CLEVELAND, Ohio - The new downtown Heinen's in the historic Cleveland Trust Building opened as scheduled at 10 a.m. Wednesday amid expressions of delight from dignitaries, foodies and public officials who showed up early for an advance peek.

Heinen's co-owners and fraternal twins Jeff and Tom Heinen, who head the grocery chain based in Warrensville Heights, invested $10 million to insert a full-service, 27,000-square-foot supermarket in the 1908 bank, a widely admired masterpiece at 900 Euclid Ave. designed by George Browne Post, architect of the New York Stock Exchange.

Display cases packed with meats and prepared foods edged the ground floor of the bank's architecturally impressive central rotunda. A wine- and beer-tasting area with cafe tables and chairs and banquettes filled the second-floor mezzanine overlooking the grand space, framed by an ornate bronze balcony.

And on the walls of the third floor, overlooking the hubbub Wednesday morning, elaborately decorated arches designed by Post framed a series of murals depicting the exploration of Ohio and the settlement of the Midwest, painted by Francis Millet, an artist who died in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.

Right next door, on the first floor of the adjacent and attached 1010 building, Heinen's installed traditional grocery shelves and aisles packed with packaged goods and produce, keeping the big central atrium clear in the heart of the Cleveland Trust Building.

"It's a huge win for historic preservation," said Jennifer Coleman, who chairs the city's Landmarks Commission and its Downtown/Flats Design Review Committee, as she stood in the bank's gleaming rotunda, gazing at signs for "Joe's Meat Market," "Seafood" and the Heinen's "Global Grille."

"Everyone was nervous about shelves and things gunking up the rotunda," she said. "But that hasn't happened. The sanctity of the circle has been kept."

Coleman praised the supermarket's design as an example of what she called "the genius of adaptive re-use," the art, craft and business of repurposing historic buildings for new jobs unlike those for which they were originally designed.

"A bank and a supermarket sound like two different trains on tracks that should never meet," she said, "but it looks like they have. Those two different genres have met very well."

She had nothing but praise for Cleveland architect John Williams, who designed the downtown Heinen's.

"He's done a fantastic job," she said. "I admire him for his creativity and sensitivity. Those are two things that don't always go together."

A few moments later, as Williams entered the rotunda, the two met.

"What do you think?" he asked Coleman.

"It's fabulous!" she said.

Michael Ruhlman, the nationally renowned Cleveland-based author of best-selling books on cooking and cuisine, also had nothing but praise for the new Heinen's.

"It's like a cathedral of food," he said. "It symbolizes the rebirth of so much in Cleveland -- the love of food, the love of downtown and the importance of food in our culture. All of these things are embodied in this structure."

As the opening neared at 10 a.m., the rotunda filled with reporters and onlookers squeezed behind red velvet ropes as Heinen's employees prepared final touches. And the big rotunda, largely silent since the 1990s after the merger of Ameritrust, Cleveland Trust's successor, stirred to life.

Just before 10 a.m., the crowd of hundreds gathered under the big dome grew quiet as a row of VIPS lined up in a clearing at the center of the floor, inside the velvet ropes.

After a round of applause precisely at 10, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson thanked the Heinen brothers and developers Fred and Greg Geis, whose Geis Cos. redeveloped the 29-story Cleveland Trust tower, also adjacent and attached to the market, as a luxury hotel and apartment complex.

The Geis Cos. purchased the entire Cleveland Trust complex, including the 1010 building, from Cuyahoga County in 2012 for $22 million. The county, in turn, purchased the complex in 2005 from the Richard E. Jacobs Group for $21.7 million in an ill-fated and scandal-ridden attempt to raze the tower, designed by Marcel Breuer, and replace it with a new county administrative office.

The Geis Cos. built a new county office next to the tower, now preserved as The 9, the luxury hotel and apartment tower.

"We want to thank everyone for coming," Jackson said. "Our philosophy and goal is to have a 24-hour city. Part of that is, how do you create a downtown that is a neighborhood of 25,000 people with all the amenities you need?"

He said the Heinen brothers "have made that vision [move] further ahead, along with the Geis brothers."

"Downtown is a neighborhood," said Ward 3 Councilman Joe Cimperman in remarks that followed those of the mayor. "We are one Cleveland. Take a second, everybody, and look around this room. This is who we are. We are African-American, Latino, Jewish, Catholic. This is who we are."

After more remarks from officials including Joe Marinucci, president and CEO of the Downtown Cleveland Alliance, plus a ribbon-cutting and applause, Janet McDaniel, a resident of the Warehouse District who watched from the balcony, uttered her verdict to no one in particular.

"Let's shop!" she said.

McDaniel said she and her husband, Randy McDaniel, moved to Cleveland from Scottsdale, Arizona, two years ago for his new sales job here with Pittsburgh-based PPG Industries.

"Cleveland's a great place to live; we love the downtown area," she said, adding that she's thrilled to have a Heinen's nearby. Until now, she's shopped at the West Side Market on West 25th Street or the Dave's nearby in Ohio City.

Now, she said she plans to walk the half-mile from her neighborhood to the Cleveland Trust Heinen's two or three days a week or take the trolley.

"I like farm-to-table-type cooking," she explained.

Rachel Downey, the Cleveland-based specialist in branding and president of Studio Graphique and Placeholder LLC, who developed signage, and a way-finding brochure for the store, was excited.

"Isn't this amazing?" she said. "I love it that people get to experience this space. It's been brought back to life for a great social purpose."

Downey's husband, architect Jason Downey, said: "Rachel really loves it because she wants to drink wine here." Then, turning to his wife, he said, "Wouldn't this be a great place to hang out?"