Crushing blow - Memphis Elementary, sold back to the city for 2000 percent profit.

Inside Memphis Elementary school, a handful of Cleveland firefighters are preparing for search-and-rescue practice, exercises to be conducted in darkness and smoke. Through the rubble you can still see the evidence of students and teachers in the hallways and classrooms. A few desks, and on one wall, a laminated poster still urging the kids, "Don't say I can't."

This may be the final chapter for the nearly century-old, beige brick schoolhouse that has defined its Old Brooklyn surroundings for almost 100 years. But these days, the visage of the school is complicated by a crane parked on the grounds, and the massive steel wrecking ball that hangs from its boom. As soon as he can get an acceptable bid through City Hall, Ward 16 Councilman Kevin Kelley says Memphis Elementary is coming down.

The demolition will leave a gaping hole at West 41st and Memphis, which Kelley has no immediate plans to fill. His predecessor also sought to demolish the school, and envisioned soccer fields in its place. Kelley, however, isn't certain what its future will hold. The Old Brooklyn Community Development Corp. is about to begin master planning, and an answer may come out of that. In the meantime, a few Old Brooklyn residents quietly wish he'd stay the building's execution, leaving at least the possibility that the master-planning process will find a productive way to re-use the monumental structure.

As Old Brooklyn Historical Society president Louise Evans — Memphis Elementary Class of '37 — says, "It's breaking my heart."

Deanna Bremer Fisher, director of marketing and development at the Cleveland Restoration Society, says some Old Brooklynites recently asked about the building's history and potential. According to their research, the school was designed by Frank Seymor Barnum, superintendent of buildings for Cleveland schools at the dawn of the 20th century. He designed 45 schools during his tenure. Built in 1913, Memphis Elementary is one of just 10 that remain standing. It's not especially ornate, but it has a dignified symmetry and a strong presence due to its position and three-story stature.

"Schools then were designed to be centers of neighborhoods," Bremer Fisher says, "meant to be monumental, meant to be seen, designed to be landmarks."

And of course, they don't build them like that anymore.

What to do with Memphis and other old schools after they close is a problem that vexes the region, as core city populations dwindle. Cleveland Heights and Lakewood will each close a school this year, and neither has revealed plans for the sites. Cleveland's biggest but by no means last round of closings — nearly 50 school buildings — took place in the late 1970s. Many of them, such as Hodge School and Murray Hill School, have been converted to housing or other purposes.

Last spring the Cleveland Restoration Society studied four Cleveland public schools slated for demolition and reconstruction and found that by renovating instead of demolishing and building anew, the schools could save millions of dollars and preserve the historic buildings. The report, though, was insufficient to sway the school district. That experience — combined with the fact that when CRS staffers visited the Memphis site they saw the crane parked there — left Bremer Fisher less than optimistic.

MEMPHIS ELEMENTARY reached the point where firefighters could use it for search-and-rescue practice through a decade-long cavalcade of decisions that have run up hundreds of thousands of dollars in public expense. The Cleveland school board decided to close the building in 1995, along with 10 others, in the face of a federal court order to stabilize finances. There began a series of real-estate deals with startling prices and failures of oversight, with the neighborhood and taxpayers taking hits at every turn.

After the students and teachers were gone, the city of Cleveland promptly acquired the property from the school district in what Councilman Kelley describes as "one of those dollar transactions." After three years sitting empty, it was sold to businessman Thomas B. Hummer for the bargain basement sum of $20,000.

Hummer ran various companies, including Hummer Imprint Products and Hummer Industries. In 1995 he incorporated Archangel Crusade of Love, which in its statement of purpose is described as "a unique evangelization company dedicated to sharing the saving treasures of our Catholic faith through personal, dramatic and multi-media presentations for the salvation of souls everywhere!"

It was under that aegis that he planned to convert Memphis Elementary into a Bible museum, Christian coffee shop and performing arts space. So the bargain price on the property came with strings: He was to improve and maintain the building, and make progress on those ventures by the end of 1998.

Hummer did not respond to the Free Times' attempts to contact him. Neither did he meet his redevelopment obligations: The interior of the building shows no evidence that he ever began work.

According to records on file with the Secretary of State, however, he moved Hummer Industries to that address and used it in his application for a trademark for the labeling and advertising of Kreo-Seal, a "100 percent coal tar emulsion sealer for end grain wood block flooring." That was in 1999.

view from memphis avenue - Meant to be monumental, designed to be a landmark.

In the year 2000, almost two years after Hummer was to have renovated the school for the purpose of saving souls, then-Councilman Mike O'Malley decided he should return the property to the city. O'Malley said at the time that he hoped the building could be returned to use as a school. Hummer, in fact, was considering the sale of the property to National Heritage Academies, a charter school company, for $400,000.

The sale never went through, due perhaps to deed restrictions giving the city the right of first refusal, but Hummer apparently wasn't interested in selling to the city. In 2002, the school district briefly considered a plan to build a new school on the site, but never made the commitment. Eventually the city took the school back through an eminent domain suit. Councilman O'Malley's plan was to level it and plant grass for soccer fields. The case was finally settled in the city's favor in April 2005, with the jury setting the price: $375,000 — a profit for Hummer of almost 2,000 percent.

That same month, Kevin Kelley was appointed to his council seat, and figuring out what to do with the school became his problem. But as it happens, the problems were just beginning.

Just a few months after the check cleared, Memphis Elementary caught fire. A Cleveland Fire Department investigation determined the cause to be arson. No one was ever charged, but a recent entry in the file identifies three teenagers said to have been bragging about it in the neighborhood.

The fact that kids could break in and start a fire inspired the city to secure the ground-floor doors and windows with plywood and steel panels, but not before every window in the school had been broken. Rain coming in has made the wooden floors warp; today they're as wavy as Lake Erie. The swells are covered with chipped paint and broken glass, fallen plaster, acoustic tiles and miscellaneous clutter.

Yet despite the way it looks, a conversation with the firefighters getting ready for training last week reveals that the ugly damage is only a veneer. The wood floors only cover the sound structural floors. The kids set their fire in just one room, and thanks to stout construction, it didn't go farther than that.

"The reason we like this building for practice," one firefighter said, "is that we could set a fire in one of these rooms, and we could burn it for weeks without worrying about it spreading to other rooms. These walls and ceiling are cast-in-place concrete. We could knock holes in the walls and not worry about the wall or ceiling falling on us."

Beneath its veneer of decay, the stately structure has what realtors like to call "strong bones."

A HANDFUL of people in the Old Brooklyn neighborhood would like to see the building saved — or at least spared until the Old Brooklyn CDC completes its master plan. Developer Gil Janke has bought and renovated several Cleveland schools, including Dawning, Gilbert and Willard. He said one he redid is virtually identical to Memphis, except that Memphis has a third floor. He's looking for investors who could give his hope a push toward reality. Kelley knows Janke is interested but has not been swayed.

"I've spoken with people who have that historic preservation bent, and I respect their point of view," Kelley said. "Gil did a very nice job with Dawning school, and a very nice job with a school in Ward 18. That said, had the building not had the fire and the break-ins, I would be very open to some sort of re-use. It just makes it more expensive to do something like that."

The Fire Department's arson investigation determined that the fire had done $25,000 in damage — far from a crippling sum in commercial redevelopment terms. Still, in order to save the school, Kelley says he'd "need a check for $400,000 and a plan."

Meanwhile, the city continues to spend money on the goal of clearing the land, without a certain future for the site. An early request for proposals produced one bid within the appropriated budget, but after the contractor moved a crane to the site, technical flaws were found in their application. All the other bids were too high. Another request for proposals produced none within the budget. Kelley has appropriated up to $150,000 for whomever eventually gets the job. Bidding on the demolition contract is entering its third round. Kelley says he expects demolition to begin in "30 to 60 days," then amends himself: "June first at the latest."

That's well before the Ward 15 and 16 master plan would have a chance to envision a use for the site, with the school on it or not. Jay Gardner, executive director of the Old Brooklyn Community Development Corp., says the process is likely to start in about two months and reach completion at the end of the year.

"Memphis is a key potential development site," he says, "whether for green space or some other development. We don't know. The idea is to look at all options."

But demolishing the building before the planning starts would take one potentially important option off the table. So Janke is hoping he can get his plan together in time.

"I was drawn into this probably by God," he said. "Someone called me and asked if I wanted to be involved in another school. I've done this school before — Dawning is just like it — and I could do it with my eyes closed. If it's too late, I'll feel bad. I know I could help."