Group pursues plan for steel-industry museum in Cleveland

CLEVELAND (AP) -- The home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum could someday also have a shrine to making steel.
Cleveland and Cuyahoga County planners, International Steel Group executives and representatives of the Western Reserve Historical Society met for the first time Thursday to pursue the idea of a museum celebrating the steel industry.
"We have an exciting opportunity to tell the tale of steel," said Cleveland Planning Director Christopher Ronayne, who led the meeting.
ISG's continuing demolition of potentially historic structures, including the last blast furnace on the west side of the Cuyahoga River, sparked talk of a museum.
Cuyahoga County Planning Director Paul Alsenas believes that razing a blast furnace soon would mean losing a potential monument to steel.
But city and ISG officials said access to the blast furnace is limited in usefulness.
And few efforts worldwide have been successful at gathering the millions of dollars needed to preserve and maintain blast furnaces or other steel-mill icons as regional attractions, officials said.
The city's Landmarks Commission asked Ronayne to convene a task force to look at building a steel museum and to study remnants of land and structures.