Map Boy

You've got to be f*cking kidding me...

Seriously...thanks for keeping us informed!

Ok, I'm a nerd, so I'll answer my own question... We've been back in the league since 1999. We've won 37 games in that span of time, which averages out to about 5 wins per season and a .314 winning percentage. 18 of those wins were at home and 19 were away. We've averaged 15.7 points per game over that span of time, which means a lot of really boooooring, low scoring losses! I mean, I could live with an 0-16 season if every game was like that 48-58 loss to the Bungles in 2004! Actually, that'd probably drive me crazy too, but it'd be a helluva lot more fun!

Sure do! I was there yesterday too. I've never had seats that good, but to see what? Garbage! I'm thinking back now and can't remember seeing them win a game at the "new" stadium in person. Question: how many home games have they won since coming back into the league? Interesting site for ya'll: http://www.firemauricecarthon.com/home.htm

Great article. Thanks for posting Blinky!

Thanks for the enthusiasm and updates and welcome to the forum! Much of that info has been posted elsewhere, but it's always nice for the newbies to see a concise run-down of what's going on...

yes, but good luck trying to find it! I walked around Asia Plaza around 6:00 one evening and all the shops were closed but the restaurant and there was no sign for a bus anywhere. I'll have to go back during the daytime...

4308 Franklin, so it's actually in the west 40s. and you call yourself a reporter! :wink:

Fantastic! What's your business?

yeah, that's about it. They tried marketing the old Dexter site and gave up in favor of the Clinton one after about a month or two early in the summer. I haven't heard anything about their progress, but this stretch of Clinton is a real hotbed right now. See the Ohio City thread here: http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=9289.0

I noticed that pizza place on the way home from the Browns game ( :cry:) yesterday. I had no idea that the market closed! Anyone want to weigh in on if this is a good/bad thing? Did the whole market move over to W. 10th or just the booze?

Glorious...thanks for the shots MayDay! Hey, promising news on the CVSR, KJP!

Nice timing. It'll help immensely to have a new cafe/bakery on the corner when they're marketing these new units. Are those original hardwoods?

Did they, now? Interesting...

Great news! Is that 314,450 square feet absorbed in the quarter or for the year?

woo hoo! just in time for winter...best bowling season of the year!

So there will be six miles remaining because it has to wind around so much? That sounds like a lot of mileage!

Try working as "Team Leader" of the women's accessories department at a NYC Urban Outfitters. Ladies would call up asking if we had a particular pair of earrings and then try to describe them and I swear I could never find what they were looking for. Most often, they'd be at another NYC UO and would be trying to find something that was out of stock that they'd seen online or would be looking for a different size in something they were holding in their hand. The problem with accessories was that we'd have our inventory list and it'd say that we had one in stock, but you could never find them! It's not like keeping track of a pair of jeans. Earrings would be stuffed inside jean pockets, crammed behind a fitting room bench, in the vacuum, you name it!

Russo's at Fairmount Circle had "break away" section of shelving at the end of one of its rows. I remember walking through with my mom when I was a kid and seeing it open with boxes coming up on a conveyor belt. I thought this was so kick ass! Every time I'd go through the store after that, I'd try to look and see where the spot was, but never figured it out until I started working there in high school.

This article ties in with the current tangential discussion (to the ECTP) of the Clinic's campus. From the OCT/NOV 2006 issue of New Urban News: Remaking Americas medical districts: a challenge for NU Philip Langdon .......

Correct me if I'm wrong, but with the SYC investment in the Towpath, along with the recent funding secured on the state level, the trail's extension to the north end of SYC is already financed? If that's correct, that's really awesome... I can definitely ride my bike to this point and continue on from there. I wonder if the state funding would have been attainable this round without the planned investment from First Interstate.

^Great news from Collinwood. Also, the JCU piece is of interest to me, as I grew up a stone's throw from campus. They bought my grandparents' house about 15 years ago (they lived two houses from the tennis courts) and have used it as offices ever since. There's always the fear from the community that the university will just start knocking down houses and building parking lots, but as this article states, that would be very difficult to achieve. On the more positive side, I'd be happy to see some of the drab, old two-story apartment buildings on the circle rebuilt. I'm sure that's not in the university's immediate plans, but they're certainly not as dense or attractive as they could be! One last note: I believe CVS is expanding into the old Russo's (later Giant Eagle) space in the Fairmount Circle retail/office building. They've been tearing the thing up for weeks. I was so sad to see the Russo's go. It was such a great convenience to the neighborhood and it was a great place to cut my teeth as a bag-boy!

yeah, bummer about the transit, but the rest was crap. there's still a great opportunity for development at the intersection of Cedar & Euclid Heights, though. Has anyone heard anything in recent years about that spot?

Local students work at play as video-game developers Wednesday, October 18, 2006 Henry J. Gomez Plain Dealer Reporter Inside a small, classroom-size auditorium on the Cleveland Institute of Art campus, imagination runs wild. Monkeys and penguins as weapons. Koala and panda bears armed with boomerangs and bamboo sticks. Teenagers who overcome their enemies with their wits, not their fists. Gadgets that can change the weight of certain objects and help free a young boy who's been kidnapped. Welcome to Video Games 101. Some think it could be a portal to Cleveland's future. ...

The first thread on this topic has been locked (http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=2716.0), so I'm starting a new one! Thanks for the heads up on the article, Josh! And another great NEO article from Ms. Chamberlain! From today's NY Times: October 18, 2006 Square Feet Young, Idealistic and Now Developers By LISA CHAMBERLAIN OBERLIN, Ohio — In this quaint but economically stagnant college town 50 miles southwest of Cleveland, Ben Ezinga, Joshua Rosen and Naomi Sabel spent their first four years as typical liberal arts college students, going to class, writing papers and looking forward to graduation. Their last four years in Oberlin, however, have been spent learning hard lessons in real estate. Against long odds, the once young, naïve and inexperienced team is nearing the groundbreaking on the first major commercial development in the historic downtown since 1958. They hope they are building not just a mixed-use project, but a model for progressive urban redevelopment under financially difficult circumstances. “I was about to graduate,” Ms. Sabel recalled, “when I noticed a ‘for sale’ sign on this lot, and I thought, ‘Someone should do something with that,’ and went on my way. But as I kept walking past it day after day, I started thinking, ‘We should do something with that.’ ” With neither development experience nor a single class in real estate finance among them, the three friends formed a corporation, Sustainable Community Associates, and as they like to say, played rock-paper-scissors to decide who would be president, chairman and chief executive. It is stories like these that initially caused some in the community to underestimate them, which few are doing now. They have cleaned up a two-and-a-half-acre site that was once occupied in part by an auto body shop, dry cleaner and gas station, and they worked with lawyers, architects and other developers to get plans approved. They also successfully negotiated the City of Oberlin’s first tax-increment financing (TIF) bond, in which the city issues a bond to be paid back through taxes generated from the rising property values spurred by a project. Additional site preparation will continue in December, with a formal groundbreaking next spring. “The polite word might be persistent,” said Daniel Gardner, president of the city council, when asked to describe how the three were able to persuade the city to issue its first TIF bond. “Because we were dealing with developers who had no prior experience, we required a whole lot more from them, frankly. But if we’re serious about redeveloping downtown, we’re going to have to take some risks and make some investments, and this is a slam dunk to me.” As far back as anyone can remember, the site on East College Street has hindered growth in the downtown area. By contrast, a few miles to the south Wal-Mart just opened a 155,000-square-foot store that has more retail space than the entire downtown. “It was a vacant lot when I graduated in 1964” from Oberlin College, said Richard Baron, chairman and chief executive of McCormack Baron Salazar, a development firm in St. Louis, referring to the East College Street land. “That site has been a major problem for decades. So when the troika, as I like to call them, approached me about helping them redevelop it, I agreed.” Mr. Baron, whose firm specializes in mixed-use urban development, greatly influenced the plan for the site: a combination of 49 residential units, 14 of which will be rented at affordable prices and the rest offered for sale; 12,000 square feet of street-level retail space, which will be leased only to local proprietors; 10,000 square feet of publicly accessible open space where concerts and markets will be held; and both underground and surface parking. In addition to Mr. Baron, another important mentor to the team is David Orr, a professor of environmental studies at Oberlin College and an advocate of green building. With Professor Orr’s recommendation, the young developers were able to hire an experienced architect, Michael Corby of Integrated Architecture, based in Grand Rapids, Mich. “I was never concerned about their age or experience except that they make me feel really old,” Mr. Corby said with a laugh. “But really, in addition to David Orr’s recommendation, I felt comfortable that these young idealists were figuring out a way to make things happen. They’re a very credible force. The model they’re creating could be replicated by others.” Mr. Corby said that they are incorporating as much green technology as the $15 million budget will allow. But he also was quick to point out that the architectural style will not be New Urbanist, as is de rigueur in small towns trying to recapture a presuburban era with white picket fences and clapboard siding. Instead, the brick, glass and metal palette is “subtle modernism that’s not trying to do anything more than suggest a different era,” Mr. Corby added. A different era is precisely what the three developers hope they are ushering in, one that is not just about mixed-use development, but also about a mix of idealism and pragmatism. On a tour of the site, “the kids,” as they are often referred to by people from Oberlin, speak in terms more familiar to social scientists than real estate developers. “Building up the tax base isn’t usually thought of as social action, but a bankrupt city doesn’t benefit anyone,” Mr. Rosen said, who is 27. “You can take a traditional field like real estate development and make it an avenue for accomplishing social goals.” Ms. Sabel, 26, said: “The market wouldn’t support a traditional real estate development. So we had to design a project to address the real issues of Oberlin and provide a tangible social value. But the building has to make sense economically at the end of the day.” Mr. Ezinga, 27, added: “When you market a project as a way to promote social values, you get people involved who wouldn’t otherwise be interested.” To that end, the young developers have put together a very complex financial package, including $8.4 million in residential sales. This includes $2 million for the affordable units, which have been purchased by a philanthropic organization, the Kendeda Fund, based in Atlanta; the fund will rent them at below market rate. There is a $1.2 million mortgage on the commercial space, $1.4 million in tax-increment financing from the city, a $200,000 HUD grant, and $3.7 million in new markets tax credits, part of a federal tax credit program for commercial projects in low-income areas. Because of the complexity of the mixed-use plan and financial package, the project has taken longer than anticipated, causing some people in the community to fret about the city’s gamble of tax money on inexperienced developers. But Mr. Gardner said he was confident that the project would succeed. “I wouldn’t bet against them,” he said. While the development team has struggled for four years to get the project off the ground — working odd jobs and running up their credit cards to survive — what they are really looking forward to is the day when they will no longer be known for their youthfulness. “When will we stop being referred to as ‘the kids’?” Mr. Ezinga asked. “When the building is done,” replied Mr. Rosen.