Superman monument zooms to unanimous approval
CLEVELAND — The Cleveland City Planning Commission on Friday unanimously approved plans for a monument to Superman and his co-creators, writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster when both attended Glenville High School in 1933.
An 18-foot-high tribute to the Man of Steel will be sculpted and cast in stainless steel by Cleveland artist David Deming, former president and CEO of the Cleveland Institute of Art.
The Deming sculpture will be set atop a tapering, bluepainted pylon on an outdoor terrace at the southwest entry to the former Global Center for Health Innovation on the northeast corner of Ontario Street and St. Clair Avenue. Cuyahoga County is completing a $40 million renovation of the global center to make it an integral part of the attached Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland.
“I’m very pleased,” Gary Kaplan, head of the nonprofit Siegel and Shuster Society, said Friday after the plan- ning commission meeting.
The Superman project still requires approval from the Cleveland Landmarks Com- mission and a new monu- ment commission created by Cuyahoga County. The sculpture, which would be sited on county property, has already been approved by the convention center, a city design review com- mittee and DC Comics and its parent company, Warner Media.
“We’re on a streak of unan- imous support,” Kaplan said. “Hopefully we’ll be batting 1000. It’s very exciting.”
Kaplan, whose mother was a cousin of Jerry Siegel, said the Cleveland Foundation has agreed to raise most of the $1.8 million to $2 million cost of the Superman mon- ument, and that money for maintenance and insurance would be included.
The Siegel and Shuster Society has already contrib- uted $170,000 to prepare footings and other details needed for the installation of the monument, Kaplan said. The long-delayed proj- ect has been 15 years in the making, he said.
Deming’s design calls for a silvery depiction of the Caped Crusader in flight, with his left knee forward and right arm and fist extended. The plaza instal- lation will include three life- size statues of Shuster, Siegel and Joanne Siegel, the orig- inal model for newspaper reporter Lois Lane, Super- man’s love interest. The trio is depicted looking aloft in amazement at Superman in the attitude of exclaiming, “It’s a Bird... It’s a Plane... It’s Superman.”
Members of the plan- ning commission offered critiques of aspects of the project design, including suggestions to reconsider the light blue color of Superman’s pylon, tweaks to landscaping and benches, and consideration over whether there will be enough room for visitors to take selfies below the zooming statue.
“You almost want to tell people where to take the best shot from and put a stamp in the ground, if you will,” Lillian Kuri, chair of the planning commission, told Deming and an architect from the Columbus-based architecture firm of Moody Noland. “You want to drive where that shot is.”
Ward 17 Councilman Charles Slife said he wanted the shot to be angled toward the highly regarded early 20th-century Standard Building, located diagonally southwest of the Superman site, not the Brutalist-style Justice Center tower. Speaking perhaps tongue-in-cheek, he said he didn’t think the Justice Center would be a fitting representation of Cleveland.
Kaplan said he hopes the sculpture is unveiled a year from now.
“I can’t wait to see this,” Kuri said. “I think it’s a great location.” The project needs “a little bit of refinement,” she said, “but this is wonderful.”