The city planning commission voted 5-2 Friday to allow the demolition of a vacant 29-story office tower designed by Marcel Breuer, a leader in the modernist architectural movement.

The Cuyahoga County government wants to raze the 36-year-old former Ameritrust building and its brooding honeycomb facade of dark recessed windows to make room for a new downtown office building for 2,000 county workers now scattered among rental locations.

The dispute divided the three-member county commission -- all Democrats -- with Commissioners Jimmy Dimora and Timothy Hagan in favor of demolition and Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones, backed by architects, opposing the move as a waste of money.

Mayor Frank Jackson endorsed razing the building as part of a plan to revitalize a retail corridor marked by empty stores.

Tony Hiti, an architect who participated in a sidewalk protest against demolition, said he was sorry the county had decided against renovating the building.

"I think it's a great loss for the city of Cleveland to lose such an important building and I think it's a major loss for the entire international architectural community,'' Hiti said.

Breuer, also a noted furniture designer, was awarded the 1968 Jefferson Foundation Medal that cited him as among the world's greatest architects.

His credits include the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the UNESCO building in Paris and the 1971 wing of the Cleveland Museum of Art.

The Hungarian-born Breuer taught in Germany's Bauhaus school and fled Europe with the rise of the Nazis. He died in 1981.

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