mu2010

Personally, I don't see how you could put Bieber in the same sentence as Swift and Gaga, but I'm not going to try to convince you because I can tell you feel strongly about this.

I have family scattered around the Aurora/Hudson/Twinsburg/Streetsboro/Macedonia area and they always considered themselves Clevelanders, most of them commuting to jobs in Cuyahoga County. I actually don't know of any of them who go to Akron. Meanwhile I know some people from Cuyahoga County who go to Akron General Hospital for work. Akron and Cleveland are definitely more intertwined than Cincy and Dayton by simple virtue of the fact that they are closer. Hamilton County doesn't touch Montgomery County whereas Cuyahoga touches Summit. Dayton definitely has a larger degree of independence from Cincy than Akron has from Cleveland. This is obvious to anyone who has spent any time in either area. (Some Akron partisans stubbornly insist they're different, like LeBron circa 2010.) I don't really know what the argument is about though... An MSA or CSA is just a thing invented by the census bureau. I guess it could help raise the profile of these MSAs if they consolidated.

True, but in Cleveland's case, you'd have to go pretty far out to change the median. The vast majority of Lakewood, East Cleveland, Cleveland Heights, and Shaker Heights were all built in the 1930s or earlier. I think that's his point - city limits are quite arbitrary and differ greatly from metro area to metro area Yes, but I think he was insinuating that the difference in median age between Columbus and Cleveland is due to this factor. I was simply stating that even if you include more areas adjacent to Cleveland, the median age likely doesn't change. Ah ok I see what you mean... Cleveland MSA is probably older than Columbus MSA no matter where the city limits are.

^yes, unfortunately we don't have enough existing transit commuters for a company to want to build in an area solely on the basis of transit connectivity. Creating a developable area with great road and great transit connectivity is probably the best move they can make... as long as the transit isn't totally ignored.

True, but in Cleveland's case, you'd have to go pretty far out to change the median. The vast majority of Lakewood, East Cleveland, Cleveland Heights, and Shaker Heights were all built in the 1930s or earlier. I think that's his point - city limits are quite arbitrary and differ greatly from metro area to metro area

^yes, the "opportunity" they are talking about is a chance to leverage routine highway funds to improve a long-neglected area while still serving the car transportation goals. It just has to be done right, ie, not in the manner that the highway projects of the 1950s and 1960s were done, totally ignoring everything the highway travels through. That obviously isn't what was done. They've planned it all relatively decently, now it's just a matter of the execution. For me the fact that the road travels by five RTA stations is reason enough to get excited. They'd just better have great bike path/ pedestrian connections to those stations. Now if UC institutions build offices/facilities along the opportunity corridor, they are connected to the rapid better than the existing UC is, and making the east side rapid lines all of a sudden very well placed.

Connecting to Goodale, right at the point where Goodale meets Vine and crosses over the 670 ramps, would be the best way to connect the area to residential neighborhoods to the the north. Looks like there is a mess of freight rail tracks, highway underpasses, and probably swampy land (isn't that plot near vine & neil some kind of sewer district thing?) to connect through.

Such a quiet, strange part of town back there on W. Nationwide. I lived half a mile away for five years, often went running around the area, and I've only ever been back there one time. It's probably good for a stadium because I feel like it's kind of out of the way for other types of development that wouldn't be as much of a destination.

You don't hear about it much up here, because the conversation is totally different in Greater Cleveland as it isn't a high growth area. You hear a lot of discussion about how to manage "no-growth sprawl" and population decline. So I don't really know what kinds of projections are even out there.

^^ That is very cool

If you are looking for industrial buildings, check out the areas around Superior Ave and St Clair Ave (and some parts you can go further north, try Hamilton Ave or Lakeside Ave) between downtown and E. 55th St. It's just a small slice but it's the first thing that comes to mind.

This is an American thing, not sure if it's more prominent in certain regions more than others, but I once hung out with an Australian guy who made fun of Americans for this. I say uuu hmmm a lot when people thank me.

I grew up here and live here now and I notice it all the time, but I lived in Columbus for five years and four years in college in Oxford before that, so my accent is pretty moderated nowadays. I tell Clevelanders about the accent all the time and they enjoy hearing about it, but I would say most native Clevelanders are pretty unaware of it. It's typically most prominent on local radio and TV commercials for blue collar-esque business like any kind of contractor or a car dealership. Jeeyaaapanese Cahhhcktail guy is also a pretty extreme example. The "a" in "Japanese" is often mentioned as the prominent feature of the CLE accent, but the "o" (pronounced aahhhh) in "cocktail" or "job" is just as significant.

Media market is a separate thing from MSA, one is set up by the FCC and the other by the census bureau. It's obvious to anyone who lives here that Akron is quite well intertwined with Cleveland just based on the amount of people who commute from one to the other. Cleveland is less so intertwined with other parts of what is referred to as "Northeast Ohio" such as Youngstown. We are all talking about about arbitrary lines on a map here but it would be nice if they could combine the two MSAs because it would benefit the region.

It looks awesome from the other side of the RTA tracks as well, you can see it from Mayfield Road if you are hanging out in Little Italy, it looks great and really adds to the dense feel of the area. This is probably my favorite development in Cleveland the past couple of years. I remember reading this thread when I first starting reading UO regularly 3-4 years ago and being excited about this one, and I think it is living up to expectations. Hopefully they get some great tenants.

I just hope they don't call it opportunity blvd or something stupid like that. Akron has opportunity parkway and I always thought it was lame and desperate sounding. If you have to name your roads "opportunity," your city probably doesn't have much of it. University Blvd could be nice...

Many people can't get past the idea that it's another highway and I often hear people poo-poo the project. They are rigid in their standards. But I think the way the city recognized that the road is happening, drove a relatively hard bargain (some say not hard enough, but there will always be some who say that), got major concessions that should help to improve the area, transit (which the area has excellent access to) and bike lanes are being acknowledged. I think it's politically savvy of them the way they are trying to handle it, and I wish it the best. Execution matters of course so we will see what comes of it, but city leadership is saying all the right things about it.

^The level of competition is very high, so anybody reaching the level of success that Bill Belichik has, and to sustain it as long as he has, well, he's doing something right. Obviously not just him, the front office would need to get their credit too.

I could not agree more with you about espn and sports talk. There just simply isn't enough things to say about sports to fill the enormous amount of airtime they have to fill, so they are stuck rambling on and on about trivial things and also drumming up controversy.

I brought up this issue the other day in the Cleveland Lakefront thread when we were discussing what kind of development should happen there. I think preexisting neighborhoods with aged buildings and more organic growth are just going to be more interesting than these planned city type things. The Banks is nice, it's probably great for visitors, Smale Riverfront Park is great, but this story should be a caution to any city looking to develop a 'prime' area to not overdo it.

I was at this ULI real estate market panel a few weeks ago in Cleveland and they were talking about how teleworking might bring some kind of "leveling off" of the coastal metros and the great lakes and other smaller interior metros.

I imagine OhioHealth is better. Call me naive but I'd much rather go to an academic, non-profit, faith-based, or research hospital than a Wall Street-owned hospital any day, I'm glad we have strong nonprofit health systems in Ohio. As for our rural/community hospitals, better they are gobbled up by the Clinic and OhioHealth than HCA.

Oh my gosh, imagine if we had a public transportation system that could do that! wait a minute...

I guess I'm okay with a small amount of food and shops and residences and whatever in North Coast Harbor, but I'm highly persuaded by the idea that most of the land is better off as a nice public park. I think at the end of the day the lake itself is a better attraction than any street food or bar can be. If we keep building up the downtown population, provide a NICE park on the lake, and provide a nice way(s) to get there, people will go. It may not become a hub of economic activity but the economic activity in downtown will benefit from people wanting to live there because they have access to the lake. Remember, other than the Navy Pier and one condo building, there is no development in Chicago east of Lake Shore Drive. Cincy has done a pretty good job balancing it, with the Banks and the Smale Riverfront Park. Talk about bridges, we need a bridge over the river from Wendy Park so we could have a multipurpose trail from Edgewater to Downtown, that would be sweet.

Yeah I think that's pretty much what we meant.