clvlndr

It's a municipal lot, ... as in owned by the City. Make it available. That's easy enough, and the City would reap the tax windfall.

With all the recent talk of keeping buses out of the middle of Public Square and, now, a potential outlet store adjacent to Burke Lakefront Airport, a thought occurred: why not terminate RTA's far NE bus lines, like the # 39 buses from Lake Shore Blvd, Euclid, Bratenahl and the like at the 2 outer Waterfront Line Rapid stops? Looking at Google Earth, there's a partial cloverleaf ramps to/from the Shoreway that feed Muny Lot directly to Marginal Road which both feeds into the Lot but goes right by the WFL's South Harbor terminal and continues to the North Coast Station at E. 9th. There is an existing bus shelter at South Harbor and one could easily be built facing away from the North Coast station's Eastbound/outbound platform toward Marginal Road. Bus riders disembarking at North Coast can follow the route of rail passengers up through the station and right to East 9th street which puts you directly at the Federal building, North Point, City Hall and Erieview buildings -- other buildings, hotels and complexes are a short walk from there... If riders wanted to travel to Public Square/Tower City/Gateway or the Warehouse District ... there's the Rapid, of course. But as folks have noted (largely in trashing the Waterfront Line) downtown is very compact and walking most places is quick. Aside from WFL trains, there are the free Trolley routes as well. After the #39s deposited/picked up passengers at these 2 Rapid stations, they could loop back to the Shoreway via E. 9th or turn around at the Amtrak Lot, and double back via Marginal Road to the Shoreway. Why not? Yeah, I know -- as spoiled Clevelanders, 39 bus riders would scream about their sudden lack of direct bus circulation but, really as I noted, the transit facilities for getting them around downtown -- as well as their feet, are readily available per such a plan. And the beauty of this plan is that, aside from the very cheap cost of say 1 additional bus shelter at the North Coast/E. 9th Rapid station (even if it's needed at all), there would be no additional costs; all the facilities are in place NOW. Bus fuel would be saved and the 39 buses would be eliminated from downtown streets. As it is, all the #39 buses travel into the center of town and partially loop Public Square -- they probably are slated to travel through the middle of the Square via Superior which is a source for discussion and disagreement. ... this like what I said in the Lakefront thread re locating the proposed outlet stores to Muny Lot instead of next to Burke, ... makes too much sense.

Why aren't the outlets aren't considering the Muny Lot itself instead? There you've got a sea of surface parking -- it is a parking lot, after all -- and adjacent empty land to the east where parking could be expanded if need be. There's Shoreway access and the Waterfront Line Rapid station directly adjacent to it -- you wouldn't even need a bridge over the Shoreway for WFL riders... The Muny Lot is huge and, I'm sure, would be more than sufficient for a very large outlet mall/shopping center... Seems to make too much sense.

^^But the OC and transit stuff is legit, in addition to the fact that in many cases local businesses, like bars and restaurants, lost money rather than made it during the RNC.

^Yeah, that was pretty weak. They said the RNC would be a boost in economy and image -- but by no means, a magic bullet.

Should the Celtics consider free agent J.R. Smith? Chris Forsberg ESPN Staff Writer When asked last week what areas his team might target while finalizing roster construction, Boston Celtics coach Brad Stevens said, "Shooting is always going to be a priority." The bad news for Boston: The remaining free-agent crop is thin on proven shooters. But there is one particularly polarizing name available: J.R. Smith. ESPN Insider's Kevin Pelton recently ranked Smith the No. 1 remaining free agentInsider and, while addressing his market, wrote: "The question is whether Smith can find a suitor to force the Cavaliers to pay him what he wants. He doesn't really make a lot of sense for any of the teams with significant cap space remaining, though if the Boston Celtics renounce the rights to Tyler Zeller they could offer Smith a one-year deal worth nearly $12 million to supply shooting they need." http://espn.go.com/blog/boston/celtics/post/_/id/4723639/should-the-celtics-consider-free-agent-j-r-smith

Good for the NBA! Screw North Carolina with it's right-wing, knuckle-dragging pols.

Why the RNC Won’t Do a Thing for Cleveland The city has poured civic energy and hundreds of millions of dollars into the event. It’s unlikely to get much back. By Alex Baca Two upcoming megaprojects include a new downtown courthouse and jail, and the Opportunity Corridor: a 3.5-mile, $331 million boulevard that will essentially make it much easier for Cleveland Clinic staffers to bypass some of the city’s poorest, blackest neighborhoods. This is to say nothing of the region’s transportation woes. The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority has cut routes, raised fares, and will likely lose $18 million annually beginning in 2017. Though public transit was a key factor in attracting the RNC, the state doesn’t even want to fund it. (The Fiscal Times estimates the RNC will cost $114 million, half of which will be covered by taxpayers—that number alone could’ve vanquished the GCRTA’s budget gap.) http://www.slate.com/articles/business/metropolis/2016/07/the_republican_national_convention_was_supposed_to_boost_cleveland_it_probably.html

I'm not wild about this proposal because, even though it would represent large-scale retail and likely to attract a lot of people, it would be located at the fringes of downtown it would pull people away from the core Euclid/Prospect corridor which is the natural location for retail given this area's density, transit access and high walkability. You know Clevelanders: give them a major shopping center, a freeway access and substantial available parking, and you can envision many folks driving in, shopping, and leaving without interacting at all with downtown. That said, if this project is built at Burke, I would favor a bridge over the Muny Lot and Shoreway connecting Burke and the outlets with the South Harbor terminal of Waterfront Rapid line. And since it would service shoppers and some air travelers, I'd recommend this bridge to be covered and temperature controlled.

Your source sounds credible, all right.... All I can say is, it's par for the course.

Pretty cool realizing that places like Public Square and East 4th Street are now nationally historical landmarks seared into the national consciousness. NBA fans already know of the Q and, of course, E. 4th is also known to them as the outdoor venue for ESPN/ABC Sports. Btw MSNBC took over E. 4th and practically made it theirs during the convention with their covered reporters' booth and huge video flatscreens overhead. As cleveland.com's Mark Naymick quipped, it made E. 4th seem like a mini Times Square... For a while when MSNBC was switching back and forth to reporters inside the Q and on E. 4th, they were labeling the "East 4th Street." However, during the last night, especially during the Trump speech when they switched to the crowd, they were calling it "MSNBC Alley" above the popular "East 4th Street" logo that MRN, Ltd uses... How cool was that?

Sometimes its our own inferiority complex that gets in the way, to wit from the Fortune magazine, otherwise positive, article: “We still feel we are known as the Mistake by the Lake,” said Eric, a 30-something Uber driver who has lived in Cleveland for his entire life. “Politicians have been talking about how the RNC would help the city financially, but most of us were mostly worried about making a good impression. We’re obviously not a vacation destination, but maybe people will go back home and say that Cleveland is a good place to hold their next, smaller, convention.” http://fortune.com/2016/07/21/the-one-thing-republicans-can-agree-on-in-cleveland/

My thinking exactly.

It's interesting that Cleveland punted on the subway, open up the Square to people in 1919, the late 50s and mid 90s, with each generation kicking the can down the road to future generations. While maybe a subway proposal isn't now the issue, per se, seeking the balance between the pedestrian and transit still is with the sudden transformation of PS into a place that actually attracts people. These challenges never really go away no matter how much we wish they would.

We should get Al on board for a Twitter campaign asking the Mayor and all of council to use public transit for one month. #leadbyexample That would be nice, since Mayor Jackson grew up in Central? Kinsman? either of which are the poorest, most transit-dependent districts. Of course we couldn't get Jane Campbell to ride the Rapid either. Jane grew up in Shaker Heights: home of the Shaker Rapid, and when she was mayor, lived on Drexmore, a block from the Blue Line which could have taken her to within a block of her City Hall office on the Waterfront Line to North Coast... She never did, preferring her chauffeured limo to City Hall... ... so whether you're poor from the transit-dependent hood or middle/upper middle class from a transit friendly suburb and live near rail, the ongoing Cleveland narrative is to love freeways and hate transit. Albert S. Porter must be smiling in his grave.

Interestingly it rained Sunday morning but was great after that. All pluses for Cleveland.

God I love that overhead shot of TT... Trump may have won the nomination, but Cleveland won the convention, hands down.

As I noted in another thread, Al friggin Roker Tweeted video from his Red Line trip in from Ohio City/WSM... Roker of course rode the trains when he lived/worked here in the early 80s. Still, he's Al Roker, a high-profile national celeb (who is big enough to even have a notable Seinfeld cameo-- ironically on the NYC subway) who could order any limo he wanted...but he opted for the Red Line.

What evidence do you have that none of the delegates are using RTA? In fact, I've seen evidence that they have been using it. The article makes clear that the heavy rider losses is due to workers teleworking or otherewise avoiding going into work during the RNC.

[Note: Al Roker's Red Line video tweet over the Flats; he was hoping over into downtown from the WSM in Ohio City; nothing new for Al; he used to ride the Blue Line home after his nightly weather casts at WKYC during the 80's.] RTA running smoothly during the RNC By Ginger Christ, The Plain Dealer Email the author | Follow on Twitter on July 21, 2016 at 9:10 AM, updated July 21, 2016 at 9:11 AM CLEVELAND, Ohio – With 50,000 people coming into town for the Republican National Convention, the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority was prepared for crowds to fill its trains, buses and trolleys to the brim. That was not the case. Unlike during the Cleveland Cavaliers parade, when RTA set ridership records with 500,000 people using public transit to get downtown, the week of the RNC has been relatively slow. http://www.cleveland.com/rnc-2016/index.ssf/2016/07/rta.html#incart_maj-story-1

I wonder what people think about trading prospects to get an arm or bat before the trading deadline... Chris Fedor makes the salient point that, trading away prospects would be especially harmful and counter intuitive to a small market, limited budget team like the Indians who, in recent years, have been especially strong in developing its homegrown young talent... Makes sense to me.

^^btw for those not familiar with Boston, Boston Commons is a central, grassy, serene public park not unlike our Public Square... The Commons is somewhat larger than Public Square.

^btw, this ties into the Health Line LRT conversion discussed before which I raised yesterday in the RTA thread. It is STILL a viable idea especially with downtown's amazing growth (let's not talk about how congested it's going to get when both nuCLEus and Weston come online) as well as the amazing instant popularity of our new Public Square.

Not to open old wounds, but the idea you mention sounds very much like the CTS subway proposal of the 1950s, which was approved by the voters: separate bus terminals to at the edges of downtown whereby bus riders could transfer to subway trains to complete their journey to PS or other locations around downtown ... or simply walk to those places. The goal was the same: remove the high concentration and congestion of buses from Public Square. Boston Commons is an example of a successful bus-train distribution (originally streetcar-train) plan that's been working for over a century. If you observe Boston Commons during rush hour, you hardly even see a T bus at all... In fact, I did so for 15-20 minutes one time and saw none. The only buses I saw was a tour bus here and there. Unfortunately Albert S. Porter killed such plans here in Cleveland and, as we're discussing today, his actions still haunt downtown nearly 60 years later.

Bump Glad you brought this up. The idea of converting the Health Line to LRT, dropping it into a subway into Tower City and out the lower deck of the Detroit-Superior (Veteran's Memorial) Bridge makes a helluva lot of sense. As KJP revealed in his extensive presentations from years past, there is ample existing infrastructure to facilitate such a project that would make it waaaay cheaper than if built from scratch. Health Line trains would be diverted from Euclid to Huron at PHS then drop down through the (grade separated) Huron subway-connector into Tower City. Consider that the above article reveals that the old Shaker Rapid station is extant and, in fact, will be used during the Tower City construction. This station and its access tracks are on the north side of Tower City's rail station complex -- making it closest to both the Huron connector and the Det-Superior subway deck (than the existing Rapid tracks) meaning the Health Line service could be segregated from the current Blue, Green, Red and Waterfront Lines. Thus with a working Shaker Rapid station in Tower City, the extant Huron subway-connector to the east and the (also extant) Detroit-Superior subway deck to the west, Health Line LRTs could be brought into Tower City RIGHT NOW... Such a move, with buses feeding into this new Health Line LRT and, thus, the elimination of their need to enter Cleveland's CBD core would fundamentally alter RTA's current transit network ... for the better!