Rick Semersky, a man who 'doesn't sit still,' sees his vision for a renewed Cleveland sprouting from East 55th Street

Provided by: The Cleveland Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Rick Semersky owns a construction company. But he is not a builder.

The 41-year-old Cleveland native is a rebuilder.

That's evident from the ways he has built and rebuilt his career path; to the historic home he renovated; to his 200-employee VIP construction company, which specializes in historic renovations; to his efforts to physically and spiritually reinvigorate the 60-year old Sterle's Country House on East 55th Street, which he bought in 2012.

But nowhere is this more true than with Semersky's most recent project: attempting to rebuild the neighborhood where his grandmother once lived on Bonna Avenue, starting with the corner of East 55th Street and St. Clair Avenue.

In May, Semersky announced plans to convert the 42,000-square-foot building next to Sterle's at 1361 East 55th St. into Hub 55. That's a mixed-use building that will contain a 10,000-square-foot brewery with a 100-seat tap room, slated to open in spring 2015; a 2,000-square foot healthy-food cafe operated by Courtney Bonning of Bonbon Pastry & Cafe, slated to open by September; a 12,000-square-foot market with locally sourced food purveyors and artisans, slated to open in spring 2015; and 9,000 square feet of rentable flex space and 7,000 square feet of redesigned office and retail space, slated to be complete by 2016.

He also announced that he had bought the former St. Clair Cleveland Public Library branch (a Carnegie library dating to 1905) and the Lakeshore Banking and Trust building directly across the street from Hub 55, from the Goodrich-Gannett Neighborhood Center.

Semersky plans to renovate these historic buildings and convert them into office and retail space by 2016. He is also planning a full-service restaurant in the stunning former bank space. 

And that's not all. Semersky also purchased the historic East 55th Street City Fire Station and plans to renovate it for a purpose still to be determined.

Almost all of Hub 55 will be privately funded by Semersky, who may apply for historic tax credits for the redevelopment of the library and bank buildings. The St. Clair Superior Development Corporation has submitted a Health and Human Services grant that could be used to help fund The Market. Semersky has not released any budget figures.

"Honestly, I don't think I'd be doing this in any other neighborhood but here," Semersky told The Plain Dealer at the time.

The reasons are twofold, say Semersky and those who know him best: historic family ties to the neighborhood, and a lifelong desire to rebuild and create.

"Rick has always been someone who has been driven towards goals, from the time he was a little kid playing sports, and then in school," says his uncle, Phil Fogarty. "And that served him well.

"He also is someone who formulates his own conclusion about things. He's got a vision about this stuff. Everybody else is talking negatively about Cleveland, and he sees the potential. He got into building because he could see the potential in things."

Forgarty employed his nephew at his lawn-care company while Semersky was in high school and college. Now he cuts his nephew's grass.

"He was so hard-working," says Fogarty. "But he always saw himself as running something of his own ... It's how he has always been wired. He doesn't want to take cues from anyone. He wants to take the lead. He's a true entrepreneur."

Semersky's first career step was one of necessity. After floundering for a year-and-a-half at John Carroll University, where he studied early childhood education, Semersky dropped out of college.

"I was paying my own way through school, and decided I needed to stop wasting money," says Semersky, leaning back in his chair in the simple conference room in the VIP office on East 55th Street. Just behind the cubicles on the other side of the glass, construction has already begun on Hub 55.

VIP is moving its offices down East 55th to another building Semersky owns to make way for the new venture. Work has also been started on Café 55 on the other side of the VIP building.

Semersky decided to stay in Cleveland, the place he had returned to after his family relocated to Toledo from Mentor for his dad's banking job when he was in grade school.

Another stint at Cleveland State University, where he studied urban planning – "I'm about a year short of a degree" – was also cut short.

"I wasn't focused on college at the time," he says. So he looked for work in construction.

"I always did construction work when I was in high school and college, and I was interested in historic preservation and rehab work," he says. "I was referred to VIP."

"Rick was a young fella when he came to me in 1996," says VIP construction company founder Vince Piscitello, who launched the firm in 1985. "He was recommended to me by the Cleveland Restoration Society. He was a young talent, you could see it right away.

"I remember the first day I sat down with him, I thought, 'Now here's a guy I could grow a business with.' "

Eleven years after starting what he thought would be a part-time job before returning to college, Semersky bought VIP from Piscitello in 2007.

When he started there in the 1990s, VIP had a three-person office and 25 in the field. Today, there are 23 office workers and 200 union workers in the field. The company was just getting into historic renovation in the '90s. Today, they do more than 200 projects a year, specializing in restoring building facades and windows.

Their client list includes the Old Stone Church, the West Side Market, Public Auditorium, Terminal Tower, the Hanna Building, the Tower Press Building, Cleveland State University's Fenn Tower and University School. The company is currently restoring the facade of the Schofield Building at East Ninth Street.

"VIP has a done a whole variety of projects over the years for us," says Tom Einhouse,Vice President of Facilities and Capital at Playhouse Square Real Estate Services, "including structural repairs.

"They have a very good eye for preservation. They put things back the way they should be put back. Their preservation quality and pricing and very good customer service have made us want to work with them. At Playhouse Square, you've got to get it right, and we don't work again with people who don't."

Einhouse says he wasn't surprised to hear of Semersky's newest ventures on East 55thStreet.

"Rick doesn't sit still," he says. "I heard about his plans and thought, 'This makes sense.' He recently gave me a tour of the neighborhood, and I could see what it means to him. He doesn't just want to do a job. He wants to do something that is meaningful to him and the neighborhood."

The first step in Semersky's plans for the neighborhood were realized in 2012, when he bought beloved – and aging – local institution Sterle's Slovenian Country House, which was located next to the VIP corporate offices on East 55th Street.

"When he bought Sterle's – and he did that to save it – it opened up a new passion in him, it gave him even more opportunity to be more invested in the neighborhood," says his partner Melissa Knelly, mother of his 3-year-old daughter and 1-year-old-son. They live in the Bratenahl house built by Glidden Paint magnate Adrian Joyce in 1915. Even their house has been a labor of love.

"It was in such bad shape, the city wanted to tear it down. Rick had to get permission from the city to restore it," says Knelly. "He has worked on it for years. And now I will hear him say, 'I always wonder if Adrian Joyce could see the house, would he be happy with what I have done?' "

That spirit of honoring the past has informed the updates Semersky has made at Sterle's, says Cleveland City Councilman and St. Clair-Superior area native – and a lifelong Sterle's devotee – Joe Cimperman.

"What he is doing is so great for the neighborhood, and so great for the Slovenian community," says Cimperman. "He's making Sterle's accessible for hipsters, but he's not kicking out the Slovenians who have gone there for decades. He's bringing new life and people to the neighborhood.

"Rick gets it. It's in his DNA. He's someone who wants to invest in, and help, the neighborhood his grandmother loved. ... In many ways, Rick is very similar to the original immigrants who came to this area. They came for new possibilities and entrepreneurship. Rick is doing something unique. He's taking the traditional and introducing it to hipsters."

He did this with Sterle's, with its ski-chalet layout and bucolic decor, by adding more amenities to the storied restaurant. These include a beer garden, a new concert series, events and menu updates – while staying true to the iconic space's ethnic roots and traditions.

"What I've done at Sterle's is about bringing back people whose parents or grandparents may have gone there, but they did not. It's not a revitalization, it's a rebuilding," says Semersky.

This same spirit informs Semerky's plans for Hub 55 and the library and bank buildings across the street. He's especially excited about the Hub 55 market.

"Bringing a market back to the neighborhood is something it needs. This is a food desert. We will be selling locally grown, healthy foods. And it will be more than a grocery store. We will also have food educational materials and preparation tips.

"My grandmother used to tell me about the area, where there was a general store and butcher shop and market and shops all around. It was very walkable – it was a neighborhood. This is about bringing it back to be more like that."

Semersky admits there is, of course, a personal motivation for developing the area around Sterle's.

"It's about creating critical mass in the neighborhood," he says, "though it's more than that. Places like this will help Sterle's survive, but more importantly help the neighborhood."

He is also quick to give others credit for keeping the area alive.

"I'm just doing the latest version of what has been done in this great neighborhood over and over. St. Vitus has been here since the 1800s. The Slovenian Home has been a part of the neighborhood since before I was on Earth. There are a lot of great people here who have never left. And I hope a lot of other people follow my path and jump on board. I would love for that to happen."

"All areas need a downtown. East 55th and St. Clair is the St. Clair-Superior downtown. It's where we're starting."

It's not where he's ending however. If all goes well, Semerksy hopes to expand past East 55th Street, perhaps down Bonna Avenue.

"I would love to buy my grandma's old house someday," he says. "I'm serious about that.

"This is the legacy I want to leave. This is about more than a building. It's about a neighborhood. One day I want my kids to be able to walk through the neighborhood and realize their father had something to do with this."

It's ideas like this that make Semersky's father tear up. "He's ecstatic about what we're doing," Semersky says.

So what would his grandmother have thought about him helping to rebuild her old neighborhood?

Semersky laughs. "She was from Croatia, very Eastern European. She probably would have told me I was spending too much money."