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Unique monster? Maybe we can get Ron Pearlman to play it in the film adaptation. So how does Detroit get a Whole Foods without building a suburban strip plaza? Midtown Detroit is a place to see "unique monsters" fighting over a bag of Fritos. I used to live there. Most of Cleveland's neighborhoods are at least viable and that's not true of Detroit at all. The state is practically taking over that place, but somehow we're the ones who have to re-acclimate commerce by putting it all the way down there, or 2 suburbs out? I'm sorry, that is a management fail. We're never going to get anywhere by claiming special rules that force Cleveland, and only Cleveland, to suck.

Most of the trends hipsters represent are good trends. Imagine if all the kids these days wanted to be 80s preppies instead, with all the sociopolitical and urban development consequences that would entail.

Building a strip center that takes retail opportunities from your downtown is not progress. A Whole Foods in midtown Detroit? That's progress.

It will also be 15 feet back from the road with a landscaping buffer and an iron fence designed to make patrons more comfortable at night. It actually says that in the proposal. Then again, this is a car-oriented business and it's on Carnegie, so I wouldn't use the same standards I would for Euclid. If this were on Euclid I'd be pretty upset about it. To the extent that every neighborhood needs this kind of thing, it's better to cluster them on an appropriate strip, which is what we seem to be doing. To the extent that the entire city needs better design standards, well... yes, it does. The drug stores especially.

I wouldn't expect those kind of changes. Holmgren will probably go but Heckert and Shurmur will probably stay. Supposedly the new owner is bringing over a guy from the Eagles as his president, and supposedly that means no major shakeup in staff or strategy.

Good work by you and everyone involved!

What I find amusing about all these SimCity references is that all you control in that game, with respect to any given parcel, is the zoning. You can't make anything happen; you can't even communicate with the algorithm determining what gets built there. Real world local governments have a lot more control over what goes where than anyone playing a SimCity game. So to suggest that someone advocating a policy change is "playing SimCity" just makes no sense. SimCity is a game. It has nothing to do with the actual public decisions we're discussing here.

The status quo at the time of the BRT project was a relatively clean slate. Certain building-block amenities existed at that time, like Gallucci's and the Agora, while the neighborhood's unique positioning is a constant. The city put forth a plan involving a high percentage of industrial/office land use. Development has taken place in accordance with that plan, including a couple of housing projects whose restrictions (homeless and elderly) do not facilitate marketability or growth. The city also put forth a plan to place a mental hospital right at Euclid and 55th. All of the city's actions arise from, and support, the premise that Cleveland's midtown is undesirable and unsuitable for the general population to live in. I for one feel that this is the worst possible approach for the city to take. Our goal should be to eliminate the barriers between us a desirable future, not to enforce them or codify them. Similarly, I think the idea that nothing good can happen elsewhere in the city until downtown and uptown are "done" is needlessly self-limiting. For one thing, those are the two most expensive areas to develop.

Who has ever chosen to live in a suburban industrial park? If we build it out as an area people don't want to live in, we face an uphill battle in reaching this second stage everyone keeps expecting. There's no logical connection between building a suburban industrial park and generating residential demand for the same exact area. I'm just not sure how that particular A can ever lead to that particular B. In fact, the relationship would seem to be that A precludes B. So if B is the desired result, then A is a bad plan. Are there any examples of this happening elsewhere? Do people colonize suburban industrial parks, in city or otherwise, because that environment appeals to them?

But "midtown" and "suburban business district" are two different things. Yes, a midtown is a thing. By putting a suburban business district where your midtown should be, you forgo having one all. Can't put it in the suburbs, or in Tremont or something, because midtown is specifically the area between downtown and uptown. There are advantages to this unique position that the current plan squanders. For example, Midtown sits between two major employment centers. Setting it up as yet another employment center is redundant and prevents synergy. This is an awfully long and important stretch to tilt so heavily toward any one use. Regardless, midtown is by definition a part of the city's core. Developing it in an anti-urban fashion establishes a long-term structural problem. Is this really what the core of a major city should look like? How does it compare to others? What does it say about our city and about our pride in it?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/07/26/the_end_of_retail_watch_chains_going_urban_to_try_to_rekindle_growth.html Chains Going Urban In Effort to Fight the End of Retail By Matthew Yglesias "One of the main advantages to running a bunch of stores is that when you identify best practices you can spread them to scale quickly, learning faster and operating more productively than smaller outlets. If the business space is fragmented this doesn't really work. So this is kind of the equivalent of a country's farmers taking increasingly marginal land into cultivation as the only way to increase output. There very much are growth opportunities in urban America (they're building an urban format mixed use Wal-Mart near my building) but they're not the low-hanging fruit."

Fill in holes with density. Filling in holes with less-than-density results in just that. Because A = A.

It's perfect, let's do it. This is something you jump on. And I'm not at all surprised about Jackson missing the boat again.

http://www.ohio.com/news/local/wally-waffle-moving-to-highland-square-1.320755 Wally Waffle moving to Highland Square By Stephanie Warsmith Beacon Journal staff writer Published: July 16, 2012 - 11:39 PM Wally Waffle is losing its downtown spot because of Akron Children’s Hospital’s expansion project, but it has found a new home in Highland Square. The restaurant will be the latest business in a city-owned building that also houses Chipotle and the trendy Next clothing store. Akron City Council on Monday approved legislation leasing the space in the 845 W. Market St. building — formerly occupied by Metro Burger — to Wally Waffle. “I’m excited about it,” said Adele Roth, the city’s development manager. “It will be a really great fit.”

Mr. Humphries, are you free?

Mwd711, thank you for your contributions, and thanks also to Florida Guy for the OP. I would distinguish TC construction from the sort of subsidies I'm talking about, since Higbee's was already there. As for the Pittsburgh Macy's vibrancy radius... I don't think it works like that. The operative radius is the one between major retail and any given house. That radius is much shorter in Pittsburgh than in Cleveland. I would suggest it's a big factor in why Shadyside doesn't look like Glenville, why Mt. Washington doesn't look like Mt. Pleasant.

How so? Is Pittsburgh's building stock not in notably better condition? Does a city's available retail not determine what you can and can't do without leaving town? Is nearby shopping not a key decision factor in selecting a residence, particularly in a metropolitan area? Pretty sure all these statements are demonstrably true. One might argue causation, but I'm not seeing that from you. I'm seeing ad hominem snark, which as usual leads to more ad hominem snark, which as usual means this discussion was fun while it lasted.

I dont see their impact. How is Macys in Downtown Pittsburgh helping? The area surrounding it isnt in the best shape and the store itself isnt that nice. Also, as I said earlier, Downtown Pittsburgh isn't filled will great retailers. It doesnt appear that their Macys is having any great impact on their downtown. Pittsburgh as a whole isn't trashed and abandoned like Cleveland. The impact of a fully functional downtown is seen throughout the city. Changes what it means to live there... determines what you can and can't do without leaving town... affects the value of every home. Distance to everyday shopping is a pretty common decision factor in evaluating places to live. If you're considering moving 5 miles closer to your downtown, are you moving 5 miles further from everyday shopping, or are you not? Night and day difference.

Re: the subsidy question, I'm pretty sure most if not all of these stores are subsidized in some way. My point in bringing it up was that Cleveland would need such a program in order to join this club, and then we started discussing different levels of club membership. I'm not sure how constructive that is, if it requires us to equate having a TJ Maxx with having nothing. Everyone seems to agree that there is a substantial and meaningful difference. If "discount stores" are counted, then the list of comparable cities having nothing is rather small, compared to the list of comparable cities that have at least one downtown establishment to fill this role. Once we accept that we're on the wrong list, the question stops being "what kind of store is such & such" and starts being "how do we solve this." I don't believe the second question can be answered without subsidies, but I also don't believe Cleveland has properly accounted for the cost of inaction.

I would suggest that their square-foot economic impact is massive, since they determine what can and can't be accomplished in day-to-day urban living. How car-free can you be? Not much, if your basic needs can't be met anywhere near your home. A city with retail and a city without are two different animals.

If we're taking stock of which downtowns have one and which don't, shouldn't they all count? What's the point of doing such a comparison if a place with a Burlington and/or a TJ Maxx equals a place with nothing of the sort? Functionally, there's a much bigger difference between those and zero, than between those and Penney's.

Looking at all these recent pictures, the finished building fits in much better than I thought it would.

I agree that the discount chains are arguable, but I would still argue for their inclusion because they fill a huge void that's otherwise unfilled. Not a Nordstrom-sized or Nordstrom-shaped void, but still clearly a void. And I agree that TJ Maxx typically anchors a strip center instead of a mall... but wouldn't it be nice to add a strip center worth of stores to downtown Cleveland? Is a downtown with a TJ Maxx not better off than a downtown with no such stores at all? I can't believe that's even a real question.

I do believe there are plenty of businesses-- great and small-- who would gladly put off investing or hiring just to make a point. Of course, if Obama wins, then what do they do?

Not sure what that means but I would define the term a little more broadly. Are we excluding chains like TJ Maxx because they don't sell appliances? For this purpose, I'm not sure we should. I certainly wouldn't say the role of a TJ Maxx or a Burlington is filled by existing options in downtown Cleveland, which is what I mean by "this purpose."