Owner of historic Roundwood Manor in Hunting Valley loses lawsuit seeking permission to

On Feb 28, 2022

CLEVELAND, Ohio — A judge has again rejected an attempt by the owner of a Hunting Valley mansion – designed by the Van Sweringens and once owned by Vernon Stouffer – to overturn the village’s decision to reject her plans to turn the house into six luxury condominiums.

Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge David Matia wrote in an opinion Thursday that the zoning laws from which Roundwood Manor owner Sylvia Korey sought a variance to renovate the inside of her 55,000-square-foot mansion was not unconstitutional as it pertained to her case.

The ruling is another setback for Korey, who has tried without success to sell Roundwood Manor for two decades.

The village’s planning and zoning commission in 2018 denied her request to deviate from the zoning laws, which requires at least 5 acres of property per home. A consultant said the renovations would increase traffic.

But the judge, who made his decision following a hearing in January mandated by an appeals court’s decision, said he solely focused on environmental concerns for his new decision. An expert for the village testified at the hearing that the code is designed to prevent damage to the environment.

While Korey and her expert argued that her plan would not raise environmental concerns, Matia wrote that Korey did not prove the zoning laws were unreasonable or unrelated to the health and safety of residents. The village can take measures to protect the environment, as it said it sought to do with its laws, he said.

“Plaintiffs interest in increasing the marketability of her property and/or its preservation do not render the Hunting Valley codified zoning ordinance as applied to her property unconstitutional,” Matia wrote. “While the Court is sympathetic to Mrs. Korey’s cause, this Court is bound to the law before it.”

Korey’s lawyer, Anthony Coyne, said he was disappointed in the decision and needs to talk to his client about whether to appeal.

Hunting Valley Law Director Stephen Byron said the village “is very pleased but not surprised” by the ruling. He said the evidence presented at the hearing showed that the zoning laws were fashioned that way because the village, including the Daisy Hill subdivision where the mansion is located, did not want to see complexes among single-family homes.

Architect Philip Small designed Roundwood Manor for Oris and Mantis Van Sweringen in the mid-1920s. Their home and the nerve center of a real estate and railroad empire, which collapsed during the Depression. The brothers are perhaps best known today as the industrialists who built Shaker Heights and Terminal Tower in downtown Cleveland.

Subsequent Roundwood Manor owner Vernon Stouffer, president of the Stouffer Corp. and a former owner of the Indians, reduced the house by 35,000 square feet to its present size. Korey has owned the house since 1988 and tried unsuccessfully to sell beginning in 2002. Previous court opinions said that in that time Korey, who still lives there, only received one oral offer to buy the house, and that would involve demolishing it.

The manor is on the National Register of Historic Places. Korey and preservation groups do not want to see it demolished. She believes the condos would quickly sell to people who want to downsize from larger homes. The Daisy Hill Neighborhood Association, which governs the subdivision and takes its name from a 430-acre farm that surrounded Roundwood Manor, opposes the plans.

Matia upheld the commission’s 2018 rejection of Korey’s special permit request in March 2020, finding that the condos “would substantially harm neighboring properties because it would create more noise, traffic, and light in the Village.” The Cleveland-based 8th Ohio District Court of Appeals ruled in June that the judge did not err when making that finding.

However, the appeals court said Matia improperly struck down Korey’s constitutionality claim and that he should have held an evidentiary hearing first. It sent the case back to Matia to hold the hearing, which he did last month.

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