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This is a great idea, and I'm not aware of it currently being done in any form here. Those who have held these properties for so long, and allowed them to decay, should gain nothing from appreciation. They also should not face perverse incentives to wait on everyone else to make development happen.

There's scattered talk of getting an MLS team in (or around) Cleveland, but until the market just demands a team here, I kind of like being in the Crew's market. And I would love to take a train to see a Crew game.

So, you want all aspects of society to be institutionalized other than underage drinking! I think some aspects of society are overly controlled, while other aspects aren't controlled enough. Speaking in such general terms you're probably the same way. The points of contention involve what goes into groups #1 and #2. US drinking laws are out of step with the rest of the civilized world. I think we exert too much contol in that area, and I think there are consequences of our doing so. I don't blame the college riot situation on that. It's definitely a contributing factor. Spoiled modern kids, who don't understand true struggle, is another one.

Please!! Take away the senseless age taboo and you'd eliminate most of the binge drinking. Kids aren't taught to repsect alcohol, they're taught to fear it, which creates a need to "conquer" it. It's poor parenting institutionalized. It's been noted by many foreigners that our age-focused approach to alcohol is ineffective.

How many cops have you met, Dan? Even the ones I'm friends with don't act as goody-goody as you describe. Cops tend to be dicks when there's just no cause for it. I write some of it off as reaction to a difficult job, but that's really no excuse. It's something we need to work on as a society.

Possessing a can of beer? She should have known better? Sounds like you're talking about a 5 year old kid. Underage drinking is not a huge problem on college campuses. Draconian enforcement of unreasonable laws is huge problem for free Americans under 21, regardless of where they live or what they do.

Just build it as a streetcar. Yes.

I had a bad police experience, and think their behavior could improve, but I'm with MTS on this generally. People need to calm down. Rioting is not part of the college experience, and no one should force it to become part of anyone else's college experience. Kids are getting way out of hand. You can't blame police actions for the overall escalation when it's all new kids every few years.

Of course Dan, you got me, it was really just me being a punk. Of course. I forgot you were standing right next to me at the time. For everyone else, here's what happened: They typically roped off the High Street sidewalks with steel cables on weeknights. This facilitated making each side of the street one-way for pedestrians. In European fashion, you went forward on the left side of the street. I had been at a friend's house on Norwich and was heading to my place on High at 9th, so I was traveling south on the east side of High. I was right about where Sully's (Skully's?) used to be, that double-decker arrangement they've since tore down. It was so crowded, Manhattan like, so all you could do was go with the flow of the people around you-- southward. It's like this every Saturday. Not a problem. At this point I have no idea there's a riot or any such madness. The actual riot was a block east or so. Everyone in front of me starts screaming and running back toward me. That doesn't compute, because it's supposed to be one way. Once I'm at the front of the crowd, I can see a cop who's talking ineffectually into a bullhorn. He's swaying back and forth like a lawn sprinkler. My face hurts. I can't see. I realize why everyone had turned around, and I follow them, back into the oncoming traffic. Soon there are more. Several other cops herd us to a location just down a side street and all of us are maced individually before being allowed to disperse. No one ever touched me or threatened me with any violence beyond mace. Dan, I support someone macing you. Every minute of every day. We'll sort it out afterwards.

Me too. I'm flat broke now, but as soon as I am able I would like to get involved.

The police were interfering with peaceful gatherings, as a matter of policy, 15 years ago in Columbus. The policy was called "in loco parentis" or in place of your parents. You had to have an official guest list and you had to have a reception desk in your front yard surrounded by caution tape in order to have a "legal" party within a certain radius of campus. That stopped nothing and created an Orwellian vibe. I like to believe later riots could have been avoided if the police had come out and apologized for getting out of hand a few times, for letting the young guys run a little too loose, but everyone stood their ground.

I've never seen one quite like that. It was just getting bad at OSU in the mid 90s when I was there. At first it was just a few porches on one street, then each riot got a little bigger. My view on the police in these things goes both ways. They do need to contain and control what's going on. They're expected to. The problem is that they often escalate riots and make potential allies into enemies by randomly attacking. I got maced in the face, repeatedly, while attempting to walk home down High Street one night. I was sober and had nothing to do with the goings on. And that was far from being the worst thing that happened to someone innocent during what was a tiny little riot, judging by the modern OU scale. It stinks to see this annual riot problem having grown and expanded since then. I had hoped what I saw was isolated and stupid. Now it's the norm at so many schools. Unreal. As distrustful as I am of campus area police, there's just no way they precipitated all this. Kids are getting dumber and more hostile.

FerrariEnzo, I love what you're doing. I'm a little peeved because some friends and I were hoping to get in there first, but more power to you. Each person doing this in EC will be better off having more people do it-- largely because of the radius issues MTS just mentioned. Realistically I may never get to. But I'm glad you are and I hope more do. On the rejecting legit criticism issue, I don't think that's exactly what was meant here. There are many times that those "in the know" assume naievete on the part of lesser posters when it may be wildly inappropriate to do so. It's not so much that people are dashing our ill-informed dreams, it's that we may not be so ill-informed at all, and we would appreciate if that issue kindly vanished. There may be more than one way to look at a single situation, certainly one on which modern professionals disagree. Rebuilding the inner city is one of those situations.

Unfortunately "Midtown" ends at E79th and most of what we're complaining about starts right there. Also unfortunately the Midtown org which produced that overlay, which I like a lot, doesn't seem all that committed to the plan. Something about promoting a mountain bike park which (regardless of one's opinion on the idea itself) clearly violated their own zoning overlay in grand fashion. There is an existing thread about the Midtown org in which I asked about this. The answer I got was an intern had come up with the bike park and they said what the hey, sounds nice... as if their zoning rules weren't really that serious. I think the zoning overlay is a step but we still have a ways to go. Zoning plans can't just step aside for every little project someone likes. How would you feel, if you were a developer, and they were trying to enforce that code on you but not on themselves and their insiders? First off, I'm really glad block clubs have the kind of influence you describe. I didn't mean that they would have no effect in Midtown, just that for various reasons perhaps not as much effect as they do in Tremont at this time. I'm very much pro-block-club. The points you make about existing code and the reality of enforcement is really what I'm getting at. It's also reality that you can find crack easily on 55th street. Reality comes in good and bad forms. Changing the bad realities improves our city. I'm aware of the general process and the deficiencies in our existing code. My contention is that we need to change that process and we need to change the existing code-- I consider these to be first priority items. These are improvements we can make to our city that wouldn't cost much at all, unlike most proposed improvements. I'd like to add this about zoning codes being mis-prioritized: There is a Cleveland suburb, I won't say what one, where my roommate wrote the entire zoning code. He was an administrative temp with the city and one day they asked him to come up with a zoning code. He had zero knowledge of urban development or economics or architecture or anything like that. He didn't do a ton of research. He says he went through some stuff on google and cobbled something together with thoughts like "Trees and grass in front? That sounds nice. I'll throw that in." He's not a UO type person, i.e. doesn't give a crap about these issues, and thought it was odd they would ask him to do something like that. But he did and they adopted it. It probably stands to this day. Now this was a suburb, not Cleveland itself, but all I can say is wow. People who run cities for a living need to start caring about zoning.

it doesn't exactly work like that. Which part doesn't work like what? Can you elaborate?

You're right about the Aldi... the door location is but one of many problems. I really have seen 100% urban McDonalds before, some free-standing and some not. I've even seen more urban-friendly McDonalds in other parts of Cleveland. My only complaint is about the building. What you said about design coming second is, I believe, Cleveland's #1 problem. Fix that and other things can begin to fall into place. Until that is fixed, we will remain a substandard and illegitimate city in too many people's eyes.

I don't see demand for those buildings at market rate developing until AFTER they are no longer Section 8. The long-standing Section 8-ness of them becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy after a while. Their status is also a government decision which can be changed through government. That may or may not require someone to fork over a giant check... but it shouldn't.

One of the most committed Block Clubs I know of is in the decidedly non-gentrified part of Tremont. They work like hell to keep their corner of the neighborhood safe and well-kempt, and their section is decidedly blue-collar in the best way that can be expressed, with folks who have lived there for generations (and who didn't "choose" to move there). In Fairfax, the Block Club that covers E. 115th south of Woodland also is a model for what can take place by committed residents. I don't know what you mean by "umph", but City Hall works with block clubs, not instead of. City Hall can't be on the ground everywhere, so you need the clubs to provide the eyes on the street. It's not enough to push this all off on the City. Building standards aren't the city's concern? I don't understand that at all. I'm not saying you're wrong, I just don't understand. Do Block Clubs get the opportunity to deny permits for inappropriate structures or demolitions? If they do, that's awesome. Is anyone at city hall being paid to handle this? I know we have departments and boards of that nature. Why are they being paid for this if the primary responsibility lies in private citizens who have other jobs? How are Block Clubs able to affect areas of the city that are primarily commercial/institutional and have few residents? What I'm getting at is I don't believe Block Clubs can be as effective for Midtown as they may be for Tremont or other mostly residential areas. I also think this issue is squarely within any city hall's core of responsiblity.

That's interesting. Do the two departments share info on that sort of thing? Will RTA police ever look for it anywhere besides bus stops and train stations? Could they if they wanted to? My experience with police departments, not just Cleveland city, is that they are... shall we say... aggressively unconcerned about petty theft complaints. I wish you the best of luck in getting your bike back. My roommate's bike was stolen about a year ago and Lakewood PD pretty much told him that's too bad.

While it would be a shame for the county to lose its mall presense, it would also be a shame for that particular building to remain there, for any purpose. It's awful. It goes a long way toward ruining the mall altogether with the sheer force of its ugliness. I've been hoping that somehow the county ends up moving as a result of this project. I hope that lenghy holdouts isn't the reason, and that the project isn't delayed, but also I think any renovation of the mall is a little bit silly if that county building doesn't come down.

I still don't understand how the desires of current Fairfax residents would lead to poor urban design. It's a separate issue from the mix of businesses in the area. Aldis don't have to have no door on the street, and CVS's don't have to be built mid-parcel. McDonalds has used many attractive and appropriate designs for its urban restaurants. For some reason, this didn't happen for Midtown Cleveland. Why? It would really surprise me to find out that Britt or her voters actively preferred this look for their McDonalds.

Some of the difference between Tremont and Midtown may involve how committed the residents are to their neighborhood. This is often based on how voluntarily they're living where they live. But every Cleveland neighborhood should benefit from high quality design and planning standards, not just the ones that have already gentrified. My view is that the umph needs to come from city hall. This is in no way a rejection of Block Clubs, which do great work.

^^ I took one look at it and felt similarly. I may check back in after some time has passed. It could change.

I was looking for pics for my desktop and found UO via clevelandskyscrapers. It took about three years of reading the site for me to work up the nerve to make my first post.

I'm not sure I would break it down quite like that. Current residents have no motivation, that I know of, to have ugly suburban garbage built there. Current residents there are city residents and would probably be better off with city-style amenities, like an Aldi with doors facing the street. I don't know what the constituency would be for building crap like they've built recently, other than inappropriately influential developers. Actually I'm pretty sure that's who the constituency is: inappropriately influential developers... foxes guarding the hen house of urban beauty. If you build a decent grocery store space, it can upgrade from Aldi as the neighborhood gentrifies. Instead we've build all kinds of stuff on Euclid that needs to come down forthwith, regardless of who lives there.