Dice Park.jpg

Designs for proposed casino gambling park in downtown Cleveland (Cleveland City Planning Commission).

(Cleveland City Planning Commission)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Cleveland City Planning Commission won't be voting Friday on the controversial proposal by the Horseshoe Casino Cleveland to build a gambling-themed park on the vacant site of the Stanley Block building off Ontario Street in downtown Cleveland.

Using a prerogative enjoyed by members of City Council, Councilman Joe Cimperman, whose 3rd Ward includes downtown, requested late Thursday that the vote to approve the park be removed from the agenda of Friday's meeting of the Planning Commission.

The revised agenda for the commission marked the "Stanley Lot Site Improvements" as "withdrawn by applicant."

Cimperman said he wants a chance to discuss the project with Horseshoe and with city planners to gain a better understanding of it before it comes to the commission for a vote.

He also said he wants to give downtown residents a chance to weigh in before the proposal moves ahead.

"We have engaged residents," he said. "People want representation."

The vacant property, on the east side of Ontario Street just south of Prospect Avenue, is flanked on three sides by the casino's valet parking and welcome center.

As revealed on the city planning website on Tuesday, the casino planned to install a park with greenery surrounding a sculpture of a stack of poker chips surmounted by a red die.

The casino, in an email to Plain Dealer reporter Michelle McFee on Wednesday, described the park as a temporary installation and said it had no long-term plans for the site.

The proposal nevertheless rapidly inspired a torrent of negative comments in response to McFee's original article about the proposal, and a follow-up commentary by the editorial staff of The Plain Dealer and the Northeast Ohio Media Group, which called the "dice park" "tacky."

Ontario Mothership LLC, an affiliate of casino owner Rock Ohio Caesars LLC, won control of the site earlier this year at a foreclosure auction after battling in court over the property with its previous owners.

The property has a $500,000 lien tied to demolition costs incurred by the city after it condemned the dilapidated 1870s Stanley Block building, an historic structure, and had it torn down in 2012.

"This has been a very contested piece of geography in Cleveland," Cimperman said late Thursday about the Stanley Block site. "Let's not make the outcome as contested as the situation that brought us to this place."