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Only one group had responsibility for it in recent years and allowed this to happen. This city wants to solve all its blight problems with bulldozers. Whenever I talk with someone involved in blight abatement, they make this philosophy very clear. Historical architecture is not assigned much value, if any. All value is placed on creating open lots, as many and as quickly as possible, which admittedly is a lot simpler than enforcing building codes. This building is more than ornamental, and losing it degrades the architectural character of the whole area.

Blessed be the King! Now I have a forever connection to the 21 Lounge. Can't talk and my arm hurts from high-fiving. Congratulations to everyone!

Exactly! Just east of here in UC, the CCF started building ugly building after ugly building about 20 years ago. By increasing the workforce density of the neighborhood, it allowed for developers to start building things like Uptown, One University and all the other great stuff over there. Midtown obviously will take even more work before we get there. I wish to lodge a formal complaint with whomever enforces this rule of economics, because they're letting everyone break it except Cleveland. CWRU, UH and CCF have been major employment centers for decades... and yet, not only are we required to ignore basic urban design principles for several more decades, we're also required to waste a fortune on dozens of awful buildings. Meanwhile those cheaters Up North are going straight from vacant lots to quality urban design-- with trains-- even though their city is worse off in every other way. It just isn't fair. The invisible hand hates us!

^^The city, through Midtown Inc, has made clear what the community wants here. We want a suburban office/industrial park. Apart from telling developers they'll face minimal red tape if they follow that path, it also signals that anything built there is likely to be surrounded by that, which in turn dissuades anything different from ever being proposed. This is the nature of a Master Plan. By specifying one future, it necessarily makes others less likely. Do CDCs and Master Plans have dictatorial authority over developers? Of course not, but the alternative extreme isn't true either, they do have an effect so it matters what they say. It might just be random coincidence, but so far multiple developers have fallen exactly in line with Midtown Inc's published agenda. That tells me it's working, and makes me wonder what a better plan might have accomplished.

I thought that was the purpose of the Opportunity Corridor? Or before that, Emerald Parkway off Grayton by the airport? Or before that, Hinckley Industrial Parkway next to the Jennings Freeway? Or before that, Industrial Parkway off Puritas/West 150th? Was thinking the same thing................ Agreed. It's a ridiculous waste of our Main Street, and of the new transit line we built there. The concept is a good idea but the choice of location is so wrong that it becomes a bad one.

It's also a signal that RTA is starting to understand TOD. The first attempt near this station was a cluster of tiny cottages.

We could also offer tax incentives similar to those used to influence the residential market. Markets are for real but they're not set in stone, they're manipulated constantly. And Cleveland has no problem building retail space when it wants to, e.g. medical mart and public square cafe. The issue here is an overt desire to avoid proper urban development in Midtown, in order to attract employers as quickly as possible. Some think that's a great idea, others find it short sighted. Regardless, this development pattern is not an irresistible force of nature. It's just one choice among many and our leaders have pushed hard for it.

C'mon folks, this is vibrant! Pictures of downtown in the old days are filled with big gaudy signs. They disappeared when everything else did.

Amazon distribution at the former Chrysler plant in Twinsburg. http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2016/05/amazoncom_plans_distribution_c.html#incart_m-rpt-1

Doesn't hurt to try and I'm glad they are. Warner Bros began in Youngstown, kind of, so there's an angle.

I think it's the key determining factor. Even when you live on the 50th floor of a high rise, having to drive everywhere is still a suburban lifestyle. And ultimately the way people live is what we're talking about. Density is just a statistic.

Low density and "suburbia" aren't quite the same thing. Much of Columbus is car-dependent by design, with land uses separated into big uniform chunks. That qualifies as suburbia regardless of population density. Adding people doesn't make the grocery more walkable, nor does it put rail on High Street. Columbus even held a special vote so it could have a suburban casino. That still blows my mind.

Right by the Linndale speed trap, there's an old Burger King that first became a "games of skill" parlor and is now becoming... a hookah place. That street is already lined with them, one more and I think we have a Tobacco District on our hands. Doesn't bother me. If all these hookah places are doing that much business, good.

"The block is big enough to support a larger development" Obviously, so why bring it up? "Dow, the councilman, said additional construction might be possible closer to Chester" Might be possible? Of course it is. Why is he framing this in terms of limitations? He's also setting up a fight about those houses for no apparent reason. As far as we know, nobody has proposed to eliminate them. There's no need to draw battle lines or preemptively curtail redevelopment. He should be happy that another hotel wants to be in his ward after the last go-round.

I think you're on to something with this, but my next thought is that some pushback is needed, before we're all living on a spectrum between Wall-E and Terminator. At the same time, it doesn't seem like Our Tech Overlords hate cities at all. Many are lefties and others are Ayn Rand libertarian-urbanists. Also consider that there are often two partners in these big tech ventures. One may be antisocial but the other one never is. A lid for every pot.

Sounds good. Although, toward the end of the article, there's some discussion over whether this should take up the whole block. It's hard to imagine an appropriately urban hotel design that would even come close. There's also discussion of the environmental cleanup costs (500k-1m) encumbering this parcel. How many parcels in Cleveland have this? Is it a primary factor in all the vacancy? Maybe it's cheaper to wait for the private sector to pick up all those bills, or maybe there's another Superfund needed to make these parcels marketable. This is land the city itself is trying to sell, and it's filthy. Not a good look. Plus, money developers have to spend on remediation is money they can't spend on the building. And now the baseline for the land value is low, so the city loses taxes in the long term. We'd be better off paying upfront for the cleanup. Then it's also a jobs program-- everybody wins!

With so many large trees, it looks like a forest from the perimeter. The cafe is not especially attractive when approached from outside the square. Most of the exterior is done in that ubiquitous gray siding, applied in big sheets like wallpaper. Same color as concrete but less texture. I say cover those walls with trellises and vines. Hard to put graffiti over that.

Grocery stores already did this, and self-driving semi trucks are not far off. Automation will continue to eat up unskilled jobs regardless of wages. That's part of why we have our current mess, automation hit manufacturing extra hard already. Ultimately wages do need to come up, I just hate to see Cleveland go it alone.

There used to be a lot of retail bolstering the low end of the downtown employment numbers. 20 years ago there were still some big stores open. Hotels are bringing some of that back but not on the same scale. At the high end, law firms and banks have all been laying off, but the people at the top of them are spiking the average like never before.

I've been critical of this but I'm also excited about seeing the final result in person. Overall it looks well designed and well thought out. I like the angles, the hills, the trees and the water. If there were unlimited budget I'd prefer a round cafe element, more like the rotunda at E 9th and the hotel at Huron. Maybe one day.

The finished building has a terrific presence on Lakeside, looks great in person.

It's at least unusual. People are saying "If we wanted city living, we wouldn't be on the waterfront near downtown. Ban all towers!" Cleveland needs to capitalize on everything it has, everything it invests in. We didn't fix up an entire theater district for a handful of homeowners who don't want others around. This is why Cleveland needs to ban cul-de-sacs. They attack development and demand parking. It's antithetical to the rest of the city's needs and goals.

Wasn't all this targeted investment in Gordon Square supposed to encourage new development? And now it comes, and it faces a battle because it's not suburban enough. Retail? Now wait just a minute buddy, how's the parking? Oh, there's a tower on top? With people in it? Well you can take your retail and scram. Try Shelbyville.

I'm fairly certain cities in Ohio can do this under home rule. As for how many in Cleveland are making under $15, probably a lot. Possibly most. Nurse aides at nursing homes get a fraction of that. $15 is closer to the bottom of the LPN scale than it is to the average aide. I mention that line of work because it's a high turnover labor shortage-- they're always hiring. What percentage of Cleveland Clinic workers would get a raise? I'm guessing roughly half. Most people in retail are well below that number, hotels too. And there are tons of manufacturing jobs that pay close to minimum, often through agencies who take a cut. In that case the employer is likely paying $15 anyway. Something has to give, and it ain't the poor, so the concept of this proposal doesn't bother me. I don't think the west coast offers a realistic example though. $15 would affect a larger proportion of workers in Cleveland and would be a larger raise. And there's the issue of demand... commerce isn't lining up to get into Cleveland like in SF and Seattle. Big pieces of the city proper are in ruins, and this law would only apply to the city proper. A city that still engages in old school shakedowns. Good luck with that. Sorry to say, $15 could only work here on a statewide basis and even that's a stretch. Ohio's competition isn't California, it's India.

Without getting into the merits of the proposal... I think Cleveland is too small, with regard to its metro, for any kind of unilateral action on this. Also, Seattle and San Francisco are differently positioned in terms of demand. I hope City Council would try to get the rest of the County on board before seriously considering this.