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Not unlikely, but there's no sense throwing good money after bad. Is it really preferable to live in an unfinished structure on a half empty block? Are condos and apartments strictly segregated in other cities? We're talking about the downtown of a major urban center... having no renters nearby is probably an unreasonable expectation. If they were promised otherwise, maybe they have a case and maybe they don't. It's not like this would be changing the character of that building, we're talking about additional buildings. And I'm guessing the individual sale agreements didn't stipulate restrictions on the entire block. This isn't exactly a gated cul-de-sac.

Redesign does look nice, an improvement over the park we already have there. Point remains though... this city is laying off young teachers like there's no tomorrow. But there is a tomorrow. And the police force was already gutted a few years back. I'm not against beautification, but when people are asked why they don't move themselves or their businesses to Cleveland they don't say "dammit the city just hasn't put enough money into Market Square park!" Instead they say crime, they say schools, they say housing, they say retail. We've got crises on multiple fronts. I don't think the answer is more landscaping, I just don't. If you want to help Ohio City... spend this money on retaining teachers in the schools that serve it. How many teachers could be saved with $1.7 million?

So I guess the four phases in KJP's post don't refer to the Avenue District itself but the streets going through it. OK. But are there any plans to jump start the actual district, i.e. the buildings? I had thought the "final phase of the Avenue District" would involve filling out the intersection of 12th and St Clair, inlcuding both wings of the existing condo building, as well as the Superior Avenue frontage by the townhomes. It seems clear enough that a shift toward apartments instead of condos would be prudent... I hope there's some willingness to bend in that direction. I can't help but think that CSU would be part of the market for this.

When I think "handle" I think truckers with handles like Big Red. The issue isn't whether parks are good, of course they are. The issue is whether Cleveland should be spending this much money to tear up and rebuild so many of the parks it already has. Seems to me that money could be better spent in other areas, given our current needs and deficiencies. Cleveland has many deficiencies at the moment and parks aren't one of them.

Ohio State is THE sports franchise of central Ohio. Outside that part of the state it's not nearly as big a deal. It makes sense that sports fans near UC or the MAC schools might follow their home teams instead. Note that Cleveland doesn't have a major college football program, so it's got a lot of Buckeye fans too. But it's also got quite a few Michigan fans.

I agree. And it's good to see Strickland hitting this hard.

Scranton Road, especially toward Metro, is not one of the city's safer areas. Neither is the area around Tower Press, for the reasons noted above. Tremont Place is better situated but very pricey. It seems like a lot of these artist loft type units are located in rough spots. Neighborhoods with a lot of old warehouses and factories in them were built as low income areas to begin with, and now those nearby jobs are gone, so the neighborhoods have shifted to mostly underclass.

Remember that one 70's Doctor Who episode where everybody was trying to find the Dodecahedron? Found it! On second thought X is right, it looks more like the d8 traditionally used for sword damage. Actually I think this design is just weird enough to work. A modern art museum doesn't call for a classical design, and it shouldn't look like everything else in town that claims modernity. This is at least unique. It's got no corrugated aluminum, no plastic sheeting, no undersized windows, no exposed cinderblock, no chicken-wire railings... none of the awful design elements that have plagued new construction around here for the last decade. I like it.

I've heard a number as high as $1.7 million to renovate Market Square Park. My concern is why this amount of spending and renovation is necessary for this park. I could see spending roughly 1/3 of that amount on landscaping and perhaps the reconfiguration of a few brick seating walls, but this number seems awfully high for a park that is already quite a nice meeting/market/performance space. I wonder if some of the money might be better spent improving the urban aesthetic of other parts of ohio city such as the Bridge Ave corridor and the parking lot behind the market. I have no idea why renovating this park has been made into a priority. Perk Park, the Mall, Public Square, now this one. I'm sure there are others as well. Suddenly we just can't redesign parks fast enough. It's mangement by buzzword... "vibrant greenspace" is all the rage, so we're sinking our scarce monies into tearing up parks and rebuilding them slightly different. Never mind the lack of functional urbanity around these parks, if we can just rebuild enough parks then crime and commerce and everything else will take care of itself. Insane. We need some turnover at the top around here.

Nope. Shaker's school district includes some streets in Cleveland side near Shaker Square, though I think that's the only CMSD exception.

These are great signs for Newark. It has a much bigger downtown than people might expect, one that could hold a lot of urbanists in those upper stories. It offers proximity to Columbus along with better outdoor action than anything in Franklin County. Haven't been down 161 in a while... does it go all the way to 270 now as a freeway? If so, that's huge. Another oft overlooked advantage of Newark is that it has the 16 freeway going straight through it, rather than a bypass like most towns that size. The Newark-Granville-Heath area is very easy to get around in. Combine that with a short ride to Cbus and it's poised for a lot of growth.

I doubt enrollment numbers are FTE unless specified... the universities want to seem as big as possible.

Awesome avatar KJP. That's a messy statute, at least as far as answering the question at hand. It certainly doesn't insist upon identifying routes by endpoints alone. It's not structured as a prohibition... neither (b) nor the auto-ferry bit subsumes (a). And the exception in (a)(1) is fairly broad, as written... no contract, no problem. But it's unlikely that an exception this broad could have been intended, if the goal was to centralize control under Amtrak.

Trouble is, adding them up is not equal to one big whopper. Many you listed have no campus life component at all.

55PS is well run.

Not bad really, especially the second one. Unfortunately, in both cases, the limitations on who will live there will also limit spinoff potential. In that sense I think these represent lost opportunity for Euclid and should have been placed elsewhere.

Perhaps we could help convince them...

Not that I know of. I'm trying to get DCA involved, as well as CSU itself.

Ah yes, thanks for the link!

bump! Given that FEB is now encouraging wealthy immigrants to invest in return for US residence, and we already have a budding immigrant community here on E12th, what can we do as a community to help link these two developments? I've recently become more aware of Cleveland's old settlement houses, like Merrick House in Tremont, which helped immigrants transition into American life. To me that seems like more than just a "welcome center," and it seems like downtown needs one pronto.

Downtown already is a destination for immigrants, at least immigrant grad students. We need to do a better job of welcoming them and making them part of the community. As it is, they tend to stick to their towers on E 12th street, and many don't plan on staying after they graduate. I've been working on this and will continue to do so.

Fair enough, Gramarye, and since I'm done with school now I hope Cleveland will (eventually) provide career opportunities. I think an expanded college downtown will help with that in the long term. Many OSU grads stay in Columbus because they enjoyed living there as students. And many of them stay to work in OSU-related fields. CSU is not a liberal arts school... its known more for engineering and hard science undergrad programs, kinda like OSU. IF CSU can expand more into the health fields, the sky's the limit for collaborating with local business. And if CSU students can be convinced to stay here and start businesses, that's better for our whole economy. Right now too many are leaving. They need to be convinced that Cleveland is a desirable place to be, and a campus atmosphere downtown will go a long way toward convincing them. This goes for out of town entrepreneurs too... a more lively atmosphere downtown would help lure them to Cleveland. CSU can provide that as it keeps growing, and keeps injecting young people into downtown's population.

I really do think a more residential Cleveland State would do wonders for downtown and the near east. Undergrads spend money. An influx of undergrads won't solve every problem for the area but it would certainly fill a major hole.

Wow! OK.

The more I see that patio, the more I like it. I also really like Zinc's signage on Euclid.