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OP refers to the Original Post in the thread. Alternatives to the city's current utilization of CDCs for community development include include having less CDCs covering larger areas, establishing stronger coordination among CDCs, or maybe eliminating them and instead employing a citywide approach to community development.

YG, with respect, you just misquoted me and you are glossing over some complex legal relationships. I did not claim to describe who "paid for" the lofts... but the university was rather intimately involved in making them happen, per its own website.

Thanks for asking. I tried to make my case in the OP... that more holistic alternatives should be considered. I would be interested in hearing your opinion on that.

All of that is true, but it is tangential to this issue. None of this has anything to do with the city's general fund. At all. But those pass-thru dollars are spent (within parameters) as the city wishes. That is the whole concept behind block grants. We're talking about block grants.

Terrific news.

I am doing nothing of the sort. Most funding sources receive their funding from another source. The feds receive their funding from taxes, does that mean they don't actually fund anything? My heavens. Cities have a degree of flexibility in how they spend their federal community development block grants. That's what we're talking about here. And the quote you're bashing was practically lifted from the Old Brooklyn CDC's website. I strongly encourage you to check out that link. Who is trolling? Everything I've said is factual and backed up, while you're playing word games layered with insults. "Pass through dollars does not equal funding source?" Please explain that logic. Does the city have to earn each dollar from a paper route before you can accept that they're spending it? Seems like you're hanging your hat on a meaningless distinction. CDCs receive most of their funding from the city, regardless of where the city gets its funding. That is not an opinion.

Entire blocks of new apartments were recently built along Main south of Exchange, and I believe more are in the hopper. These are nice looking mixed use buildings and part of a sizeable entertainment district. They're built by the university I think, but I don't know whether or not they're limited to student housing. Either way it's very encouraging progress and I'd love to see this sort of thing built in Cleveland. Not clear why Akron is having so much more success in building exactly what Cleveland needs.

Continuing from the Cleveland Retail News thread, where the discussion had turned to the relationship between CDCs and City Hall. http://www.oldbrooklyn.com/FAQ.htm Are you saying Old Brooklyn's CDC isn't a good one, because most of their funding comes through City Hall? That's one of Cleveland's more affluent neighborhoods, so one might assume its CDC would be near the top in private donations. And yet, per the CDC itself, 70% of its funding is public. **** More broadly, I'm not sure the current emphasis on CDCs is the right choice for Cleveland. By spreading its development funds across dozens of tiny fiefdoms, the city hinders its ability to attack major problems with coordinated efforts and expenditures. Instead of doing little bitty things for each neighborhood, we could be doing transformative things for the entire city. Then there's the too many cooks problem, in terms of actual planning. Everyone is primarily concerned with their own constituency, leaving no one responsible for the ties that bind. Just like our balkanized county map, this results in every neck-of-the-woods expecting to have its own separate everything. So instead of 1-2 major parks, we get a bunch of dinky ones, and the same goes for retail. The inefficiency and redundancy can be crippling. Also, their "private corporation" status can be used to shield records that would normally be available under sunshine laws. I'm not aware of any instances of this being used by CDCs but it is a general concern with the privitization movement that certainly applies to them.

According to the list we're talking about (which is 4 pages back-- great discussion), economic stats were only one of the factors they used. Other factors were more subjective, and of course, debatable. Clearly the economy favors Cleveland, hence the number of Steelers fans living there. But then again, we're told the economy here is too weak to build high rise apartments and subways while Pittsburgh is simply building them. This feeds into my point that the deficiency highlighted by such lists isn't the Cleveland community but its leadership, which has left that community with a built environment and retail scene far below what it deserves.

That definition seems a little narrow, splitting the Stones into Rock and Rock 'n' Roll. You could call the Stones five different things if you wanted to, but at some point the categories have diminishing value. And rock is in no way a function of sprawl. It just isn't. A case could be made that progressive rock was. That was what killed it, people complained it was too suburban in light of punk and disco. And they had a point, as most of the people making prog were upper class white guys with classical training. Enter Metallica, and the suburbs had themselves a new genre. Abracadabra-- back on topic.

How to choose, between bigotry and anti-abortion ferver? You'd think the beautiful scenery down there might promote a nicer outlook.

I see what you're getting at, and I think you're right. But I think it's a bigger issue in Cincinnati than in Cleveland. That's not a who's better comparison, I'm just talking about recent history and current controversies. And then there's LA. I just don't see it as an excuse for anything. It's 2012. If we can't move past that, we probably don't deserve good fortune. And I think we do. So we need to move past that.

What you said and what I said are consistent. That link I posted explains your point, but it also explains mine, and they're consistent. Why is this such an issue? Nothing I've said is untrue. Many government functions, like city planning, are being shifted to these sorts of entities-- this is not a conspiracy theory, it's a well known current event. It's also perfectly, technically, legitimate. But it has detractors. I've thought about starting a thread to discuss it, because it comes up here and there but it's never quite on-topic. I don't think it is here either. But I was trying to talk about Retail News, and had no idea my point about CDCs would be this controversial. "Odd degree of certainty." Do you mean that in the statistical sense? What? For the most part people here seem erudite. For a while I assumed everyone researched before they posted, at least before they contradicted someone. It's become evident that they don't, so I've gotten in the habit of posting examples of sources. I say examples because this info is typically abundant and readily available. I've seen documents explaining how all this money and control is spread around. Not secret documents, just documents, which you can see too. I've talked to a lot of the major players. They're people, you can talk to them. I go to meetings, not nearly as many as I should. You should too. We all should. BTW I realize willyboy's post about the Dollar General was hypothetical. At least I believe it was. You may not recall, but this particular CDC has come up before in similar contexts. Cudell and Edgewater are very different retail markets. That's what all this is about.

Pretty sure I've seen them engaged in the activities I mentioned. More than pretty sure. The fact that they're "private nonprofits" is essentially meaningless; so is JobsOhio or whatever Kasich is calling it. Is JobsOhio a state institution? Not in the most technical sense, I'll grant. But that's the problem. Moving government functions to "private nonprofits" is a significant trend, and not one that I'm thrilled with, as it serves to block sunshine laws and other controls on government activity. http://www.oldbrooklyn.com/FAQ.htm This link provides a decent explanation of the relationship between City Hall and the CDCs. In short, CDCs receive most of their funding from the City of Cleveland's Community Development Department and report to it regularly.

Rock went like this: American Blacks--> American Whites--> England--> Suburbs Not perfect... there's a pretty direct link between 1 and 3, but 2 did come before 3. And 4 was last. This all happened around the same time suburbs began to blossom, but that's generally not where it happened.

That's a leadership vaccuum. Those on the pro-sprawl side don't need to bring it up, because it's the status quo already. Meanwhile, density and planning have no vocal advocates, certainly not among the running-for-office crowd. I think a lot of people are persuadable, or at least open to the concept, but they just haven't been exposed to it. The narrative they accept is urban decline and inevitable, necessary sprawl... not because they like it but because they're unaware of alternatives. It's a function of inertia and that can be overcome.

Maybe this will hasten the development of new large hotel, which is what we really need.

This would be fantastic. Which is exactly why Edgewater should have its own CDC, instead of being lumped into Cudell's. It is definitely an odd marriage. What gets me is that someone at the Cudell/Edgewater CDC, who's in a position to make decisions and speak for the city, apparently believes a Dollar General on Clifton is appropriate. That's an even odder marriage.

Well, technically it's not the Rock & Roll Hall of Good.

I agree. We built BRT, they built subway. We starve our transit agencies, they don't. Market forces do not have volition. They are reflections of choices made by people. Design a cruddy car and market magic will reject it. Design a good one and the opposite happens. But the variable here is the car, not the market. In the end, I think my theory is the same as C-Dawg's, except that I consider "market forces" to be less of an actor and more of a measurement.

I wouldn't put Creed on Pearl Jam alone. Bands like Candlebox and Collective Soul had a lot more to do with it, in the way they moved grunge toward pop.

Not sure what data you mean, and I suggest a visit soon. Check out the recent photo thread. People who uphold Pittsburgh as a model are doing so for reasons that are observable and verifiable. And I agree it's important to recognize gains made in Ohio, just not to the extent of false equivalency. If a comparison case really is that much better, and it's possible to for us to make similar gains with similar approaches, this seems like extremely valuable information. The answer to being sick of unfavorable comparisons is to improve. 10 years from now, the differences could be even more stark if changes are not made here. We cannot ignore our problems and we cannot ignore that some of them are not universal to Rust Belt cities. I mean, I keep wanting the Browns to move up in Power Rankings, but that's not a reasonable expectation given their record. The problem is not the columnist doing the rankings, the problem is the decisions made by the Browns front office.

Buildings here should be oriented toward the water. Large open promenade-type areas should be avoided. Be generous with overhangs in pedestrian areas. It's a waterfront but it's not Jamaica. Most any design will work here in summer, the challenge is designing for winter.

Pursuing a Dollar General for Edgewater would be gross incompetence on the part of the CDC.

For clarity... if the city or county supplies funding to a project, that does not count as active encouragement? And regs that require buildings to be separated from each other and from the street, complete with mandatory lawn buffers, do not actively thwart density? This is devolving into a Python sketch. Have I completely mistaken what all these words mean? I'm a real estate attorney, but I must admit that I did not sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night. That must be my problem.