ccars

In optimal situations, bar bouncers would keep an eye on the street. It is most certainly not in the best interests of anyone's business to allow fights on the street; it drives customers away. This is the number one reason why the city streets in general have become more dangerous in the last fifty years-the small businessmen who once monitored their neighborhood have been driven out of business. The point isn’t to make bar owners richer than they already are. It’s to promote Ohio in general as a destination where freedom is valued and your good times are nobody else’s business unless you harm them. For example: I cannot begin to tell you what a really poor impression the Highway Patrol creates to out-of-staters whose first or only exposure to the state is watching the red and blue lights on the turnpike. Issuing traffic tickets does very little for safety but does a lot to create enmity in people’s hearts. Open container laws serve much the same purpose (it’s more of a revenue-raiser for bars than it is a safety issue). I am of the firm belief that it’s these types of laws and traditions that do moreto drive people away from this place than any job market or climate problem does.

This!! It doesn't only apply to the homosexual culture, either. People aren't moving to Vegas in droves because of the fantastic job opportunities available. Further, I'd love to see a poll on how many New Yorkers moved to the city before they had landed a job. If we abolished all liquor laws tomorrow, 90% of the population wouldn't even notice a change. If I lived in the middle of Mayfield Heights and never went anywhere but between the house and work, it would probably be months before I even heard the news. Neither am I going to move away because I hear that people are drinking at the bars until 4 AM. We already have a huge contingent of college students who do this stuff illegally anyway. Cops handing out open container tickets in Athens aren't doing a thing to curb drinking. They should be focusing on making sure everyone has a good time without getting hurt instead. Officially supporting the party towns with liberalized liquor laws would be a real boon to the state in terms of tourism. The bottom line is that a good job is not the only thing in life. People, especially in this country, want to be free to do what they want. Let's let up on punishing victimless crimes and give people a reason to brag about Ohio.

There were. The Flats were once called "NOLA North" for good reason. But few remember that the reason why the Flats finally went away was because the mayor sent a crack task-force in to shut down quite a few bars on a single day. They showed up with cops, the fire inspector, and even contractors with lumber and nails to board them up, all at 2 AM. Sure, it wasn't that nice of a place at the time, but the heavy-handed city government had a big part in making things worse. I think that the more we try to restrict recreational activities in such a heavy-handed way, the more convoluted problems we create for ourselves. We should take a page out of the western states' books and try to emulate them. If I'm not mistaken, California and Nevada have very liberal liquor laws and their drunk driving rates are the same if not lower than Ohio's (of course, these statistics are heavily influenced by the percentage of population who drinks).

How about this: No restrictions on bar closing in core downtown Cleveland, 4 am latest closing time elsewhere in the state. The key to safe streets is people, and it still works if they're drunk people.

But this already happens with distributors. Talk to the Great Lakes guys about Holy Moses--it's hardly available on tap in the Cleveland area because their principal distributor is a Coors distributor and will push Blue Moon on the bars and downplay Holy Moses. Outside of CLE, though, Holy Moses is a really popular tap. Edit: Here's the link for the interview: http://drinkcraftbeer.com/editorial/interviews/great-lakes-brewing-company-interview-with-luke-purcell.html

It seems to me that the reasoning behind early closing times is to keep drunk drivers off the street in morning hours. Of course, if we didn't restrict bars through limited license quantities, bars would probably begin to open in clusters, promoting responsibility with respect to drunk driving. (think of it this way: an isolated, suburban bar is probably much more likely to produce a disproportionate number of drunk drivers than those contained within a cluster)

Private vendors operate the liquor stores, but the state acts as intermediary distributor for all hard liquor. The state sets all prices, determines allowable inventory and even store layouts. And on top of that, only about 400 licenses are outstanding in the state. Basically, the owners of liquor store licenses are guaranteed X% profit based on their store sale volume, which is huge because the stores are so limited in quantity. Sales on liquor or other promotions are also prohibited. Manufacturer-distributor-retailer. The purchases must all occur in this order. Retailers MAY NOT buy directly from manufacturers, unless it's locally produced wine (I think.) Distributors serve a useful purpose, but I don't see any reason to force retailers to use them as an intermediary other than to line the distributors' pockets. This is especially harmful to microbreweries and some wineries. I'd like to hear why you like the three-tier system, thomasbw.

As an unwavering ambassador of Ohio's youth, I'm sending out a call to arms. I seriously want to start a petition abolishing state liquor stores, the three-tier system, population-restricted liquor license quantities, and maybe even open container laws. There's always a ready-made constituency every night at the bars. :) And to everyone else, we can paint it as a way to "stimulate economic activity." I'd be willing to wager that doing something like this would go a long way to shake off our "Bible belt" image and put the brakes on the incredible exodus of those in their prime. Edit: We should note that most of these statutes we are discussing contain language that has been left substantially unchanged since 1933, the end of Prohibition. The landscape of the state has changed substantially enough since then to warrant re-examination of the rationale behind these laws. Who's with me on this one? Who's against? Let's discuss.

I would argue the opposite: public schools suffer from major diseconomies of scale from corruption, loss of sense of community, and many other factors that can only be witnessed in very large educational institutions. Maybe it's my bias as a product of a small public school speaking, but I have never seen a high-quality unified school district. Frankly, every city has areas that can do without fantastic public education at the ready, and those who don't need such services tend to live in those areas. In our city, the problem we need to overcome is that of public safety, which forces someone like me to live in an area with decent public schools even though I have no future plans to utilize the public education system.

It doesn't seem unfeasible to regionalize certain functions while keeping regional school districts intact. The fiefdoms can continue to levy a local tax for schools if they want, but they pay into the fund for one police department that isn't nearly as annoying and powertripping as the CH cops because they have to deal with real problems rather than drunk people or noise complaints. (Forgive my bitterness, but if we really do live in the second most dangerous city in the country, why is it that there are police staking out my neighborhood every night just to give people noise tickets, or screaming at people to get off the sidewalk? This is absurd.)

But is it even necessary to touch the schools at all? I don't see how improving schooling from abysmal to mediocre is going to help the depressed areas. There are plenty of us who do not consume school services at all, especially since it is relatively affordable to send your kid to a private school. Not only that, I don't think that merging school districts does much for unity. I know the CH-UH rift has been discussed earlier in this thread, but their school district has been merged for years. The two suburbs want nothing to do with each other, which is a real mind-boggler for me (although I heard UH doesn't even allow kegs, so screw them!) I think education really has to take a back seat to safety here. I think it could stand to be sold much harder: clean up crime in those real problem areas, and you're going to improve the feeling of safety throughout the city. Wipe away that bad perception. That way, I don't have to hear about shootings in Coventry on the news.

One of my biggest pet-peeves is seeing articles about "Cleveland's huge population loss" when the reality is that the metropolitan area's population has remained relatively flat for 50 years--meaning that the majority of people "leaving" have simply relocated to the suburbs. So regionalization should fix this, right? Merge the city and the county and we're back as the tenth-largest city in the nation again. This idea appeals to me greatly. None of this crap about Columbus trying to claim the title for Ohio's largest city. I hate that! So if the problem is that the suburbs don’t want to lose control, how do we sow the seeds of regionalization while maximizing local control? I’ve heard talk about “boroughs,” but has anyone come up with a plan of implementation? What is it that the suburbs value most that they don’t want to lose through regionalization? Surely, this doesn’t entail a complete loss of local control. Which service presents the most pressing need for regionalization? I’d probably have to say it’s police and fire. CH won’t like it since we tend to have a 1:1 police:resident ratio, but I think most residents would agree we could stand to cut down on the police presence a bit (who decides this stuff anyway?)–those CH cops would be much more useful patrolling into East Cleveland.

I'm coming into this thread exceedingly late, but I do feel the need to comment. As a jaded 20-something, I resent this statement a bit. Cleveland was *built* for people in their 30s and over--that is, for family life. The disproportionate amount of communities of single-family houses, as well as our collection of world-class museums and cultural institutions make this plainly obvious. What this city sorely lacks in comparison to its peers is the community that the youthful demand: walkable urban neighborhoods with constant street life. We are young. We need to meet people. (Aside: I don't mean to claim that the older crowds don't also desire this, but most of them tend to have a more settled social circle than 20-somethings, especially when they start a family.) What we’re looking for is constant social contact and interaction with our peers, something that being shut up in our cars or single-family houses cannot provide. Since there is so little of the walkable, lively neighborhood in Cleveland, it becomes much more difficult to interact with our peers. So we pick the next best thing: we go to the bars. Since most patrons of WD bars travel by car to get there, the demand for bars nearby increases, thus forcing the concentration of the entertainment district. To forcibly destroy this “scene” would really be a blow to the youth of this city who already have a very difficult time cultivating their social circles. Yes, there is drunkenness, rowdiness, etc., but this kind of behavior will persist wherever there are bars–it only becomes visible when so many bars are concentrated in one area. And this concentration must persist as long as downtown remains mostly devoid of safety-promoting small retail establishments at the street level *throughout* downtown, not just in carefully cordoned areas.

This event might not be fresh on many's minds anymore (at least after all that beer, heh), but has anyone else noticed that the police seem to be "cracking down" on the Feast more and more each year? I was positively stunned when the cops started driving down the road at midnight, yelling at everyone that the "Feast was over." I seem to recall that they just blocked the street for the whole night in previous years? This doesn't really bode well for future attendance.

I know this is highly anecdotal, but I'd like to offer my most recent observations about the foreclosure crisis as it affects Cleveland. Abandoned properties have been Cleveland's bane for many, many years. I spent all of 2007 and 2008 closely monitoring the foreclosure and property markets in East Cleveland/CH/Little Italy, and boy, were they plentiful, most in especially poor condition from years of absolute neglect. Now, when I go by these same properties I toured a year or two ago, a good percentage of them are being renovated into fairly livable and decent houses. What's my point? I never understood why property owners held on to their abandoned factories and collapsing houses for dear life -- there has to be someone who can get profitable use out of the place, even for $1/yr rent? Well, I think that many of these owners refused to sell simply because they speculated that the property would be worth more in the future than they paid for it. But now -- we know now that's not true! These owners are finally getting rid of these abandoned properties at prices to people who actually want to *redevelop* the property at little upfront cost. I think this is exactly what the city needed - a shove in the right direction, and a fire under property owners' butts to make their property produce something.

I'm not sure what you mean by "truthful." Just because a particular brick architectural style was more popular in early 20th century does not mean that it is impractical or impossible to build now. Likewise, glass-and-steel building construction was extremely popular during the 1960s. We simply have more architectural options available today. We need to be sure we don't apply them willy-nilly without regard to the surrounding area. Here's a Google Streets view of the Mayfield Road condominiums/townhomes on the eastern side of Little Italy: http://tinyurl.com/ddjrn8 While these may not be my personal ideal, I think it's a fairly good example of how more classic styling can be applied to an older neighborhood to complement the surroundings rather than detract from it. Overall, I think this was an improvement to the street.

Any information or back story on the stairway would be appreciated to, I tried googling it, but didn't find anything. Sounds very interesting though... If I remember right, the pedestrian portal for the Mayfield-Euclid station envisioned by the Van Sweringens was off East 117th Street, not Mayfield Road. Thus the station would have easy pedestrian access from either Mayfield or Euclid. Problem is, the Google streetview from East 117th is obscured by vegetation, but I believe it's just north of the old railroad side track bridge over East 117th that's been mostly removed. If you want to see where the tunnel access was, better hurry down there now or wait until October or November when the leaves fall off. The 117th entrance was evidently the actual access point before 1955. If I recall correctly, there is also a vault inside the Mayfield Road bridge that was also either planned as a stairwell or actually implemented. It's simply covered by painted plywood right now. Someday soon, I'm going to take a walk and snoop around with my camera. I just love uncovering evidence of Cleveland transportation history. Incidentally, the Lakeview or Auburndale bridge still has station entrance signs above the boarded-up stairwells. I wouldn't be surprised to find evidence of a transit stop at any bridge in East Cleveland. Edit: I found a picture of the stairwell on Mayfield to which I was referring: The doorway to the original site is situated between the two bridge spans. I would love to push for remodeling the station to use it as a temporary boarding point until accessibility features are added...heck, if I were in construction, I would do the thing myself! Station building can't possibly be that complicated, especially given the spartan nature of the E120th station... :? Just need to come up with the other couple million to pay off the city government. I absolutely agree with you: a mix of the modern new with charming antiques makes for a very interesting place. However, we have to also acknowledge that much of the reason an older neighborhood maintains its character is because it has an _identity_. An old neighborhood maintains something of a golden-age character, but an old building standing among modern structures tends to look quite out-of-place. We can still thrust forward with progressive plans, but we have to focus on how to create, preserve and strengthen each neighborhood's identity. I think Little Italy is a perfect place to start with TOD, but we need to be mindful of what LI means to visitors and residents and build structures to complement it. This entire area including the Heights was essentially a (private) TOD experiment in the turn of the century. There's no reason why we can't repeat it with roughly the same plans.

I am beginning to understand the notion that seems to permeate this board that one shouldn't complain if they are not otherwise trying to help. But as it stands, I don't have very much influence on the RTA. :/ KJP: I had a notion that the ADA had something to do with all of this, and I wondered whether and to what extent mass-transit authorities are bound to follow the law -- after all, I've been on many streetcars, especially the vintage electric F-line in San Francisco, that were clearly not ADA-compliant. What's definitely clouding my understanding is that classic government "ask for more than what you need" attitude. I'm definitely not used to it, working in the private sector where you commit yourself to one viable plan before hiring architects. The station movement itself will be very important to the community subject to (1) the availability of funding and (2) the architectural impact on the surrounding area. I think a solution exists that would be low-cost and much more achitecturally-friendly to the area. (As a resident of Cleveland Heights, I hold a certain bias against bling-bling glass-and-chrome structures. Little Italy seems to have (somewhat) maintained its community character as a buffer between the restrictive Heights and the anything-goes Ford-Mayfield area.) But we'll probably not even know what they're actually planning to do until they break ground! I was just wondering as to when this talk would really (actually, no, seriously) get done. I'm no transit expert, and I certainly don't pretend to know all the circumstances. Heck, if I were running the RTA, I'd spend some of those capital funds restoring the LSE streetcars and run them in regular service on the Green Line. :) But not to get /too/ off topic...

Does anyone know anything about what is going on with the Red Line E120 station move to Mayfield Road? There has been no activity in the area besides a bridge repaint and a few guys looking at the boarded-up old Van Sweringan stairwell in the bridge a few weeks ago. I'm just curious if anyone had any news. The last I heard was that they were going to break ground sometime in the fall of 2009. Are there plans to re-use the Van Sweringen stairwell if feasible? I have always wanted to check it out for myself -- another piece of interesting Cleveland history :)

Hmm. I just noticed that the plan on the GCRTA website claims the project will be done "in 2008." I'm now assuming that the accompanying PDF document is not even close to RTA's plan. So...does anyone know _anything_ about what is going on with the station move? There has been no activity in the area besides a bridge repaint and a few guys looking at the boarded-up old Van Sweringan stairwell in the bridge a few weeks ago. I'm just curious if anyone had any news. The last I heard was that they were going to break ground sometime in the fall of 2009. Case administrators mentioned building the station somewhere between Mayfield and E. 120th to coincide with a different "Master Plan" involving complete redevelopment of the area. Barring any stimulus funding, I think launching into grand master plans involving building entire neighborhoods on top of parking lots may be an unwise solution. Little Italy is already an incubator for urban pedestrian life; all they really need to do right now, IMO, is to move the transit stop there in order to facilitate more TOD.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Avogadro. I really didn't want to get into an Internet shouting match on my third post on this forum. :) Anyway, you're exactly right. I didn't mean to make my post all about Case students -- in fact, most of them don't have any reason whatsoever for going downtown except to drink (but the Red Line closes at midnight - don't get me started on that one!). The only reason I mentioned being a Case student was because yes, indeed I was mugged once underneath the E. 120th street bridge, and as others said, people in this area will deliberately avoid using the E. 120th station, turning it into a veritable black hole of funding. As for Case, this point is made a bit moot by the opening of the HealthLine, since it is in fact more convenient to catch the (nice) bus on Euclid/Mayfield. I live in Coventry now, and I'd like to say that it would be quite nice to walk down to Little Italy and catch the Rapid when I do need to go elsewhere in the city. So yes, I'm very excited about the plans to move the station to Mayfield. The concern I have is that the plan they promulgated seems over-the-top. It seems so ambitious that, as with so many other plans in Cleveland, it might not happen at all. I think moving the station should be of paramount importance. So, here are some questions I have that I hope will incite debate on this: 1. Is the "Master Plan" the final RTA proposal for moving the station? 2. Have there been other proposals suggested? 3. How does this plan interfere with the planned Mayfield condominiums on the east side of E. 119th in Little Italy - there have been large advertising signs posted on that property for some time now. This might have done better to be a separate post, since I'm less concerned with the overall TOD plan than simply moving the station first. I figure though since we've already seen a TOD plan for the E120/Mayfield station, that I would be able to get some more information on this topic. IMO, I'd like to see a less obtrusive RTA station (put up big signs if you want, but keep the station simple) and a separate execution of the TOD plan for E. 119th.

I didn't mean to be antagonistic about this, I just wanted to give my views on the situation. My opinion comes from the viewpoint of someone who lived on the north side of campus for three years, where it's relatively much more difficult to use the University station. I'm not objecting to moving the E120th station, I just think they can do it with a much simpler plan. I'm sorry.

It wasn't; I speak from personal experience. The E. 120th-Euclid bridge is a fairly desolate and dangerous area, especially after dark. Of course, it was a bit of a hyperbole. :-D But the aversion of Case students to Red Line use is not altogether unfounded...the station sees less than 70 passengers a day, IIRC.

Here is a link to the RTA's "Master Plan" for the E120th red line station relocation and TOD area. http://www.riderta.com/majorprojects/e120.asp As a Case student and resident of the area, I'm really quite disappointed at the extravagant nature of this plan. A large part of the draw to this neighborhood is the "frozen in time" character of an old city - especially Cleveland Heights and to a lesser extent Little Italy. The newer, "modern" UH-related concrete developments on the west side of the bridge are an absolute eyesore comparably. There is already a stairway built into the Mayfield bridge from the Van Swerigan-era rail development. Why can't the RTA just renovate the stairway and build a simple covered platform on top of the bridge? I'm sure that when it was built, the E. 120th red line station was gorgeous, but the surrounding area absolutely killed it (if you are on Case campus and really, really want to get mugged - just use the Rapid a few times.) The moral of the story is that a Taj-Mahal station will not alter people's preferences to use transit. It's the presence of other people, not art exhibitions or spans of shiny chrome and plate glass, that will encourage people that it's safe to use the Red Line. Jesus, RTA, all I want is a stairway! I don't care if I have to walk through mud to get there, as long as I don't get mugged. :-D

First post...this is a great website! As a native of Cleveland I am very happy to see such active discussion of what's going on around the city. I've always had an interest in resurrecting Cleveland's streetcar service and one day decided to research just how much it would cost. The figures of $20-30mm per mile thrown around in Cincinnati streetcar discussions just seem absolutely ridiculous. Well, here's something I came across -- http://www.lr55-rail-road-system.co.uk/ This type of rail system, called LR55, was developed in the UK to solve some traditional in-street roadbed problems and reduce construction cost and time. It has been used in Sheffield since 1996 without significant failures and by now other cities as well. The track, encased in concrete and polyurethane, can be laid in existing roadbeds without significant excavation at a rate of as fast as 1500ft/week. For a little more information, check out the minutes of a meeting regarding the implementation in the town of Bath (they're from 1998, so the money figures may not be as accurate). http://www.tramdev.clara.net/TfB.htm The notable line in here is this: "3.5 Km track in the centre of Manchester cost £14M to install, with LR55 that should reduce to £5M." £5M for 3.5 km works out to be roughly $3.7 million per mile (in 1998 dollars and exch. rate). A far cry from those astronomical numbers proposed. I'm curious to see if anyone has seriously discussed the accurate pricing of streetcar systems? It seems that there is truly a dearth of accountants involved in local government and transit authorities....