Map Boy

will we ever see the exciting young tandem of Winslow & Edwards? Braylon just tore his ACL and will be out for the remainder of this season and likely part of the next. By the time either one of them actually settles in or they play on the same day, they're not going to be so young anymore! That, and they'll both be recovering from significant leg injuries...how will that affect their games? On the bright side, Frye looked great on Sunday and Droughns finally ended a long-standing 1,000 yard rushing drought for the Browns... Do you think he deserves a new contract?

mid-2006, eh? any murmurs on where they'll go? It seems like the May Company Building would be an idea spot...

all right, I'll start it off then! I like the Tribe's ambitious early signing of Paul Byrd. It sounds like the potential of re-signing Kevin Millwood is not that great (though not out of the question), so Byrd will be a much-needed and qualified fill in. As for Elarton and Wickman, they remain to be seen. It sounds like we're most aggressively going after Trevor Hoffman, who I would love to see replace the Wick! I don't think the wick-ey one can repeat what he did last season... Plus, we lost Howry, but I think that we'll see younger players like Cabrera step up and create a niche for themselves! Now, about our pursuit of Nomar...

what kind of weird riddle is this? are you talking about who owns the land? is someone buried under a deck? have you scrawled the answer on the existing bridge? what?

Great site! Word on the streets is that the first cars will be in Ohio City and Oberlin...well-picked!

What surprises me about the South Euclid side is that the city would be allowing the construction of a 4-story residential building of that mass over another floor+ of retail on the back end of the property. The back end meets the backyards of a cozy little street of single-family houses that will probably feel pretty oppressed by this sort of structure. (Hessler Road thought they had it bad!) Is there a residential element on the UH side? From the sound of it, it's going to be retail and office...

[merge with the innerbelt thread anyone?] I'm still waiting for my personal response to the letter I sent her... Another note, though, is that text like "A federal independent study should determine the cost (and benefits) of the county’s proposed bridge—which could be an elegant, cable-stayed design like the one currently being built over the Maumee River in Toledo rather than the aging steel-truss span that represents the monolithic approach to bridge design of the 1950s" seem to be off-track to me. Every conversation that i heard at the meeting two weeks ago that brought up a "signature bridge" was met with "of course we're going to build something that Cleveland can be proud of!" The "signature bridge" is not the argument. The argument is about the alignment and the takings and the impact that the entire innerbelt project will have on the communities that it passes through and the City and region as a whole. The signature bridge argument seems to me to be a non-issue at this point.

I feel like everyone I know is part of the Colectivo! Not that that's a bad thing! I'm planning on hitting them up for about half of January's rent and utilities... PS: anyone hip to the Ohio City community owned coffee house? The community is apparently working to re-open a recently vacated Metro Joe's cafe with a sort of co-op cafe. The community-built thing is so big in this town...I love it!

From what I can tell, the images above are for the South Euclid side of Cedar. Does anyone have images of what is planned for the University Heights side? This is the side that is being demolished right now, correct?

Nothing too exciting here...just a couple updates from last week's unconditionally warm day (hard to believe it was 70 degrees just over a week ago!) The view down Euclid in front of the University Center: Fenn Tower, looking good and nearly ready for occupants! Two shots of the site of the new administration building...this will do wonders to connect Euclid and the main campus with Prospect and the new housing over there, especially the recently completed Walker & Weeks building... Rhodes Tower, home to a significant rehab of its own, but nothing too glamorous...

Well, the City does own their fair share of parking lots in prime locations, but the browfields and vacant land issues are definitely true as well. I had the privilege of witnessing a lecture by Brooke Furio, who is "on loan" from the US EPA to the City of Cleveland. As is the case with many of the people who are "in the know," his perspective was sobering. It is, in fact, true that there is a ton of vacant land in Cleveland...about 10-25,000 properties, depending on whose estimates you use. This includes homes, commercial buildings, industrial space, empty lots, and on and on. The process of getting these properties back to productive, legal use either via a private investor or through public investment is very complex and the methods that the City and County have taken in the past to address these issues has been inefficient and ineffective. Bottom line, there's tons of land out there, but finding it, acquiring it, clearing or cleaning it (of liens, pollutants, etc.), marketing it, selling it, and eventually collecting taxes on it is more than we know how to do right now. Furio and others have ideas, but they won't come quickly or easily. If the real estate market heated up in Cleveland, we'd have a much easier time of it, because the private market would take care of a lot of these things on its own. However, as it stands right now, Cleveland is far riskier than cities like Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul and continues to suffer as a result. Sadly, there are companies out there who are interested...with jobs in hand and an interest in locating or remaining in Cleveland, but we just don't have the land that they want ready to go. The land, as it stands, is too risky for them to do without significant prior site prep, but our means of bringing this land to a point where the risk is low enough for a profit to be certain are lacking. Enter, the industrial land bank. This is new and very underfunded. Ideally, a few pilot projects will help it to gather support that will bring more funding into the program. If this happens, then larger groupings of land can be tackled and made ready for development. As this pertains to the Opportunity Corridor, the assembly of these large amounts of land that the City can market to developers and employers is an important step. Providing key infrastructure improvements (the boulevard) is another. But will the land be attractive enough without further subsidy? Who knows? I think that's the theory, but if it doesn't prove to be true or if the market doesn't heat up enough on its own, then the City could be stuck with a ton of land that still needs additional subsidies before it becomes attractive enough to lure developers. Pretty depressing, right?

I smell a future commuter rail station...

Forumer of the Year, anyone? Great work MayDay! I feel like I've seen most of these throughout the year, but there were still a few that I'd missed! Perhaps I'll do one as well?

Glad to hear all of this...I didn't know about the residential component either and that makes me more understanding of the subsidy. I understand that Cleveland is a struggling market and that subsidies are required all around and that this is more than "just a bowling alley" I just know how this article makes the City Council decision sound to me and I wonder what the general public reaction is to the necessity of a $1.5 million subsidy for a bowling alley. Now, on the Jackson front, I'm not nearly as worried as I was prior to the election about his position on development and keeping the momentum going and perhaps making it even better in this city. I think it's positive that he's willing to understand that Downtown should take priority at times, because honestly, Cleveland as a whole has a lot more at stake, fiscally, Downtown. Of course, no one in their right minds would discount the importance of the neighborhoods, as that's where 98% of the population lives. I think there are a lot of people nervously waiting to see what Jackson's approach is to development and the Downtown v. Neighborhoods and "his" neighborhoods v. other neighborhoods issues (I'm one of them). And this may be a positive sign, but there are also lots of people who have supported Jackson who have development interests in this city and I find that reassuring as well.

good question...i thought it was going to be before the end of the year...and if they're going to do that, it should be open by now! in other news, Sergio's just opened at Shaker Square!

Is it, though? I know there's a lot of money out there for neighborhood projects from intermediaries like LISC and NPI, but this seems a little odd. Especially considering that a $200 million-plus transformative project like the Flats East Bank will be getting only $1.5 million more from this move than a bowling alley on E. 4th...what's that all about? I thought the subsidies were all in for E. 4th already...unless this is somehow tied to historic tax credits or something. I don't think that a use like a glorified bowling alley should be built if it can't be done on its own...where will a public subsidy fit in with something like this that should only be built if the market will allow it? I know, this is contrary to a lot of what I've said before, but this just strikes me as very odd...

The most specific frontage I'm talking about is the actual CMHA property along the east side of West 25th that touches the sidewalk. This is the space just north of the existing towers and south of Franklin Ave. that goes downhill east of the site. I figure that if they say the hillside is stable enough for two towers to remain there, then they should probably be able to build something considerably smaller just north of them that abuts the sidewalk. However, if they're concerned about future development prospects or if it's not stable enough even for that or if they just want the whole thing to be a park, then this option is out. The other frontages I'm referring to would be all the parking lots on the west side of the street and perhaps moving north to the Transitional Housing property, which CMHA does not currently own. I doubt this property is contained in the area that they are considering for a park.

well, there went my good mood!

I think an Ohio City SID would be excellent and that West 25th is the logical place to do it. It could spread down Detroit and Lorain as well. The park idea is one that just seems like common sense and has been mentioned here before. One drawback, though, is that we would likely be losing all development potential for the future by committing this site to public use as a park. I'm still curious about the West 25th Street frontages of the CMHA property and others north of Jay that still haven't really entered into the conversation yet...at least, not the conversation that I've witnessed.

The following is a handy article from the December Plain Press, available online at www.nhlink.net/plainpress. This is the best wrap-up of that last Riverview meeting that I've read to date. There's even a little bit at the end that I hadn't heard yet... Riverview HOPE VI update by Chuck Hoven At a November 17th meeting at Riverview Towers at 1791 W. 25th Street, Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA) officials and representatives of Ohio City Near West Development Corporation (OCNW) and Telesis Corporation offered an update on the Riverview HOPE VI proposal to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to build 384 units of new mixed income housing in the Ohio City neighborhood. While little new information was offered at the meeting, the small crowd of a little over twenty people allowed officials to answer questions about the project. CMHA officials noted that they met a September 30th deadline to submit a revised proposal to HUD requesting an extension on the original grant and identifying new sites for the proposed development. They said the revised proposal received approval of HUD with some conditions. HUD has not yet revealed what conditions they will require. The revised proposal requests additional funds for land acquisition (not in the original proposal) and identifies new sites for the housing. The original site for the new housing, CMHA property behind the Riverview Towers, was deemed too unstable to build upon. Four new sites were selected on which to build the 384 units of new housing. Eighty-one of those units will be replacement public housing units for residents displaced when their homes were demolished to make way for the project. The new sites put forth in the proposal are: W. 28th and Detroit Avenue (56 units); W. 28th and Church Avenue (74 units); W. 41st and Lorain Avenue (12 units); and Regional Transit Authority land that lies between W. 25th, Lorain Avenue and Columbus Road (242 units). OCNW Executive Director Joe Mazzola said OCNW and Telesis Corporation are committed to pursuing additional sites to lower the density of the housing proposed for the RTA site, in response to concerns of residents in the Duck Island neighborhood. A CMHA official explained that tenants in the 81 public housing units will only pay 30% of their income for rent and utilities as other public housing tenants do. Telesis Corporation will manage the rental units for the first 15 years, at which time the contract could either be renewed or revert back to CMHA for management services. The units are protected as public housing under CMHA ownership. CMHA Executive Director George Phillips said that, while CMHA would like to build more than 81 public housing units as part of the project, they have received only $8.5 million to build public housing, enough to build only 81 units. Asked whether HOPE VI dollars could have been used to acquire scattered site housing and substantially rehab it (instead of building new housing), Phillips said, “it is theoretically possible, but I don’t know that it would have received funding from HUD.” When asked why all of the housing units were being built in the Ohio City neighborhood rather than spread out over a number of neighborhoods, Phillips said the major reason was to fulfill commitments made to former residents of the Riverview estates. “We promised they could come back to this neighborhood,” Phillips said. CMHA and Telesis Corporation officials also said that some creative mortgages could make some of the 303 new for-sale housing units more affordable. Income restrictions tied to the mortgage could be transferable with the property when it is sold making the units more affordable even upon resale. A Jay Avenue resident expressed concern that the new project offered little in the way of commercial development and green space as proposed in the original HOPE VI proposal made with input from the community. Mazzola said he believes that the new housing on W. 28 by Detroit and at W. 41st and Lorain will help spur development. Mazzola explained a proposal by OCNW to create an Ohio City Safety Special Improvement District. He said such a district would be entirely dependent upon property owners in the district agreeing to pay an extra tax to pay for extra security. Mazzola said OCNW’s board has proposed that the original site behind the Riverview Towers be made into a public park and that it be connected to the Ohio and Erie Canal Towpath Trail as a trailhead. CMHA Executive Director Phillips “that is something we would seriously look at and consider.”

Well, according to the Stockyards Area Development website (http://kathy.sargent.net/), which has a really funny logo of a bull with sneakers on, their service area is the following:

wonderful! still no talk of an extension, but this is a start at least... what about building the permanent shed on the West Bank of the Flats and running a historic line through there, up the hill, past Stonebridge and down West 25th to Market Square? I know they're planning on doing some work with the park there and this could be added in as a terminus for the historic streetcar? It would also add to the allure of West 25th and increase development potential on the West Bank's surface lots... eventually, this can jump over the old river channel to Whiskey Island and could potentially connect to Downtown via the Detroit-Superior Bridge... just an idea...

I understand the Flats funding, but why more funding for the bowling alley?

I second that...great article KJP! You're a bastion of truth and solid reporting in NE Ohio. Next, I sent out something like 13 letters to local, regional and state representatives and officials concerning this project. I received an email from Jane Campbell's assistant to let me know that she had received it. I received a letter in the mail from Governor Taft, ensuring me that he would share my opinion with the appropriate parties. And today I received the letter from ODOT that YSOH posted on page 7 of this thread. These are the three I expected the least feedback from... what about Joe Cimperman? Frank Jackson? Bob Brown? Stephanie Tubbs Jones? Dennis Kucinich? Steve LaTourette? The list goes on... Finally, the more I hear about this, the more I think we're talking about a project that is much bigger than it needs to be. Obviously, the bridge issue needs to be dealt with, as it's lifespan is limited. But if we're talking about making all these changes to the "trench" and the loudest voices are up-in-arms over it, then why do it? I know, the safety issue, but even that seems to be disputed! Now, straightening "Dead Man's" curve seems practical and it doesn't look like it will involve any takings or piss anyone off, so let's do that and let's continue to push for an upstream bridge to replace the current one and let's talk about ways that we can cap the "trench" to open up more land (something that's been left out of the discussion altogether). But the rest of it? Who's pushing to make this happen? ODOT? Anyone else?

yeah, I was referring specifically to the East 55th Street station project that just went through the concept approval phase with City Planning. There was mention several times of the effect that the Opportunity Boulevard would have on the station location...this is pretty much where the boulevard would start, correct?