327

Thanks for posting!

Streetscape under a bridge? I wish this kind of effort and coordination could be applied to more meaningful investments.

That is absolutely ridiculous.

I attribute a lot of the population loss to back to leadership. Not just the loss but the failure to mitigate it. Transit support and TOD are among the obvious policy choices our region has avoided for way too long. We reap what we sow.

That's a shame, because expert opinions are exactly what I was hoping to hear! I understand where you're coming from though. Better not to risk disclosing client info. If my understanding is inaccurate, I would appreciate any general analysis you could provide.

Electric arc furnaces are used for secondary steelmaking, which means recycled and lower grade.

CERCLA is a federal environmental law that comes up in discussions here from time to time. It also impacts many more discussions here without note. Can we come up with any viable reforms to this law? In a nutshell, CERCLA shifts the burden for environmental cleanup from original polluters to redevelopers. It simply assigns responsibility to whoever currently owns the land in question. As such, urban brownfields become an Old Maid card that nobody wants, because the cleanup costs make redevelopment impossible. The rationale behind this system is that the damage took place long ago, so it's impossible to definitively prove who was responsible. And even if you could, they're dead. In many cases the companies they worked for have long since folded or merged or whatever. And we wouldn't want to burden the paper assets of big corporations. That would slow down the economy! Besides, assigning responsibility to the current owner is simple and clean, from a legal standpoint. Obviously CERCLA's approach slows down the economy too, disproportionately so in older industrial cities. So what's the alternative? Sometimes local governments will agree to absorb these costs to spur development, as with Steelyard in Cleveland or City View in Garfield Heights. But that solution doesn't seem ideal to me because those revenue streams are already thin, having already been screwed by CERCLA. It really just doubles down on the problem. To me, there's no way to fix this without a massive federal investment. And I think it's notable that the areas most affected by CERCLA tend to be union strongholds. It has literally driven population and investment away from those communities, kept them poor, kept minorities trapped in them. I mention this because it's certain to underlie any national discussion to broaden the cost burden.

Good point. Blast furnaces are destroyed when they go cold. The only alternative to continuous use is for someone to pay a big heating bill.

This close to downtown, it's crazy not to have high rises on the shore. The lake and city views are such a major attraction they should not be limited to a small market through low density development. Look at what other major cities do with their shorelines. If this isn't a site to pack people into, what is?

$2000 is almost 4x what I spend on my modest abode. Might need to have more pedestrian amenities online before that becomes a reasonable number, even for people who work across the street. I really value what these guys are doing as the first major development in a bad area. The more amenities you have, the more they feed off each other, and it's a rough go when you're all alone. But hopefully their presence makes the next development on Chester that much easier.

But Nordonia is such a perfect name for the merger. We could give it a coat of arms and call it a Grand Duchy.

Everyone there just assumes it's terrible on purpose, because obviously you should buy a car.

You can see into the store for what feels like half a block along Euclid. It's awesome. Too awesome for words, when I think of all the years that place was boarded up.

Having used both I think we're much better off here, but it depends on what you're trying to do. In Wayne County you need two different bus systems to travel between Detroit and the inner-ring burbs. Quite a hassle. The best feature there, which we don't have, is that all the surrounding counties share one system. Are they now merging DDOT with SMART? If so, that would solve their biggest conundrum.

I'm curious how much this will cost, per stick. I'm glad they're "testing scale and color" because obviously sticks with flaggy things is the only way to go conceptually. That kind of big-picture clarity is really what we're paying for here, but I can't help being interested in the unit cost as well.

Progress!

For the same reason that the same government enforces strict meritocracy on people who don't have rich relatives. If you didn't earn this food, this home, this education, you have no inherent right to it (poor folks only). The government enforces that principle with brute force and I suspect you support it in doing do.

In a society that espouses meritocracy, emphasizes personal responsibility, blames the poor for being poor and exalts the rich for having earned it, we cannot allow so much wealth to change hands through right of birth, without regard to individual merit or effort, according to values best described as medieval.

I think the less isolated the Rock Hall is, the better. I've never been happy with the location they chose for it. Would have been different if this sort of surrounding development had been on the table in 1995. As for Burke, I think its value is more for business travelers than for freight, but that alone is a significant value for downtown. I'm in no hurry to get rid of it. Hypothetical high rises along Lakeside or St. Clair would benefit just as much from the lake as would any hypothetical Burke redevelopment. The value of the lake is not tactile, for the most part.

People in the projects shop too, and are particularly dependent on walkable retail. I see old ladies schelpping absurd distances all over this town because they have no choice. Meanwhile, the worst parts of Baltimore and St. Louis are still arranged in an urban format, and they still have stores. Some spaces are unused but others aren't. The unused ones are potential for an already functional urban neighborhood to get better. This sort of planning cuts off that potential, creating an unmarketable out-of-place neighborhood that can never be more than projects. It also imposes an expensive suburban lifestyle on people who can't avail themselves of it. It forces those old ladies to forever drag their little carts across parking lots a mile away from home. I understand that retail in poor areas is a tough sell, but it's clearly possible, and the answer for Cleveland isn't to give up on urbanity.

At least they won't have to mow all that concrete.

The Good: Marginal commitment to mixed-use. One of the buildings looks very appropriate for what is practically downtown. Parking is handled well. The Bad: Marginal? Why? Again, this is practically downtown, and it's intended for those least likely to own cars. Aside from the one building, this is Strongsville style development. And that is quite a setback on the one urban-looking building. The Ugly: The top left part of this picture should be a CBD, because that's what's there. The decision to leave it out encapsulates the thinking behind this.

Is there any place where it hasn't worked out? No, school districts do not have to follow city lines. Part of Cleveland has Shaker schools.

I suspect that might have pissed some people off over the years, maybe even informed their current attitudes toward "polite society."

One rarely sees Cleveland-area police outside of their cars. I think if that changed, a lot of things would get better around here.