The aptly named Idea Center at Playhouse Square is the result of an unusual and groundbreaking meeting of the minds. Three years in the making, the Idea Center is an unprecedented partnership between WVIZ/PBS & 90.3 ideastream and the Playhouse Square Foundation.

It's a "breakthrough concept conceived out of unprecedented collaboration to serve and inspire the public," according to ideastream. "It's a home for creative thinking and learning.designed to inform both current and future generations through its offerings."

"There is nothing like it in the country," says Art Falco, President and CEO of Playhouse Square Foundation and one of the collaborators, along with ideastream's Kit Jensen, Chief Operating Officer and Jerry Wareham, President and CEO.

The result is a beautifully renovated historic building and a state-of-the-art home for creative thinking and learning-a center for the arts, technology, education and ideas. The Idea Center, located at 1375 Euclid Avenue, serves as the broadcast headquarters for ideastream (public television and radio stations WVIZ and WCPN), including its distance-learning and educational technology training facilities, and also serves as the site for Playhouse Square's extensive arts education programs and services.

Open since September of 2005, the Idea Center has become a model of creative connectivity where digital media is used to create and distribute news, information, educational services, and arts and cultural programming. It's also expected to increase attendance at Playhouse Square Arts Education Department events by 100,000 people per year.

Befitting its creative use, the Idea Center is housed in a storied building. Built by esteemed architects Walter and Weeks, and meticulously renovated by architects URS Corporation and Westlake Reed Leskosky, the Idea Center building once housed the Cleveland Public Library, as well as the studios of radio station WJW-AM, where in 1951 Alan Freed first coined the term "rock and roll."