Tower City Center is a large mixed-use facility in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, on its Public Square.

The building complex was originally commissioned by the Van Sweringen brothers, prominent local railroad moguls and real estate developers.

The Van Sweringen brothers envisioned a network of interurban lines extending from the CUT in all directions.

However, they eventually decided to build the 52-story Terminal Tower on the northeast side of the complex facing Public Square.

In 1931, the Higbee Company moved its main store to a new building connected to Cleveland Union Terminal.

Postal Service moved its main Cleveland office to Union Terminal in a new building designed by the firm of Walker and Weeks.

Several east–west routes on the circuit of trains bound east from Chicago through northern Ohio bypassed the city, traveling slightly to the south, passing through Akron and Youngstown, as in the case of B&O and Erie mainlines.

In addition, national passenger rail travel had already passed its peak and was starting its gradual decline in favor of the automobile and, later, the airplane.

By the end of 1965, the B&O and the Norfolk and Western (the successor to the Nickel Plate) had terminated their last trains that had served Cleveland.

[14] Amtrak's short-lived Lake Shore served Union Terminal for seven months in 1971, but the railroad found the rents prohibitive.

The station area itself was converted by Forest City Enterprises into a three-story, 367,000 square foot[18] shopping mall and food court known as The Avenue, which opened on March 26, 1990.

When the already renamed Tower City Center reopened, the mall housed many high-end retailers, including Bally of Switzerland, Barneys New York, Fendi, Gucci, Versace, and even had a letter of intent from Neiman Marcus to build a 120,000-square foot anchor store in 1992.

After the completion of the nearby Gateway project in 1994, RTA built an indoor walkway connecting Tower City to the complex.

[27] In 2001, Time Warner Cable Amphitheater opened as an outdoor stage along the Cuyahoga River near the Tower City Complex.

(Previously, the Shaker trains had used streetcar tracks to reach downtown from East 34th Street, which caused significantly slower service.)

Development of the other interurban services, however, was stalled by the Great Depression, which hit the Van Sweringens particularly hard.

The Shaker and Van Aken lines became part of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority when it assumed control on September 5, 1975.