CLEVELAND, Ohio - For the second time in four months, the city's Downtown/Flats Design Review Committee on Thursday unanimously tabled FirstEnergy's request for approval to demolish its permanently idled Lake Shore power plant along the I-90 Shoreway at East 72nd Street.

FirstEnergy officials including David Turner, manager of external affairs, and Ketan Patel, director of real estate, said their company wants the plant demolished because it has begun to degrade structurally since it was shut down a year ago.

As they had during a Plain Dealer tour of the facility in January, FirstEnergy officials pointed out Thursday that as soon as the facility was no longer burning coal and producing heat, pipes and downspouts froze during winter months, heavily damaging its major coal-burning structures.

The FirstEnergy officials said they would perform a multi-phase demolition. The process so far has included removal of all liquefied fuels and waste, and would continue with removal of asbestos and lead-based paint, plus any remaining contaminants.

Buildings would be demolished and the top 2 feet of soil on the site would be removed and replaced with clean fill and topsoil, then seeded.

Company officials said they would then seek potential new users for the site and would remediate the site environmentally in compliance with all applicable laws.

Architect Jack Bialosky, the committee's chairman, said the company's request put the committee in "deplorable'' position because FirstEnergy had failed to adequately lay out its case or to convincingly explore the possibility of saving architecturally iconic portions of the facility.

But Freddy Collier, the city's planning director, said the administration of Mayor Frank Jackson has become convinced that the plant should go, because its removal could open up land along the lakefront for future development.

"That position will not change moving forward," Collier said of the city's view that demolition is the wisest course.

Collier said the demolition proposal would be heard Friday by the city's Planning Commission, whose approval is required for a demolition permit.

The Design Review Committee, which advises the Planning Commission, can block a hearing by the Planning Commission by tabling a demolition request - but it can only take that action once.

The Design Review Committee first tabled the proposed demolition in early December, saying that FirstEnergy had failed to show whether the demolition would be part of a larger plan to provide an environmental cleanup for the 57-acre site and enable it to be redeveloped.

FirstEnergy closed the last of the plant's coal-fired boilers in April 2015 after having decided it would rather close the century-old facility than spend millions of dollars to upgrade pollution control equipment.

On Thursday, the committee focused on whether architecturally significant portions of the plant, including its A Plant, which includes a vast interior turbine room, could be adaptively reused.

Kathleen Crowther, president of the nonprofit Cleveland Restoration Society, said her organization would like to see FirstEnergy market the building aggressively to potential developers who could pursue historic preservation tax credits.

She told the committee she'd also like to see FirstEnergy perform an architectural, structural and market analysis of the plant, which she said could cost up to $40,000 and take two to four months.

Collier said in response to Crowther's comments that "we are not in a scenario where that makes sense or is feasible at this juncture."

He also said that the value of potential redevelopment of the FirstEnergy site outweighs the value of preserving significant portions of the plant.

Patel pointed out in the meeting that a developer told FirstEnergy that new residential construction on the Lake Shore site faces constraints including concerns over electrical transmission facilities that the company still operates on the site, plus building height limitations related to the flight path for nearby Burke Lakefront Airport.

Plain Dealer Reporter Michelle Jarboe contributed to this story.

