Photo Credit: Mike Mozart

A prominent corner in Clintonville is getting a Verizon store. Speculation has swirled about the half-acre parcel at the northeast corner of East North Broadway and North High Street since an excavator appeared on the site earlier this month.

With the asphalt parking lot being torn up and most of the existing building demolished, many neighbors took to Facebook to speculate about plans for the corner, which was once home to a Starbucks and a Gold 2 Cash store (and before that, a Pizza Hut).

Building permits filed by the owner, Metropolitan Partners, indicate that Verizon will be the new tenant. The new building will be taller than the previous one but will still be a single story and will sit on the same foundation.

Anthony Celebrezze, of the city’s Department of Building and Zoning Services, explained that a desire from the tenant for 18-foot ceilings meant that the roof of the existing building needed to be raised, which meant new walls and a new facade, which in turn triggered a zoning requirement for larger windows.

The result will be a mostly new, 2,600-square-foot building that will sit in the same spot on the site as the building that had occupied the lot since 1982.

The project did not have to go before the Clintonville Area Commission, because a rezoning was not required and because the work done did not meet the official definition of a demolition (which would involve taking out the foundation as well, according to Celebrezze).

The new Verizon store will sit diagonally across from the site of a 2015 proposal to build a five-story mixed-use building. That plan did not come to fruition and no new proposals have been presented for the corner since.