Transformation
The $350 million transformation of the historic Higbee’s Department Store into a state of the art, three-story gambling casino is nearly complete. Employees and contractors are still busy with final details leading up to Monday evening’s opening. Some of the 2,100 slot machines are still being readied, and installation continues on lighting and other electronic features. But Horseshoe Casino official Nate Forbes says people who once shopped here or saw the store featured in the 1983 movie 'A Christmas Story', will still see things from the buildings past. 

 “We’re really looking at the restoration of the first floor of the historic Higbee’s Building. We kept a lot of the original column details, the plaster work, a lot of the handrail details. So we tried to save and resurrect many of the old details. We’re trying to build on the past and bring it to the present day, keeping with a gaming theme.”

Keeping history alive
The elaborate brass revolving doors that welcomed shoppers into Higbee’s from Prospect Avenue remain. And the art deco lighting fixtures have been recreated. But the old store’s wooden escalator steps are gone…replaced with modern metal ones. Forbes says the balancing act made the project a challenge.

"So when you come into the building you have infrastructure to deal with, mechanical, electrical, fire protection, all that you have to modify to bring it to modern day standards. Then you have structural issues you have to design around. You have ceiling heights, you have columns. Obviously if you’re building this from scratch you wouldn’t have columns 25 feet oncenter, there’d be a much different structural grid system. So we had to design this building to keep the integrity of the historical elements in place."

24-hour operation
After nearly 100 years on Public Square, Higbees closed in 2002 after being taken over by Dillard’s 10 years earlier.  When the casino opens Monday night, it will operate 24-hours-a-day, seven days a week. It is expected to attract five million people to Cleveland annually. Within the next year, casinos will open in Toledo, Columbus and Cincinnati.