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Unless we have a Charles Bronson or a Batman among us, it's generally thought unwise to let people other than the police do the policing. This is something that government needs to get right without outside help. I'd prefer not to have amateur police running around. Yes you can blame the govenrnment for failing in core government functions-- just like any of us can be blamed if we don't do our job. You can blame the people for not electing the right leaders, you can blame them for not holding their leaders accountable, you can even blame them for how they raise their kids. But you can't blame the people for not doing the cops' jobs for them. Much of that job is simply being present, being conspicuous, so that people nearby don't look like easy marks. If we're switching to a wild west format where everyone is expected to enforce the law for themselves... I'm insufficiently armed. So was that girl at the museum.

OK maybe you can't stop everything. But to leave the newly renovated art museum unguarded, after all this weekend's promotional efforts, is boneheaded. Police should be pulled from their cars (by the ear lobe if necessary) and made to guard our people, on foot, as they visit core areas of the city... on foot. Some may note that this is my response to most crime stories. Police strategies and operating procedures are at fault for what happened here. These are things we can change.

There are at least three separate police departments running around that area. It's not surprising though that someone could be attacked in front of the art museum... there isn't a road or parking lot directly adjacent, so it can't be reached by car, so it can't expect any police protection.

If we can build a space station, we can build an attractive city block. I too mourn the loss of skilled sculptors, but do we not have schools of art and architecture? There are thousands of extant examples to study. We even have better materials now, in some cases, that can replicate older looks for less cost. Basically, we can build whatever we want to as soon as we choose to. It's a matter of priorities. Ugly modern designs are not required by Newton's fourth law. That said, I fully agree that demo of older buildings must stop. But I refuse to believe that we as a people are incapable of replicating the work we did a century ago. If that were the case, we'd be better off ceasing to exist.

It sounds like construction is incentivized with the promise of selling it off as condos after 5 years. I worry they might run out of people willing and able to buy. Because of these demographic problems, like the one where the target market doesn't have money sitting around, the model may be flawed. Why not incentivize what we need, which is apartments? You can go through the rental ads right now and find all sorts of affordable hi rise apartments in places like Mayfield and Willoughby Hills. This is what happens when you let your dumb brother play SimCity. Those ought to be getting built in and around downtown. If the law tells people not to, the law is wrong.

I'm not clear on why a similar program couldn't benefit apartment building owners instead of condos. This here seems like pre-crash thinking, i.e. everyone must own a home, the more the better. Change the channel. Now is the time for 1br apartments, and I mean reasonably priced ones. The lack thereof is a bottleneck for downtown growth... it cuts off the demographic who wants to live there most, the single & not-ready-to-settle demographic.

Wow, that's kind of scary. I hope this area can be developed soon. It makes no sense for downtown to end one block south of Playhouse Square. As old buildings go, that Goodyear place looked pretty far gone. The site deserves a prominent residential structure. It has such a short walk to the theaters, to Gateway, and CSU. Seeing the ballpark across the old cemetary would be a cool view, and you should also have a good view of the steel mill torches from there.

I used to live next door to Forest Arms. How severe was this fire? Always liked that building.

Your best bet is to cruise the side streets, write down phone numbers from signs, and check each one out in person.

They make good points there at the end. Tourists could find the west bank more easily if there were pedestrian bridges from downtown. The way you have to go on foot is too roundabout.

You can try both ways before you actually buy anything, so you're in great shape. Welcome to Cleveland!

MMPI wants something like Millenium Park in Chicago. Falanga showed several pictures of it, then explained that the scale would be different but the general idea similar.

Not all of it, and Akron has done a decent job replacing what it lost. It transitioned from rubber into modern polymers. If there's one thing that Ohio makes it's chemicals. A lot of what remains is in this category. Fuels, solvents, plastics, agricultural, all of it. Every part of the state. This sort of thing can be environmentally unfriendly. Maybe that's a factor in having so much sprawl here, despite how old the cities are.

I've never taken the #1, but I can't imagine there being horror stories. Horror stories are just very rare in general. You had originally mentioned a shorter commuting goal, and I don't think you could have met that goal reliably w/o a car. If you're willing to get up earlier, and occasionally be at work way before your shift, the bus could work for you. I'm just trying to give you realistic expectations. The problem is the variation in trip times. On a route that long, so many things can happen to change the bus's ETA. How many people get on and off? How many are in wheelchairs? How many have their money ready? How cooperative are the lights, in conjunction with these other variables? Did the bus show up on time initially? Who's driving today and how do they drive? Complex trip planning was my field for many years, so please trust that I'm not making this stuff up. I also use RTA more extensively than anyone I know... though if I don't drive to work, a six mile 15 minute trip into downtown becomes 45 minutes. Not always, of course, but in order to reliably be at work on time via bus. And this is an express bus traveling on a freeway for half the trip. So I drive to work, for the most part, even though my situation is ideal for riding the bus. Yours would be less ideal, and if the schedule shows a roughly 45 minute trip (yours seems to), and you know there's gonna be walking involved, I would double that 45 minutes to 1.5 hours. You could safely budget 1.5 hours each way. That would be my guess. Budget less than this and you could be late more often than you'd prefer.

Alternate take: Transit in Cleveland is generally not a viable commuting option unless you work downtown and live right off a direct line. The distance and destination you're talking about sound impractical to me. I would drive. This is a new job and you don't want a ton of variation in your arrival time. As someone mentined above, you're looking at an hour-long bus ride each way, though it's not even close to an hour's distance. And that's if the bus shows up right when and where you need it to at both ends, which is exceedingly unlikely. Time-wise, the schedules are approximations. For what it's worth.

Most would consider Crittenden a step up from Heritage. It's a new hi-rise in a more happening area. There are some things located around Heritage that produce... interesting characters, like the Harbor Light Center and a day-labor temp agency. This may not be an issue for you at all, but for some it is, and you should walk around there a little before signing anything with the Heritage. The only drawback to the Crittenden that I can think of is that based on the floorplan and square footage, those studios seem very small. I've never been in the building so I don't know how it plays out in real life.

One other thing, Falanga said the medical mart building will look much better than any rendering we've seen so far. He said this as soon as they put up a slide of the most recent rendering.

For cheap used cars, go the length of Lorain Avenue. It's a main road on the west side. It has used car lots all the way along it into the suburbs. These run from reputable to ugh, more ugh at first. The cheapest option is probably Our Lady of the Wayside, on Brook Park Road at the end of the 176 freeway. Near Parma. They sell donated cars and the money goes to charity. This is a good option if you do your own work. Most of these cars need something. Last resort-- there's a public auto auction off I-71 at Emery Road by the airport. Every Friday morning I believe. Very interesting crowd at the auto auction. For nicer car lots, they're everywhere in the suburbs. Bedford has several and Brook Park Road does too.

Doc Broc is right, there are 1br places for 600 and below, but selection may be limited. I've been around that range for years here, and there are nice places you can get for less than 500 sometimes. These tend to be in older brownstone or mixed use buildings on the major streets. Euclid has these, more in the northern part, and Collinwood does too. The advantage of these is steam heat, which is typically included in the rent. You can't control it but it's there. Not anyone likes these but I think they're great. There are also a lot of post-war apartment complexes where you can find good 1brs under 600. These may or may not include heat. They're more likely than the older places to have AC. 600 might also get you into a high rise, and Euclid and Collinwood have some of those too. The ones by the lake may be pricey. 600 won't hardly get you into a newer place anywhere, and it's bottom of the range for anything in the really popular heights areas. You should still check them out, Coventry and Shaker and several areas along Cedar. They have lots of cool 1brs but mostly at higher prices. Any kind of house, including a duplex, will usually involve a heating bill. This is always on top of the rent and in the winter, it may be as much as the rent. In an older house it may be more. I live in a 2br upper on the other side of town for 650, split with a roommate, and the gas bill got up to 300 one month. There were several months in triple digits, and this place has new windows. So if you rent even a floor of a house by yourself, you could be paying 4 digits in the winter.

Falanga also highlighted the need for speed, as a way to defeat said competition.

Premium Member status allows you to delete your own posts, not just the content but the whole thing! I find this to be a very useful feature. Also, red stars rock.

They only gave us index cards to write the questions on... no room to explain, or I would have. I did make a point of referring to the 3-C project by name.

It happens. I spend a lot of time trying to convince people, people who should know better, that Cleveland is OK. It doesn't make them bad people. It just demonstrates how much difference of opinion there is on these issues. They even said, at the end of the conversation, that if I can convince them I can convince anybody on earth. Still working on it. Just remember when you encounter these folks that they don't speak for everyone. Not by a long shot. If that were the case, these things wouldn't be getting built at all, yet we've had tremendous progress over this past decade.

I mentioned this to some friends yesterday, and they immediately freaked out about losing parking. They also believe no one uses transit and no one lives downtown. They believe parking lots are the highest and best use of that area, and would consider looking for work in the suburbs if they lost any parking convenience whatsoever. Also, they made the "no-growth" argument. We still have some convincing to do...

So... Mark Falanga was asked whether there was any chance of a new train station becoming part of the project. Sounds like no. His take is that conventioners are not partial to using rail, and he reiterated that the plan for the north side of the CC is a glass wall for viewing the lake and museums. He did mention that there is an existing bridge to the Amtrak station, and said that a train station there certainly wouldn't be a bad thing, but it's not any kind of a priority for them. Despite that difference of opinion, I'm quite sold on Mr. Falanga. He knows what his plan is and he's seen it work before. I think he and MMPI will make this a successful project. He also reiterated MMPI's preference for a Midtown location, but stated that, as far as he knows, there are no significant barriers to moving forward with the current plan, although negotiations with the private landowners continue. Brian Tucker, the publisher of Crain's, was the moderator and hopefully they will have a writeup on the whole presentation soon.