CLEVELAND, Ohio - Restoration of a graffiti-strewn former garment factory for a school. An apartment redevelopment of a building where the inventor of the alligator clip expanded his company.

The residential revamp of an Italianate mansion in Cleveland's Ohio City. Housing east of downtown Cleveland, in Lakewood and in Alliance, northeast of Canton. And a Cuyahoga Falls theater earmarked as a future microbrewery and restaurant.

Eight Northeast Ohio properties won nearly $5 million in state tax credits Tuesday from a popular program designed to support historic preservation. In a departure from recent rounds of awards, the list of winners didn't include any high-profile downtown Cleveland projects. Instead, the money will flow to developers working in city neighborhoods, suburbs and outlying counties.

The Ohio Development Services Agency announced $27.8 million in statewide credits for 39 historic buildings. The state allocates credits twice each year, through a competitive process where demand far exceeds supply. Building owners don't actually receive the credits, which can be used to offset a range of liabilities, until their projects are complete.

This time around, 44 applicants sought $64.7 million in credits to renovate 71 buildings.

A rendering shows the Joseph & Feiss Co. garment factory, restored as the new home of Menlo Park Academy.

For Menlo Park Academy, a public charter school focused on gifted children, the third time was the charm. The state awarded $826,668 to the school's planned renovation of the empty Joseph & Feiss Co. clothing factory on West 53rd Street in Cleveland, after Menlo Park missed out in two previous rounds.

The brick structure is perhaps best known, at least to urban explorers and passersby on Interstate 90, as the "Read More Books" building, thanks to an enterprising graffiti artist - or artists - who tagged it years ago. Menlo Park bought the seven-acre Joseph & Feiss property in early 2015 and hopes to move its classrooms and more than 400 students into the building in time for the 2017-18 school year.

"We're really excited about the opportunity to move our school to this more central location and make the school more accessible to low-income families," said Teri Harrison, co-founder and board chairwoman at Menlo Park, which currently leases space on Triskett Road near West 140th Street. "We really needed state historic tax credits to close the financial gap and move forward."

The state's allocation only covers about 40 percent of what Menlo Park needed. Records from the development services agency show that the school actually applied for almost $2 million in credits to assist with its $16.6 million project.

But Harrison said the award should be enough for Menlo Park to close on its financing, which also includes federal preservation tax credits, New Markets Tax Credits and site clean-up money flowing through Cuyahoga County, and to start construction. She hopes that the balance of the credits that Joseph & Feiss needs - based on historic-rehabilitation expenses at the building - will become available if other preservation projects come in under budget or fall through.

"There were certainly times when we thought, gosh, it would certainly be easier - and wouldn't it be cheaper - to just build new somewhere," Harrison said of Menlo Park's struggle to put together financing for the complex project. "But that property can be transformational for that neighborhood. ... We had hoped to be done with it in time for the RNC to come to town, so that people wouldn't have to look at it off the highway."

The complex served as the production facility, warehouse and offices for the Joseph & Feiss Co. from 1900 to 1965 and later housed subsidiaries of men's clothing companies Phillips-Van Heusen and Hugo Boss. The garment factory closed in the mid-1990s, and a series of plans for residential redevelopments never bore fruit. The state rescinded a 2011 preservation tax-credit award for the blighted building after an apartment project failed to materialize.

Harrison is convinced that the school project will happen. But she's not sure about one detail: whether the rather scholarly graffiti will stay put or get scrubbed off.

"The state historic preservation office has left that up to us," she said, noting that the "Read More Books" maxim doesn't clash with the school's mission. "A firm decision hasn't been made on that."

The other local tax-credit winners are:

The Mueller Electric Co. building on East 31st St. in Cleveland's Asiatown neighborhood.

A local development group called Sustainable Community Associates plans to transform the empty brick building into 59 apartments, charging lower rents than what tenants are paying in downtown Cleveland and neighborhoods just west of the center city.

Mueller Electric founder Ralph Mueller invented the alligator clip - think of the copper clamps at the ends of jumper cables - in 1908. The company, now based in Akron, still exists. But its longtime manufacturing facility has been empty for at least a decade.

"It's a large building, but it's only two stories," said Josh Rosen, a member of the development team, which previously won state tax credits for its conversions of the Fairmont Creamery and Wagner Awning buildings into apartments. "It fits really nicely into the residential neighborhood. ... It seems like the residential opportunities in Tremont, where we've been working, and Ohio City have already been capitalized on. There will be folks looking for a different neighborhood to live in."

The former Mueller building won just over $1.7 million in credits, to support a $17.4 million project. The apartments could open by June 2017, Rosen said.

A roughly 64-unit apartment redevelopment of two vacant buildings at 2125 Superior Ave., just east of downtown Cleveland.

Local investors plan to turn the complex into market-rate housing aimed at graduate students, faculty and other renters who want to live close to Cleveland State University, on a corridor that's seeing a flurry of redevelopment activity.

Construction might start in the fall, and the apartments could open a year later. The state awarded $826,667 in tax credits to the $13.6 million project. The century-old buildings were part of Cleveland's once-bustling clothing-manufacturing and textile industry.

Sanford House, an 1860s brick house on Franklin Boulevard in Cleveland's Ohio City neighborhood.

Now vacant, the house has served as a juvenile detention facility, a school for disabled children, a nursing home and, most recently, part of Cuyahoga County's archives.

Welcome House, a nonprofit group, plans to renovate the building for small-business or nonprofit offices and four market-rate apartments, as part of a larger project that might kick off next year. The neighboring Rhodes mansion, which Cuyahoga County is still using as archive space, is slated to become 24 subsidized apartments for adults with developmental disabilities.

Welcome House expects to file a separate preservation tax-credit application for the Rhodes mansion in the next competition for awards, later this year. The nonprofit also is pursuing low-income housing tax credits, another competitive funding source, for that larger project.

Tuesday's award, of $249,999, only applies to the Sanford House renovations.

"We feel good about the announcement," said Tony Thomas, Welcome House's executive director. "We feel good that we've got one piece of the puzzle in, and now we can look forward to filling in the other pieces of the puzzle."

Welcome House acquired the buildings from Cuyahoga County in late 2014.

The Veronika, a small apartment-and-commercial building that is Lakewood's first project to win state historic preservation tax credits.

Developer and contractor Frank Scalish bought the building, at 12301 Madison Ave., early this year and plans to strip off the 1970s storefront and refashion the ground floor. He'll also renovate six apartments in the building, which sits in the Birdtown Historic District.

Slovenian immigrants Michael and Veronika Turza bought the Madison Avenue corner in 1915 and constructed the building. Over the years, the retail tenants included a hardware store, a candy store, tailors and taverns. The most recent occupant was the Corner Pub. The Turzas lived in the building until they died, and their children sold the property in late 1950s.

Scalish stumbled over the building when a more recent owner approached him about new windows. Instead of an installation job, Scalish ended up with a historic-preservation project. He's talking to a restaurant and a coffee shop about the ground-floor space. And he's taking advantage of Lakewood's storefront-renovation program to help with construction costs.

The state awarded $82,402 in credits to support the project, a $500,000 investment. Construction could be finished in early 2017, though the apartments might reopen sooner.

The Falls Theater on Front Street in Cuyahoga Falls. The long-empty theater is slated to become a microbrewery and restaurant, with revived storefronts and renovated apartments upstairs. The nearly $1.3 million project won almost $250,000 in tax credits.

The Faber Building in Wooster, which is that city's first such tax-credit project and the first award winner in Wayne County. The downtown building on West Liberty Street will accommodate a store called Vertical Runner, with housing upstairs. The $860,000 project won $168,500 in tax credits.

Alliance's City Savings Bank & Trust Co. Building, a former bank building that has been affordable housing for elderly renters since 1991. The state awarded $812,579 in tax credits for an $8.1 million renovation and preservation project. The eight-story building, at 449 East Main St., was constructed in the mid-1920s.

A handful of local applicants didn't make the cut for credits, and the teams behind those projects will have to decide whether to reapply later this year.

The properties that missed out include the Halle Building, the former downtown Cleveland department store where the K&D Group, Inc., is planning a partial conversion of office space to apartments. K&D asked for $5 million in credits, the maximum amount available in a typical round of awards.