CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A few Cleveland landmark buildings, such as the 81-year-old trapezoidal-shaped Marathon gas station, and several nondescript commercial structures will be reduced to rubble to make way for the new westbound Inner Belt Bridge.

Appraisals are under way following the September ruling by the Federal Highway Administration that the Ohio Department of Transportation could proceed with the project.

The ruling freed up the $50 million ODOT expects to spend to acquire 57 parcels under the proposed bridge and the current Inner Belt Bridge from about 25 owners, said Dan Dougherty, real estate administrator for the ODOT district that includes Cleveland.

The transportation department hopes to have all property in hand by October, 2010, so construction can begin the following year. The $400 million bridge is scheduled to open in 2013. It will carry traffic in both directions for several years while the current Inner Belt Bridge is replaced. Then it will carry five lanes of westbound traffic.

The new bridge, just north of the current one, will span a largely industrial area as it crosses the Cuyahoga River. So it only displaces a few homes in Tremont and several businesses, ODOT officials said.

ODOT spent $985,510 in 2006 and 2007 to acquire six single- and multi-family homes after it finalized the location for the bridge, Dougherty said. ODOT had offered to purchase property if owners faced hardship in renting or selling their buildings.

Others who owned land or buildings in the way of the bridge preferred to wait until ODOT got approval to build the bridge, knowing it could take years.

ODOT also had to agree to commemorate three buildings deemed eligible for the National Register of Historic Places that will be destroyed.

It will provide documentation to libraries about the Cleveland Cold Storage Building on West 14th Street, built in 1927 and used to store ice to be used in holds of ships.

There's the Marathon gas station on Central Viaduct, a distinctive shaped structure built in 1928.

And the Broadway Mills building, next to the gas station near Gateway, is considered one of the best surviving examples of mill architecture in the city, historians said. It was built in 1894. ODOT plans to salvage brickwork and the large medallions from that building and use them in nearby retaining walls.

As appraisals are completed, ODOT will make offers to owners. If the property is worth more than $500,000, it undergoes two appraisals and a review by the Federal Highway Administration.

"We want to pay fair market value and purchase the property as if it was sold on the open market," said Dougherty. If an agreement cannot be reached with the owners, ODOT can acquire the property by eminent domain, in which the fair market value is determined in Cuyahoga County Probate Court.

That is how the sale of the Cold Storage Building likely will be settled, say ODOT officials and Fred Finley, the building's owner until it was sold in October at a sheriff's sale to a company that holds one of the mortgages. A hearing to vacate that sale will be held in January in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court.

ODOT had offered to purchase the 12-story building for $4.5 million. It says the building is worth $400,000 and the remainder of the money would compensate Beautiful Signage, a company that has 99-year lease for billboard advertising.

Finley claims the building is worth $8.85 million, its value had he been able to go forward with residential and commercial development plans that were abandoned when ODOT said it needed the building.

Negotiations will be less contentious with Scranton-Averill Inc., a real estate corporation that owns about 60 acres in the Flats, has four of the parcels that ODOT needs to acquire.

"They are telling us they are finishing up the final details and will get to us with an offer," said Thomas Stickney, the corporation's president. "They have been nothing but helpful, but this is the friendly time of the process."

Even if the value of land has to be determined in court, he said he believes the process will be fair.

"They have a right to take the land," he said. "The city, the county, we all need this new bridge."

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: kfarkas@plaind.com, 216-999-5079