Map Boy

I thought that (new cancer hospital) site was going to be the hotel?

I pick the poison that won't spend hundreds of millions of dollars to make hasty work of destroying more of our heritage and recent success stories.

yeah, we hit the WRHS exhibit and saw the room of old panoramas. Several of them, including the one you mentioned, Straphanger, are in the excellent book Cleveland Then and Now (Grabowski). You should check it out!

Thanks for that tour and meticulous detail B12! This has been getting a lot less attention than it deserves, even at the meeting last year where they unveiled all of their huge posters with visuals and "marked" buildings. The best explanation we could get out of ODOT or the B&N engineers was that they had to move the trench east during construction so that it would still be usable. Basically, they'd be knocking down many of the Midtown structures to ensure smooth passage during the construction phase. In the end, we'll end up with an even wider, more divisive trench and even fewer reasons for drivers to get off the highway and onto local streets. In my eyes, this is a no-brainer...close lanes, slow it all down for as long as it takes...fix only what must be fixed and let's talk about ways to lessen the negative impacts of this already destructive throughway...no more demo!

Yesterday was a fine day for a trip to University Circle! Recognizing this, YSOH and yours truly set out around noon to visit some of the amazing institutions that were offering free admission in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Here's a bit of what we saw: Setting out from Ohio City, we walked down West 25th to find Howard Hannah/Smythe Cramer's office looking complete, Phnom Penh's new awning up and work being done on the Market Square building, which caught fire last fall. Across the street, the new Bier Markt: The West Side Market's produce row, bustling with Monday shoppers: We've made it to the West 25th Street Red Line station, just across the bridge from Downtown: A few minutes later, here's our train...and it's packed! Walking from the University Circle Station through University Hospitals... Coming up on Euclid Avenue and Wade Lagoon: And our first destination, Severance Hall! The house was packed and the music and dance were wonderful: We then walked through CWRU's campus (below) towards Ford & Euclid: At Ford & Euclid, the Triangle, where MOCA will soon relocate to: After lunch at the House of Falafel, We cut through Hessler Road towards Magnolia: The wooden-bricked Hessler Court: On our way to our next destination, we passed the new CWRU housing: Our next stop was the Western Reserve Historical Society: On our way out, we passed the site of the Cleveland Institute of Music's expansion: We also passed the Botanical Garden, which had just closed for the evening: After a lovely walk across CMA's steps above Wade Lagoon, we headed up to Grandma's house, the Judson Manor: And after it all, we returned to our little burg for some live Irish music and a couple Great Lakes pints: What a day!

Let's add this one to the mix too... Park Lane Villa, located on E. 105 & Park Lane, overlooks Wade Lagoon and Rockefeller Park, just south of the West Quad mega-development. This historic apartment building will soon be renovated, with additional units soon to be added in a contextually appropriate building between the villa and the more prominent Judson Manor (formerly, the Wade Park Hotel). The view from the corner of E. 107th & Park Lane (Judson Manor is in the fore)

Man, BW3, then the Loft and now Scorchers is giving it a go? Who decided that the only use for that space had to be a sports bar?

Here are a few shots from today: CMA: CIM:

No "news" on this story to date, but walking past today, I found the sidewalk taped off and workers up in the upper floors, working on the roof and other assorted things. It still looks the same as it did the day after the fire, though, so who knows what the plans are?

no problem...I'm anxious to hear people recommendations, as I'm just now starting to explore these! I know I spent time in a few as a kid, but it's been so long, I really can't remember which ones or what I was doing there! As for the cc skis, check out the website (www.clemetparks.com) or call 216-635-3200 for info.

hmmm...interesting final comment there Wimwar. Keep us posted on what that means!

One comment on the Philly thing. They may have one of the more dated and slowly progressing systems around, but what they have to start with is far greater than what we have here in Cleveland. They do have daily inter-city and regional commuter rail that is depenable. They have more than one station Downtown (I know, we have the Waterfront Line, but who uses it?). They have a Downtown residential population that creates a 24-hour neighborhood that puts ours to shame. Our rail system, as it stands today, is primarily a commute in, commute out system. Until we have more people living in the center and more density and uses clustered around our stations, we're not going to have anything resembling what Philly has, regardless of how poor their system is reputed to be.

Agreed that this is a very interesting idea, but also agreed that it might be more feasible to build this into the GCRTA's structure. If there's enough momentum to create a new, publicly funded body, then there should be enough to change the modus operandi of the RTA. I do understand your points, however, of how the RTA has a dual mission and tends to lean towards the social service side of things, leaving a big gap on the economic development side. But I think there's a lot of validity to what MrNYC is saying about the leadership within the organization shaping the way that they operate in a negative way. This is just one more example of how Cleveland has stagnated because of the inability of some of our most influential organizations/bodies to adapt and progress. We need a sort of "coup" to get the next generation of leaders into those positions ASAP!

I'm about to check that out, but wouldn't the federal funding scheme, let alone the development potential, be a big impetus for the RTA to create this position/department?

Anyone seen this blog entry yet? It was posted on the Cuyahoga County Weblog and is a pretty extensive view at what looks like an updated Case master plan: http://darthvadermeditations.blogspot.com/2006/01/early-action.html ps: there's tons of free stuff going on down at UC today for MLK Day! If you've got nothing to do, check it out! http://universitycircle.org/NEWS/MLKday.htm

I love it!

Here's that map, from the December 2005 edition of Emerald Necklace.

Thanks for posting the Puritas article, KJP! I didn't get to see the images until finding them here. As far as the TOD elements of the Puritas proposal, it looks like we've got a couple and are lacking a few. The strengths are the neighborhood form/context and the connectivity to existing land uses. However, the latter three elements (mixed-use, mixed use format and policies) appear to be missing. I was surprised to hear that there are almost 600 parking spaces on-site at present. Though, I've never been to the station, so I guess I wouldn't know. In redesigning the station, it sounds like they will be making a larger, more functional and more attractive building. This is good. However, the remaining parking spaces will still add up to nearly 500, which I'm assuming are all on a surface lot. This, much like the case at the Brookpark Station, seems highly inefficient. Now, I'm curious about what RTA is thinking and I'm hoping that you transit experts out there have some insider knowledge about this. It seems to me that the RTA is doing a good job of rebuilding their stations, from W. 117th to E. 55th and so on. But they're not doing a lot to create these mixed-use sites on their property. I know there was talk of this at Brookpark and the W. 65th Street station has room for a police substation and a possible cafe, but what about the rest? The optimist in me says that they are taking step one to make the stations themselves better...which I agree is issue #1. But a very close #2 is utilizing the land adjacent to the station to promote more transit ridership and more functional, active, sustainable neighborhood. Understanding that most of the riders at Puritas probably drive to the station at this point (correct me if I'm wrong!), that would probably necessitate building a garage before developing the site. This may be cost-prohibitive at present, but I wonder if they're even exploring this option. You know, selling or leasing the remaining land to developers in order to pay for the garage? I hope that they are just working on "step one"s throughout the system right now and keeping an eye on the market and interested developers for when the time comes to develop their many parking lots.

So, resident transit experts, this sounds like progress on the federal level that could help persuade local transit agencies to work towards TOD by offering more dollars to those projects that follow more of the TOD guidelines. Am I reading this correctly?

seriously, Pittsburgh or Denver? What kind of cruel world is this?

sorry, it appears that the web site map is a little dated. I'll scan the latest map from their newsletter tomorrow and post it.

let's hope they have a diversity of marketing/non-marketing folks working on this. I cringe when I think of all the "rock n' roll" themes that they'll come up with. They'd do well to cater to more than just the conventioning, hotel, media, and business crowds... actually, they should just us here on Urban Ohio to do it! We can knock this thing out in a week or two, no problem! And we'd probably do it for free!

well done, well done! This will definitely be unique to the Downtown Cleveland market for the near future...hopefully, sales will reflect the desireability of it and more mid-rise condo towers will start to pop up very soon!

As for this 10-year vision, I agree in large part with what I'm hearing here. I don't think we'll be luring any big companies away from somewhere else and I have "ethical" issues with doing so anyway. It's like getting a football franchise from another city. Chances are, the city you're getting the company (or team) from is struggling already and I wouldn't want to be on the ass end of the deal (ala Office Max, BP, etc.), so I can't say I'm in favor of this sort of competitive growth. Now, in cases where there's a merger or an acquisition and we're in danger of losing what we've got... well, that's different. I think it's much more important, credible, and sustainable for us to find ways to keep our homegrown talent and investment here...at home. We've seen and heard about too many of these people, businesses and ideas slipping away already. And we can't necessarily fault people for leaving if they have sincerely tried to stay and couldn't find a way to make it work. We, as a region (not just Cleveland), need to work to keep these people and dollars in town. That's the only way we're going to see any kind of growth. Sure, the exurbs have been growing over the years, but they're really just absorbing the exodus from the City and Inner Ring. If we want to grow, we're going to have to have jobs for people to stay for...in Cleveland and region-wide. Families will grow and if we can retain them and so will our city and region. Oh, and people with choices will come here because they think it's a fantastic place to live, work and raise a family, not just because their job transferred them. And then there's the draw of home... When I decided to "Come Home to Cleveland" (KJP, you've outdone the PD again!) earlier this year, it wasn't because I had a job lined up or because I thought my employment opportunities were better here than in NYC. I chose to move back home because of the potential I saw here and because of the compassion I have for this city and because I felt like this was a place and a time that offered me opportunities to make a difference in a city that needs more difference makers. What I found very quickly was that I'm one of many people who share this passion and vision for Cleveland. This is reason #1 why I feel that, 10 years from now, Cleveland is going to be a better place to live because we will have captured the excitement of (as B12 said) a new generation of urbanites, and restored faith in Cleveland in many of those people who had stopped looking for reasons to stay in or return to Cleveland over the past several decades.

seriously, but is the Fed actually going to change their system? I know they can't just give jurisdiction over to the local municipalities to do their own counts, but they could probably do better to learn from them about how best to do the count as accurately as possible.