Triumph36

Only 0-7? You do know they play the Pats after the bye, then the Jets, right? 0-9 seems more likely, lol. The Browns might only be the favorite 1 or 2 times this season :drunk:

The two men who were arrested were likely drunk and acted like idiots. The only reason it received so much publicity is because the two men were black. If they were white, it's a non-issue. Drunk idiots of all races are going to be at almost every club sooner or later, and I don't really see that as a problem as long as it is contained fairly well (ie: no huge riot-esque fights breaking out, no weapons, etc). That seems to be the case with the people who are actually allowed to enter the clubs. With the loitering and fights caused by the loiterers though, why can't you put the cost on one owner? The loiterers don't seem to be coming out of other clubs at the end of the night. They are staying outside all night. If a single club is attracting the 16yo demographic, why should other owners pay? Again, I'm not talking about the fights started by drunken idiots...those happen in all club areas and can usually be contained by the normal security in the area. I just don't see why other owners should be responsible for problems caused by the crowd a certain club is attracting. And it's pretty clear that club IS attracting those people, even if they aren't old enough to enter it. Anyway, this is appearing in the PD again, with focus on the affect this is having on residents and businesses in the area. http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/09/as_the_warehouse_district_roar.html The first half of the article is troubling, but the end is fairly encouraging. I just hope the city handles the problems without worrying about the reaction from the NAACP or whoever else.

It's kind of a tough situation IMO. For the police to handle it, they would need more officers, which either a) takes away officers from other areas, or b) forces officers who were supposed to be off to come in every Friday, Saturday, and possibly Sunday night for the warmer months. With the first choice, that obviously makes other parts of the city more vulnerable, so that should be avoided. The second option is better, but forcing someone to come in when they were supposed to be off is kind of unfair to them especially if the problem is stemming from a lone club. Plus this problem lasts all throughout the warmer months. If it were a one-time event that required increased security, that would be different. But to require increased security every weekend for months because of the clientele a single club is attracting....eh, kinda tough. If they aren't going to close the club, I think at least making the owner of Lust pay for the police would be a step in the right direciton. But do you think he would be open to that? Obviously it would take more money out of his pocket....so I'm guessing he'd pull the race card again and make a big fuss out of it like he did before. If he wouldn't object to paying, then sure, make him pay for the police (or try to shut it down if he refuses).

Well, it seems you either hold the owner accountable or have to have a significantly increased police presence in the area. St. Louis went with the former and Cleveland went with the latter. Perhaps Cleveland opted to go with the latter because there weren't any gunshots (as far as I know?) so making the case would've been more difficult. I'm still slightly confused as to why the city let the owner of Lust change to a dance club even though the lease explicitly said it was for a restaurant - and then they extended it! Oh well. It's hard to compare the efficacy of each course of action now because the weather is getting worse, but it'll be interesting to see what happens in the respective areas once it warms up again.

It surround by undesirable areas? MSA of Chicago increased? The weather in Cleveland is worse than MINNEAPOLIS OR MILWAUKEE??? Are you kidding me? :wtf: :wtf: :wtf: Yes? It's in the fourth district. The same fourth district that had the most homicides last year - 49. Granted, the bodies from the Howell case are included, but even without those it'd be at 38. The second worst district had 24. The little development itself may be safe, but the areas around it? Erm, not so much. According to the census estimates here, the Chicago-Naperville-Joliet MSA increased in population. By 5.3% to be exact. The city of Chicago itself lost people (-1.5% according to city-data estimations), but the MSA did not. Assuming you are factoring in more than the temperature, yes, I'd say the weather is worse. Cleveland has a slightly higher average temperature, but as WestBLVD pointed out Cleveland also has more snow and more cloudy days overall (I didn't even realize the differential in cloudy days until now - quite depressing).

You might be right about some of those areas, but the Mill Creek development is in Garfield Heights, not exactly a suburb on the rise (quite the opposite), so of course homes are only 79k there. As far as fixing the downward trend for the region, I have no idea. It's obvious why people are leaving areas that have issues with education, crime, and poverty. Those areas account for absolutely huge parts of the city itself, which is a serious problem. But why are they leaving the nicer suburbs outside of Cleveland too? If nicer places like Lakewood, Shaker Heights, Fairview Park, Beachwood (and the list goes on...) can't even keep people.....then how in the world can you turn an entire region around? Mill Creek is in Cleveland. But with regards to the region. I think looking at population loss across different cities tells the story. It's not really about schools and crime. People are fleeing at the same rate regardless of their municipality. I think a lot has to do with weather. In this day and age, with a national and global society, people can choose where they want to live. And since 90% of American's don't like cold and snow, they choose to live in/move to warmer climates. There is no city or region with a larger population than Cleveland that gets more snow than we do. That says a lot. Buffalo, which as a region is much smaller than Cleveland gets a little more snow than we do, and guess what, they are suffering just as great losses as we are. It's comparatively easy to fix crime and schools and build infrastructure to attract new people, but it's hard to change their perceptions of cold and snow. It's right above Garfield Heights. I wasn't exactly sure of GH's borders, but still, its surrounded by undesirable areas whereas Strongsville is not. The weather certainly doesn't help, but the population is still increasing in metro areas with similar weather. The MSAs of Chicago, Minneapolis, and even Milwaukee increased in population from 2000 to 2009. Granted, the weather isn't as bad in those cities, but they don't exactly have Los Angeles-esque weather either. They still manage to attract people though. So what's stopping Cleveland from being more like them and less like Buffalo?

You might be right about some of those areas, but the Mill Creek development is in Garfield Heights, not exactly a suburb on the rise (quite the opposite), so of course homes are only 79k there. As far as fixing the downward trend for the region, I have no idea. It's obvious why people are leaving areas that have issues with education, crime, and poverty. Those areas account for absolutely huge parts of the city itself, which is a serious problem. But why are they leaving the nicer suburbs outside of Cleveland too? If nicer places like Lakewood, Shaker Heights, Fairview Park, Beachwood (and the list goes on...) can't even keep people.....then how in the world can you turn an entire region around? For the education, crime, and poverty issues, building new large neighborhoods of houses can help. If you have an area full of $200,000 to $300,000 homes then that helps the poverty issue in that area. It also affects the crime levels because higher incomes often lead to lower crime. Schools is an issue that needs to be addressed in a different mannor though. And where do those people come from? I don't think someone is going to leave RR/Lakewood/whatever other nice suburb and go to an inferior one just because the inferior one has new housing. Garfield Heights is in Cleveland. And apparently Mill Creek is just above Garfield Heights. Point still stands though, it's surrounded by bad areas whereas the city he compared it to - Strongsville - is not.

You might be right about some of those areas, but the Mill Creek development is in Garfield Heights, not exactly a suburb on the rise (quite the opposite), so of course homes are only 79k there. As far as fixing the downward trend for the region, I have no idea. It's obvious why people are leaving areas that have issues with education, crime, and poverty. Those areas account for absolutely huge parts of the city itself, which is a serious problem. But why are they leaving the nicer suburbs outside of Cleveland too? If nicer places like Lakewood, Shaker Heights, Fairview Park, Beachwood (and the list goes on...) can't even keep people.....then how in the world can you turn an entire region around?

^^while it'd be nice to have lots of residential development (tho to be fair, there is some), the timing isn't exactly great. not much you can do about that. when (if?) the economy turns around and it's easier to get financing, I imagine you'll see quite a bit of development going on. hopefully by that point the major Cleveland projects (FEB phase 1, MM/CC, casino, uptown, etc) will be close to completion.

I thought it included a parking garage too. Yeah, not much, I know. Still, it'd be great to see at least SOME progress with phase 1, even if the office building fell through. Like Hts said though, it is just an unknown source so hopefully things still go as planned.

I heard some disturbing news from an individual that works high up in a company that was thinking about providing part of a loan to the FEB. He said that the building is simply not economically feasible as it is currently structured. They only have two companies committed to leases and that accounts for roughly 50% of the building (the upper floors). On the remaining half of the building he said they were planning to charge in the low to mid $30's per square foot. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there is quality class A space in the center of downtown for much less than $30 psf. According to this individual the office building is simply a loser. Needless to say his company chose not to make the loan. Sounds like they are going to have trouble finding any private means of financing the building. They'll need to get creative or this thing could die. Yikes. The office building dying (for now, at least) would not affect the construction on the rest of phase 1, correct?

Really can't believe they picked that terrible name. Wonder if they bothered to google it first.

Wonderful news :-)

sigh....they refuse to drop it. Now Councilman Jeff Johnson wants the safety committee to review the investigation. This is ridiculous. http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/09/cleveland_councilman_jeff_john.html

Me too. If I remember correctly, though, these things are like $800k. According to The Cliffs site here they range from 275k to $1M. The smallest unit is 1400 square feet, so the prices don't seem too bad. I wish they had some floorplans posted though. I might be thinking of a different project. Is there another project on Rocky River that is just townhomes without a giant building on top? Yeah, it seems you're thinking of 11 River. Those look incredible. Apparently you can even add an elevator :-o

Me too. If I remember correctly, though, these things are like $800k. According to The Cliffs site here they range from 275k to $1M. The smallest unit is 1400 square feet, so the prices don't seem too bad. I wish they had some floorplans posted though.

Now there is a ranking for the "most stressful" metro areas. Cleveland comes in at #3. http://www.portfolio.com/special-reports/2010/09/07/detroit-tops-list-of-most-stressful-metropolitan-areas The robberies/100k stat is pretty alarming. Granted, that only takes the city itself into consideration and not the entire metro area. But still, Cleveland is at 827/100k and the second most, St. Louis, is only at 766/100k.

You would think, but yet it wont, they will just grasp at even more ridiculous and unrelated situations. It's quite sad, to be honest. Yes, the WHD is going through problems. But why can't they let the police and city worry about fixing the problems? The NAACP should be directing their efforts towards more serious problems like the abnormally low graduation rate in the Cleveland school district. Or perhaps teenage pregnancy in the inner city. Or maybe the violent crime issues in the inner city. They could actually make a positive difference, but instead they push their ridiculous agenda which does more harm than good. But drunken behavior isn't the only problem. Too many underage kids are loitering, trying to start fights, being rude to people (mostly women), etc. Those kids are the source of many problems, perhaps even more than the drunken idiots. If you can cut out the underage crowd, the area becomes noticeably safer. Will it ever be crime and issue free? Of course not. But blocking off the streets & making the area 21+ would be a step in the right direction.

[heh, finally decided to stop lurking and actually sign up] Actually.... there was media coverage to this event which occured basically in the projects. In fact, despite the fact that police reports showed multiple assaults in those projects within the surrounding weeks, the beating of these white kids was the only one reported by the Plain Dealer. An inner-city kid gets shot, stabbed, beat, whatever... it is a non-story... barely mentioned. Suburban white kids get shot, stabbed, beat while in the City and we get the type of coverage which was given to the Perk Park shootings. Plus, as for the OUTRAGE you seek, the "Morehouse College" grads were allegedly beaten by off-duty police officers, while the white kids who "got lost" were beaten by thugs. Much different situation. As for the "Morehouse College" references, I imagine that might be a pre-emptive strike on all those cleveland.bomb commentors who would have went on rants and labeled this incident as off duty police vs. a couple "thugs" simply because the alleged victims were black. Be honest with yourself, if you were to hear of an off-duty cop getting into an altercation with two young black males on West 6th, what would you assume?... that it was two bank executives and recent grads of a highly respected college, or two local thugs? Closing off the street should have happened months ago, I agree. The fact that it hasn't happened yet is rather disappointing. Jackson evidently believes "cultural competency training" for the bar owners and staff will fix the problem. It won't, though. Really, I don't think the problem will be fixed until the people who inject race into every situation possible (Forbes, NAACP, etc) back off so Jackson & the city can do what is best to solve the problem and not just do whatever satisfies the black leaders. I also saw you call these two black males "executives" which is actually not true. They are in a banker training program. It seems people (and the media) only focus on the "executive" part and totally ignore the "training program" part. Perhaps to make this look more like a race issue than it actually is. ETA: oops, I see hootenany beat me to it.