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When the Il Venetian restaurant in Cleveland, Ohio, wanted to expand its dining seating to the outdoors, it contacted Ohio Awning & Manufacturing Co. in Cleveland. Ohio Awning worked directly with the restaurant group that owns this high-end Italian eatery.
“We worked with the restaurant group’s designer, who had also worked on their other locations,” says William Morse, Ohio Awning president. “We enjoyed working with her, and her attention to a lot of little details helped the project overall turn out even better than we imagined.”
Ohio Awning is both a manufacturer and a fabricator. According to Morse, that enables it to be a one-stop shop and go above and beyond what clients expect. For example, at Il Venetian, to match the restaurant interior, the designer wanted to hang glass Italian sconces outdoors on the new patio.
“However, the city wouldn’t allow us to hang the sconces on the posts outside,” says Morse. “Instead, I offered to make wall plates to install in the exterior space so we could hang the sconces on them.”
Because Ohio Awning is also a fabricator, it uses aluminum to make its structures and has its own powder line for finishing products. Ohio Awning was able to laser-cut aluminum, powder-coat it, and provide the wall plates that replicated a hexagonal design used inside the restaurant on cutout screens.
“We want to be able to add, enhance and amplify projects when we can,” Morse says. “It gives us the chance to be creative and, in this case, helped us unify the space and theme for our client.”
The sconces were a minor challenge. A major challenge with this project was getting it all approved by the city. Ohio Awning didn’t have a part in that; however, work couldn’t begin until the city okayed the project.
Some of that lengthy process was informed by the restaurant’s location. According to Morse, Il Venetian is on the ground level of a 57-floor hotel and event center. It is one of the tallest buildings in Cleveland, located in a busy section of the city, with a great deal of foot and vehicle traffic.
The project group needed to define that outdoor restaurant space and segregate it from foot traffic. The restaurant owners wanted it to be secluded for diners in a way that allowed for open air in good weather. They also needed the shade and awning solution to be stored in the winter. Using a retractable cover and retractable shades, Ohio Awning achieved that.
Morse is proud of how well it all turned out, and more importantly, that the restaurant and its customers are happy with it.
“We work to be more of a solution rather than just being one part of the project,” says Morse. “We believe we certainly did that with the Il Venetian project.”