ccars

^^ I really like the idea of locating it on the hospital site. Slavic Village is exactly the place a market like this needs to be located in order to bring money to the local businesses there. Does the county or city still own the site?

You're right about the point of road history; I confused world history and American history. Governments in the United States, with the exception of municipal governments, didn't really look into using public funds to maintain roads until the 1890s, which is what I was referring to. There are exceptions to this rule. I suppose you're right, though, it's a moot point to argue economic viability at this point, considering the damage is already done. Had this country maintained a policy not to use public funds to expand its road system for any other purpose except intercity transportation, residents would have settled more efficiently. But now that we have already paved the black ribbon to everyone's door, we have created a bilateral monopoly situation for those who live in rural areas and inefficiently rely on the road. As for new development, though, I see no reason why a public entity should ever decide to annex a privately build road ever again. Roads and infrastructure are tools of economic efficiency and their use does not promote any targeted social goals (such as reducing reliance on fossil fuels). So what are we accomplishing by growing this network of liabilities?

I'd rather see it closer to 55th and Broadway, IMO. That place has some real potential with its housing stock, but unfortunately it has been hit quite hard since the credit crisis. I think a market like this could really help to save that area from the wrecking ball.

Do I have to edit my post? Jesus, I thought we were on the same page here. If Cleveland becomes a boom town again, of course every square inch of real estate will be valuable, and 55th and Woodland might just recover. DUH! But we have to be frank about the reality we're facing here and not squander scarce development funds in areas where it will have little impact when there are far greater opportunities to create more bright spots in the city. If you put the market here, expect an area more like Cedar/Warrensville rather than Ohio City. Fine if you think any development is good development, but I despise car-centric development and I'd rather leave that intersection full of gas stations than build another strip mall inside city limits. I wouldn't consider such development a "recovery."

If they are not economically viable, why should we have them? If a road does not provide more of a benefit than it costs, it should not be maintained. Civilization has had roads for thousands of years--they were built by private entrepreneurs because they provided an economic benefit one way or another. Perhaps our governments wouldn't be such expensive enterprises if we didn't maintain so many underutilized roads. Really, if you choose to build your house in the middle of nowhere, why should the rest of us have to pay to pave what is essentially your driveway? Maintenance of these roads are probably the single biggest contributor to suburban sprawl even more than freeways, and are probably responsible for the death of early public transportation. At least around Cleveland and Cincinnati, most of the main roads were private turnpikes, and interurban companies built railroad lines to compete with their business. Once the roads went public, the interurbans lost too much ridership, ending the golden era of intercity public transportation.

^ I didn't mean to imply that the area would _never_ recover. But there are areas in the near vicinity with high-quality housing and retail stock that would be better candidates than this intersection. We have to set our priorities and build accordingly. We can't expect that plopping this market in the middle of a barren area is going to spur SimCity-like growth. Besides, a mix of new and old housing stock is what gives an area like Ohio City its charm as opposed to, say, Crocker Park.

^ I think I have to agree. The area is simply too devastated to recover. If you look at any emerging vibrant neighborhood in Cleveland or any other city, the key component is an existing supply of quality but aging buildings. Small businesses that draw diverse, eclectic crowds are the catalysts to gentrification of neighborhoods, and they can't afford to finance the construction of a new building.

The suburban planned developments with dedicated streetcar service greatly encouraged suburban sprawl (albeit a more tolerable, walkable type than superblocks/cul de sac development) in the 1920s. At the time, the city was one of the wealthiest in the world, enabling mere factory workers to afford their own plot of land and take the streetcar to work or even purchase an automobile. (I might even go far as to say that the storied "American Dream" was born here, as residents moved out of 19th-century city brownstones to single- and double-family homes in droves.) The city's incredible public transportation network that peaked in trackage in the 1920s made high-density development unnecessary, as there was no benefit to be realized from living in a luxury highrise that couldn't be enjoyed the same way in a 4-story brownstone. The demand for apartment living had waned greatly in the 1920s in the city, which was about the time when that kind of construction was heating up. We do have several highrises from that era, but they were nearly all originally hotels (the University Circle area has several fine examples), and don't forget that the Terminal Tower was the second-tallest building in the world and remained the tallest outside New York City until 1964. As for "districts," however, the city traded that kind of development for lower density neighborhoods very early in the game. To this day, I sense an attitude pervasive through the area that apartment living is far less desirable than living in a house with a yard and driveway.

One of the guides also said there are no longer wealthy neighborhoods in the city. Is this true???? There have to be some pockets of million-dollar homes in the city limits. Please enlighten me! It's important to understand the layout of the greater Cleveland area--it's made up of 59(?) different, more or less self-sufficient municipalities. The actual area within "city limits" is much smaller than most major cities (though it edges out STL by 15 sq. mi). The wealth and prosperity is very highly concentrated in the suburban cities and in the downtown core. Though the population of the City of Cleveland has been declining for years, the population of the metro area has stayed relatively flat during that same time. Much of the decay in the city center can be attributed to racial tensions followed by white flight and "administrative revenge." As a native, however, I consider basically anything within Cuyahoga County, with a few exceptions, to be a part of the contiguous "city." I've always thought of this city as a collection of hundreds of small towns within a greater metro area. The development, especially in Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights, was very controlled to allow for several small "town centers" of high commercial density along main drags surrounded by a few blocks of dense housing and brick apartment blocks. I really haven't found a place like it anywhere else, although northern Chicago and Pittsburgh come close. Alas, however, we've paved over much of our high-density urban past. As elaborated above, it's the pessimistic attitude that is killing this place more than anything else. Cleveland is a viable city; for a young professional like me I find the opportunities available to me here are much more numerous simply by virtue of me being a big fish in a small pond (do you know how many unemployed graduates are in New York right now?)

I'll agree with you here 100%. I find it ironic that those who support subsidization and manipulation of industries to "create jobs" also tend to be the people who support socialized college education. These two goals simply do not fit. The jobs the subsidies create often are truly awful. (Would you like to work at a recycling plant? What if you had a PhD?) Not to mention that university education in this country has turned into a joke. They should call it 4-year daycare and liver training.

^ Why shouldn't everyone have a college degree, _if_ the increase in productivity exceeds the cost of education? Simple cost-benefit analysis yields the notion that in an economy largely made up of knowledge-based industries, especially professional services, shows that a degree can increase one's net worth many times over. The flaw with our system--and the reason why college education is now so devalued--is because of failure of universities to actually teach their students anything. It's not that there are too many educated people out there. It's that too many degree-holders aren't any more qualified than high-school-educated job candidates. Thus, the degree becomes devalued.

^ You hit the nail on the head. We simply can't expect that nuking China will suddenly cast us back into prosperity by virtue of bringing all the manufacturing jobs back. Neither can we believe that excess government subsidies will suddenly re-employ all those out-of-work factory workers. We have one of the higher standards (and costs) of living in the world, and we need to manage our time wisely in order to avoid squandering all that productivity we have.

I came across this set of pictures of the intersection of Euclid Avenue and E. 105th, where the Cleveland Clinic campus now stands. The website bills it as Cleveland's second downtown, and one can see why. http://www.scottymoore.net/circletheater.html

^^ Qatar has very lax building regulations and unions are few and far between if they are even legal. In Cleveland and other muncipalities, any government project is inherently burdened by a tangled web of cronyism, kickbacks, preferred union shops, deliberate budget overruns and all-out materials theft. There's no incentive whatsoever to complete the project quickly and efficiently.

Here are my questions: 1. What are the current drawbacks of using Public Square as an open-air transit facility? Is the goal to create an indoor depot? 2. If they obtain a large parking lot to do this, what happens to the parking spaces lost? Do we just have to deal with it? 3. Do I really want a huge bus depot right next to our party zone? 4. Doesn't the WHD already have adequate access to rail by way of the waterfront line? I know this is ludicrous because nobody uses that train, but I think that just goes to show that most WHD residents just -don't- (or -can't-) use public transportation on a daily basis. WHD doesn't strike me straight off as being underserved by public transportation. Most of the residents there either can walk to work downtown or are forced to drive out to Beachwood or Lakewood because taking the bus would require upwards of 45 minutes' extra walking time through dead neighborhoods to get to work. The real trouble is service. If the bus doesn't get me to near where I need to go, there's no number of fancy facilities that will entice me to use it short of offering free drinks on the bus (and even then, I don't want to be drunk when I get to work...) I think this study will find that not very many people would consider using the bus if it were one block closer or had a heated waiting facility. But we'll see... However, I acknowledge the benefits. I would certainly rather walk past a bus depot (perhaps with some built-in street retail spots...) than a parking lot on my way from Tower City to the WHD. With the energy that is accumulating at both lower Euclid and the WHD, though, I think it might waste some potential synergies between these areas to take up an entire superblock with an indoor transit facility, especially if it is a standalone building without any non-transit attractions. These problems can definitely be mitigated by proper planning. RTA needs to avoid creating deadspots on the street like that entire mess of City Hall, CMSD, the library, the Fed and the courthouse does right in what is supposed to be the center of the city. Edit: Ahh, just saw that they plan mixed-use development. Well, if the RTA can force it to happen with federal funds, that would be pretty desirable considering no one wants to touch those parking lots. I'm looking forward to the plans. Or does Crain's detail them? I don't have a subscription, so I can't read the article.

Could you possibly scare us up a link, Scav? At least, for that retail plan referred to earlier? (the website seems quite sparse)

It's true that we're kind of getting a raw deal on the manufacturing side right now. We're essentially subsidizing the growth and modernization of China. But I have absolute faith that they will get what is coming to them very soon as their workers wake up and realize that their government has been stealing all their accumulated wealth in the form of an inflation tax, and they demand higher wages. It is already happening now. What I don't agree with is going back to manufacturing as a bread-and-butter base. I might step on some toes here, but I do not feel as if manufacturing labor has an appropriate place any more in this country. Such jobs are carried out in unpleasant atmospheres and largely require no formal education. If it is our goal to college-educate all of America's youth, we'll end up with a very unhappy manufacturing workforce whose job does not capitalize on that education. As one of those people, I would rather jump off a building (or more realistically, wait tables) than work in a factory. If we artificially perpetuate this kind of labor in the U.S. in favor of the older, factory-seasoned generation, we will never give our infrastructure an opportunity to fully adapt to providing jobs that require more education, knowledge and experience. To keep this on topic, I'll refer to the regional loss of manufacturing jobs. Something occurred to me recently--I've lived here the majority of my life, and during all that time I have never met an unemployed factory worker. Not one. Ever. This leads me to entertain the idea that there's a great deal of population turnover here. The factory worker who loses his job moves to Texas. He is replaced with an immigrant, which keeps the population numbers flat. This is in sharp contrast to Michigan, where it seems much more obvious to me that most of the population puts a great deal of stock in the unions to somehow re-employ them. Just idle observations, no evidence except frequent trips to Flint and Detroit.

Maybe I misunderstood the plan, but if the showrooms are not open to the public, then wouldn't their customers deliberately seek them out instead of just "stroll down the street?" If that's the case, what value does a storefront add to their business? I can see showrooms with similar goods trying to "poach" other clients through street advertising, but aren't we talking about a wide diversity of products here rather than just Amish furniture? Don't get me wrong, I don't mind showrooms opening storefronts. But if we're truly aiming to urbanize the area, streetfront property will need to mostly be devoted to public uses. A closed-to-the-public storefront creates a dead spot of life on that street and throws up a subconscious barrier for the pedestrian. This is fine if it's interspersed with diverse attractions like stores, restaurants, art galleries within view, but I'd be much more worried if the plan is to have a solid, unbroken chain of nonpublic uses. My worries might be unfounded--I haven't seen the master retail plan.

^^ Keep in mind that most of these CBDs have not been "vibrant mixed-use" since the turn of the 20th century right before the massive streetcar suburbanization movement. Here's the 1950 census for Cincinnati and Cleveland: http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/41557421v3p1ch7.pdf It shows that only about 7575 people lived in downtown Cleveland at the time. And that's kind of a generous estimate because the tract south of Euclid seems to go all the way out to 31st or so. Unfortunately, I can't find detailed data except by ward prior to 1950, although Wikipedia tells me that Cleveland was one of the first cities to create census tracts in 1910 (a Cleveland man came up with the idea).

^^ Provided that we assume that Euclid Ave. will eventually become a popular street for pedestrians, it would become unprofitable for non-public showrooms to take up streetfront retail (or at least they're leaving money on the table). For now, I don't think it matters, as long as there's some open-to-the-public businesses interspersed and it is not entirely devoted to a single use. Workers and customers will provide the on-foot street traffic needed to support diverse retail.

Knowing the strength of Little Italy's community, I kind of doubt this project will come to fruition.

Even San Francisco's financial district and "downtown" Manhattan have this problem. The workers' use of district resources is unbalanced (biased toward before-work, after-work and lunch), so establishments that serve this population have to be disproportionately scaled. Then it becomes unprofitable for those places to be open at any time other than the peak hours. In our cities, we have a lot more room to play with true mixed-use development because our CBD worker population is much more manageable than those of SF, NY or CHI.

For those of us who missed that era of the "fun" Flats, maybe we can start a photo thread of when it was a great place? I've seen very, very few photos of the place when it was actually operational, and I really don't have a good grasp of what it must have been like. Does anyone have any?

It's hard to tell without the detailed data set. However, since the difference between ColDay's population estimate and the Brookings estimate is 1166, it looks as if they might have included the west bank of the Flats (census tract 1033, population 1187) or maybe some other outlying tracts to make up the difference. Overall, it's comparable. But of course we won't have detailed population estimates until the 2010 census comes out. The only thing I've been able to get the census website to give me is a population estimate of the whole city.

^ Sure is. IIRC, the both the Bingham and 701 Lakeside were completed around 2005, and they have about 350 and 80 units, respectively. Account for double-occupancy in most and you end up with about 800 extra residents in those two projects alone. I wonder if the census people have been sampling the tract? When can we expect them to finally tabulate the 2010 data?