Map Boy

sheesh! well, they certainly won't be running out of places to put their fancy pic statues this year!

Asia Plaza isn't expanding, is it? A little birdie told me that they were getting a big grocery store, but I have a feeling that they were actually talking about Asia Town Center...

Is this open to the public or only the Friday morning meetings? Citizens Advisory Board 2nd Thursday of every month 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. RTA Main Office, Board Room

I tried to get on the Citizens Advisory Board when I first moved back to Cleveland, but I missed the opening. How often and where do they post these openings? I seriously spend so much of my time riding, talking, or thinking about our transit system...it's about time I put all that effort to work!

Can you believe this crap?! Bentley will miss another season Third knee surgery puts Browns center's career in doubt

Cavs fans would be PISSED if we traded Andy. I would think that Sasha's done a good job of making himself marketable, but I don't know how interested the teams we want to trade with are going to be. He's young, though, and could be a solid starting shooting guard for a b-level team.

Ok, so I may be way off... This is from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, which offers a pretty good explanation of the 20% tax credit... To be eligible for the 20% Tax Credit: -The building must be listed on the National Register, either individually or as a contributing building within a National Register Historic District, or be a contributing building to a Certified Local District (a locally designated historic district that has been certified by the National Park Service). -Building must be used for income producing purposes, for example office, retail, residential rental, bed and breakfast, and light manufacturing uses. The building must be a depreciable building and not used as a private residence. -Rehabilitation work itself must be undertaken according to the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation. -The project must meet the “substantial rehabilitation test.” This test is where the amount of money to be spent on the rehabilitation must exceed the adjusted basis of the building or $5,000, whichever is greater. Generally, projects must be finished within a 24-month period. -After rehabilitation, the building must be owned by the same owner and operated as an income producing property for five years.

Thanks for putting it in context, MrNYC!

Again, I could be wrong about the motives, but this policy (which is Federal) ensures that the owner can't just buy, use credits, and flip. In other cities/regions where gentrification and affordability are serious concerns, this is a huge problem. They'd basically be using public dollars to give developers an extra large profit for doing a project they'd have probably done anyway...in essence, subsidizing the rapid increase in home prices in neighborhoods that may be historic and still affordable. I see what you're saying in how it applies to the Cleveland case...why not encourage developers to come and invest in our communities? There really isn't a neighborhood in Cleveland that couldn't use an extra subsidy for a kick start. But this is why I'm saying that as a Federal tax credit, it's likely not specific to development in a booming or declining city. It's likely a safeguard against speculative purchase and resale for profit, especially in the case of a federally subsidized project.

Sorry, but I also meant to add that the Rosewood project (also discussed on this thread) is looking complete and lovely. That, and I couldn't help but notice that this Cleveland Clinic building in Lakewood actually acknowledges that it exists in a neighborhood with a street grid and pedestrians. Too bad it's a lesson they haven't applied to Fairfax yet!

I thought the bought the property directly north of this. I didn't think it included the Cuddell offices (which SORELY need an update!), but I could be wrong. Thanks for the update snaps, Oompa!

wow, you guys really are giving two of my favorites a hard time! For the record, I've never had bad service at Tommy's or Mango's and the food at Tommy's is still some of my favorite in town. I honestly probably wouldn't eat at JM's if not for the convenience factor (I live two blocks away), but it is certainly my most frequented spot for a cheap meal in the OC. Tommy's? I've been going there since I was 14 and I've literally NEVER been disappointed.

As I've written many times in this thread, I fully agree with Guv and others who are more concerned about the sheer waste (financially & physically) of buying and tearing down this complex of buildings than I am with saving a piece of significant/insignificant architecture. On the latter topic, the following is a very well written article by Steve Rugare of the Kent UDC on the topic. It presents a number of issues that we've discussed here and brings a few other points to light... It appeared in this month's issue of angle: a journal of arts and culture, and is viewable online at http://anglemagazine.org/articles/To_Be_or_Not_To_Be_2430.asp To Be or Not To Be Steve Rugare Prevailing architectural tastes evolve according to a generational rhythm. Roughly speaking, we tend to revile the buildings of our parents’ prime, just as we “re-discover” the buildings of our grandparents. What this means right now is that we’re loving the ‘50s and early ‘60s—just check out how much has been published in the last two years on ‘50s greats Eero Saarinen and Charles and Ray Eames, or look at the newly designed furniture in high end dealerships. But we don’t “get” the period centered on the early ‘70s. For some, this incomprehension may take the form of outright hostility. These generational tensions are probably necessary and psychologically healthy, and they’re great for us historians, who have a steady supply of new material ripe for revisionist interpretation. But there is collateral damage. The history of American cities is full of “lost” buildings that had few or no defenders when they were demolished just a few decades after their construction. Right now in Cleveland two buildings are poised to suffer a similar fate. Marcel Breuer’s Cleveland Trust Tower (1970) is likely to be removed as part of the project to build a consolidated Cuyahoga County office complex on its site at East 9th and Euclid. Just down the street, Cleveland State University has set January 2008 as the demolition date for Don Hisaka’s Student Center (1974). Before these relatively young buildings are gone, it’s more than an academic exercise to ask why this is happening and what we’ll lose in the process. Of the two architects in question, Marcel Breuer (1902-81) has the much starrier name, and his building has received much more public attention. Though his architectural work was always overshadowed by the fame of the steel furniture he designed in the 1920s as part of the legendary faculty of the Bauhaus, Breuer forged a stellar career in post-war America as a leading modernist designer of high-end houses and large-scale institutional buildings. The latter genre is well represented in Cleveland by his addition to the Cleveland Museum of Art, and you can see the real strength of his work there. There’s no color, and textures can only be described as cold and rough. But the carefully modulated lighting and proportions of the interior lend its users a striking gravity and importance, without resorting to grand scale or overt theatricality. One can detect the same qualities in the public spaces of the downtown tower, even in its current mothballed state. The building’s exterior is another matter. In spite of careful attention to materials, Breuer failed to (or perhaps didn’t care to) avoid a degree of heaviness and monotony. At the forum on the building held at Cleveland State University in October under the sponsorship of AIA Cleveland, Kent State’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative, the Green Building Coalition and other organizations, the self-selected crowd was largely in support of saving the building, but few of the comments betrayed real affection for the architecture. What’s worse for the Cleveland Trust Tower’s prospects is that it may not be easy to adapt to a new role. This is the key issue for the County Commissioners and their staff. After all, the reason for investing in the consolidation of county offices is to increase efficiency and improve service to citizens. It’s not clear that a rehab would produce the levels of workplace comfort and functionality that they want. (There are also environmental concerns, though the trade-offs involved are complex.) In other words, though each individual problem with the building could be addressed, there are enough of them that new construction might well be the way to go if a stunning new building were in the offing. Unfortunately, the County took that possibility off the table very early on when they set up an invited competition between six big firms that differ only in how closely they stick to the middle of the road. I suppose the commissioners didn’t want to be accused of putting public money at risk, but they ended up squarely within the time-honored Cleveland tradition of hiring too-safe architects too late in their careers. So the design architects for the new County Administration Center will be Kohn, Pedersen, Fox, a firm known for technically competent and polished architecture that no one remembers or talks much about (at least not since the late ‘80s). Once KPF is a given, the preservation of the Breuer tower starts to look like a priority, and who cares about its flaws. It’s not too late for the Commissioners to ask KPF and the strong team they’ve assembled to figure out how the tower could be preserved within the new complex. This brings us to Don Hisaka’s CSU Student Center, where a disturbingly similar tale is unfolding. Don Hisaka was a Cleveland architect, much admired by his colleagues and competitors, and the Student Center is arguably his finest and most deeply assured work. Unlike the Breuer Tower, which is a footnote in the scholarly literature on the architect, Hisaka’s building was the subject of very positive national press, and it was innovative. The goal of the project was to create a year-round social center for a commuter campus. In keeping with CSU’s founding master plan, it would address the megastructural parking structure and plaza at the core of the campus, not the surrounding streets. Given those requirements, Hisaka’s solution—a large steel and glass cube protected from solar loads and the surrounding streets by deep concrete “walls” of offices to the south and west—was simplicity and elegance itself. There are problems with the Student Center. The façade on Euclid Avenue is forbidding, even cold. The heating and cooling costs are high. The uniform palette of ‘70s beiges and tans has aged far less well than Breuer’s greys. Other problems were created by CSU’s “Innerlink” pedestrian bridge system, which draws activity away from the buildings ground floor. Nevertheless, Hisaka’s conception is so essentially strong that it ought to be pretty easy to think about a remodeling and addition. This is precisely what architect Pieter Van Dijk argued very passionately when he spoke from the floor at the Breuer forum. Instead CSU is intent on demolition. A flashy new Student Center is a great recruitment tool, and it would be a flagship component of CSU’s campus master plan, which understandably attempts to reverse the anti-urban principles of the ‘60s campus plan. (Full disclosure, the plan was developed by my colleagues at Kent State’s CUDC.) Those institutional priorities might seem superficial, but they’re exactly what campus planners have to contend with, given an increasingly tight and discerning market for higher education. But if that’s the goal, CSU’s choice of architect is even more unfortunate than the County’s. Gwathemy Siegel Associations is an extremely well-connected firm known for cool and, I would say, rather faceless neo-modernist buildings. They do competent work, but I’ve always suspected that they’ve coasted for thirty years on the critical acclaim that they received at a very peculiar moment in the early ‘70s, when Charles Gwathmey was exhibited along with better known names like Peter Eisenman and Richard Meier as part of the "New York 5.” It’s hard to imagine them giving CSU a building that will receive the attention Hisaka’s did. Don’t take my word for it. You can drive to the campuses in Youngstown, Akron and Oberlin to see just how dull their work can be. All of this throws into sharp relief a comment that Kent State Professor Elwin Robison made at the Breuer forum. Pointing out that office building design is largely determined by functional and economic parameters, Robison suggested that a very few of them genuinely require a second or third look. Most are content to please at first glance. (He was too polite to say so, but I’m pretty sure he was referring to the Key Tower, designed by Cesar Pelli, runner-up to KPF in the County’s process.) Breuer’s and Hisaka’s buildings are both definitely worth a second and third look, and we shouldn’t sacrifice them when mediocrity is all we’re going to get in return. After all, it’s only a few years until we’ll like them again, and be ready to demolish the early work of the architects chosen for their replacements. First Published in Issue 30, January/February 2007

Oh MrNYC, why are you so fixated on that dying city?

seriously, when are developers going to figure out that Urban Ohio is the only source they need for marketing materials???

Ah, details! If you look very closely, you'll find that the rendering is actually printed in reverse. I noticed this when I first got the flier. And yes, the rendering is totally cheesy, as have been the rest of their mailings. This is certainly not the worst of what they've done! BTW, in regard to the minority representation, I believe that they are all actually inside their units, which they own, and that the white folk are just posers who wish they lived in this sweet ass development.

Really? Your distaste for the service at the "other" veggie restaurant on the East Side has been well documented and I've already registered my testimony that I've never had problems over there. I'll say the same for Taco Mango...I've always had great service! Last night, for example, the guy from behind the bar came running out into the street after I'd left to give me the $20 voucher I'd earned from my last year of purchases. Apparently, it had printed out after my receipt and he didn't notice it until after I'd left. Now, that's service! The food...well, I have a dish that I like and I stick to it. The drinks...yes, weak as hell. But the place is fun and fresh and I'll keep going back!

Style Lab? That's open already.

or the opposite of the two? I think you may be right, though, considering all the baby-toting, poodle-walking residents that are LOV-ING the neighborhood! Much as the case with the Avenue District, I am so pleased with this development...I just can't help but poke a little fun at the marketing!

"coming soon" signs are up in the windows of 360 Clothing Studio. It'll be on the west side of W. 9th, just south of St. Clair. This should add nicely to the mix of retail options already on W. 9th, which, when combined with the offices, residences, dining, nightlife, and convenience shopping, is becoming quite the complete street!

I would assume it has something to do with preventing "flipping" of property immediately after renovation. This certainly isn't the worst example of the practice, but precautions like this are a way of promoting neighborhood stability. I would guess that you wouldn't want profiteers coming in, snatching tax subsidies and then leaving the market without more of an investment in the future of the community. 5 years seems to be the norm for what this investment means.

Anyone else get this delightful little flier in the mail? The typo is a nice touch...

Having been inside this building, talked to the developer, and seen what it's made of, I think this project will succeed. I absolutely loved the unique spaces inside, highlights of which are an interior courtyard and two story laundry room, whose flip-down ironing boards are still intact behind wooden doors. The place is amazing and is in a fantastic location, to boot. Go Robertses!

I kept wondering why the for sale sign was still up on the front facade... so, this is moving forward? I love their old spot so much, but I trust that they'll do this one up right!

Wow, I am very pleased to hear that everyone who is eligible will be passing on the exemption. I know it's just pennies to Wal-Mart, but this is a positive sign (along with the other posted news) that they are actually looking at the local impacts of their projects, beyond their own bottom line. Unexpected and hopefully a sign of good practices to come.