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Excellent suggestion, thank you!

A significant number of them do NOT want houses, which is why it takes us decades here to revitalize a neighborhood. We don't have enough marketable rental units to let people try urban living before they buy. That's the majority of the market, but we only get the really committed ones. Nothing against them, obviously. But that leaves a lot of growth on the table. We also miss out on a lot of the serial movers, people building careers who are willing to relocate as often as necessary. Their options are overwhelmingly outside the city here. And then there are the people who simply prefer a dense setting and don't want a house period. I'm in that group, and my options are also largely outside the city. I live in Lakewood because Cleveland has lost too many apartments and built too many houses. That's the case for a lot of the area's young professionals, they end up in the suburbs because they prefer urban apartments. CDC's looking to attract them need to focus on getting more apartments to market. This should be a front-burner priority but it doesn't seem to get much attention.

If there's crime afflicting a particular building, and everyone knows about it, then put a cop there. Don't tear down the building. I saw two Cuyahoga sheriff cars clocking speeders on 77 last week. We're not so short on manpower that demolition is our only answer to crime. If the area's not going to be patrolled, what's to stop people from doing their drugs in a vacant lot? This does happen and it's disquieting. I feel less safe in empty areas, I'd rather have buildings around.

Those first two pictures show commercial along the ground level. The second two, especially the fourth one, suggest otherwise. The aerial suggests it's one or the other, because except for the one row of buildings on Chester, the rest looks like townhouses. I was hoping the whole thing would be multistory with some commercial mixed in. I mean, this is right downtown. Those townhouses would fit in 200 blocks away.

I hope the one on Wade Park is coming down for a reason. Otherwise that shouldn't be allowed. Whose ward is it in?

Too bad we lost the technology to make buildings like that. Relics of a bygone civilization, before the Martians came.

Easy... by having a high variance among the incomes of its residents. I found it annoying that their description of downtown only includes the low income portion, which is silly considering what their point is. And their point is that there's a statistically odd mixture here of concentrated projects and million-dollar condos. Those aren't typically so close to each other. Atlanta exhibits the same phenomenon on a larger scale.

I wouldn't say the PD ever "had it in for this project" at all. It turned on the county commissioners, sure, and one of their last acts was putting this through without a vote. But the project itself has enjoyed mostly positive media coverage until that Scene article opened new issues with it. Suddenly the PD is skeptical. But local news stations still use shots of the construction site in their "things are looking up" montages. If anyone believes the papers are flat out wrong about something-- anything-- we'd all love to know why. Clear things up. But why is the media always wrong, while local leaders and developers are always right? I strongly doubt that this town's problems revolve around its newspapers. But whenever they actually pose questions to power, like they're supposed to, they're cast as the bad guys. They're the ones bringing us down. I don't get that. Ultimately they're not in charge. If they're lying, or they're way off base, I have no problem with setting the record straight. But we can't just dismiss every single unflattering report.

From the end of an article ranking wealth disparities in various cities... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45052935/ns/us_news-life/#.TqikvXJHsvs "Downtown Cleveland had the greatest gap between rich and poor. The neighborhood is dominated by individuals living alone, mostly women and mostly black, who tend to have incomes of under $10,000 per year and receive food stamps." Is it me, or does that description not sound right at all? I get the rich/poor aspect, and I assume several concentrations of projects are being considered part of downtown. But no mention of the high-end stuff that justified including it in the article...

"At least half" to the third of the state that it actually passes through? How generous. All the roads in the rest of the state are free. The turnpike's in-state tolls are paid disproportionately by those living nearby. This deal is rotten on its face, right now, without question. Until they put tolls on one of those new highways down south, and then sell it, the lion's share of Ohio Turnpike revenue should be spent on itself or in its vicinity.

I think the "possible" preceding "change in business plan" was sarcastic as well. If you're MMPI, you have to backtrack from those earlier quotes. You just have to. But no bells have been unrung... so MMPI's backtrack is still the story here, not Scene's. MedCity points out that MMPI still has some explaining to do at their 11/9 meeting with the county. Lots of interesting questions at this point. According to the MedCity article, Nashville has announced six signed tenants so far, including a furniture company I'm familiar with. Considering that construction here has been underway for some time, one might expect those tenants to come our way instead. Or to have done so already. At what point does Nashville give up because we won? Why hasn't that happened yet? I don't like the idea that a distant possibility in Nashville would still be competitive (at all) with a near-certainty here. What if they do end up going forward, and they announce it around the time ours is set to open? If I were them, that's how I'd do it. The continued threat of competition reflects favorably on MMPI's original business model. That's a good thing. Mr. Casey's earlier comments obviously didn't advance our cause. Unless... MMPI does a bang-up presentation next month and recaptures some mojo. Perhaps announces a signing or two. Or seven. If we're really doing this we need to win. I'm hopeful to see what MMPI's offense looks like, and here it comes. Go team!

Agreed. We have plenty of Healthline already.

He's right, those relationships are a given and should already be established. Same with benchmarks, really. I thought we already had those. So does this mean the benchmarks will change? If so, will they change up or down?

Probably not worth it to drive to the Warrensville station. So many lights, and then a ton of stops in Shaker. The highway would be faster on all but the worst days. I've heard that Canal Road is a decent shortcut from Macedonia to downtown, but I never did try it. My suggestion (to you or anyone else that's listening) if you do drive up and take the Blue line, drive all the way up to the Drexmore station. If you get there a few minutes before the blue line catch it there, if you end up just missing it, you can walk the 1/4 mile over to the Shaker Square station and catch the green line there. (Shaker Square doesn't have parking.) It'll save you waiting however long it it between the blue line trains, and there's no way to predict exactly how much time it'll take you to get there because of traffic. (Though afternoon traffic is worse at 271/480 than morning) This would work better, but you're still probably better off driving.

Two people I work with just got jobs in the legal end of the fracking industry. So +2 for Kasich and his jobs plan. But I think it likely that any subsequent democratic governor would put an end to fracking, or at least regulate its margins down. Then again, a second Kasich term might result in enough established fracking jobs that even the greenest of successors might hesitate. I'm not making value judgments here, just musing. This could end up being a big issue in Kasich's reelection campaign. And if it comes down to jobs vs pollution, jobs probably wins.

I don't think they have much of a case, the way they're going about it. There are all sorts of rules that properties and businesses have to follow. Few involve an individual opt-out provision. And their argument (as described) doesn't address the core premise of the law, that of protecting employees. It was this focus on employees that neutered the supposed "private club" exception. You can only smoke at your club if it has no employees, so almost no real-world clubs can ever qualify.

In fairness, First Interstate and those in South Euclid that support the Oakwood development probably don't give a rat's behind about Severance and University Square. This is what a lack of regionalism does. We get more and more retail because the suburbs are all competing against each other, but in the end, everyone loses. South Euclid can't pay its bills so it whores itself out. Exactly. This is insane.

I'm curious what factors make something count as BRT. Articulated buses? Bus-only lanes? Center lanes? Special stations? Timed lights? This project and the healthline both feature most of the items from that list. Perhaps BRT refers to a continuum...? It's not a very useful term. As far as I'm concerned, it means "you really should consider rail instead." Transit wise, I'd be happy if they would just use longer buses on Clifton. They're packed whenever CSU is in session. Last week I saw an old man almost fall out the door-- at speed-- because it was so crowded. I cross Clifton often enough that I wouldn't mind having a median. It can be challenging. But wow, Lakewood just repaved this road 3-4 years ago. Outrageously wasteful to tear it up so soon. They must have known something of this proposal when that went through. If this proposal came after Lakewood's project, it should have gone way down the priority list, to be scheduled in a more cost-effective manner. Millions of dollars worth of useful life could be thrown away here.

I've never been happy with the Seidman design. Every aspect and every curve seems random. The VA is interesting enough to be OK. In the end this modern glass swoopy style is too hit or miss.

My understanding is that Duck Island has some activist residents (or maybe just one, IIRC) who don't want it to be developed. I find that many longtime city residents aren't interested in change, especially change that would involve increased density. These are the sort of people who ring the phones at city hall somewhat often and they may hold a disproportionate amount of sway.

Absolutely. But even if if takes all 400 to get just one area going (WHD or EC), so be it. We're still miles ahead of today.

That's exactly it. We need to refocus all this spending on the city itself. And I really believe that if we'd done that, we could have opened possibilities for Midtown that otherwise seem impossibly remote. Those arguing most strongly that the current developments are appropriate rely heavily on the slim chance that anything else could happen. But what if it could? I bet you $400 million that $400 million in residential and retail subsidies would have changed the prospects of Midtown Euclid Avenue considerably. And a transformation of that magnitude, between downtown and the hospitals, might have convinced some company to come here and build a Medical Mart all by their ding dong selves.

At my job "blogging" is forbidden but headphones all day is perfectly acceptable. I've been rediscovering the Beatles and the Stones, as well as the entire genre of early 70s progressive rock. Ween too. Ween goes well with everything.

I like this idea. The U-pass program at CSU was a godsend for me and many others. Not only does it help student budgets, it gets young people to try out the transit-oriented lifestyle, creating a generation of new supporters.

The idea that there's no money doesn't fly. Yes there is money. We see it getting spent all the time. Cleveland just delivered new trash dumpsters to every property in town. We used to have retail-free ghetto, now we have retail-free ghetto with recycling. I've never heard anyone say "I might move to Cleveland, but... ...there's no recycling." ...the grass at the Zone rec center isn't properly irrigated." ...they don't add bike lanes every single time they fix a road." ...I need bumpouts to cross a street." ...the West Shoreway just plain sucks." ...the parks need to be torn up and rebuilt." ...there aren't enough suburban plazas and single family homes." Yet a fortune is being spent "fixing" all these non-problems. I agree that money is the issue, but not the existence of money, rather the choices our leaders make in spending it. Based on budgets alone, one might assume Cleveland was a perfectly robust and functional city whose major challenges are traffic and landscaping. As soon as the Euclid Corridor project was green-lighted, we should have focused our resources on creating a premier city street, modeled after other premier city streets around the world. Instead we've proceeded as if we didn't deserve such a thing. What's that? Someone wants to build a pedestrian dead zone along our new transit line? Thank heavens. That's the best we could hope for during the concrete's useful life.