Be it ever so tangled Frank Giglio's boarded-up home.

On the last Wednesday night of November, Frank Giglio milled around his Tremont yard, musing over his dwindling options. Cats patrolled the grounds, hiding among the tall plants.

A few weeks earlier, armed with a temporary restraining order, Cleveland police and a board-up crew escorted Giglio out of the house he has owned for 20 years. Giglio, a swarthy man of 53 with a steady gaze out of clear eyes, is no longer allowed to live there. The crew nailed plywood over all the first floor windows and doors to make sure he wouldn't.

Giglio believes he's being harassed because someone wants his land, or at least wants him gone so someone else can redevelop it. But the Department of Building and Housing, the housing court and Councilman Joe Cimperman say it's all about Giglio's well-being. They believe it's better to put an impoverished man out of his house than to let him live among its myriad code violations.

The eviction spurred a flurry of angry gossip in the neighborhood and a posse of supporters. Even as Giglio stood in the yard explaining his situation, well-wishers stopped to talk. Someone had nailed cardboard signs on the sycamore trees out front. One read "Building and Housing, City of Cleveland, Land Stealers, Leave Frank Alone!" Another said simply, "Home Owner 20 years, Homeless 3 Weeks."

But not everyone is sympathetic. As he stood in the overgrown front yard describing the sequence of events, a white sedan slowed to a stop at the curb. A woman left the car running but got out only long enough to steal the cardboard signs. As Giglio realized what was happening, he ran toward her, shouting, "Who are you?" But the car drove away, and the noise of the West 14th traffic swallowed his voice.

FOR MORE THAN A DECADE Giglio has had a colorful relationship with the neighborhood and a rocky one with the city. He became famous around the South Side in the '90s for his overgrown yard, and for late-night bacchanals with bonfires, drummers and kegs of beer. Pagans celebrated the seasons in his garden, which he cultivated with an extensive collection of plants and herbs. Entire Christmas trees sometimes burned in his fire pit, their sparks and flame visible to cars passing on Interstate 90 above.

Not that the ruckus could have bothered anyone. Giglio's triangular patch of real estate is insulated from the surrounding neighborhood by the highway embankment on one side, his mother's empty house on another, and across the street, a row of boarded-up, long-empty homes. In warm weather, a thick shroud of trees and foliage further shields his yard from the sidewalk. It's a great situation if you want to be left alone, which seems to be what Giglio wants more than anything else. But the City of Cleveland codified ordinances don't seem to allow for that.

Giglio has been in and out of Cleveland Housing Court since 1993 on code violations. Before this year it was all about the exterior: the deteriorating roof, gutters and paint, the tall plants, the unpruned trees, the firewood stacked on the ground. His story came to a notorious crescendo in 1998, when the city arrived with bulldozers and chainsaws to scrape the land clean and prune up the trees. Since then he's painted the house white, replaced the gutters and roof. But this year, the city got inside.

Cleveland doesn't conduct point-of-sale or periodic inspections, but a Tremont West Development Corporation code enforcement officer says that last August, based on the exterior condition — the weeds and clutter in the yard and on the porch — the Building and Housing Department asked for a warrant to enter Giglio's house and got it. Once inside, the inspectors found plenty of code violations, from the trivial to the dangerous.

Many of the conditions are undeniably common to century-old houses in Cleveland. Others are simply the manifestation of Giglio's enigmatic lifestyle. A prodigious depth of clutter occupies most of the rooms. An incomplete but representative list of the city's complaints includes improperly grounded electrical circuits; extensive use of extension cords; furnaces installed not incorrectly, but without permits, and by contractors not registered in the city.

The report faults Giglio for not having an electrical outlet on each wall. It notes that the toilets were "not properly operable." The back stair is not clear of Frank's stuff. There are holes in some interior walls. And again on the outside, the fence is "not maintained in good order," and "there was junk and debris in the yard and on the front porch."

For this, the city removed Frank from his house and nailed plywood over the doors and windows. Giglio has decorated the boards — one with a spray-painted basketball player; another, where a picture window ought to be, with the words "Unconstitutional Cimerman" (sic).

Councilman Cimperman says it's "too convenient" to believe that Giglio's troubles are at their root a land grab.

"I hear people say the city or developers want to take his land. Who? It's part of the Frank mythology."

Instead, Cimperman points to the code violations. He acknowledges that Giglio has made substantial repairs, that the paint, roof and gutters "are absolutely in good shape" since Giglio replaced them in 2003, but says the city is responsible for Giglio's well-being.

"The electricity isn't grounded. If there were a fire, and God forbid something happened to Frank, we'd be liable." He adds that if there were a fire, Cleveland firefighters would have no choice but to go into the house with its cluttered hallways and stairs.

He emphasizes that he doesn't know of "one person" who wants to buy the house, even though Giglio had it for sale last year on eBay for $250,000.

"The specter of development has nothing to do with it," the councilman insists. "It's to ensure safe quarter."

But there needn't be a buyer for someone to push for the redevelopment of a rundown house at what some have described as the "gateway to Tremont." And there's no shortage of fuel for that rumor. For all its isolation from neighbors, the property is the first you see when you get off the Innerbelt to go into the trendy neighborhood. And the increasingly intense efforts at code enforcement came during the same years that Tremont flourished from a forgotten and decaying pocket of the city to the real estate and nightlife hotspot it is now.

In 1986, Giglio was one of the first to buy in, years before the revival. In addition to the house, Giglio owns the vacant land next to it. Of the three vacant lots next to that, one is owned by Rysar Properties. Another is owned by the City of Cleveland. Added together, the parcels total an exurban-sized half-acre lot. Giglio's is already zoned for multifamily residence.

An effort to assemble property for a "Greektown" development that would have capitalized on the neighborhood's ethnic heritage has gone quiet, but at least one other possibility looms. Cleveland Clinic affiliate Grace Hospital owns the row of boarded homes across the street, and is in strategic planning. Bob Range, who used to be CEO of the hospital and is now leading the long-term, acute-care facility through its planning process, says one of the decisions that will come of that is what to do with the several boarded-up houses the hospital owns across the street from Giglio's.

There are some "developmental options," he said, though he added that in its "good citizen role," the hospital has no intention of demolishing them. He assured the Free Times that Grace Hospital "does not have designs on the house across the street."

Finally, coincidental to Giglio's current battle with the city, the State of Ohio filed a lien against his property — a sudden attempt to collect on an $835 judgment that had been gathering dust since 1997. As if given a clue that the property might soon go up for sale.

IF THERE ARE RUMORS about whether redevelopment could be driving the case, there's plenty of disinformation about Giglio and his house, too — stories even Cimperman has repeated.

The councilman told the Free Times that there's a temporary protective order that bans Giglio from going near staff at Tremont West Development Corporation. Giglio has been to jail several times on a variety of low-level charges, but Cleveland Municipal Court spokesman Ed Ferenc says not only is there no such order, but no hearing for one has been set. No request for one even appears on the docket.

The councilman also told the Free Times that "when the inspectors went in, there was no functioning plumbing." The only reference to plumbing in the housing court file, however, referred to toilets with improperly installed flush valves and a drip in the basement. And when Giglio pried a plywood panel off his front door to give a tour, he walked to the kitchen and turned on the faucet. Water flowed, and after a few seconds, it was hot.

Giglio and the councilman disagree on the definition of "homeless." After living "in the woods" for a time after the board-up, Giglio moved into his mother's vacant, unheated house next door. He'd have heat in his own home, he says, if the city hadn't removed his meters to make sure all that wiring didn't get hot.

Incorrect information seems to have been documented even in the case file. While the overwhelming volume of its claims are visibly accurate, the city's charges, filed October 24, say "the structure is infested with fleas." The October 27 judgement says that if Giglio didn't fumigate to kill them, the city would be empowered to do so. He didn't, so they did. But Giglio and his friend Patrick Turner say that when an exterminator was at the house, he told them he didn't really see a problem. Exterminator Kevin Padden, a subcontractor who was delegated to the job, confirmed the same thing.

The Free Times asked City Hall Friday and Monday to answer a few specific questions and to speak with someone in Building and Housing, but the Mayor's press office did not follow up.

Barbara Reitzloff, chief magistrate for Cleveland Municipal Housing Court, said neither she nor judge Ray Pianka are able to talk specifics about Giglio's case because it is still pending. She says at any given time the Housing Court "probably has 10 cases pending where the city brings actions because they feel the property is not safe to be occupied." It's less common for the property to be owner-occupied.

"I don't think we routinely see people out on the street," she said. "Often people can stay with family and friends."

Reitzloff says if Giglio doesn't get the work done, the city could do it and charge him, to be recovered by placing a lien on the property. She says if a person in such a situation "has too much on their plate and can't keep their house in repair, the city can try to find them a new place to live, and a way to find a transition to a new owner."

It's impossible not to note that might be someone who would build some nice condos.

LILY MILLER SAYS she met Giglio while working in the Cleveland Housing Court. She thought the inspectors were "harsh, rough and overzealous" in their dealings with him. She thinks the city has it in for Giglio because of his pagan beliefs.

"And he does have valuable land there," she adds.

Miller isn't a lawyer, but helped Giglio draft a request for a stay of the restraining order — to give him time to clean out the clutter and bring the electrical system up to code. Giglio needs legal help and skilled labor, but doesn't have money for either. As of Monday, the court hadn't ruled on the motion, and Giglio was worried that the city would be back soon with a dumpster, and would throw the entire contents of his house into it.

Miller says she could at least get the place cleaned out, if only it weren't boarded up.

"If the city gives us time, I'll get a dumpster and clean it up. I told the city we have the money and people to get it done, but it's not possible because we can't get in."

mgill@freetimes.com