ExPatClevGuy

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🤬 Due to recurring issues like this at Cleveland City Hall, I never have to ask why C-Town is not to be found on consequentials lists of Business-Employer-Development Friendly cities.

With the many crowds, events, and weekend visitors, I don't see this as a townhouse community, but rather one with large scale development and ground floor retail uses. The traffic and noise in this neighborhood can be brutal and best addressed with planning for larger multi-family that has a single property owner or an effective association. - Oh my, I would not want to be one of these lonely townhouse owners on a busy Saturday night, trying to get support for rowdy entitled club-kid behavior issues (or worse) from CPD.

Wow! Adjaye's Smithsonian African American History and Culture Museum in DC* is a total delight to view and to visit. One of his two DC Public library branches is full-on incredible. The Francis Gregory Neighborhood Library (shown) can easily be describes as the equivalent of an elegant World's Fair Pavilion. Yay Bedrock! *FUN CLEVO FACT: Significant elements of Sir Adjaye's Smithsonian building exterior were crafted in Cleveland. It was a $41M contract, and the lacey bronze metal panels that comprise the museum facades look truly fantastic. https://www.brown.senate.gov/newsroom/in-the-news/article/northstar-contracting-to-build-exterior-walls-for-smithsonian-museum

Thanks @MyPhoneDead and you are right in every way. Dont get me wrong. I understand massings, and simply feel it's never too early to start thinking about great design. I will lament losing the view of Landmark because in a very major way it tells the story of Cleveland at a glance, but it wont hurt so much if we get something great in its place.

I'm not against sparkly new (awesome and desired) development, yet I have always the enjoyed the elegant massing of the "big city" roaring art deco masterpieces of the three Landmark Office Towers over the bend in the Cuyahoga. Architectural character counts: As the new face for this edge of our city, Befrock'd new initial massing looks gratuitously hulking and weird to me. I'll take it somehow, but this concept belies any attempt at sympathetic deference. I'm hopeful for subsequent design iterations to offer cohesion and artful appeal to this prominent and wide Southern flank of downtown. (...and after all this, I still dont see a hoped-for plan to complete Landmark with a finishing structure; one that will cover the awful and unfinished giant brick wall over Ontario, made famous by the S.W. LeBron mural.)

Great thinking on transit concepts @Foraker. We'll a lot of workable creative ideas like this pulled together to prepare Cleveland for the next 100 years.

If they care so much; interested neighbors or the Slavic Village CDC in partnership with City of Cleveland Urban Forestry might do more to support planting some trees on the Eastern flank of I-77. That strip of uncared-for income properties, disinvested small business infrastructure, and junk car storage along E49th is one of the greyest, bleakest, filthiest, worst eyesores in all of NEO. A 🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳 living screen of trees, (or heck even one of those awful concrete sound barriers) along E 49th Street would go a long way toward dissuading each passing commuter from thinking of Slavic Village as a hole, rather than as a cool community worth visiting.

Bravo! If the desired appearance is to replicate the now demolished CMHA Woodhill Homes of the 1940s, then these new garden-less garden-style units facing Detroit are a resounding success. (Woodhill may have had a better landscape architect, but they did some things differently back then.) This new concept shows no hint of *trees between the street and the sidewalk. - Harsh! Can someone explain the image of a ghost-tree* over the roofs of the townhouses? It's clear to me that no *tree will ever grow there, and especially not a glorious *tree of that size and shape. It's kind of a fraud that the proposal image would have any hint of a *tree there. I guess it's to fool folk who only give these images a passing glance and to give viewers an impression that this building facade offers anything but the lowest possible design quality & site planning, along the Lake Ave frontage. *The Forest City 🌳👻

Okay, but The Clinic is known internationally for sensitive and striking architecture, so what gives over their aesthetic decision-making here at home in Clevo?

I don't believe it has a particularly large amount of indoor space, but it makes sense to me as a Restaurant-snack Shop/Metroparks Welcome Center/Canal & Trail Interpretive Center/ with Office space to lease upstairs. It could function as a maintenance & custodial building for equipment & personnel related to the sprawling Bedrock property or for maintenance and customer support for new riverfront amenities envisioned for this area. Due to the fairly plain interior, I don't see it having a dazzling starring role as a tourist magnet indoors. The exterior appearance and historical context do seem to offer enough of an architectural draw that it will invite visitors to investigate those uses I describe or similar retail/office/maintenance setups.

Nonetheless, for this location I still prefer a mixed-use street. IMO, a long covered walkway is no substitute for a lively multi-modal avenue that allows for total immersive interaction with the community, drop off and pickup, occasional short term parking, police access, and visual variety.

I've always disliked that incongruously designed IMG sign on the rooftop with no artful connection to the building beneath it. It calls to mind an ill-formed coffee pot, about to topple onto St Clair Avenue below.

My heart hurts when I worry we might lose the old B&O Terminal. Bedrock really let Cleveland down with it's happy-go-lucky demolition of the 8-story Columbia and the cool old Stanley Block Building on Ontario. The B&O has the potential to be one of the more memorable buildings in downtown Cleveland if only given the attention it rightly deserves. IMO, when it comes to compelling historic architecture, Bedrock hasn't shown itself to be caring or creative about adaptive reuse. If there's a low-ball alternative at hand that includes flattening stuff for more parking - away it goes.

Killing pedestrian access on West 28th would be a big mistake for residents, local business customers and employees alike. I used to live on Jay Avenue. W28th was a handy walking thoroughfare for myself and my neighbors. It allowed us to scoot here and there around the nabe without having to head all the way over to W25th. Those who despise having an empty stadium on our lakefront most of the year, should also consider an empty stadium hogging up a critical local tourist destination and busy neighborhood street for most of the year too. Closing 28th means no cross streets all the way from W25th to W32nd - a terrible concept for those of us who prefer walkable neighborhoods. Also - Market Ave can be made into a "pedestrian only avenue" with a few cheap cones or some modestly more expensive bollards.

What's with all this unhappy judgement over the huts? They aren't ugly or wasteful, but do have a quirky fun style of their own. Sorry they aren't a glass and concrete cube, but rather they are distinctive, unique and cool. We've got nothing like them where I live in DC, and there's nothing like them in most places I've seen. The layout looks inviting to pedestrians and has a great scale and texture that relates well to the sidewalk. As for me: 👍👍👍👍👍

You're so right @marty15 about the new views here! I think this will create something more of an open air room at 9th & Euclid and help to activate the small park in front of PNC with residents and workers from both new developments. This was my top #1 lunch spot on sunny afternoons when I worked at the May Company, then Huntington Bank while in college - for the best people watching in town. Public square will soon be a complete outdoor room again, and Playhouse Square has surely arrived over the years to become a bookend for the three. --🟩------🟩------🟩-- All of this pleases me so.

As for the Ohio Bell, aka AT&T, (aka OneAmerica Network OAN Financier) Building on Huron; it may not make sense to illuminate the exterior of the building given the sad appearance of those rooftop rigs, but a few light bulbs left on inside here and there on timers would improve AT&T's appearance on the skyline and look as if they care or wish to contribute to the life of our town. - If not with bodies in the building, at least with a modest appearance of vibrancy.

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I won't pooh-pooh a new tower in any PHSQ location. However, Prospect & 14th seems more desirable for the near-in view of Old Erie Street Cemetery; Playhouse Square; the skyline; the glide path to Hopkins from the East; the ballpark, and all the way out to Parma and Independence; plus the handiness of freeway access. IMO there's just so much more to be viewed and enjoyed from every direction at 14th & Prospect. Building here will also diminish the Siberia effect one can observe from beneath the chandelier. EDIT: After reading below I now rescind my idea, but only as I'd hate to support lining the pockets of the do-nothing Frangos family.

Hey @Pleco ! Now that the Sherwin Williams tower has broken ground, is your contribution to our virtual skyline able to transition from 💭- Proposed to "🏗️- Under construction on the Cleveland Diagram of SkyscraperPages.com? I've publicly whined & complained as much as I thought useful in hopes of prodding for the best possible design, (the big decision makers all looked here first, right?) but now that the design & materials are settled and it's on the way up, I'm pleased and excited over how things will go. It will be a fun couple of years now traveling to and from Cleveland watching this new tower take it's place.

Good luck to Stark with the sale, and good luck to all of us that a new entity might turn these properties into something with as much vision as Nucleus. It's appears chic on these pages to beat up and poke fun at Stark, but I think those who do are mostly unkind to a guy with bold vision who was clearly trying to make things happen. Everyone's a critic. Some, gracelessly so, but 🥂here's to the strivers of our world. They don't always succeed, but they mostly try their best, and do so on their own terms.

Can we please, please, please name that terrible bridge after Frank Jackson? The appropriateness of this honor will be exact and self-evident.