Cleveland is set to knock down a condemned building owned by Cuyahoga County Council President Pernel Jones Jr.’s funeral home.
The century-old meeting hall is a former masonic lodge on Buckeye Road that Pernel Jones & Sons Funeral Home bought in 2008 to use for repasts. It fell into disrepair, and the city condemned it in 2021.
The roof has collapsed, and the building was damaged by a fire, Beth Mackey with Cleveland’s demolition bureau said at a city planning meeting Tuesday morning. Now Cleveland plans to raze the building at taxpayer expense and stick the funeral home with the $106,355 bill, according to the city.
Jones, the funeral home’s director, told Signal Cleveland that he plans to reimburse the city for the demolition. He said he has already paid to secure the building and is now working to sell the property. Cleveland would recoup its costs from the proceeds of the sale.
“I will be certainly be meeting my obligations, yes,” Jones said.
The county council president has already paid off a delinquent property tax balance of $3,631, according to property records. The hall now sits near the corner of Buckeye Road and the newly built Opportunity Corridor, which fully opened to motorists in late 2021.
Cleveland’s Central Southeast Design Review committee, an arm of the City Planning Commission, reluctantly signed off on the demolition Tuesday morning. The planning commission must still approve the demolition before the building comes down.
“Frankly I think that the building is too far gone for any sort of reasonable reuse or demand,” Alex Pesta, a partner at City Architecture who sits on the design review committee, said at the meeting. “Shame on that owner for letting this happen.”
Jones has a family history with the building. His late father and the namesake of the funeral home, Pernel Jones Sr., was a member of the Most Worshipful Rising Heights masons, who used the building as their lodge, he said. The funeral home bought the building for $118,100 in 2008, records show. Jones Sr. died in 2020.
Jones said he has privately contracted with the Cuyahoga Land Bank to find a buyer for the land. The council president said “no county money whatsoever” is involved in the deal.
“It’s prime property on the Opportunity Corridor, which wasn’t the case a year ago, two years ago,” Jones said, adding, “The end goal is to put this property into viable use.”
