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History

The Stouffer family business traces its roots to 1914 when Abraham E. Stouffer and his father started the Medina County Creamery in Medina County, Ohio and, also, a dairy stand at Cleveland's Sheriff Street Market. In 1916, Abraham and wife Lena moved to the Cleveland suburb of Lakewood, Ohio to manage the creamery business and, in 1922, Abraham resigned as president of the creamery to manage one of the company's dairy stands located on the lower floor of the Cleveland Arcade. The Stouffers converted the operation into a restaurant which served buttermilk, sandwiches, and Lena Stouffer's homemade dutch apple pie (credited by some as the reason for the almost instant success of the restaurant). They opened an additional restaurant on East Ninth Street in the city, called the Stouffer Lunch, and incorporated the business as Stouffer Lunch System in 1924. As time went on, the couple continued the program of expansion with the assistance of their sons Vernon, a graduate of the Wharton School of Finance, and Gordon who, together, led the reorganization of the business, taking it public as the Stouffer Corporation in 1929 with Abraham as chairman of the board.

The year 1929 also marked the beginning of the company's effort to establish locations outside of Ohio with the opening of a restaurant in Detroit, Michigan and one in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After Abraham's death in 1936 the company continued its program of expansion by opening its first restaurant in New York City and eventually began a program of diversification, entering the frozen food business in 1946.. In 1960 the company, formally renamed Stouffer Foods Corporation in 1956, purchased its first hotel, the Anacapri Inn of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and, by the end of that year, the company was composed of three divisions: Stouffer Foods Corporation, Stouffer Hotels Corporation, and Stouffer Restaurants Corporation.

The Ameritrust Tower (formerly known as the Cleveland Trust Tower) is a high-rise building in the brutalist style located at the corner of East 9th Street and Euclid Avenue in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. The building is 29 stories and rises to a height of 383 ft (117 m). It was designed by Marcel Breuer and Hamilton Smith and completed in 1971.

Although plans called for a second mirror-image tower, the second building was never constructed. The tower initially served as headquarters for Ameritrust Bank before its merger with Society Bank. Society Bank has since merged with Key Bank. The tower has been vacant since 1996.

Ameritrust Tower

2005 Purchase

In 2005, Cuyahoga County purchased the tower, the historic Cleveland Trust Company headquarters building with its rotunda, and several other surrounding structures from the Jacobs Group for use as the site for new a county headquarters. On March 29, 2007, the members of the Cuyahoga County Commission voted to demolish the tower and to replace it with a new building to be designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox. Two commissioners, James Dimora and Timothy Hagan, voted in favor of demolition while commissioner Peter Lawson-Jones voted for renovation. The Cleveland Planning Commission approved demolition of the landmark Ameritrust Tower, to the chagrin of preservationists, who argued that the county would destroy a valued piece of architecture. A June 2008 Cleveland Magazine article showed that the county's own consultants told commissioners that it would be cheaper and more prudent to renovate the tower for its own use.

However, later in 2007, the Cuyahoga County Commissioners, claiming a desire to devote more of their energies for Medical Mart and Convention Center, decided to attempt to sell the complex to private developers. The County declared that it would not sell the property for less $35 million, which represented the purchase price plus expenditures on the property, including the removal of asbestos. The only bid on the complex was submitted by the K&D group of Willoughby, Ohio, for $35,005,000. The deal fell apart in 2009.

Federal investigators scrutinized the 2005 purchase of the Ameritrust complex, the attempted sale, and the removal of the asbestos as part of their probe into corruption in the Cuyahoga County government. In 2012, federal prosecutors alleged that attorney Anthony Calabrese III had offered to bribe county employee J. Kevin Kelley in 2005 if Kelley could convince Dimora to vote to purchase the complex. The accusation was contained in a witness-tampering charge against Calabrese, which was later dropped.

2013 Sale

In December 2012, Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald announced that the County would sell the Ameritrust complex, including the tower, the rotunda building, and two other office buildings to the Geis Companies of Streetsboro, Ohio for $27 million. Geis Cos. agreed to raze the smaller buildings, known as the P&H buildings, and to build an eight story office building to be used by the County as a consolidated headquarters building. The parties envisioned that the county would move about 750 employees into the newly constructed building from eight other locations by mid-2014. The County agreed to make lease payments of $6.7 million on 222,000 square feet of space for a period of 26 years with a County option to buy the new building at the end of the term for $1.

The Cuyahoga County Council approved the sale in January 2013. Geis Cos. took ownership of the Ameritrust complex in February 2013.