mu2010

I am a fan of the signage. I have not been over there since the feast so will need to go check it out.

https://goo.gl/maps/uWSRvzffAm42 Is this the place you guys are talking about? I walk by there regularly but have never really noticed it, I am oblivious sometimes. I will have to check it out next time.

Yeah I wish we could avoid these constant QB controversies. They end up ripping the team apart every time.

Would like to add, I have ridden suburban buses to the end of the line on the east side (#9, #32) many times and those are usually crowded too. The empty buses thing is just something people who don't ride buses say. And that's not even mentioning all the empty roads in the area that I could point out...

Did the land Burke sits on even exist 100 years ago? The question is not whether a park can be considered the highest and best use of urban space. You are right, Central Park is proof that it can.:) But is it the best use for Burke. Central Park is surrounded on all sides by millions of people within walking, biking, and transit distance. Tell me what similarities you see with it and Burke, which is bounded by the lake to the North and 1000 feet of highway and rail to the south. Maybe if we see the political will to downgrade to the Shoreway to an at-grade road, create a street grid to improve access and allow significant development, I'd be all for it. When I say that Burke should have been park, I don't mean necessarily that specific piece of reclaimed land - what I mean is that the lakefront in Cleveland, from east to west, should have been reserved as parkland. You don't need NYC densities to get a good use of a park. Many low density oceanfront, riverfront, lakefront places reserve the waterfront for nature and parkland. I mentioned Chicago and Milwaukee as examples, but you don't even have to go that far to see a successful lakefront park in a city with a lower density than NYC. All you have to do is look a few miles away, at about W. 78th St. I agree with others who have said existing neighborhoods should be the priority. I recognize that this is no easy project nor is it an overnight project, but it should absolutely be the long-term vision, IMO.

Maybe you will be able to get the mayor's attention with this example.

And a park is? Is Central Park the highest and best use for a huge chunk of uptown Manhattan? I would say so. Cleveland's lakefront should have been reserved as parkland 100 years ago and it should still be reserved as parkland today. It was done in peer Great Lakes cities of Chicago and Milwaukee and it should have been done here and still should be. I'm a little more sympathetic to Burke in general, I recognize the difficulty in closing an airport and the fact that we have other neighborhoods to develop, but at the end of the day, it should have been a park. At least a chunk of it closest to the lake.

The sign for the Ohio City Galley food hall is up at 25th/Detroit (former Massimo da Milano), and they look like they're moving kitchen equipment in today. Anybody know when this thing is slated to open?

I will settle this debate right now. Browns fans and Browns front office leadership are both terrible.

Congrats tastybunns[/member].

I think you are correct. Scroll to page 152 of this book (https://books.google.com/books?id=IT1NVT1vEwUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false) and you will find the following. Start at the third paragraph. The West Bank was owned by private developers as part of independent Ohio City. When the City leased the canal bed to the B&O, the B&O must have separately purchased this land... and built their bridges to connect it with the rest of the right-of-way.

Here's some historical nuggets about the area in response to some discussion on the "Random Quick Questions" thread that probably belonged in this thread. KJP[/member] A few pictures I took recently of the Nautica parking lots where the old railroad tracks/rights-of-way are clearly visible. They are causing the pavement to crack. And one of the jackknife bridge river crossing, and what remains of the tracks:

Very cool. That would be such a great thing to have that railway reach Downtown CLE. More info to come?

Is it legal to do hemp products now? Crains says in the article it's long been illegal, but mentions nothing about current legal status. Edit- PD article explains it.

"Bitcoin was never that great" -Andrew Cuomo

I get that parking's an issue but it annoys me when Channel 19 can go and do this story on a TOD, talk about parking problems, and not mention the RTA station that sits on the property at all.

Knowing nothing about the company, the vibe I picked up from the article is that they really wanted that building. We are entering the era of adaptive reuse of big box stores - which will be a boom for the Eastlakes of the world.

The only time we fought the Canadians we lost. It seems that everything's gone wrong since Canada came along

No different than what many cities/regions do for many industries, to be honest. I'd rather have us give this a try than not.

I wonder about their other locations. There is one by CSU and I've seen a few in the suburbs, but if you can't make it in Lakewood I doubt you're doing great elsewhere. I am pretty ambivalent on the place.

^^ by the way, the reason the blue line came to be city owned is because it is essentially the path of the final 2.5 miles of the Ohio and Erie Canal. When the canal was abandoned the city leased it to the Valley Railroad which became part of the B&O. Another fun fact I've learned is that present day sycamore slip used to be the "sycamore street canal" all the way through to where the current jackknife bridge is behind the Nautica pavilion, aligning with the end of the O&E canal.

1984: 1986:

KJP[/member] - found another article from 1988 that tells the second half of that story. The city sued in 1986 to get the land back. The city said CSX had abandoned and CSX said they didn't. So that's why there was no news article - CSX was trying to get abandon it secretly. The article says the two parties settled and the deal was that the city didn't get all the land back, they settled for just the section from Merwin to Columbus, aka future canal basin park. CSX must have quietly sold the West Bank to Nautica. So I think you were exactly right about 1982 being the date of closure. Interestingly, there are articles from that summer about Chessie abandoning the Painesville-Warren section you mentioned but nothing about the Flats - it was probably hush-hush due to this deal with the City.

Thanks, KJP[/member]. I think I just found an article that proves it was open as of 1978. Interesting piece of history here. Still having a hard time finding news of the abandonment but I'm determined to find it now...

Sanborns show the old setup - it was known sometimes as the "sycamore docks" and had a direct connection from river/lake to the B&O (later C&O or Chessie) via the jacknife/bascule bridge (#463, reconstructed in 1956 so they only got maybe 15 or 20 years of use out of it). Jeff Jacobs bought the Powerhouse in 1983 or 1984 and christened his development "Nautica" in 1985. He bought the Coast Guard Station a few years later and Shooters went in. Nobody at the PD ever apparently found it interesting enough to write an article about the land that would become the parking lots, so no info about when the railroad abandoned the area... and how that land ended up in Jacobs' hands. Slide #22 here is exactly what I'm talking about: http://canalwaypartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/canal-basin-history-presentation.pdf "By By 1970, B&O Railroad is consolidated with several other lines and the connection near Merwin Street is eventually abandoned." I'm just looking for a bit more detail on exactly that. Will keep looking.