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That's been Cleveland's calling card since 1930, a very unbalanced skyline. The gaps are more pronounced because our tallest buildings are surrounded by so much open space. Some of that effect is intentional, like it or not. A completed west end would take care of the unintentional part. I do like the positioning of this new tower because it keeps most of the height close to the river and the square, adding to the existing crescendo effect and emphasizing that this is the city's true core.

True. I'm a bit torn on the two story residential so close to downtown's tallest buildings. I don't like it either but I'm OK with having it along a minor side street like the current stuff. Fronting Superior or St Clair? No way.

Moreso very recently. Rush is from Toronto too, and they recorded Subdivisions 35 years ago.

I've heard this too, people getting sweetheart deals without any process. All anecdotal of course.

Not irrevocably! If we commit to their importance, and funnel available resources into to bringing them back, those neighborhoods all have a shot. What we can't do is allow the vacant gaps to get filled in with surface parking, private single-use facilities, tract housing behind fences, or anything else that's antithetical to a pedestrian's interests. And if we could avoid future demo of our remaining historic mixed-use building stock, that would be super helpful.

This is just silly semantics I think. And inferring a suggested policy prescription that was never offered anywhere in this thread. You are welcome to think that traffic congestion and commute times have no bearing on people's residential location decision, but there are mountains of evidence that contradict that view. I'm trying to focus on solutions for the neighborhood depicted here. To me these traffic issues seem pretty far afield, but that's just my individual view. I don't disagree with your view, I guess I just have the issues ranked differently in terms of priority. I think it's safe to say, based on photos such as these, that we have a serious blight problem in our community. And it seems to be getting worse in a hurry, which suggests that current policies intended to help may not be working. Sure, some of the blame can be deflected to larger trends and uncontrollable abstractions. But is it productive to do that with all the blame? I don't believe so, and that's why I see value in discussing alternative solutions that are within local control. Thanks for reading and thanks for sharing!

Several posts in this thread had already mentioned highways and easy commutes as a problem, if not the problem, for this neighborhood. Do we really believe the width or speed of Union/Miles/Harvard is the main issue here? Is that something we need to invest in, on streets where there's not a store open for miles? Given that the other cities mentioned aren't dealing with this kind of abandonment, I'm not sure it matters if they are slowing down some roads. There's hardly any traffic at all in this part of Cleveland. People have all day to cross the street, but why bother? Nothing's there. If Minneapolis had been a wreck, and then spent a bunch of money on road narrowing, and then experienced blight reduction... ok maybe. But that correlation hasn't been established. Minneapolis has the same type of roads as Cleveland, tons of freeways, similar built environment, similar sprawl, similar landscape... minus half the city collapsing. We don't need to get rid of lanes or highways, we need to fix up properties. Renovated properties generate new tax dollars, which can help to renovate additional properties. This is especially true of commercial properties, which also help attract people to neighborhoods.

True, especially the first part. The idea that you are going to help the city by intentionally making commuting more difficult is such a non-starter than it only makes ones other views less relevant. Just to nip this in the bud, no one above suggested intentionally making commuting more difficult. OK but public dollars are being spent to do just that on the West Shoreway as we speak. It seems to me that roads and freeways absorb more than their share of blame for urban blight here. Chicago and Minneapolis have done just fine with wide roads and substantial freeway networks. Union Avenue is quite cozy compared to some major streets in Cleveland, it's relatively isolated from freeways, there's still quite a bit of active industry in the area, and yet Union is the most blighted street in town. Focus on the city itself. I believe it's time we started addressing that blight in a more direct fashion. Start with fixing up the remaining storefronts along Union and getting businesses in them. Cleveland is spending millions tearing up and replacing every road and park in the city. Instead, we should be focusing on the city itself.

While I generally agree, especially in neighborhoods that were built cheap to begin with, I would note that these same housing types remain marketable in places like Lakewood (to say nothing of Minneapolis or Toronto). Few of those who live in Lakewood work there, in fact many work on the east side or in some outer ring burb. They still choose to spend their off time in Lakewood though, which suggests there is some inherent marketability to intact urban living situations, even where the housing stock is less than ideal.

There are abandoned homes in far better shape, in far better neighborhoods, that don't merit the investment to make them nice again. Most of these pictured were nearing the end of their useful life regardless of neglect; they're just low-end wood frame shacks from 100 years ago, which now have zero commercial activity nearby. My hope is that we can find a way to build better housing stock the second time around, but also that we can solve our zoning and planning issues before we even try.

Plus, there are tons of jobs in Beachwood that have awful ghettos within a mile. I think job proximity is necessary but not sufficient. To me it comes down to whether a resident can plausibly have a decent lifestyle car-free or car-lite. It's about what you can accomplish by walking out your front door. Urban living is a different animal and it requires destinations that are walkable or transit-reachable. Not just for work, not just for dining, but for more or less all day to day needs. These houses in these pictures can not and will not thrive in a vacuum. They need to be part of a fully functional city, with the transit network and the downtown and everything else. We can't just focus on certain elements to the detriment of others, and we can't abandon the original urban layout to replace it with a suburban one.

I would second the "crap regional economy" point, but beyond that I think this mess has more to do with the policy and investment choices of local leadership. We have an obvious glut of houses and yet our main redevelopment incentive demands yet more houses. Meanwhile the commercial corridors that once made these older neighborhoods liveable have been ignored, while car-oriented plazas continue to expand. Downtown is being converted from a retail center for everyone to a work-live-play area for the lucky few. IMO the solution is not to make commuting more difficult, but to identify what makes urban neighborhoods work and bring those elements back.

Hard to tell from that pic, but is this meant to go on the patch of grass behind the One Cleveland Ctr parking deck? If so, then I think it's a nice fit for the parcel. I originally thought it was filling an entire block between 12th and 13th.

Unfortunate news. http://www.wkyc.com/story/news/local/cleveland/2015/10/26/just-in-manitowoc-closing-cleveland-facility/74625656/

If that's the base for a residential tower, it looks great. Otherwise meh.

Tragic. Self-inflicted and tragic. Kind of like the Browns.

There's really not that much to be gained from merging a few mid-sized burbs with each other. But start merging things with Cleveland, get a population over a million, and that's when you start seeing some real gains. Federal grants, purchasing power, land use planning, etc. Plus, then we could reassign enough police resources to make a real difference.

I guess we need to build things up like Chicago then. To the extent there's any empty feeling here, I would attribute it more to a lack of density in the built environment than to the width of the streets. The streets just give us more reason (and long term ability) to build bigger.

Interesting. Can you elaborate on the street grid aspect? I had not thought of this as a major problem. As I see it, Chicago and Pittsburgh are at opposite ends of the "grid" spectrum with Cleveland somewhere in between. Those cities manage to have decent walkability.

I don't know about terminations, but we needed some acknowledgement of what went wrong systemically and what would be done to prevent such debacles in the future. No one person could screw up a purchase to this extent... it takes a village.

The market for downtown retail is not limited to downtown.

I know people who take the Rapid then walk to the North Point building at the end of east 9th. The Fifth Third tower is a very short walk from Tower City, half the distance of North Point. It's unfortunate that the area around Tower City is so underdeveloped right now. But even so, the entirety of downtown doesn't cover that much ground! Transit rarely provides door-to-door service, even at its best. Part of the concept is that people walk a bit more. That being said, it is crazy to have so much surface parking right by Tower City. Develop those lots and its location starts to make more sense.

^ Great points here, especially about the failure of city planning to utilize and support the rail hub at Tower City. Every time we make a bad planning move, we suffer the ill effects for decades. That's how we got to this point and it's long past time for a change. Transit Oriented Development starts with Transit Oriented Planning, which encompasses everything from zoning to fiscal policy. Downtown needs retail. Areas near rail stations need housing density. Parking lots cannot be allowed to front major pedestrian streets. All of this matters and all of these issues are interconnected.

To this extent, I fully agree. Solving this problem starts with having a transit leader who is not against rail. For us to be hearing all this now from KJP (great work KJP) strongly indicates that Calabrese is not fit for the job. It is clear that this alarm needed to ring years ago. It did not. That responsibility falls on Calabrese. It is clear now that Calabrese should have made saving our rail system the focus of his tenure. He has not. Instead he's tried to force us down a different path. The fact that some maintenance has occurred carries little weight if the entire system is doomed in the short term. Again, the issue is Calabrese failing to raise the fiscal alarm and fight for our rail system years ago.

I like a 3-4 but I agree that we don't have the right personnel for it. Supposedly, offenses are so pass-heavy these days that it keeps nickel and dime packages on the field and requires 4 down linemen more often than not. But if that's the case, why not just stick with the 4 on every play, especially when it suits your roster?