327

Yeah I find it unlikely that many local Russian-speakers would support Trump-- for one thing, they're immigrants.

CERCLA has accelerated it but new industrial complexes have always preferred the edges of town. They need a lot of land and they don't play well with other uses. Job sprawl entails more than just factories though, especially now. Think of all the employment along Richmond Road. Almost none of it is industrial. 271 is thick with jobs, most of them reachable by the Richmond Rd bus line, which could easily have stopped at said parking garage. Cutting off the nose to spite the face.

There are a lot of Russian speakers around Mayfield/271, maybe some spillover of that into Beachwood. Also Beachwood has a lot of offices and research parks. Those draw people from everywhere.

It does sound like they ran across political problems. We only know for certain about the wetlands in Brooklyn issue.

More people have had access to health care recently.

His side of the argument has been invalidated by history. He turned the transit system into a social program and persuaded the political PTB to take that approach explicitly. He did this, probably on purpose, right as the suburban systems that would (and early on, did) contradict his views were being absorbed into the main, and of course there was no private competition. Being a social program, it had little if any incentive to improve itself but was destined to be de-prioritized by the general trend of politics in that era. Plus, more generally, he was one of Dennis the Menace's main co-conspirators. I agree that history works against his viewpoint but for different reasons. He failed to anticipate job sprawl. In the long term, extending the reach of the transit system would have helped the people he wanted to help. And he should have seen it coming. New employment centers have always been built on the fringes of town, it's not like we just thought of that. It sounds like he was blinded by resentment. That rarely leads to good results.

He wasn't big on rail, didn't want to extend the rapid. That's all I could find for the negative column.

We've wasted enough money on streetscape projects. No more. The real streetscape is the neighborhood itself, i.e. the buildings and what's happening inside them. That's where public investment should focus. Improve the availability of walkable services and attractions. Lafont just provided a nice list to work from. These investments always support some kind of business, but we've shown extreme favoritism toward paving and landscaping businesses. Please let's throw money at something else, anything else.

I've seen worse. The new townhouses look great.

Seems like a traditional small grocer or convenience store might do better, and might help anchor other businesses with the traffic it brings. From the article the owner stated the business was intended to cater more to residents. I wonder if there are a significant number of BP residents that are averse to outside visitors. There's a conceptual tension in the way this has been set up from the start. Prime urban location but every move seems calculated to minimize the urbanity. It's even marketed as "not too urban!" http://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2017/12/battery_park_townhouse_offers.html

Invest what? Half the country is barely scraping by. Any worthwhile advisor would tell those people to build a few months of savings before playing the market, and that might take years.

Well stated, although the conservative side would prefer to eliminate "public" everything.

Privatize the gains, socialize the losses.

I can see how that might work, but the sense I've gotten from WNY people is the state forgets them and they have to battle NYC for every penny. As usual I don't accept that the universe is structurally aligned against Cleveland. I think we can do what others can. I'd like to hear from the Buffalo delegation about alternative policy choices that may actually be available to us. It's at least worth looking into. I mean, we have a ton of new and affluent downtown population that Buffalo doesn't. That's gotta help, right?

If inner city Buffalo can have that, so can we. "Market forces" affect Buffalo the same as Cleveland but the results are markedly different. Cleveland should send a delegation there, or invite a delegation here, and find out how they've done it.

That ranks it among the oldest of freeways. So why malign a WPA project as if it were happening now? Why malign people who oppose the shoreway conversion as if they were asking the city for money? They aren't. They live where they do because it's dense and walkable there, while the inner city pursues a more suburban development pattern. This isn't a matter of Avon vs Downtown. There's no benefit in pretending it is. I love how you're all "yay urbanism" until it costs you an extra 2 minutes on your auto commute. We may not entirely agree on what urbanism means. And I work in Parma, so we aren't discussing "[my] auto commute." Please stop making things personal.

That ranks it among the oldest of freeways. So why malign a WPA project as if it were happening now? Why malign people who oppose the shoreway conversion as if they were asking the city for money? They aren't. They live where they do because it's dense and walkable there, while the inner city pursues a more suburban development pattern. This isn't a matter of Avon vs Downtown. There's no benefit in pretending it is.

None of that applies here though. It was conceived and built as a freeway, entirely within city limits, and served a distinctly urban population in Lakewood. Public funds aren't being sought to widen it, in fact the polar opposite is true. All in the service of this: http://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2017/12/battery_park_townhouse_offers.html "Can't decide between city or suburban living? At Battery Park, you don't have to." My favorite line: "Downtown is just a $7 Uber ride away."

I was told there would be no math.

It's not fair to expect anyone to cough up answers on the spot. Especially in a criminal investigation, 5th amendment applies. But it's also not fair for a mayor (of unprecedented power) to claim no responsibility for what happens on his watch. He'll get plenty of time to answer. And he'll have to answer for the people he installed and the people they installed. If you don't want that kind of responsibility, you don't run for mayor.

http://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/index.ssf/2017/12/what_is_burton_scot_the_compan.html#incart_2box Sounds like there's a lot going on here, maybe involving kickbacks?

He has considerable budgetary authority, and we don't yet know the extent of what they're looking at. That's part of the problem. Regardless of title, she had enough authority to acquire a Harley with federal development funds. Every aspect of how we spend that money should be under review. By whom, I don't even know. That's another part of the problem. The feds took down our County government a few years back, and now the new one's corrupt. Budish is fighting tooth and nail for unchecked authority to shovel money toward his friends. Presently he claims to already have that authority on no other grounds than tradition! And rather than ending the practice, he wants to codify it. At least the Council is moderately skeptical. http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2017/12/cuyahoga_county_asks_county_council_to_allow_officials_to_pay_salaried_employees_beyond_40_hours.html#incart_river_home

From the article, this lady had three prior convictions for employee theft but we had her running a CDC. I hope this does reach the mayor. It seems there's no other way to get rid of him. Seems like only yesterday the federal government had to step in and protect our bus system from him. Thanks feds! Nice to see you again.

I was told the Tribe is on leased land, which could become a problem down the line.

I wonder what "Advanced Vaudeville" is.