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lol

The Great Lakes Brewing Company went smoke-free about three years ago. Business went up about 10% after the switch.

I think that I was a bit misunderstood. :)

If you can smoke in a stand-alone bar in Florida, then the smoking ban is not very strict. I guess its what your opinion and my opinion of strict is? The point is the states I listed have statewide smoking bans. Many of the states don't allow smoking in stand-alone bars neither. People pass smoking bans because they want smokefree bars and restaurants (who can smoke at at work anyways??). If stand-alone bars are not included in that restriction, then the restriction is only going halfway as compared to other states' restrictions. If Florida is considered strict, then Ohio's would have to be considered Gestapo-esque. (Vulpster and Pope--no comments please)

If you can smoke in a stand-alone bar in Florida, then the smoking ban is not very strict.

Thought this might be an interesting read. (remember, it was written 20 yrs ago) Focus: Cleveland; High-Rise Completes 1903 Plan By JAMES BARRON WITH the construction of the 45-story Standard Oil Headquarters, Daniel Burnham's ambitious 1903 master plan for downtown Cleveland has finally been completed - but not in the way the 19th-century architect imagined. Burnham, whose 1893 master plan for Chicago is considered his finest project, had grand ideas for Ohio's largest city - an elegant public square surrounded by tall buildings, a mall leading to Lake Erie and a lakefront train station. What he suggested was consistent with his belief that city planners should ''make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood.'' It was no little plan, but except for the public square and the mall, what Burnham envisioned for Cleveland was never built. And the railroad station ended up on the public square, not on the lake. But seven years ago, when Standard Oil decided to go ahead with the $200 million headquarters project, the architect, Gyo Obata of Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum of St. Louis, decided to take his inspiration from Burnham. The new building, formally dedicated this spring, houses more than 2,500 Standard Oil employees and has seven floors of space rented out for $24 to $28 a square foot, the highest prices in the city. It came on the market during what city officials say is a downtown construction boom. According to Mayor George V. Voinovich, $1.8 billion worth of new buildings have gone up in the downtown area since 1981. With so much new construction, some leasing agents say that Cleveland now has a surplus of office space. There is 17 million square feet of rentable space in downtown Cleveland, with 13.4 percent of it vacant, according to an annual survey of the office market by Peter Galvin, a local broker. But other brokers say the vacancy rates in some buildings are twice that. Among the office buildings that have opened recently or are scheduled for completion this year are the 28-story Eaton Center, a $41 million Ohio Bell headquarters building, the $34 million Northpoint office building and the 31-story One Cleveland Center, designed by Hugh Stubbins & Associates, responsible for the Citicorp Building in Manhattan. ''There's something of a glut,'' said Holli Birrer of Forest City Development, which owns the Terminal Tower. ''But downtown retailing is strong, so we are capitalizing on that.'' Forest City plans a $163 million renovation of the cavernous spaces on the Tower's street level, with 300,000 square feet of retail shops, as well as a multiplex cinema, a health club and 25 restaurants with 2,000 seats. To give restaurant patrons a view of the tugboats on the Cuyahoga River behind the Terminal Tower, a 600-foot section of an exterior wall is to be replaced by floor-to-ceiling glass. The project is aimed at the same affluent customers Standard Oil hopes will patronize the eight-story atrium in its building, which contains a two-level gallery of shops, restaurants, more than 1,500 plants, a fountain and open spaces where shoppers can relax. A new hotel is also on the drawing board. There is already one hotel in the Terminal complex, but Miss Birrer says it is not enough. ''Cleveland lacks the critical mass of hotel space to get the big conventions,'' she said. ''You need 1,000 rooms, so we'll build the 500 we don't have now.'' Until its employees began moving into the new office tower last year, Standard Oil was the largest tenant in a three-building complex behind the Terminal Tower. Moving vans are busy at the Tower, too. WCLV-FM, a classical-music radio station that has been broadcasting from a penthouse suite for more than 20 years, is moving to the suburbs. CLEVELANDERS see all the activity as a symbol of the city's progress toward recovery. Like other cities in the nation's industrial crescent, it was hit hard during the recession of the late 1970's and early 1980's. A fourth of its residents left between 1970 and 1980, and the city's plunge into municipal default in 1978 hurt its reputation and its credit rating. Hospitals and health services have become Cleveland's growth industries, providing 17,000 new jobs between 1977 and 1985, a 35.2 percent increase in that category, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Cleveland's turnaround has cheered Standard Oil, which considered moving elsewhere but decided to stay where John D. Rockefeller founded it in 1873. The company, which called itself Sohio until a few months ago, was the first of a group of related companies that dominated the petroleum business until 1911, when the United States Supreme Court broke up its holdings into 34 independent companies. Mr. Obata, whose firm designed the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, studied Burnham's sketches for Cleveland, then aligned the new office tower on the north-south axis of Burnham's mall. He angled it to frame Public Square as well, reducing the building's apparent mass by a series of facets that ascend in steps to the top floor. This gave the Standard Oil building a distinctive profile on the Cleveland skyline, which for years had been dominated by the neoclassical Terminal Tower and the glow of steel mills. Some Clevelanders have complained that the new building's stark design is does not harmonize with the 60-year-old Terminal Tower, which is similar in size and shape to the Municipal Building in Manhattan. But others say it fits right in. ''The building is certainly not out of character with what the city long envisioned as a master plan for the mall,'' said John D. Cimperman, director of the Cleveland Landmarks Commission. ''To walk the mall is to realize just how well the Standard Oil building rounds out the vision Burnham had for its own public space.'' But it was a vision not shared by Orris and Mantis Van Swearingen, the former office boys who built the Terminal Tower atop a railroad station that served a commuter line as well as cross-country passenger trains. The commuter trains still go there, but intercity service from the Terminal Tower ended in the 1960's. Now there is an Amtrak station near Lake Erie, though not on the site Burnham intended in the plan he drew up with Eugene Carrere and Arnold Brunner. ''Burnham's plan called for passengers to get off trains onto a public vista,'' Mr. Cimperman said. ''That didn't fit with business plans. Also, I'm certain that Burnham came here in the summer. If he'd come in the winter, he would have felt the north wind off Lake Erie. I walk there all the time and it's cold.''

Here is the link to the story: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/realestate/commercial/08cleveland.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 I'm hopeful that it ran in NYC. There is no NYT/midwest website.

30 minutes does seem to be way too long for that distance.

You act like Ohio and Utah are the only states with smoking bans. Here is a list of States that have smoking bans, Florida, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Washington State, with many cities and counties across the country as well. Most of those smoking bans are quite watered down and don't really amount to much. Ohio is the 12th state to enact a smoking ban that prohibits smoking in bars and restaurants as well as in all workplaces.

I just glad that Blackwell will not be Secretary of State anymore. With presidential elections coming in 2008, I'm glad that we'll have someone less corrupt in that position.

^B is the most embarrassing concourse. I really wish that something could be done with that one.

Come for the pierogis, stay for the card catalogues.

If the neutral sources are correct, then the Indians made out on this deal: "It's stunning that the Padres would give up Barfield for two lesser talents, even if this is some sort of sign they're close to acquiring Marcus Giles. Kouzmanoff is older than Barfield by a year and a half and has had injury issues in his past. He'll probably take over as the Padres' third baseman, but he doesn't project to be much better than average. While we've always been fans of Brown, his command was pretty awful last season and his strikeout rate was well down in Triple-A. Also, he's out of options. Barfield isn't likely to develop into a star, but the Indians are doing well here."

Construction is coming along nicely on the building that burned last year on West 25th close to the market. It looks quite nice.

WOO-HOO!!

Are you confusing the issue? Issue 3 definitely failed.

So, its going to be a slow three-year long strip tease? Will they cover the lower half of the Terminal and do the same type of renovation once the upper portion is complete?[

This is what I love about UrbanOhio. I've found a place where my interests are fully understood. :)

I think that they were supposed to have it done by late September (but that's before they used the wrong cement). A lot of progress is being made between the inner belt and E.55. I don't know why they didn't do the downtown portion first.

Not sure that they knew about the DD a month ago. I really wish that the VA build anew on Euclid Avenue somewhere in the 60s to take advantage of the SilverLine. Traffic on MLK is going to be a nightmare (at least some people are already looking into ways to alleviate the effects). If the VA were removed from UC (never gonna happen), it would open up a lot of space for some nice new housing opportunities.

I'll be very interested to hear what comes out after the election concerning the CC. I'm sure that the slots proposal will go down hard, so plan B will then go into effect.

Agency fixing north-end structure to aid homeless women Toledo Blade, 10/25/06 Construction workers and volunteers are giving a face-lift to a former carriage house in North Toledo with the aim of helping women and their families associated with the Aurora Project renew their lives. Yesterday, volunteers from Owens Corning helped Jasmin Thompson, an Aurora Project resident, move closer to completing a new residence for her and her family. About 50 volunteers from the company painted walls, stained wood, and dealt with debris in the two-story brick house off North Superior Street that is being converted into two apartments to help the nonprofit organization in its mission to serve homeless women. The Aurora Project purchased houses at 1025 and 1017 North Superior over a year ago with the long-term goal of turning the area into a safe haven for the women it serves and their families, said Denise F. Fox, the organization's executive director. MORE: http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061025/NEWS16/610250385/-1/NEWS

Its a great atmosphere, but I'd say Notre Dame beats it out. I've been to both. Even my Tennessee friends will admit to as much.

The disappointing thing about Knoxville is that the big party strip is pathetic. I forgot what they call it, but its a bunch of storefront structures mixed in with suburban strip-style bars and Applebees. Total waste of a great opportunity.

Bookstore opens new chapter in Tremont By SCOTT SUTTELL 10:25 am, November 6, 2006 The 84 Charing Cross Bookstore in the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood will be reborn early next year in Tremont under a new name and owner. Dave Ferrante, president of Kaplan Trucking in Cleveland and a longtime book and music buff, bought the used bookstore in October and will move it to a 2,300-square-foot space at 1023 Kenilworth Ave. The store will be called Visible Voice Books & Music (the name comes from a Replacements song) and will sell new books as well as used books, magazines, CDs and DVDs. “I believe in the city and wanted to do something to make it better,” Mr. Ferrante said of bringing the bookstore to Tremont. The 84 Charing Cross store at 6411 Detroit Ave. will be used as space for the adjacent Cleveland Public Theatre.