clvlndr

Really glad a new Mitchell's ice cream going in...really good stuff. A Mitchell's will now be located at Ohio City, UC Uptown and now Van Aken.. Guess we can it TOIC (transit oriented ice cream).

Masterful performance by Kluber and our hitters. The media, and I'm sure Boston fans, are now ganging up on David Price who still has yet to win a post season game and has a fat post season ERA: the "$219 Million Man" they're calling him. We just dusted off their 2 aces and we would likely have gone down yesterday with Bauer had not Francona so masterfully handled his pitching staff. We need Tomlin to be on his game but you can bet Tito will have a quick hook if it goes south early. Fenway obviously will be challenging... ... side note: I agree that TBS is terrible from a graphics standpoint. No strike zone or pitch count; they occasionally give you pitch radar speed often don't even give you the batter's name. This is all state of the art stuff for ESPN and Fox. MLB needs to demand more or leave Turner. As for the crew; they're OK; I happen to personally like Cal (seems like a decent guy from his playing days with Baltimore) and Ernie Johnson (good guy; cancer survivor and I love his NBA TNT work-- best panel in all of sports imho), but Ernie seems to be a fish out of water doing baseball although I always enjoy his dry wit.... Darling seems a bit of a know it all and is a tad annoying.

Last Saturday I strolled through the 5th Street Arcades and was pleasantly surprised at the amount and vitality of retail there--quite a bit of foot traffic even on a nice day outside. I have a tendency to walk down 4th street all the time between Euclid and Prospect but, in the future, will pay more attention to 5th Street. Does anyone have any info or stats on how the 5th Street Arcades are doing retial-wise? Financially?

I've been talking smack with all my Boston friends for a few days. They all wish they had Tito! Tito's the best in the biz imho. He gets more out of his players than anyone. Even though all our individual pitchers aren't great, he's found a role for each one of them so that, collectively, they're a unit and one of the toughest in the MLB. Ditto for our hitters... If Wedge or Acta (or hell Dartmouth-educated Brad Ausmus) managed this team, it would have won 75-80 games and been out of the playoffs... Hiring Tito is the by far the best move the Dolans have made.

Francona managed like it was Game 7 in the World Series. Kluber is going to have to go long tomorrow with the pen now gassed, but he's our ace and, again, a Cy Young candidate. Such is life with our no. 2 and 3 pitchers out injured. Huge win; 1-0.

^It would be great if, not only Burger King (and Hertz!?) could be demolished for curbside mixed-use development, but that this whole area to the north on W.117 and to the west along Madison, could be linked up with existing walking districts along Detroit and Madison/Birdtown, to create one huge walkable area. I tend to forget about the nearby useful retail that exists (going under the RR bridges) along W. 117 to the south even though they are big boxes. This area has great bones; so many building blocks are there already. As I noted, even though the core part is mainly ugly-strip style and car-oriented, people seem to overcome the obstacles and walk to-from transit anyway... Sadly for some, this may drive down the incentive to change the status quo.

Frankly, as I believe KJP once suggested, it would be nice if RTA would develop TOD on its own surface parking lot: convert it into mixed use development with parking in a garage.

I was amazed at how hard Cleveland was hit during Hurricane Sandy 4 years ago. Huge trees were uprooted and property damage was enormous; much worse than in Philly which, of course, is much closer to the Atlantic -- nextdoor NJ was blasted, though. -- Fortunately in Greater Cleveland there was no direct loss of life IIRC. Still, I had never seen Cleveland that strongly affected by a hurricane before.

Agreed.

I noticed from the Airport Rapid the other day that those new (senior?) residential buildings along Madison Ave near the W. 117 Red Line station appear to be complete, or nearly complete. While visually they are an upgrade over the industrial property they replaced, it seems like, once again, we had an opportunity for something better get away, and that's a shame... The W. 117/Madison location is an urbanized area and it appears that, although there is a small parking lot there that's usually full, a lot of commuters walk or bus to this station. It's a walkable area with quite a bit of multi-unit housing both north along W. 117 and, especially, NW into Lakewood. Just a short walk away in Lakewood's Birdtown along Madison, the commercial strip is quietly emerging from its scruffy, run-down appearance of a few years ago. There are a number of clubs, restaurants and viable retail there now. This area is not fancy or upscale like Market Square or Uptown/Little Italy, but it appears stable with a significant population base, esp on the Lakewood side. It's just a shame that the W. 117/Madison corner is defaced with strip-suburban style fast-foods and other small buildings set behind a sea of asphalt parking. Of course the NE corner only has the one small, viable mixed-use building next to the new seniors housing... This area screams for TOD. It has as much TOD potential as any Red Line station, save W. 25, Tower City and Little Italy, each of which are doing pretty good in their own right. Damn shame it can't be replicated at W. 117.

I sure hope your Pittsburgh friends are successful. Even though Amtrak only has one round-trip per day of the Pennsylvanian, it amazed me how on-time it was (even 2 minutes early the 2nd time!) given the windy, mountainous route (tunnels, the famed Horseshoe curve, etc) and the fact it was heavily shared with numerous freight trains -- several portions of the route had 3 and, I think, 4 tracks. It would be lovely if Amtrak and freight runs could run in such harmony on the Cleveland leg of the trip.

The article referenced expanding the Keystone corridor into Ohio, but I think she meant Pennsylvanian as the former only constitutes Harrisburg-to-Philly (with most trains continuing to NYC)... I'd love more trains between Cleveland and PA; heck, Cleveland-Pittsburgh regional/commuter Amtrak route would be huge... Imagine how packed trains would be for the (at least) 2 Browns vs. Steelers games every year, alone. All the college kids Ken references, plus the business and family commuters would make this an extremely popular line... Of course, the freight bottleneck near Cleveland would have to be resolved 1st. I've been on 2, 1-way rail trips from Philly to Cleveland in the last 3 years... Both were great (scenic, punctual) from Philly-to-Pittsburgh (the Pennsylvanian)... but the late night, 120-mile leg from Pittsburgh to CLE (Capitol Limited) were marred by freight priority both times: each train was between 2 to 4 hours late... Not good.

I see RTA is well underway in its reconstruction of the sidewalk area under the RR bridge at its new UC-Little Italy station, which is a good thing. The sidewalk is now closed and commuters must cross the street and use Mayfield Road's west sidewalk to walk under the bridge toward UC and Uptown. I think RTA and/or UCI should move to get a lighted crosswalk (or even a traffic light) installed over Mayfield at the station. Crossing Mayfield now without a stoplight or crosswalk at the new RTA station is hazardous enough now with the temporary sidewalk closure, but it will still be an issue even after the new sidewalk is installed since I noticed a bunch of rush hour commuters leaving the station and crossing Mayfield to the bus shelter in order to transfer to the #9 bus up the hill to Coventry, Severance and other Cleveland Heights/NE suburban areas. Fortunately on Monday, for me coming from the station (and heading Uptown) and #9 commuters, Mayfield Road at rush hour is usually a parking lot (which is a beautiful thing in itself imho) so we were able to walk around the stopped cars, but still...

So, these buildings aren't coming down? I had not heard the Goldfish building would be demo'd. IIRC there were stability issues with the wall of the furthest east of the trio (the Record Rendezvous building?), so much so that the adjacent surface parking lot to its east was closed due to the safety hazard of falling bricks.

^Ah, great news...thanks!

Looks like the Settlers Point office building (formerly Sammy's) is close to having Accenture, Welty and others move in. The rebuild looks great, especially the top deck/penthouse suite... Also, there appears to be some action over in the old Watermark Restaurant building. Went by there last weekend, and the lights were on inside and the place looked fixed up. Would love to see another quality restaurant go in there. Anybody know what's going down there?

...but if bored tunnels are getting cheaper to build, why shouldn't the Relief Line be an express line in itself-- with wider station stops than the roughly .5 mile or less station frequencies of the core Bloor-Danforth and Younge Lines? Outside of NYC's ancient, crazy mega rapid transit system, which features numerous 4-track and 3-track (rush hour) express/local lines, there are only 3 similar such lines in the nation: the northern portion of Philly's Broad Street line from Center City, roughly 2/3s of Chicago's Red/Brown/Purple line and a 1-mile section of Philly's Market-Frankford (Blue) HRT line where Blue Line trains run express between 15th Street (City Hall) and 30th Street while Green Line subway-surface LRTs run local stopping at 19th and 22nd streets in between... That's it. Toronto probably missed the boat in not building 4 or at least 3-track, rush-hour lines when it designed and built the subway in the 1950s and 60s, but planners probably didn't predict Toronto's wildly explosive growth in the last 4 decades either.

^Unique's building + the adjacent Marathon station -- like Lorain Ave's gazillion used car lots -- is one of those ugly holes along the street, than needs to be filled in, preferably with mixed-use development along the sidewalk.

[RTA does the right thing] RTA to run trains later during Indians playoffs http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2016/10/rta_to_run_trains_later_during.html

Very exciting development... That is a cool old photo in Michelle's article: I didn't realize the Massimo da Milano restaurant (originally the Forest City Bank & Trust) building was that old; obviously dating to the horse 'n buggy (no cars even visible) era well before the Detroit-Superior/Vet's Memorial bridge was built per the streetcar track configuration in the photo. It's really great they're recreating the mixed-use, walking district that was built over a century ago... Once this huge mixed-use development goes in, I sure hope the City develops some serious traffic calming. maybe even narrowing, for the surrounding streets, esp W. 25th. ... btw along this theme, sure would be uber cool if LRT could be re-created from Tower City under the bridge to the extant W. 25/Detroit subway station. This new development plus the developing area across the street and behind it could well support rapid transit.

Attack? He asked a simple question and you take it as an attack. Perhaps your constant and increasingly unhinged posting about RTA has made you a bit sensitive? Troll much?

C'mon KLJP, don't sugarcoat this. No system closes over half of the entire system for entire weekends like RTA does. Especially with how frequently RTA does it (and with little warning). No system has no provision for disabled riders or riders with strollers, etc., for 3 months at their busiest station. RTA seems to be intentionally sabotaging their rail system. And those "temporary" bus replacement signs at the rapid stops? I bet they spent so much on those because those will be the norm soon. Maybe they're planning for the future after they don't have enough rail cars? Y'know Jeff, this weekend I think it's more like 2/3rds of the Rail system being shut down and, honestly, it seems as though at least this much, or major chunks of the rail system, are closed nearly every weekend -- with the rails being closed more weekends than they're not. And, yes, I disagree with KJP and the idea that these large shutdowns being caused, often, by non-rail building like ODOT's being a normal occurrence with other transit systems. It isn't. And I just feel RTA and/or the powers that be are just too willing to constantly allow this to happen; this work could be done nights to try and preserve service. And as I've seen in the past -- not necesarily with these latest closures, RTA has closed rail service for maintenance work and I've barely noticed any work being done at or during when it was supposed to be. Certainly I have witnessed considerable peirods of inactivity in construction when the rails are closed because of it. Sadly these shutdowns are clearly driving people away from the rails at exactly the time when downtown and in-City neighborhoods served by rail (ie: Ohio City, Univ Circle/Little Italy and even Shaker Square) are flourishing. And of course, just in time for the expanded Flats, the Indians postseason and the Cavs returning with their gaga crazy fan-base, along comes RTA to implement their deep service cuts, esp impacting rail... This should NOT be happening. Riders, present company included, are now planning downtown weekends around NOT using the Rapid. I've actually heard and read people saying this. Unfortunately I don't think our rail advocates aren't speaking up enough and in some cases, are acting more as apologists for RTA than asking serious questions about what are obvious shortcomings to the unbiased. With RTA, just like the Opportunity Corridor, it is people like Angie Schmidt and others who are asking important questions who attacked (by UOers and others) as whiners or whatever while our leaders getting to do what they want without question, even when what they are doing does not appear to be in the public interest...

C'mon KLJP, don't sugarcoat this. No system closes over half of the entire system for entire weekends like RTA does. Especially with how frequently RTA does it (and with little warning). No system has no provision for disabled riders or riders with strollers, etc., for 3 months at their busiest station. RTA seems to be intentionally sabotaging their rail system. And those "temporary" bus replacement signs at the rapid stops? I bet they spent so much on those because those will be the norm soon. Maybe they're planning for the future after they don't have enough rail cars? This!

On that, I would agree with you...and Philly's SEPTA isn't without it's colossal screw-ups, like buying the Hyundai-Rotem Regional Rail fleet to replace half the old Pensy cars, only to find those 6-year-old cars with fatigue cracks in their wheel systems due to improper welding forcing the cars' shutdown -- half the fleet; causing drastically reduced schedules... along with serious havoc and P.O.'d passengers... Clearly such incompetency afflicts many transit systems.

Not in Philly, and it's much older than RTA.