mu2010

They always say Central Park is the most valuable real estate in the world if it could be developed, which is probably true, so I'm not sure the two are mutually exclusive. A lakefront park which stretches from east to west would by far be the best use of the lake and tremendously enhance the appeal of Cleveland.

" We have a pro-business enviornment™ "

Nice graphic. I never realized Burke was larger than Meigs.

I've said this on this thread several times and so I am a broken record, but imagine what opening up that land for development would do to development in our actual existing neighborhoods in a region that's losing population. It'd suck the energy right out of Ohio City and create some sort of Crocker Park-like, economically segregated, car dependent zone, separated from the rest of the city by a freeway, railroad tracks, and an industrial neighborhood. With zero old buildings or existing infrastructure, it'd have zero businesses that weren't corporate chains. Please God no. The only thing that should happen to the airport is to turn it into a park, if it ever closes. I say no development North of the Shoreway, ala Chicago.

Do you have those numbers for Lakewood and Cleveland Heights? I'd be interested to add those two to CLE's total, because I think they get a lot of that population, where in Cbus and in Cincy they mostly go to the city proper.

People in real estate right now, both local and national, think that a very slow economic recovery means a "soft landing." i.e. the next economic downturn will be nice and easy breezy.

I grew up after their heyday, but I was definitely aware of them, and now that YouTube is a thing, my Dad likes to show me all their old sketches from the 70s ;D

Atlanta's success is no accident, it was planned and executed by the leadership at the time, as was Austin's, while most of the country stood still.

My undergrad loans, I believe, were amortized over 10 or 12 years. Not sure what was different and why some over over 15, 20, or more years. I was in school from '06-'10, I paid off the loans early and was done by the end of '15. The government loans were around 6% fixed and I also had a private bank student loan that was variable, but always around 4% after the recession.

The increases are largely due to an arms race among colleges for the newest and fanciest facilities. It's a tremendous waste of resources and the cost of it all is being passed on to 18 year olds in the form of debt that will take 15 years to pay off.

Name recognition typically is beneficial to a candidate's polling, even in today's anti-establishment environment. Furthermore, Cordray's won statewide elections before, so I wouldn't say he's unknown. Dewine is definitely more well known though. The poll results are very interesting but it will take a few more polls to figure out what's really going on.

For comparison, here is the current layout. This is such a weird project. On one hand they are adding a much larger, much more urban-designed building, but on the other, they're keeping just as much parking as before, and the way it's setup, it's just like a much larger strip mall than before. There is zero street interaction with any of the nearby roads and is incredibly unfriendly to anything but cars. There's nothing really that makes this attractive to the potential residents, IMO. Where are they going to go? I guess this is not surprising considering Don Casto Sr. was one of the original creators of the strip mall, so they're sticking with what they know. I suppose they could build on some of that surface parking at a later date, but as it stands, it's another letdown for me personally. Columbus desperately needs some serious urban developers. This is how a lot of Cbus development on the West side of the Olentangy has gone. Urban looking building, completely car-oriented and suburban in actual nature. They are finally starting to figure out how to do it correctly on Fifth Ave.

I think ethlaw was asking not about who Dan Gilbert is, but about my assertion that we're going to (hopefully) get a bigger piece of the Gilbert pie.

Yup. I arrived here in Rome Sunday. Arriving Rome on a Sunday wasn't a good idea. Most of the passport controllers don't work on Sunday. It took 90 minutes to get through passport control. We couldn't find our luggage as our flight was no longer displayed on the correct baggage carousel. So we had to find a working airport personnel to find the right carousel. Fortunately our bags were near the top of the pile! So yes, there's always an airport that has it worse than Cleveland. I have redeye'd into Milan twice with no issue, but never flew into Rome internationally. However, last year departing Milan on WOW Air, ran into an issue where the flight left at 11 PM (not a common time for long westward flights out of Europe) and there were no other departing flights at that time so the airport was essentially shut down. We thought we were going to eat once we arrived and got checked in, but after security we wandered around for and discovered there was no food other than duty-free shop. We bought proscuitto, breadsticks, and hazelnut wafers. But there were no drinks (other than booze). We then wandered every inch of the airport concourse available to us for another half an hour and found not even a drinking fountain. Finally, an employee let us into the back room and we used an employee vending machine to get bottles of water. We sat down to eat. Technically it's illegal to eat your food from duty-free until you get home, but we ripped open the plastic bag they sealed our stuff in, and ate up. Such is life in Italy - you have to be creative at times. So if any of you take WOW and depart Europe late at night, beware, the airport could be very dead, eat before you get there. Anyways have a great time KJP[/member], make sure to ride those fast trains.

Nope, just that Bedrock has been investing more here, May Co, Tower City, etc. They moved that guy here from Detroit to manage the Cleveland holdings. Seemed to me like a sign of more to come. I did hear that they don't yet know what to do with the mall, but that Gilbert doesn't mind if it is a "loss leader."

Well, supposedly we're going to start getting a [bigger] piece of that...

Even if they had the money to do it themselves, the City would still be burdened by their own baloney procurement processes for hiring architects, contractors, furniture, technology, etc.... no way. Doing what they did was the only way to get the deal done Thing is, those baloney procurement processes were implemented by reformers in the Progressive Era to try to curb corruption. Whether or not they've succeeded at that is up for debate, but I would say they have been at least partially successful if you go and read up on the Tammany Hall era. If you got rid of the red tape, the public officials now have the ability to buy whatever they want from whoever they want whenever they want. AKA - reward all their buddies. This is the way it used to be. Not to say that it doesn't happen at all today or that there aren't ways to game the process, but it certainly helps. I think it's a common trope in our society to complain about government corruption and red tape, as if they are the same, but in fact they are opposite. Nobody wants to remember, or people were never educated in the first place, on why the red tape was put into place. All I'm really saying is that everything is a trade-off. The way this building was done is definitely a good way to do it - this way there is only one burdensome procurement process instead of hundreds, but cost savings are still achieved through a competitive bid process between landlords.

That's a really interesting article. I've lived all over the midwest and while I'm excited for the future of Cleveland, it's got a big uphill battle compared to Columbus or Indy or even Detroit at this point. Many things to point at as obstacles but I truly think the 50-some municipalities is a big road block. I deal with real estate projects that compete from Wickliffe to Highland Hills to Solon to Bedford.... every 2 bit mayor and economic dev official wants to land a project regardless if it makes sense for their community or not... meanwhile places like Medina are growing simply because they have land, nothing else. How do you change all that??? well it's going to take a big hand to come down & force the matter. I thought Kasich started the process but it seems to have stalled. We should be ahead of Detroit but bankruptcy was a bit of a clean slate for them and now they have an absolutely phenomenal mayor in Mike Duggan who is doing a bang-up job.

I wasn't talking about corruption so much as stagnation, and the way the electoral system is set up and where the lines are drawn can definitely lead to this. A decentralized system of government with too many individual suburbs and wards and counties, politicians given all incentive to squabble with each other instead of bring the region forward definitely brings stagnation.

I agree with 327[/member] and I'll go further. It's not the individual leaders. They're probably a bit lacking in vision, but it's the fragmented system they work under that is the problem. That is the issue with "throw the bums out." It makes people feel good but you just get a whole new class of "bums."

It's possible. Right now I would imagine East Cleveland is seen as far to risky to try to work in or work with. If Cleveland annexed it, it would probably take some time to get things to relative stability but, given the proximity to University Circle, I'd think development would happen.

East Cleveland likely wouldn't be able to provide the necessary services/infrastructure/support/etc.

One other thing - In my opinion, it's a cop-out to always blame "leaders." Larkin would never say this in the Plain Dealer, but the reality is that leaders are a reflection of the people they are leading. Many people in this region, unfortunately, tend to be sheltered and unimaginative. Maybe this is due to decades of stagnation - all the people that aren't like that keep leaving. But there you have it.

Ouch. Sad but true.

Columbus is very High Street focused, to its benefit and to its detriment. High Street is great but there needs to be other corridors. Summit/4th will hopefully burgeon. German Village is nice because of all the corner businesses. Kind of lacking in other parts of the city.