Cleveland, Ohio, is setting a shining example for downtown revitalizations in the aftermath of drastic economic and industrial change.
More people are moving downtown, more money is moving downtown, businesses are filling up previously vacant office space, and developers are adapting buildings to meet new demands.
One of those buildings is the Halle Building, a former luxury department store that’s been transformed into beautiful, high-end apartments.
Adjacent to the downtown area’s Playhouse Square (the second largest performing arts center in the nation, next only to New York City’s Lincoln Center), the Halle Building apartments just opened earlier this year.
To accompany its interior renovation, an exterior cleaning was ordered to remove
years of atmospheric staining from carbon emissions that had built up onto the building’s white terra cotta façade.
Around the same time that M-A Building & Maintenance got the job to clean and
restore the building’s exterior in the summer of 2018, the company’s vice president, John Wamelink, learned about a new restoration cleaner with an interesting advantage.
The product, a restoration cleaner called ReVeal, is formulated to clean not only multiple types of masonry and stone, but also architectural metals and glass, eliminating the need to cover those other materials and substrates during the cleaning stage.
“When you clean... with restoration cleaners, you have an issue of protecting... windows, automobiles and other things. It’s very expensive to do that, and it increases the risk in your whole process.”
John Wamelink
M-A Building & Maintenance
“We wanted the safest possible product, and the architects like using products that aren’t high in hydrofluoric acid. So we asked for something that wasn’t going to harm windows. (ReVeal) did not seem to harm the windows and did not cause a problem with harming other surfaces,” he said.
In addition to being less corrosive than conventional restoration cleaners, ReVeal also comes in fluid form instead of a gel, enabling a shorter dwell time and easier rinsing that lets contractors finish the job faster.
Wamelink said he likes that ReVeal comes in liquid form because it can spray onto the surface. He also found that on the Halle Building, mechanically scrubbing the substrate optimized the product’s performance.
“It probably hadn’t been washed in decades,” he said. “It had a lot of atmospheric carbon on it.”
A product data sheet from PROSOCO’s website states that ReVeal is designed to remove atmospheric and carbon staining from many types of masonry and stone, including unpolished limestone and marble, architectural concrete block, concrete, fired clay, granite, sandstone, slate and unpolished travertine. It also removes soiling and hard-to-remove deposits, such as white scum, from window glass, and is safe for use around most architectural metals.
What makes ReVeal different
HALLE BUILDING
- TYPE Rehab
- LOCATION Cleveland, Ohio
- AGE 108 years old
- SIZE 380,000 square feet; twelve stories
- TYPE Multi-family luxury apartments
- RESTORATION CONTRACTOR M-A Building & Maintenance
- COMPLETION DATE Summer 2018
PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT: REVEAL
- Formulated to safely clean most atmospheric staining scenarios
- Liquid cleaner removes stubbon atmospheric and carbon staining from multiple types of masonry and stone
- Safe for use around most architectural metals
- Safer and less corrosive than conventional restoration cleaner based on hydrofluoric acid or ammonium bifluoride
- Low-odor and non-fuming.
