When completed in 1994, Gateway—the intended home of the Cleveland Indians’ new baseball stadium and the Cleveland Cavaliers’ new basketball arena—was expected to dramatically enhance downtown’s attractiveness as a destination for tourists and residents. To ensure that the public spaces surrounding the sports complex were as exciting as the stadium and arena themselves, in 1992 the Cleveland Foundation made a $750,000 grant and a $2 million program-related investment to provide Gateway Economic Development Corporation with the resources to design and construct gracious exterior plazas filled with public art.

A competitive application process overseen by Cleveland Public Art attracted 125 submissions, from which four artists were commissioned to create outdoor works that became overnight sensations with fans. R. M. Fischer’s Sports Stacks, incorporating elements of the complex’s exhaust system … Nancy Dwyer’s benches entitled Meet Me Here and Who’s on First? … and a planting bed/seating area decorated with Penny Rakoff’s historic photographs of the old Central Market that once occupied the site and Angelica Pozo’s ceramic tiles of market produce would likely not have been created without the support of the foundation’s “patient money.”