NapsFan

Great news. Restoring the historic ballpark (home of Major League and Negro League Championships) can only help establish a much needed focal point for a neighborhood with a lot to offer. This may not have the short term glitz and bang of a casino or aquarium, but it does show long term thinking. It is an investment in the history, architecture and, most importantly, residential nature of the Hough neighborhood. It would be a investment geared toward neighborhood enrichment, not short term revenue generation. I would hope that future posters who diminish this project would specifically address why this project should not move forward. Otherwise it's just cynical noise. I urge everyone to check out League Park as it stands today--and not just on a wintery weekday drive through. Make an effort to stop by on a sunny spring day when vintage baseballers fill the diamond. Or on a weekday afternoon when pee-wee footballers practice where the Browns once did when they were a Championship team. It is a park in a neighborhood with some nice new homes and the shells of historic homes that could use some TLC. We're at a point where there is just enough of the architecture left to remind us what a beautiful baseball cathedral it once was. If we neglect it any longer, we'll likely loose it.

Firstly, casino goers won't see anything. The gambling portion of the building will be nowhere near the windows. Have you ever been to a casino with a view? Secondly, the Scranton peninsula is a floodplain. Given a few (or several) thousand years, that cut will make itself. Businesses and homes with a dense street grid occupied the lowest portions of the flats until 1913. If one were to build anything there, it would behoove them to make it well above (10-20 feet) the crestline and sturdy enough to hold back thick mud, logs and the cars from Steelyard Commons.

I don't understand the all the argument for where this project should go. It's proposed for East 55th and Woodland. You can't just move it elsewhere, but you can propose a similar project for somewhere else. I think this is a great idea, critics be damned. No one can easily say this will definitely spur development and improve the eating habits of the neighborhood, but anyone saying this is not a good idea is living in the past (specifically 1982 when cars, processed food and suburban living were considered the future.) Any forward thinking project like this, proposed for anywhere in the city, should be lauded.

Scranton Peninsula is a poor choice for two reasons: One being that there is not good road infrastructure to deliver the traffic. Traffic would have cross active lift bridges and meander on two lane roads to get there. From any direction, there is no simple path without zig-zagging down narrow roads after exiting the highways. I suppose that's why a pedestrian bridge would be necessary, but I imagine that the traffic through Tremont and Ohio City would have to increase and back up just to staff the place. It is unlikely people would pay downtown parking fees for a casino on the west side with closer parking options. Parts of the flats not owned by the Gilbert plan could likely be turned into surface lots relatively cheaply. It is not unlikely that the owners of those parcels would try to cash in that way instead of building more business ventures. It is hard for me to envision more than a sterile, if not gaudy, building protruding out on the peninsula, surrounded by seas of cars with--as is the case with other casino ventures--no visible signs of life on foot. The second being that the peninsula as it currently stands on average about 5 feet above the water line and is squarely in the 500 year flood plane. The last major flood was in 1913 and it wiped out just about everything. Prior to 1913, there were homes dotted throughout the lowest parts of the flats, but not anymore. The tables that have the peninsula placed in the 500 year flood range were set before the forest and swamps of the Cuyahoga basin were developed into "well draining" strip malls and cul-de-sacs. Tack on the current climate models of more heavy, infrequent rainfall in the Great Lakes and building there seems to be a fools venture--or better yet--a real gamble.