ExPatClevGuy

'Not hopeful of using Bedrock and adaptive resuse / historic preservation in the same sentence. After the Columbia Bldg (1908) was demolished for parking lanes to a casino garage next door, and the Stanley Block Bldg (1870s) was demolished for "Dice Park". Okay, so now maybe they owe Cleveland a high-vis turnaround project, not directly related to the casino? BTW, lol. "Dice Park in downtown Cleveland may have set a speed record for the public condemnation of a weak design idea."

Tanger is well positioned to lure additional new top retailers to the center.

If our tax dollars will be redirected and given to the owners of the Cleveland Browns, which entities that currently enjoy the benefit of casino generated taxes will stop receiving this same money? The change up means Ohio is trading out something that had been a clear priority, and making NFL owners the new priority. - Why?

Does the neighborhood need a dental office and a State Farm Insurance agency? If so, this is perfect.

Oh really? Tell us more about the Philly & B'more row houses you watched being built between 1844 & 1933. 'Here's some being built and sold there today.

'A 1950s Citroen DS. The artist must be a fan or collector of French cars, and so added it in as a little self indulgence.

Whatever happens; if it's Jazz, I hope it's still Nighttown. This local allusion to Nighttown reflects upon the red light district of Dublin, Ireland in James Joyce's modernist novel Ulysses, from the chapter Circe. Ulysses was published in serialized form by the woman who created Shakespeare & Co (Sylvia Bach) in Jazz age Paris (1914-1940). IMO - Bungled as this whole scenario was, there's just too much that's iconic and Cleveland-cool about this place and the Nighttown name to let that legacy pass away without some extra consideration. I've been dying for it to reopen so I could return and bring visitors the next time I'm in Cleveland. I guess now I'm glad I missed this series of missteps and mistakes there. I might have been saddened and embarrassed to bring a visitor after hyping it for many years and maintaining my excitement for Nighttown's triumphant return. 😦

^ Dream Hotel always seemed like more of a central business district kind of place to me. IMO, it's the kind of hotel for young people who want to move around on foot in a vibrant downtown area.

Bonsoir, Stadium! This major change to the skyline is now out of our hands. I'm very excited about what's next for the Cleveland lakefront without it.

$Ms that don't go to the Browns, (although not as much without the admission tax) can instead be spent on the lakefront. The cost for demolition of the current stadium will be eye popping, but should still leave some nice piles of loot to be used as infrastructure improvements and developer incentives. Also, if the stadium stays put, I imagine Ohio & Cuyahoga to spend indirectly on new stadium support by improving the roadways and infrastructure surrounding the current site. Also, good luck to all of us getting to our (Brook Park) CLE flights on time - any time there are stadium events (Monday/Thursday Night Football, Taylor Swift. other convert events, etc.) at a potential new Brook Park facility.

I hate it still, but at least the fakey texture-free faux French "mansard" roof with the verdigris colored finish is gone. That element would have been a long term architectural embarrassment for sure. - I feel seen, lol. Also, the image below is a similar visual statement, styled with 10 times the visual grace & dignity, in suburban Cleveland Hts.

Cleveland is ageless & timeless, with most of the eras displaying their artifacts and remnants, sometimes well, sometimes needing help. "Moving forward" by demolishing what a few don't like or they don't personally understand the appeal of, isn't actually stepping forward at all. Cleveland doesn't need to be a sleek imitation of some-other peer city to look incredible for visitors, or to make us proud at home. There are plenty of anodyne skylines around the USA, but they say nothing to anyone except that there is no visible past there. That's either because no history exists, or the folk there were too wrongly ashamed of their cool local stories to save any of it. The CTE Smokestack is a link in our chain that some other towns will never have and wish they did. From a farming trapping and milling town > an industrial town > a banking commerce, transport and engineering center > a manufacturing powerhouse > beacon of opportunity > immigration magnet > a Victorian/Edwardian/Gilded place > City Beautiful inspiration > center for Beaux-arts architecture > Burgeoning jazz age metropolis > a (mildly, lol) art-deco city> a creative design center > a mid century modern city > a brutalist city > internationalist-tower & urban renewal HQ> an early pioneer of interstate freeways destructing our close-in urban neighborhoods > exciting postmodern pop and flair > and a now a city with contemporary design aesthetics adding freshly-built landmarks to our rich mix of historical moments.

@newyorker Will you explain why this is your desire? I'd rather not deny who we are by demolishing all remnants of our earlier selves. IMO, this type of building reeks of fun, even stylish authenticity. It has tons of charm for me, even though there's only one stack left where there used to be three. The very cool Cleveland Thermal Energy (CTE) building has been here since 1924, so it is 100 years old this year. The steam it generated to heat buildings underground downtown was recently converted from coal to gas, and it sits vacant. If there are no hazards and it's still generally salvageable, I'd prefer to see it repurposed to a contemporary use. It's far too cool to me. Sigh... A little spit and polish will so often deliver a derelict building to favorability, but this often gets missed when the public fails to see the potential of a place. I'm looking at you Sugar Warehouse, Powerhouse in the Flats, and rusty-cool (should be lit up again) lift-bridges.

Is this a drawing of Dreamliner over the airport or are those fireworks? Both indicate some problems with proximity. Thinking just now about the Secret Service (who oversee Superbowl security) and the likelihood of free-flowing airline traffic above a Superbowl stadium during the weeks surrounding game day - which of course would be an insanely busy time for airline traffic in-&-out of Cleveland if a Superbowl is being sold as part of this package. Burke and Hopkins are two different sized bags of potato chips

IMO a vertical arrangement is inefficient for a massive urban courts and justice building, so it should only be constructed as a skyscraper if absolutely necessary. Users of this building will have no interest in a shimmering tower when they have to use it(!) Maybe our Solomon-like judges who would love a tower, thanks to the separate elevators they'd use to their offices in the sky with commanding views over the city and lake. Juries, judges, police & security, attorneys, housekeeping, clerks, wedding couples... will be loathe to wait, then ride in elevators crowded with their peers plus the families of the prosecution and defense. A series of separate elevators for prisoners is another additional expense & use of space and time to avoid if possible. Long elevator waits prior to assembly, lunch, and departure made me hate the extant Justice Center. Remember, many people will enter and exit this building at the same time, making elevators a significant annoyance. 😍 A broad and low, elegantly sculpted building along the lakefront on the bluffs could also be seen as successful as any skyscraper. Take a look at these successful low and broad structures to get a sense of success with a different form.

Thanks for asking. 'Not P+C's best work from the viewers' perspective, but probably judged as excellent by SW's own standards. It shows a missed opportunity to do something more interesting and recognizeably distinctive than rigid planar surfaces of glass - in a town where our other tall building have more singularly identifiable sculptural elements. It does looks like several other buildings in several other towns, which was to be expected with the Internationalist style cubes of yesteryear, but nowadays the bar is much higher. That said, hope against hope, there is an opportunity for redemption at street level in the warehouse district, which I (many?) would love to see incorporate the historic building at W3rd and St. Clair. Doing it right during phase II won't change the drab Home Depot DIY angles of the tower, but over time other towers will grow and add to the mix, and make this one appear somehow less prominent. It will do okay in SW's seemingly self-selected suppporting role on the horizon. What I can say about it is that SW's mod-blue-glass contribution to the skyline has been delivered, and it is immeasurably better than the surface lots it replaces - in multitudes of noteworthy ways.

😆 This is a really fun illusion. It resembles the preposterous fictional hotel I imagined when reading a favorite story, "Martin Dressler" by Steven Millhauser. "Martin couldn't resist digging a hole from which an extraordinary building would grow; a hotel like nothing that had ever been seen or imagined... The Grand Cosmo opened five days after Martin's thirty-third birthday. It was a city (several highly-diverse cities) within itself - "it was a complete and self-sufficient world, in comparison with which the actual city was not simply inferior, but superfluous."

I believe the look they have faked-out here is supposed give the (failing) illusion of a canted French mansard roof line (in a faux historic verdigris color to boot). It simply comes off like a cheap billboard advertising a building quality that is totally missing on this structure. There is zero shape or texture, and I've seen better roof-line treatments at strip malls (image below). I don't think I'm the only one who seeks more of the "the real thing" for Cleveland. The top floor of this building is an insult to people who know better. The proposed look of this top floor fails at every turn of the eye.

All that remains are a cylinder and something tall and slim that culminates in a dome. Oh... and maybe something with a giant newspaper folded on top, displaying latest headlines in flashing LEDs for passing airline passengers.

I do hope this is just a conceptual drawing, although it's pretty weak even as a concept. Meh! The provided illustration of a proposed new entryway on Chester doesn't need to match the building perfectly, but it should at least be suitably harmonious and not appear tacked on as an afterthought. A more studied contemporary dialog with the massive concrete structure above will really help it out The dignity of Rhodes tower (such that it is) is rudely diminished by this look. And, for those who already don't care for this period style, the attachment of a glass-puff tumbleweed at the new entrance hardly gives an auspicious welcome. It fails to deliver the kid of prominence and appeal that befits our major public university.

Cleveland and infrastructure, in the spotlight again.... Sigh! Always a cause celebre, and deservedly so. Has the downtown city councilman Kerry McCormick weighed in on this at any public meetings? Public Works are an executive function of Cleveland government, yet contacting city council offices often helps put an extra press on the Mayor's team to get some small ugly/hazard things fixes sort'a quickly. You can always reach out to the Public Works Office too. Of course there a number of different directions you can take to get started. Also, if you have the sympathetic (not politically protective of candidates or beholden to City Hall for operating money) ear of local community groups, action can come even faster. - This also looks like a good TV news story, given the important tourism function of the Warehouse District. Frank Williams Director of Public Works James DeRosa Director of Mayor's Office of Capital Projects Angela D. Shute-Woodson Director of Community Relations & Senior Advisor, Community and Government Affairs Alyssa Hernandez Director of Community Development https://www.clevelandohio.gov/city-hall/departments/public-works sigh... again. Good luck!

Read as: "Could transform the Cleveland area... into a place that better serves their insatiable desires, yet delivers a product that serves Cleveland less." Meanwhile, the Haslams can reach their hands beyond The City into the deeper pockets of Cuyahoga residents & /taxpayers. The transformation will be complete when our regional NFL attraction is re-conceived as a suburban gated community for pro sports" I agree that this will indeed be transformational. Also, good luck catching your CLE flight in on time on game days.

😁 - "We met at Rise, but not the same Rise"

- -

Relating to Tower City and our Terminal Tower... The former Hard Rock Cafe space will reopen this month at Tower City when The Astro a sci-fi themed restaurant opens their doors. Cleveland dot com article from the other day is linked here And, speaking of the Terminal Tower & science fiction. Many may have seen this, but not all. This poster was the cover image from the The 13th World Science Fiction Convention in Cleveland back in September of 1955. > Pretty fun! "The World Science Fiction Society administers and presents the Hugo Awards, the oldest and most noteworthy award for science fiction. Selection of the recipients is by vote of the Worldcon members. Categories include novels and short fiction, artwork, dramatic presentations, and various professional and fandom activities." Artist Frank R. Paul created the image. 'Looks like a crowd scene on Public Square from this weekend.