CLEVELAND, Ohio –Restaurateur Terry Tarantino has spent 37 years serving Italian food at La Dolce Vita, his restaurant at the corner of Mayfield and Murray Hill roads in Cleveland’s Little Italy. Now, he’s turning his attention to a neighborhood landmark a few storefronts away: the 103-year-old Mayfield Theater.
Tarantino is renovating the historic building with a vision that reaches beyond another restaurant. He wants to create a gathering place for live music and private events, giving residents and visitors another reason to spend time in Little Italy.
“We are basically restoring the original theater the way it was built in 1923,” Tarantino said. He is reproducing the original sign and restoring the old vaudeville stage, aiming to preserve the building’s historic character while giving it a new purpose.
Tarantino said authenticity is central to his plans.
The two-story brick building was built in 1923 by Michele Mastandrea, with a stage on the first floor and an apartment on the second. For 32 years, it served the community as a venue for Italian plays, second-run Hollywood movies and Italian lessons.
Its uses changed over the decades. In the late 1960s, it operated as a beer and champagne bar. From 1974 to 1985, it was known as the New Mayfield Repertory Theater, showing movies. The theater closed in 1985 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2013.
Referred to as “Next Act” in marketing materials, the project doesn’t yet have a name.
Tarantino’s plans call for several distinct spaces within the building, each with its own atmosphere.
The 103-year-old Mayfield Theater is getting new life.Paris Wolfe
Marketing information describes the space: “A lower-level lounge will feature deeper, more saturated colors to create an intimate setting. The main bar and dinner theater will have a stage, reflective surfaces and color-changing lights playing across ombre finishes. An outdoor patio above will offer a different atmosphere, with lighting and lush botanicals.”
The venue also will include spaces for private parties. Tarantino initially envisions three areas for private events, with the potential to accommodate as many as five. An upstairs room could be reserved for gatherings, with customers choosing from a list of approved caterers.
“I want a place to do large venue parties, public and private,” he said.
Tarantino sees the theater as a potential amenity for a neighborhood experiencing new development, particularly projects that lack gathering spaces of their own.
“Many new developments are being done without amenities,” he said. “I want to bring a high-level amenity.”
He also is careful to distinguish his plans from opening another restaurant in a neighborhood already known for its independent dining spots.
“I want to enhance the neighborhood. I don’t want to open a restaurant and take anyone’s business,” he said. “The neighborhood is doing well. Everyone’s food is different depending on where you go.”
Instead, Tarantino wants the theater to complement the restaurants around it, giving people a place to gather before or after dinner rather than competing for their dinner reservations.
One of his goals is to move his live opera performances from La Dolce Vita to the theater. He said he believes the program can succeed in the new space, noting that opera has been part of his restaurant’s offerings for 33 years. The theater will be able to seat far more people.
“I love opera and classical music,” he said. He also would like to introduce Latin jazz performances.
Tarantino’s interest in food comes from family as much as business. He learned to cook from his two grandmothers, one from Italy and the other from Little Italy, experiences he describes as two different styles of Italian cooking. He earned a degree in horticulture from Ohio State University before building his career in the restaurant business.
Now, after nearly four decades at La Dolce Vita, he is taking on a different kind of preservation project, one that brings a century-old theater back toward its original purpose while opening the doors to new uses.
The opening date is undetermined.
Mayfield Theater is at 12300 Mayfield Road, Cleveland.
