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Nothing with as many lights as Chester, Carnegie, Mayfield, Cedar, etc can be considered arterial in light of what the west side has as arterials (90, 71, shoreway). The east side has its own outerbelt and that's it. Yes, I'm saying that the central east side is hurt by poor freeway access. The internet age hasn't been kind to urbanization any more than the freeway age was, but we don't run away from computers. Compared with Lakewood, Cleveland Heights is woefully isolated from other parts of the area. Given that there is a freeway system, and given that it will still be an important part of life and commerce until we can lay down billions worth of train tracks, this critical part of town needs to be accessible to the freeway system. We can't stick our heads in the sand and wish the automotive age away at this point. Inaccessible and isolated is how many EAST side Cuyahoga people view these communities. Experiment with a stopwatch if you think they're nuts. Anything we can do to increase access to UC is a good thing. Even if we prefer better methods, increasing access remains a good thing. There's no sense in hating all roads for the sake of hating all roads.

Jpop, I'm with you on all of that. The reason I want parking to be free is not to please people from Beachwood, but to make downtown shopping a more viable option for people living in the city and inner ring, who now drive out to the burbs to shop because they have no choice. Our current transit system, while good, is still a little short of making parking availablility a non-factor for downtown. RTA doesn't run enough during shopping hours. RTA justifiably won't increase weekday evening or saturday afternoon service to downtown without some prompting. All these things need to come together at once: increased density, along with increased shopping, along with increased transit. Re the 5th amendment, never said they wouldn't be paid off. But that one-time payment to make downtown a free parking zone would create big dividends. After what happened in the flats, it hardly seems legally impossible. I don't think it would be that hard to drum up popular support for free parking, enough that it might overcome any untoward influences. Is Collinwood considered part of downtown's market? E 152nd St? Well, W 150th goes through the middle of Lakewood. To me, Lakewood and the interior Heights area are unquestionably within downtown's market area. They have been, by design and since the time of their creation, inexorably linked with and dependent upon downtown Cleveland. What is the special significance of being in downtown's immediate orbit? Who cares. From the Rocky River valley to about Lee Road, it is all solid city. All of this solid city area is set up to use downtown Cleveland as its downtown, as its major shopping area, no less so than is Ohio City or Hough. Everyone seems to want to think of Lakewood as being in Lorain County or Michigan. As long as we're in that mode, then no, downtown retail can never succeed. It never would have in the first place.

I may get lit up for it, but I like this project. The way 490 ends where it does just screams out Mistake. No, I don't want a freeway through Shaker Lakes. At all. But the road setup around UC is terrible and this would improve it. Everyone talks about how this road would help Avon pick up UC workers. I can't deny that, but it's not like that isn't happening anyway. The larger effect of this road will be increasing access to everywhere else for residents of UC and Cleveland Heights. It makes those communities much more attractive by reducing their isolation. I think it will result in a significant net gain for the greater UC area. In general I don't support road expansion when we need to rebuild our transit network. But in Cleveland, the road system is highly unbalanced and that needs correcting, independent of car vs. transit questions.

I agree about the parking, it's an immeasurable barrier for many people. It gives them an excuse big enough to avoid dealing with any other prejudices they may have. I believe Tower City validates parking, as long as you buy something or see a movie. But that's still administrative BS you don't have to go through in Beachwood. I'd love to see how competitive downtown retail would be if the city just said "Beachwood doesn't charge for parking and neither will downtown. No one shall profit from keeping our downtown ugly, for no rational being or polity would allow this. All visitors to downtown will be treated the same as visitors to Beachwood Place, and step one is not demanding money from visitors before they've even quite arrived. We're sorry property owners, but owning that land gives you no right to open a slaughterhouse downtown either. We live together in a society. You're using your land to negatively impact the commercial value of other land nearby. That is a nuisance, and we the city can stop you." Again, this may sound radical or insane, but the current system has led only to sorrow. Are we sure it should remain unquestioned? Aside from the parking hassle, I'm still don't understand why the downtown market is limited to those living within a few blocks of the square. The downtown market rightly includes everyone who has reasonable RTA access to it. Those people don't necessarily need to park. Do stores in Manhattan measure their market only in walking distance, like we're trying to here? I don't know for sure, but I bet they don't. I bet they include Brooklyn. I may be way off on that. But why is the potential market for a store in downtown Cleveland limited to 10,000 immediate downtown residents? It should include the entire city limits, Lakewood and some of Shaker at least. There are over 50,000 people in Lakewood who can get downtown twice as fast as they can get to any other major shopping area. Why are those people not considered part of downtown's retail market? The lack of access to major shopping for Lakewoods twice-the-magic-number residential base is so pronounced they almost tore down the west end to build a mall. Lakewood was built with the expectation that people would take transit to do their major shopping in downtown Cleveland. There ought to be some way we can work this out.

One would hope that some new restaurants and certainly a new hotel would be developed around the mall site to go with this. Without a doubt, the mall area is better for creating spin-off development than is Tower City. It's also much easier to get trucks into, compared with the nook behind Tower City, a critical factor Mr. Harris failed to mention. Maybe the site's awkward placement is his "fatal, as-yet-unrevealed flaw" that everyone else has been aware of for some time.

What does core really mean? I would say most of the inner ring is core city. It's what downtown is the downtown of. The city ended at 55th for a long time. Lakewood, and half of Parma really, are just extensions of Cleveland's main corridors. The borders are arbitrary and they don't make much sense. In a satellite view of the entire area, what I would consider core city jumps out at me. It's the part that looks urban.

What area of Youngstown? I'm from Howland. Coventry is not shady at all. Coventry is one of the best around here, and the great thing about the Heights area is all the little villages like that clustered together. Show her Coventry along with Shaker Square, Cedar-Fairmout, Cedar-Lee, and all the cool things around case. It's a package deal. But go up Mayfield to Superior, turn left and go down the hill. That will highlight her point of view, and it is a package deal. But bear in mind that it's also like that near downtown or Lakewood. Lakewood is sometimes underrated. The east end has good transit access, the middle has almost whatever you need, and the west end is as nice as anywhere. Rocky River is nice too, but it's pretty suburban and that's getting far away. Lakewood is a little far if you're at Case. And though it has much better highway access than Coventry, the main routes east out of Lakewood will be torn up for the next few years. I go to CSU law and Lakewood has worked out great for me. With the 55 bus on Clifton, along with the Health Line or the Red Line train, you can get to Case in under an hour. Don't try this in the middle of the day because they come less frequently. The Detroit bus runs 24 hours. Another plus for Lakewood is that it's all underpriced. It's worth some looking. The worst area near Lakewood is the West 70s thru the West 90s, so show her that too. For your situation, the far end of Lakewood is far, and the near end deserves the same shady rating as Coventry. Downtown is where I'd prefer to live, but I can't do it right now for the same reasons you mentioned. I've heard good things about all those buildings in the warehouse district.

That actually sounds awesome.

I was but now I'm in law school. I wanted to be an architect but I can't draw at all.

Yes that was a rambly post. I still like the first and last paragraphs though. I live primarily off student loans right now so I don't do much shopping. I eat out downtown quite a bit because I'm usually there all day. If I need clothes or household goods, downtown doesn't offer many realistic options. One day I hope to wear tailored shirts and $100 ties; this is not that day. I tried to do all my Christmas shopping downtown, but very few things on my list were available there in any form. That was one sad evening. Luckily all of these items were available in the Olmstead, Mayfield/Cedar, and Niles shopping areas. I loathe going to those places but many mainstream goods are unavailable where I live and work. The items that were available downtown cost at least double what they cost anywhere else. I'm sure they were nicer but I had more than one person to buy for, so the added spendor of Brooks Brothers $120 gloves did me no good.

Optimism, my good man. That's my problem. I refuse to believe that Mother Nature, or God, or whatever, wants downtown Cleveland retail to suck. Removing that from the equation, we are left with man. Human decisions and human philosophies resulted in this blight. Those are not dictated by laws of existence-- they are arbitrary constructs. They could change right now. Or now. Or whenever we decide we're sick of this. It really is that simple. Crises call for creativity. Let's try to come up with an entirely different approach to getting these needs filled, getting these buildings and lots filled. The set of rules I'm childishly refusing to accept is the one that hasn't worked all that well for several decades now, throughout my time on this Earth. Maybe I'm crazy and maybe I'm not. How many ways can we possibly get some competitive retail downtown again? Just one? Get 15,000 people to move inside the innerbelt, all with essentially this level of retail, as a precondition? Whose rule is that? I don't think Cleveland voted for that, at the meeting. What can we do about it? Could it be easier to go around that hoop than through it?

This discussion is moving so fast I can't keep up (and work). As an aside, it troubles me that I'm recently at odds with McCleveland a lot because I usually agree with all his points. Anyway, I can't shake the notion that downtown retail falls so short of its potential that something systematic is wrong. Our economic approach, at some level, is so fatally flawed that it must yield. I don't know the answer, but more of whatever got us in this hole is definitely not it. The Galleria was probably a lost cause. Tower City isn't, and neither is Euclid Avenue nor the potential of all these parking lots. The cost of parking is definitely a problem. Maybe for-profit parking lots are antithetical to downtown retail in the average US major city like Cleveland. Maybe there should not be one more dime bled, in this manner, from people who come downtown. I also don't understand why the population of the immediate downtown area is so crucial. How big is North Olmstead? Macedonia? It doesn't matter because they're not islands, and neither is downtown Cleveland. The existence of a transit system, one that converges downtown and doesn't go to any other major retail center, should make for a downtown market much bigger than 10k right this moment. If that's not enough to create a market equal to at least Niles, or Newark, or some other small Ohio town that has a full complement of retail, I don't know what to tell you. I think we have plenty of market right now, and the problem is something else. Which brings me back to what is so different about retail here than elsewhere? Other than the aforementioned parking, it's the hours.

This demonstrates just how long it's been since I've visited the Galleria. I was unaware that their shift away from retail was so pronounced. That's too bad, because the layout seems less than ideal for an office complex. Then again, it never made for much of a mall either. Three mistakes in a row (including the original plaza nothingness) for such a key spot on such a major intersection. I still wish it could become more Avenue District.

We have the opportunity right now to make sure those walls will be actual walls this time. Let's make it happen.

Regarding market forces, I'd like to know why downtown rents are higher if retail space there is in less demand. According to the theory, rents should come down until stores are filled. Maybe every downtown property owner who doesn't follow the rules of capitalist economics and lower the rents on their empty spaces should be expelled from the country as a communist. Any economic theory that forces downtown Cleveland retail to suck is a worthless economic theory. How come I look around and all I see is empty stores? Theory? You let me get a hold of that theory and I'll give it the whuppin' it needs. Some administrator at CSU once told me market forces dictated that it wasn't profitable to sell coffee in the morning. Yeah right. Half the time people quote me "market forces" what they really mean is: "I just got torched on a contract and I'm being forced to act against everyone's interest but the one who torched me." or "I inherited this job/property in a way that had nothing to do with any market forces, and logic shall bow to my whim." Edit: I agree that limited hours can work for some retailers in some situations. On the whole, I don't think it works for very many retailers, particularly those whose competitors do keep normal hours.

I don't think they're even set up for one. I can't remember. Have to admit, I haven't been in there for ages. My contention is simply that whatever the economic perils of being open normal hours, there is no other way to survive. I'm not asking for "long" hours. There's long, there's normal, and then there's us closing restaraunts at 3 and retail at 7. Will any given store that's open normal hours succeed in downtown Cleveland? Maybe, though not necessarily. Will they succeed without normal hours? No chance.

Too bad. There is no other way. You can't expect customers to come in only when its convenient or efficient for you. I guess serious upfront capital is needed just to open a store of that scale, in order to ride out those evenings. At least WB flat out closed when things went south. Maybe the tie store did too. But there is no sense expecting to remain in business if you aren't going to be open normal hours consistently. No sense at all. That's why I read "Galleria closing on weekends" as "no more Galleria" and I'm already dreaming up schemes for that building/plot. I'd like to be wrong about this, but then again how successful can the Galleria ever be without an anchor store? How often does the no-anchor model work anywhere?

Is Matty Maroun still the owner? Yessir He supposedly owns more of Michigan than anyone besides the state government. I used to work for him, and he was made out to be a terrifying individual-- a cross between Kaiser Soze and Montgomery Burns.

This is all my unresearched opinion, but: Do businesses sometimes have to be open when nobody's there? All of them. Do people go to shop at a place they know or assume will be closed? Never, never, never, never, never. You simply cannot improve your market position by not being available. The only direction that can move you is down, regardless of cost savings. It only takes one "Oh my god, they're closed NOW?!" to permanently lose that person and some others they know. It communicates to them that you live in a different reality with a different and much lower set of standards than they're accustomed to. The Galleria's owners would be better off leveling everything but the new Dollar Bank section and selling the land to Zaremba. This move truly makes me wonder if they have something like that in mind, although it might just be a panic move by some individual who blundererd into having control of a retail center.

I cannot imagine how that could help anything. In way too many cases, the survival strategy for downtown Cleveland businesses is to not be open. That is counterproductive, as it tells potential customers to go away and not come back. I've never seen restaurants or convenience stores close as early as they do in downtown Cleveland, not anywhere, and it is positively senseless. As for the Galleria, they would be better off to cover the exterior in brown paper bags than to close the place on weekends. Maybe they're trying to move it to Florida, like in Major League. If downtown Cleveland cannot offer normal human amenities (restaurants open at dinner time, shopping open on shopping days, convenience stores open when people are off work) it makes us look not only poor but determined to stay poor. There is one and only one way to develop a customer base and that is to be there when needed, period. Do not complain about slow business when you close during peak hours. That is insanity defined.

Is Matty Maroun still the owner?

It sounds like the two sides of this haven't talked much to each other. Was CSU given target dates that were even remotely feasible? If not, did CSU think the state was kidding and simply ignore the deadline? Why is this all just coming up now? It must have been clear for some time that there were problems. CSU (Weinberg) seems to think there's still no real deadline or need for urgency. I would like to hear a more leadershippy tone coming from CSU, given the state's position.

Now come on, you're drawing an evil moustache on me. All my posts clearly indicate that I favor rail over highways, and dense urban development over any alternative. The devil's in the details. Maybe we disagree about them, and I understand your frustration, but please don't misrepresent where I'm coming from. I want what's best for our core urban area. Access among the various parts of it is something I consider critical. Good traffic flow is not an anti-urban ideal. I also condsider Lakewood to be part of Cleveland's core urban area. It enhances and complements downtown. Putting obstacles between the two is bad for both, in my opinion. It also isn't clear to me how much the shoreway conversion will actually "open up neighborhoods to the lakefront." These neighborhoods are still up on a plateau, are they not? There's still a giant Edgewater parking lot and meadow that aren't going anywhere, are they? None of the industry is moving either. If you're worried about getting at the water, the shoreway is not the archnemesis you make it out to be. Eliminate it entirely and the lake is no closer. In terms of getting people across, what could intersections accomplish that pedestrian bridges couldn't? And even the most optimistic projections don't show that much new development along the converted boulevard, because the terrain and the existing development don't allow much room for it, regardless of how slow we force people to drive when they visit our fair city. And if you think the delays right now are five minutes, I'm glad you don't work at ODOT. I trust you were kidding about that number. These are change-your-entire-lifestyle delays, moving people multiple slots up the bus schedule all at once. These are not Strongsville people, these are people who chose an urban lifestyle. The desire for a short commute is not frivoulous. It's a huge selling point in Edgewater and Lakewood, and if it comes off the table there will be widespread impact across a huge chunk of dense city that's currently very popular and functional. To me, the cost-benefit equation does not work out in favor of changing the west shoreway at this point. That doesn't mean I'm against the concept. I only ask that it be accompanied by a rail expansion, and that it be well-coordinated with other road projects. I don't think that means I should move to Hinckley.

Well... yes. I was a professional logistical planner for about 5 years, trained in modeling traffic flows and analyzing bottlenecks. I've passed APICS certification tests in production, capacity, and distribution control. I also appraised houses for a short time. My opinions on this are not entirely conjecture. They're also similar to concerns raised by civil engineers at ODOT, for what that's worth.

The increased traffic on the shoreway is due to the merging that occurs due to the lane closures. If you don't have merging, then flow should be fine. The plan maintains the same amount of lanes as currently exists. The reconfiguration will not produce traffic tie ups like you currently see. I haven't run a simulation of this, but it seems to me that the amount of stoppage per lane that occurs during merging would at least be similar to the amount that would result from traffic lights forcing the entire roadway to stop all at once. Actually, I think even one single light would (by design) cause a lot more stoppage than one single 3-becomes-2 merge point. They're talking about putting in 3 lights, which I believe would turn eastbound Clifton and Lake into parking lots for a solid two hours each morning. It would also result in significantly more traffic on area sidestreets during that period, from people escaping to Detroit Ave. Any property values gained in D-S will therefore be offset in Edgewater. Appraisers take off a lot for traffic, especially can't-get-out-of-driveway traffic like we've seen this week. If we're going to switch from a car/highway transit model to one more balanced toward rail, which I'm all for, I'm afraid we might need to do it all at once. Rush hours around here aren't bad at all when the existing set-up is fully functional, but constricting or retarding multiple routes along one corridor can change that in a hurry. I would suggest that any west shoreway conversion 1) wait until the innerbelt is fixed, and 2) be done only in conjunction with a new rail line for the affected corridor.