CLEVELAND, Ohio - There is nothing elaborate about this makeover. No colorful murals. No big bright signs. Decor? Hardly.

In fact, reviving the Odeon Concert Club required stripping away the glitzy remnants. There are a few lonely disco balls shoved away in a back storage space to testify to that.

"It needs to be what it was: a basic club where you go to see music," Odeon general booking manager Gregg Kelley told The Plain Dealer. "With all the changes happening in the Flats, people want to walk in and feel a sense of nostalgia for a place because it hasn't changed."

The May 1 reopening of the Odeon isn't just about nostalgia - or even just about the Odeon. The storied Old River Road club is a major step in owner Mike Tricarichi's plans to develop music clubs and dining on the East Bank of the Cleveland Flats.

The new Odeon will swing into action Friday with a grand opening starring Mushroomhead. The shock-metal band, a regular at the old club, will provide a bridge between the present and past. The Odeon will host three to four shows a month at first -- until the fall, when Kelley expects a full schedule of shows.

Other than a fresh new paint job, some bathrooms and overall clean-up, the Odeon will look barely any different than it did when it closed nine years ago. After all, glitz was never what the place was about.

In its heyday, the 1,000-capacity East Bank club played a vital role for a wide range of bands -- from up-and-comers to big-name acts. The list is seemingly endless: Weezer, Iggy Pop, Nine Inch Nails, Metallica, Sigur Ros, Eminem, Marilyn Manson. (Click here for a look at 15 memorable shows.)

The Odeon also anchored Cleveland's old Flats, despite its no-frills look and approach. If owner Mike Tricarichi has his way, the Odeon will perform a similar function in the New Flats.

Since 2005, Tricarichi's Telecom Acquisition Corp. has been quietly acquiring commercial buildings on Old River Road -- the main drag of the old Flats, when it was center of Cleveland's downtown entertainment scene in the 1980s and '90s.

"We have seven properties," said Tricarichi, as he walked around and surveyed the clean-up of the Odeon. "Things will start coming into shape once the Odeon gets running."

The process started in December, with the opening of Roc Bar - another Tricarichi property, located down the street at 1198 Old River Road.

"Soon after we opened Roc Bar, we stared getting booking bigger band and it only made sense to re-open Odeon," said Kelley.

There was another reason: Tricarichi's purchase of the Odeon in 2007 came with a seven-year do-not-compete agreement made with Live Nation concert promoter, which owned and operated the club. For years, it operated as a dance club, Earth, until 2014.

"We were originally going to open Odeon in December," he told The Plain Dealer. "It's just taken a while to get it all together."

Tricarichi made his money in the cell-phone business in the 1980s. He spends most of the year in Las Vegas, where he produces theatrical shows, but keeps a home in Chesterland.

His Flats portfolio consists of four properties on the river side of Old River and three on the other side.

"I'm envisioning restaurants on the river side and music clubs on the other side," he said. "We have these long decks along the river with great views that would go perfectly with restaurants."

"But I'm not a restaurateur," added Tricarichi. "So I'm looking at working with operators that want to come in and open up here."

So where does that leave Roc Bar?

"We'll probably move Roc Bar into the old Buffalo Wild Wings location and then adding another club between that and the Odeon," said Tricarichi.

The old Buffalo Wild Wings spot - 1313 Old River - sits at the southeast end of the properties. Across the street is the historically-significant Frank Morrison & Son building (1330 Old River), which is on the National Register of Historic Places as "The Old River Road Historic District."

At the other end are the old homes to the Scripts Night Club (1204 Old River) and the River's Edge (1198 Old River).

"Most of my buildings were in disrepair when I got them," says Tricarichi. "I had to fix the roofs and basically put a ton of money in them."

Developers such as the Wolstein Group and Fairmount Properties have thus far received all of the attention regards to the Flats, thanks to the high-end, big name restaurant and club operators - from country megastar Toby Keith to Cleveland chef Zach Bruell.

"That's fine," said Tricarichi. "We're going to do something different here."

"Here" is roughly on the southern side of the Main Avenue Bridge, often called the "blue bridge."

There's no coordination between the two developments, other than Tricarichi selling the former home of Jimmy's bar (1061 Old River) to Wolstein.

"There will be some benefit to being next to what they're doing," said Kelley. "But we're looking doing something more like the old Flats."

Kelley looks back fondly at those days.

"This block is rich in Cleveland music history, and it was sad when The Odeon went away," Kelley told The Plain Dealer. "I think that we will be a great addition to the new Flats. You have something amazing going on in this neighborhood, and it does keep some of its heritage."

That's music to the ears of Jason McGinty, a Cleveland photographer and music fan and a regular at the old Odeon.

"It was the perfect venue, because there were all these chairs and things around - it was just a big empty room where you could see and hear a band play," he said. "It was a place where, for days or weeks, you couldn't wait to see your favorite band play - because it was about music and nothing else."

McGinty recalls seeing Henry Rollins and Keith Morris performing Black Flag songs at the Odeon in 2003.

"There was this little guy walking around the crowd with super long hair and I thought he was Cousin It," says McGinty, referring to The Addams Family character. "Then I see it was Keith Morris - because now he's on stage and totally blowing away the crowd. The Odeon was the kind of place where you could see something like that."

After the club closed, he often found himself driving around the Flats and wondering how a once-vibrant place could end up so deserted.

Whether the club recaptures its vibrant past is an open question. The music scene, like time, has changed - and the plethora of venues in the city, from the Beachland Ballroom to the House of Blues, complicate the landscape.

But for McGinty, it goes beyond the lights and sounds and bands.

"It's great to see a city going back to a time when you had places that weren't just for rich people," McGinty told The Plain Dealer. "Music appeals to the heart and soul of Cleveland and it seems like history has become history - something that doesn't exist anymore."

If the Odeon has its way, the past will play a vibrant role in the future of the Flats.