WestBLVD

I attempted to use this bus stop last month to get from downtown Denver to the airport. I looked up the bus schedules and arrived at this station a few minutes early to catch the bus. I found it very confusing where I was supposed to go and which bays the buses actually stopped that I wanted (of course no one to ask). By the time I figured it out, the bus had just left, and required me to hail a taxi to the airport. Boo! There was a hub downtown that was sandwiched behind the post office and a ymca (later torn down). It was very discreet for a bus terminal, yet in a great location. There's been a lot of construction around this spot recently. They also had a hub in the parking lot of shopping plaza a few miles from downtown near the interstate. It served both as a park and ride and transfer spot. There was a Starbucks and other food joints adjacent to this so if you had 20 minutes til your next bus, you could occupy your time well. The downtown public square "bus stop" doesn't work. Waiting 20 minutes outside at 11:30pm in the winter time is not a pleasant experience. It's dark, it's cold, it's uncomfortable, and it doesn't feel safe. It would be nice for a dedicated facility that was lit and had security present.

The design isn't that bad. Chester as it is right now is awful, it's basically CSU's backside where this development is going to go. As long as the building on Chester fits an urban bill, then I'm fine with it. The East 20s between Chester and Payne are dead zones now. These "townhomes" are going to be built along the street with parking hidden in the back, nothing wrong with that. The style is a tad suburban, but the layout is fine. Replace some vinyl siding with brick and a few urban decorative elements and we're good to go. In 15-20 years, or when demand permits build more units on the hidden parking. Actually my biggest concern with this project is that they won't preserve the mature trees that already line these streets. Surprising as it may be, but these 4 streets surrounded by parking lots are the most tree lined streets of downtown. see map: http://g.co/maps/nkpcb It would be a shame if these all get ripped out for construction. On the same vein, if these are preserved with the current design, it would help leaps and bounds with the finished product.

There's a Constantino's just a few blocks away. This area doesn't need more grocery. You've got two Giant Eagle's a mile away in either direction and Sapell's a block south. While Trader Joe's offers a niche brand, I don't think the volume is there in that particular spot to sustain their model. I think that Constantino's moving a few blocks down and expanding would be a better neighborhood fit. I'd also like to see more restaurants with patios, the wine bar down the street can't meet the demand.

Yeah. Tearing that down scares me a bit. How many years will we have an empty gravel lot there? Look at Cedar Center north in South Euclid. An older plaza was torn down 4 years ago, grand plans for mixed use were put into place, after each design iteration the plan got worse until desperate for anything a GFS pops up with a sea of parking and next on the plate is a Bob Evans. I'd really hate for these buildings to come down, some developer with bright eyes for ground level retail/upper office/apartments comes in, realizes that the ROI just isn't there and voila a Sheetz, Autozone, Denny's or some other crap finds its way in. The JD Byrider just a block south of this location was cleared earlier in the summer leaving a blank parcel. I think I might be more concerned for some sort of crap with a sea of parking to appear here first then up a block. However, I'd truly hate to see two box stores with a sea of parking appear in both of these spots, which would essentially kill this neighborhood. That old JD Byrider spot really needs to be built with something up to the street level to connect the area around Brother's Lounge on Detroit with Clifton. The location of Clifton and W 117th is great. I'm just not sure what would be best put in there. I think it could sustain a couple new restaurants/bars, but I don't know how well more retail would do.

A significant number of them do NOT want houses, which is why it takes us decades here to revitalize a neighborhood. We don't have enough marketable rental units to let people try urban living before they buy. That's the majority of the market, but we only get the really committed ones. Nothing against them, obviously. But that leaves a lot of growth on the table. We also miss out on a lot of the serial movers, people building careers who are willing to relocate as often as necessary. Their options are overwhelmingly outside the city here. And then there are the people who simply prefer a dense setting and don't want a house period. I'm in that group, and my options are also largely outside the city. I live in Lakewood because Cleveland has lost too many apartments and built too many houses. That's the case for a lot of the area's young professionals, they end up in the suburbs because they prefer urban apartments. CDC's looking to attract them need to focus on getting more apartments to market. This should be a front-burner priority but it doesn't seem to get much attention. Correct. Much of Cleveland's existing housing stock is an obstacle to new development. If neighborhoods are stable and houses are kept in good repair, great. But many are not, and there's where the opportunity for apartments comes in. OC is in a period of massive redevelopment, and although it's going to be a vibrant commercial and restaurant area, it would be good to anchor all that with more people. With the economic downturn, many young people prefer to rent, myself included. And actually, I've become rather accustomed to apartment living and am not sure I want a house anytime soon. Plus, it increases density, which increases development opportunities. Ohio City has plenty of houses, but not many that I'd consider buying. As I've posted before, my greatest wish for this neighborhood would be apartments near, but not on West 25th, that are somewhat upscale - or for the Flats West development to be completed and not be such an island. Townhouses are also good. And this isn't going to limit anyone who prefers a house - there are plenty. Sounds like some of our city neighborhoods are losing out on potential residents by not offering the housing stock desired by young people. I think we're seeing a disconnect between the city, the CDCs, developers and financiers. Each seems to be saying that they know what the other parties WON'T do, but some of the experiences posted on this board suggest they don't know. I think there needs to be a city housing marketing study sponsored by the CNDC and/or the city. We're going through a tectonic shift in the housing markets, what with the recent foreclosure crisis, the economic recession, the tightness of financial markets and demographic changes in which GenY (largest demographic group in US history) increasingly want city living while Baby Boomers (second largest demographic group in US history) started turning 65 in 2011 and are looking to downsize. This is an amazing opportunity for Cleveland, and I'd hate to see them miss this. But they need data to show to funders to show why they should invest in a no-growth city. From my personal perspective, I like the idea of downtown living, but without living in the downtown per se... if that makes sense. I want to be able to live on a dense/moderately dense tree lined residential street with historic buildings anchored between strips of commercial, but more importantly I want to be able to walk to the downtown CBD in 10-12 minutes, essentially living downtown without actually being in the downtown. This is a living concept that Cleveland unfortunately lacks now. I feel as if the Avenue District was trying to accomplish this sort of feel, being on the fringe of the core CBD, but yet lacked that historical residential component to bridge the two. A good example of this type of living is the East Avenue/Park Avenue area of Rochester, NY. This is essentially lifting Clifton Boulevard and Lake Avenue in Cleveland mixed with the commercial strip of Professor Ave in Tremont and placing it at E 22nd and Superior. This was definitely a limiting factor in my choice of where to live in Cleveland. If you choose downtown, you can't walk out of your home to a residential neighborhood like in Denver (capitol hill/cheeseman park, Rochester (park ave), or Boston (beacon hill) for example. On the other end if you live in Ohio City in a dense residential neighborhood, the walking threshold to downtown is just high enough that it's not something one would regularly consider doing, especially considering the bridges really make the walk feel isolated. So, Cleveland lacks that "best of both worlds" aspect of urban living. Housing stocks are generally the same in each neighborhood, but with neighborhoods being just far enough apart that they don't bleed over. When the neighborhoods are adjacent, each neighborhood can build on each other's assets. Live in a rich historical apartment, yet walk to the modern shining buildings of downtown just blocks away. Or live in a modern condo with contemporary furnishings but walk 5 blocks to a historic neighborhood and sip coffee at a sidewalk cafe. So in my opinion the development that Cleveland has seen over the past decade has been a stab at trying to overcome this. The historic residential neighborhoods adjacent to downtown are long gone, but you can at least try to build new ones (Avenue District). The charming late 19th century Detroit Shoreway has to diversify with Battery Park ... and so forth. I think the housing stocks that people want are there, but they just aren't mixed with/close enough to the other amenities that people want. that's JMHO.

Basically resurrecting this thread here, but I had to bold that part about Forest Hills. I've been house hunting lately, mostly in the heights, and was floored when I discovered that this neighborhood was actually in the city of East Cleveland. This is not the type of neighborhood one thinks of when they hear East Cleveland. Unfortunately, this neighborhood comes with the East Cleveland hassles of amenities and unreliable/non existent city services, so it's immediately axed off my list. If you change that to city of Cleveland, you'll have me lined up first to buy a house. Has anyone driven down Brewster Road? I just can't believe this is East Cleveland. A Cleveland annexation of East Cleveland would do wonders. The area immediately north of University Circle is instantly opened up for development and Forest Hills becomes one of Cleveland's nicest residential neighborhoods.

Four story vacant apartment building. There's already a massive "brownfield" vacant lot at W. 106th and Madison (right by Berea and W. 110th) that has been there since I worked in that area from '05 through '07. It used to be the Midland Steel plant. Yeah. It was this building: http://g.co/maps/gfdxu The entire stretch of Madison in Cleveland between W 65th and Lakewood is pretty much a blight zone now.

I have always loved this building at the corner of St. Clair and East 20th. It has become boxed in with junk, but makes me wonder what the area looked like 80 years ago: http://g.co/maps/k38yp

I don't believe that Cleveland had much of a residential population at all downtown once it reached big city status. I'm sure at one time there was residential right off of Public Square when Cleveland was more of a town, but that made way for the central business district as the city grew. I do know that the area between E. 12th Street and E. 30th Street was once a densely population area made up of apartment blocks and houses. Although, I'm not sure if that area was considered part of downtown at the time or some other neighborhood. I believe very few streets around there survived as residential by 1960. Here are some photos from that area of some of the last survivors that were destroyed to make room for Cleveland State and parking lots (from the CSU archives). I don't really know the history of that area other than Millionaires Row along Euclid. I just know that must have been a pretty active residential district at one time that was leveled to make room for parking lots and one story commercial/industrial structures :x Wow. Thanks. I had no idea that the area around CSU had apartment buildings like that. I suppose there is one last remaining vestige of this area on E 17th at Walnut. This is a very non-descript building that doesn't look very nice at all. I wonder how, it, of all buildings based on the images before happened to remain? It's such a shame that some of these 4-6 story apartment buildings with big bay windows couldn't have survived on the fringes of downtown. It seems quite a handful of these treasured style of apartments/shells remain in many of the decaying neighborhoods with no imminent hope of conversion while those in neighborhoods seeing a comeback unfortunately turned into parking lots decades ago. :(

That Garlock building is amazing. Imagine if that was still standing today in that location on Euclid. I can only imagine the demand to live in such a building! There was no Hanna Building on that map in 1896 either. I wonder if the Hanna Building and the Garlock Building ever co-existed. Today there is that parking lot at the corner of E 17th and Euclid, but it's hard to tell if this building would have stood where that lot is today or if it would have been on the "new" E 17th st, nonetheless this thread is making me cringe seeing all of these amazing residential properties of yesteryear.

There was a huge fire on the west side of Cleveland that took out an apartment building at west 98th and Madison. Such a shame. I woke up this morning to bits of ash coating my car. I had a really weird feeling brushing away the fragmented ash bits of cleveland's past. Neighborhood landmarks disappear so quickly now.

Just out of curiosity, what historic year does the current downtown Cleveland population now resemble? For example are we at a similar downtown population as say 1930 or 1950 or some later year? Historically the core downtown has never had much residential right? Are there many buildings downtown pre WWII that were built exclusively as apartments? On the flip side, any numbers or guesses on how many residents lived in the core of downtown (bounded by Cuyahoga River, North of present 90 and West of E 17th) in 1920, 1930, 1940, etc? I know there was residential farther down Prospect and in the East 20s, but I don't consider that core downtown. I'm just trying to gauge how today's downtown population compares against a historical context for downtown Cleveland.

^ Yes, I love how so many renderings of suburban strip malls and even city streetscapes show what the project will theoretically look like with mature vegetation 40 years down the road. More often than not, a lot of the trees end up dying/stunted or just never get that big to begin with, or in most cases the plaza goes out of fashion or is rebuilt without the trees taking full root. With so many zoning codes now requiring plantings for every X amount of parking spaces in parking lots across America, it's really hard for me to envision if a a Target or Wal-Mart parking lot in 2050 will really have majestic 50' tall oak trees similar to what you'd see along the boulevards in Cleveland and the Heights.

the cost of having a hub. I wouldn't drive - driving equals time and money (tolls, parking gas) and adds to the bottom line of the supposed cheaper ticket - to CAK Yeah. The allure of that cheap ticket from CAK can be appealing until you realize that CAK is some 50+ miles away from many in Cuyahoga County. At 55.5 cents per mile, you are talking an added cost of roughly $60 in auto mileage roundtrip, plus 7 dollars a day in parking, and the added hour to drive down there. Here, I can leave the car at home, walk to the rapid and be in the terminal in 15 minutes for $2.25. So, the real cost to that low CAK fare can be well over $125 than what is advertised. Rarely ever do I see fares to the same destination that much cheaper at CAK versus CLE. There are exceptions and recently I made the drive down to CAK to take the flight (mostly to gain miles on a preferred carrier) and by the time I got there I was telling myself, "never again will I drive this far to catch a flight here" and the 50 mile drive home at 11:45pm wasn't so pleasant either. And to talk a bit more about speculation. Any insight on what might happen once the Airtran/Southwest merger is complete? Status quo for both airports?

It's been rumored that the Starbucks next door is going to move into Cedar Center North when it opens. And from the list above, sounds like a whole lot of basic chain dining for this development.

It has not been repaved. It's not in the best of shape, but in terms of most Cleveland streets, it's not that bad, but considering the traffic flow, it should be a high priority street for repaving. On a semi related note, I think they may be repaving the Cleveland side of Edgewater Drive soon as a "your tax dollars at work" sign popped up a few weeks ago. Funny that the street that carries so few cars gets a redo first!

I'd imagine that Lakewood would also get new bus stops. Also, Lakewood just recently installed their own traffic regulation system on Clifton, I would assume that this could tie into a GPS system on an RTA bus.

As has been said before, this isn't putting BRT on Clifton. The list of things the $3 million is pegged for is rather generic outside of the the lighted bus stops telling passengers when the next bus will arrive. There's no mention of redoing Clifton outside of putting in concrete bus pads (which help extend the life of the road). There is no mention of putting in a median, just using the current outer lanes (which are currently no park zones during rush hour) as dedicated bus lanes. But yes, I agree, Clifton could use the articulated buses during the day. The problem is that outside of the morning and evening rush hour, the 55 only goes down Clifton every hour. This isn't frequent enough so you end up packing a bus where people are crammed in like sardines. RTA has neglected this route a lot over the past few years. So it will be interesting to see what this grant will do to service. Will signs on Friday night in the new bus stops really say, "next bus arriving in 2 days, 8 hours, and 7 minutes" ?

If you click that government grant link and click around a few more times, you'll come across what I pasted below. Doesn't look to be anything terribly unique. Better spaced out stations? They are already every 3 or 4 blocks right now. The real time lighted GPS stations will be great though. No mention of creating a median, but I wonder what landscaping they have in mind? Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority Project: Clifton Boulevard Enhancement Project Grant Amount; $3,000,000 The project will include improvements at several transit stations in the Cities of Lakewood and Cleveland. Improvements include bus only curb-side lanes during peak commuting hours, traffic signal prioritization for emergency and transit vehicles, better spacing of transit stops, concrete bus pads at designated transit stops, upgraded bicycle and pedestrian amenities, and lighted bus shelters with real-time GPS based bus arrival monitors, emergency phones, and landscaping.

If I'm seeing that rendering right, it also looks like they are taking East 12th Avenue District across the muni lot and shoreway to the lake. I'm sure that's just a pie in the sky idea, but what a great way to jumpstart this district

Yeah, retail is oversaturated as it is. How does this help Cedar Center North get off the ground just a few blocks away? Let alone, trying to fill in the vacancies at Severance, University Square, and Legacy.

Yep. The writing was on the wall when GFS was selected as the "anchor" tenant a while ago. You're just not going to get retail any better than what was there before with these two tenants. What other retail establishments will want to go into a plaza that is anchored by a low end bulk grocer and a low end sit down chain restaurant? ... let alone the possibility for any mid or upscale residential development in the future, which I'm sure has long been scrapped. I'm afraid this once great concept will turn into another Brookpark Rd/Mayfield Rd strip mall with the likes of Dollar General and a couple of Nail Salons with a sea of parking in front. Regression at its best.

Depending on whether or not you consider Mansfield to be Northeast Ohio, 9 out of the 16 districts "represent" in some form or fashion a part the region. District 9 still baffles me. When you zoom in, it literally cuts through residential streets of Parma without rhyme or reason splitting the city into two districts. I had to laugh at Huffman's comment regarding a potential referendum on the map. He said, "The (referendum) process was not meant to be a political game." Really? and so the map created, particularly district 9, was not a political game? http://www.cleveland.com/newsflash/index.ssf/story/committee-oks-redistricting-map-for-ohio/66f6e739543d4693b6de805ebb94ae8c

Wow. Talk about gerrymandering! Cuyahoga County gets represented by 4 districts, essentially diluting the vote outward. Absolutely absurd that Fairview Park, Lakewood, and the west shore of Cleveland all get represented by different districts. Westlake and Parma get lumped with Canton and Kent?!? Avon gets lumped with Massillon and Coshocton?!? Whatever happened to preserving counties and keeping geographic regions intact? Regardless of what party actually represents these districts its going to be a real challenge to keep constituent's backgrounds and regions in mind when the areas that are represented are so vastly different. District 9 is utterly absurd. Basically a run off between a Toledo dem candidate or Cleveland dem candidate with Sandusky deciding if they are more like Toledo or Cleveland. Same with District 11, Akron democrats versus Cleveland democrats. Essentially, the democratic primaries for these districts are the actual election.

The state of Edgewater Park right now is an utter mess. As we enter a major holiday weekend, its appearance is an embarrassment to the city. It's been more than a week since the storm that downed several trees has passed, but it appears that we will be left with huge limbs and tree segments scattered about, (as was noted before, limbs that had fallen in late winter/spring sat for months untouched with weeds growing all around them) The lack of physical maintenance in the park, coupled with the lack of ecological/landscaping maintenance, really exacerbates the broken windows theory with regards to trash. Tall weeds, dead limbs rotting for weeks, mounds of wood chips and mulch sitting in the corners of the parking lots makes the park look dirty beyond the trash problem. When something already looks dirty, people don't take as good care of it. Couple that with general trash that floats ashore, and the litter problem overtakes the park. The problems with the beach/park are numerous * Litter. No further explanation needed, number one priority for the park, IMO. * Dog poop. While I love dogs and hate to say it, but please enforce the no pets on beach rule. The signs are everywhere, but no one obeys. The piles of dog poop everywhere are just disgusting. People would like to lay in the grass and on the beach where your dog is taking a cr@p or pis$ing! * Cruising the park for action. Please take your acts of backseat pleasure elsewhere. * Petty theft. Don't even consider taking anything to the beach that you would hate to have stolen. Hoodlums have the galls to run up and steal bags and items from beach towels while you are 20 feet away in the water watching them, of course unable to run to shore in time to catch them. * Drug use. Once again, please take it elsewhere. * Homeless people who live on the beach and in the wooded areas on the beachcliff. There are a handful of homeless who take up residence in the park and will occasionally harass beach goers. * Sewage overflows. This summer has had record rainfall and subsequently every time it rains, the E coli levels in the park become too high. * Junk that flows ashore, not only plastic junk, but leaves, driftwood, branches, dead fish, etc * Personal Watercrafts/boats and diesel. Some days the smell of fuel is so nauseating it feels like you are laying on a towel on a runway at Hopkins. You can also see a thin film of oil on the water and a haze wafting above during the busiest/hottest of days. * Algae blooms. I've been noticing a lot of nasty areas pop up close to shore recently. Western Lake Erie is really feeling this problem as of late. So yeah, that's just my short list of things that I can think of off the top of my head that really need to be fixed. It's daunting. I also think the resources at the park are not allocated correctly. How many times have you seen a park ranger walking on the beach patrolling? How many times have you seen a park ranger riding a bike on the trails patrolling? How many times have you seen a ranger driving a vehicle along the shoreway pulling someone over or giving someone a ticket on an offramp? BINGO! That right there sends a huge red flag to me. I really wish there was an actual foot presence of rangers/police in the park, rather than this ridiculous presence on the nearby roads that happen to intersect park property. It'd be nice also if we could allocate some of this park road patrol nonsense to a full time person who just cleans up trash through the park. Sort of a park janitor. If adding that person to the payrolls is that out of the question, how about encouraging job skills to the homeless that live in the park to help clean it up? What about a summer internship to college students and turn the trash collection into a Great Lakes research project? I feel that there is a wealth of knowledge to be learned about the density of trash that comes ashore, weight of materials, where materials come from, type of material matter, etc. Not only does it clean the park up, it contributes to finding point sources, and gives students some experience. So that's my end of summer rant/suggestions for Edgewater Park. I hope that at summer's unofficial end next year, our lakeside gem doesn't look like the pit that it does now.