Public Square.jpg

A bird's eye view of the Public Square plan devised by James Corner Field Operations of New York.

(James Corner Field Operations)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The proposed renovation of Public Square in downtown Cleveland gained fresh momentum Tuesday with a $4 million gift from the KeyBank Foundation, the single biggest donation in its 45-year history.

The KeyBank Foundation has donated $4 million for the renovation of Public Square, which will give KeyBank Tower a new front yard.

The foundation is the charitable arm of an institution with an obvious interest in the project, given that the 57-story Key Tower, the tallest skyscraper between Philadelphia and Chicago, overlooks the square.

"Literally this is KeyBank's front door," Beth Mooney, the financial institution's chairman and CEO, said in an interview Monday, before announcing the gift formally Tuesday afternoon in a ceremony in the tower's lobby.

"We thought about this as a transformational gift from KeyBank to a transformational project," she said.

KeyBank's $4 million brings the total raised for the $32 million project so far to $18 million, including $8 million from the Cleveland Foundation, $5 million from the Gund Foundation, and a previously unannounced $1 million from the Kent Hale Smith Foundation.

Additional funding could come through the sale of bonds worth $8 million to $9 million, backed by tax revenues from improvements made to the Higbee Building for the Horseshoe Casino.

KeyBank Chairman and CEO Beth Mooney.

On Thursday, the board of trustees of the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District is scheduled to vote on a $3 million "installment grant" for the project.

The special role of the KeyBank donation is that it is the first corporate gift for Public Square.

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said in a separate interview Monday that he hopes the bank's gift would inspire other corporations to follow suit.

"We believe we'll see others come in as time goes on," he said. "It helps get us where we need to be."

He also said he viewed the bank's support as a vote of confidence in his desire to "transform downtown Cleveland from a vehicle-friendly urban center to a pedestrian, cycling and people-friendly city."

Anthony Coyne, chairman of the Group Plan Commission, the nonprofit civic body created by the mayor to lead improvements to public space downtown, said, "I'm humbled by fact we have a company of Key's stature coming forward with a major contribution to make this project a reality."

Mooney left no doubt that she firmly supports the redesign of the square, which is still being refined in preparation for an as-yet unscheduled groundbreaking later this fall.

"This creates a place and a space -- whether people live here, work here, or visit -- a place where people will come," she said. "This is going to be the cornerstone of our downtown."

Plans for reconstruction, devised by the leading American landscape architect, James Corner, of New York, call for removing Ontario Street, which flows north-south through the 6-acre space, but leaving Superior Avenue open for buses.

The northern half of the square would be dominated by a large, open event lawn, and the southern half would include a speaker's terrace, a splash zone and a cafe.

A perimeter walk, shaped in the plan like a butterfly, will be named for KeyBank in honor of its donation, said Ann Zoller, director of LAND Studio, the Cleveland nonprofit managing the project for the city's Group Plan Commission.

"We liked the notion it encircled the whole thing as the boundary and as the thing that defined the location," Mooney said of the perimeter walk. "That sang to us."

Mooney said that since joining KeyBank in 2008, she has been impressed by the momentum created by growth in the city's neighborhoods, the rapid rise of downtown's residential population and completion of projects including the city's new convention center and the Global Center for Health Innovation.

She sees the makeover of Public Square as a necessary next step in downtown's ongoing evolution.

"The city felt like it had a collective inferiority complex about its past being better than its present and future," she said. "I think that's waning. We see our way to a better and brighter future."