Paul in Cleveland

Holy crap, you beat me to it as I was typing! :)

MayDay and I went down to the press release at 11:30 a.m. today. We both took photos of the renderings (there were only a few), but I don't have a way to upload them from my camera until I get home, I imagine MayDay will beat me to the punch, anyway. The design by Forum Architects (never heard of 'em) is okay, lots of 4-ish story red brick buildings with lighter yellowish brick on the top floor, some skylights. Nothing mindblowing, but nothing awful, either. It kind of reminds me of a new urban college campus. One thing I like is a semicircular marina/plaza located about where Dick's Last Resort is. Kind of an shallow ampitheater facing the river. They also had in one rendering about a 400,000-450,000 sq-ft building where the Cleveland World Trade Center proposal from a few years back would have gone, just inside that strange peninsula of land made by the Waterfront Line, north of the main Wolstein proposal. Apparently, that is a part they're adding for that Defense Accounting (or whatever) group that was just announced is leaving Cleveland. They are hoping to house all 1,000 of those people in this building, if the gov't. will reconsider moving the jobs out of town.

Take a look at Penton. Penton was a company that moved downtown into the Bond Court building and should be a thriving company, but has fallen on tough times for whatever reason. Sorry for the aside. From a 10-year Penton employee, I should mention that Penton has always been downtown (we used to own the Penton Press in Berea, too). Before moving into the old Bond Court Building, we were in the Diamond Building. We've also been in the old Penton Plaza (near Perk Park, now renamed something else) and in the Rockefeller Bldg. many years ago. Penton got in trouble because we bought up a bunch of Internet-type publications and trade shows right before the Internet bubble burst, and we also invested heavily in trade shows, and then 9-11 made everyone want to stay home. Double whammy. The company would be doing fine, except we have over $300 million in debt with nothing to show for it. Our ex-CEO made a lot of dumb moves, thank goodness he's gone now! Hopefully, in a few years, we will be a much stronger company, if we can refinance our debt.

I think this is just awesome news ... for many years I've thought that the AT Tower is the most hideous tall building in Cleveland. I'd certainly prefer tearing it down and building something new, hopefully >28 stories. But the skinning thing would work for me, too, it would be like gaining a whole new building, as my eyes tend to avert when seeing AT.

I think I read that her husband is also in so-so health. He's a good bit older than she, if I remember correctly.