archangel

A deadlock is probably a win for the Casino. A forced sale means they'll likely be the highest bidder, unless there's a white knight out there. Who knows, maybe they'll keep it and do something creative - it seems silly to just blow it up at this point, given that the garage/welcome center (which looks fairly nice, I guess) can no longer benefit from its subtraction. What would they do with the empty space?

Not wishful thinking at all - I totally agree this stretch deserves some special attention, given the exposure it gets. Visitors to Cleveland frequently see MLK on their way to UC, and god knows many of us see it on a daily basis. I guess I'm taking Chester while this is being done. Also, am I the only one who never had a problem with the traffic circle at UC? I guess they're getting rid of it because people don't know how to drive. Oh well.

It's not off-center if you consider where students live on-campus and where the graduate schools are. The 'Main Quad' is really just somewhere people go to class. All most students have to do is walk down E. 115th to the new store. I have no idea what they plan to do with the space in Thwing. But the new student center is probably too small to permit a bookstore along with everything else they have planned for it, especially given its unusual form factor. I think 7 PM is actually an improvement for their hours, haha - I went to the bookstore several times last year and found it unaccountably closed at various times. It looks a little bigger in the photos, and they could probably cram more stuff in there if they tried.

Aren't they still limited on the Red Line by the lightning damage in how often they run the trains?

Yeah, this is one of my favorite downtown restorations. Classy, neoclassical and very suitable for a law firm. The pics from inside are great too.

The Ravens just lost OG Ben Grubbs to the Saints for 5 yrs/36M. Pretty much what Steinbach got when he was picked up in FA three years ago, and at the same age, I think. That eliminates the best available replacement for Steiny, but at least he's out of the division.

^ Vickers was only a 'great' FB in terms of highlight reel blow-up blocks, and he wasn't consistently great at those, either. He was adequate and had a great attitude, but this staff, even under Mangini, has been obsessed with finding a more agile FB with hands - thus, Marecic. In theory. Vickers was released again, btw. I was confused at the time as well, but it makes sense. Releasing Steinbach: Makes sense if, and only if, they either re-sign him for less money or they spend the money on other SIGNIFICANT free agents. I'm all for being conservative, but freeing up 6+M kind of obligates them to do something. Personally, I think he could play well for 2-3 more years. He was healthy at the end of last year after being on IR for awhile. Hillis: I would have re-signed him if I wasn't sure about getting Tate or wasn't planning on drafting Richardson. Tate is the best option IMO. Rumor is a third-rounder for Tate. Works for me. Frostee Rucker: Good signing. Although he's not much of a pass-rusher, he has good run defense, and we stole him from Cincy. Win-win. If everyone is healthy, we have a defensive line I'm confident in calling 'good'. And we need offensive linemen...big time. LG, RT have nobody who can start reliably. The other positions are pretty much safe - Pinkston can't play tackle in the NFL except in a pinch, but he makes a decent guard. I thought he did well given how he was thrown to the wolves last season, for a 6th rounder. Needs: QB (maybe?), RB, WR, LG, RT, possibly LB?

I agree - but there are a lot of us who do paid part-time work rather than clinics; the clinics aren't mandatory. In fact, they're discussing lessening some of the 'required' classes to give us more flexibility. Several of the clinic professors are really outstanding - it gives the school a chance to employ experienced lawyers who don't fit on the tenure/publish-or-perish track.

^ As a law student, not surprised at the drop. I am surprised it wasn't worse, frankly, given how absolutely hammered this school has gotten in terms of LSAT competitiveness. The median is now 158 (I think it was 159 last year, and 160 in my year), and the 25th percentile is 153, meaning the school had to accept a number of lower scores just to fill its class. Applications were down nationally, so Case actually didn't get as hammered as it could have. It's nice to see the specialties recognized - the school markets them pretty aggressively. I hear they're absolutely carpet-bombing scholarships to get the LSAT up, but we'll see what happens. Ohio law schools all fell this year. OSU fell 4, to 39, and Cinci fell 8, to 69. Akron ranks 119, Toledo 129, Cleveland-Marshall 135. Dayton, Ohio Northern, and Capital are unranked.

Graduate school rankings were released last night. Some good, some blah for CWRU. + means better. Social Work: 9 (unchanged) Weatherhead MBA: 52 (+28) (That's up 28 spots (!) - but not entirely shocking since other publications rank Weatherhead around 40, and USNews was the outlier for whatever reason) Law: 67 (-6) Law subcategories: Health Law: 8 (+?) International Law: 11 (+5) Clinical Training (first time ranked!): 23 IP Law (first time ranked): 24 Medical: 24 Medical Subcategories: Primary Care: 35 (+20) Family: 12 Pediatrics: 16 Engineering: 47 Biomedical: 10 Nursing School: 15

Sorry, KJP, you're right of course - 'only in cleveland' is force of habit, and I usually use it in reference to GOOD things... :) And I agree - the solution is to build up CSU and CWRU, not plop down a new institution.

The problem is that most of Ohio's students aren't in or near Cleveland. Even the majority of the students in the region are elsewhere. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_Ohio The total enrollment of CSU, CWRU, Oberlin, JCU, Ursuline, Hiram, and Baldwin Wallace is 38,904. That's less than OSU or Cincy, barely more than Kent. And CSU, with the largest enrollment, is only ranked 10th in overall enrollment, and we know at least 3/4 are commuters. The problem is not just that Cleveland failed to establish a huge university presence (despite several opportunities), but also that there isn't enough of a deficit to really merit establishing a new school in/near Cuyahoga County. Akron and Kent State aren't very far away, and together they have 60,000 students...but they aren't really in/around Cleveland. Close, but not close enough to have a visible, everyday impact on the fabric of the community. Certainly their alumni are everywhere, though. So there is, comparatively, a large deficit compared to Columbus and Cinci. Also, there is a significant prestige gap. CWRU is #38 for undergraduate and has a few programs, particular medicine/biomedical engineering, that do significantly better. Oberlin is #24 for liberal arts colleges. Ashland is #190 for Universities, and Kent is #194. Most of the schools aren't ranked. Compared to most major MSAs, there is a gap there - not always a huge one, but it's there. By the way...Rockefeller offered the money he gave to Chicago to Western Reserve first. They turned him down. Only in Cleveland.

If we're at #4, the obvious choice is Morris Claiborne. He's a guaranteed hit, and will immediately establish us as having one of the best secondaries in the entire league, with Joe Haden and him together. Blackmon would not be a bad choice given our extreme need at WR. Richardson is not even on the map at 4.

Kaptur is the senior member of the appropriations committee. She has clout Dennis cannot match, even if she's not from Cleveland. Dennis has also gone far afield in his ambitions; I'm voting for Kaptur.

Amazing restoration, and very suitable for an old Cleveland law firm.

Too many uneducated immigrants is obviously bad if there are no jobs for them. That's why Immigration policy has quotas and limits on the amount of immigrants permitted. President Obama has massively stepped up deportation procedures for illegal immigrants. Ask any immigration lawyer - the Obama administration is on an absolute blitz of deportation, which certainly wasn't what they expected. Nobody anywhere even seems willing to consider amnesty anymore, which was in the conversation as recently as 2008. Your views are strongly reflected by the law. I do not believe Ohio has a serious problem with illegal immigrants, nor large unemployed populations of migrants, but I'd obviously welcome any data that suggests otherwise. One problem I know Ohio has, along with many other states, is that otherwise legal immigrants come, are tricked into working quasi-legal or illegal jobs, and lose their legal status because of employer exploitation. Some are even trafficked in the sex trade - certainly an unquestionable negative for all concerned. I also doubt that anyone has advanced the position that 'immigration is an unquestionable good for all concerned.' - that's a straw man. Economically beneficial, generally? Yeah, I'd agree with that, if we're talking about legal immigration.

^ I don't think the proliferation of handguns is the entire explanation, but it's a large part of it, and I agree that gun control is an absolute necessity, and I don't understand the arguments against it. That said, any particular act is going to have many causes - but the difference between TJ Lane with a knife or a crossbow and TJ Lane with a handgun is obvious, and anyone who suggests that mental illness is the root problem - fine, can you guarantee treatment of mental illness? Can you even guarantee detection before someone goes off the deep end? Is that just a societal 'cost' we should all be willing to accept? Even if most gun owners are responsible, how does that suggest that regulation is unnecessary? Most heroin users are functional, should we legalize it? Most drunk drivers never get caught, does that make it alright? They're all inherently dangerous activities/instruments that have to be regulated. Certainly gun ownership should not be forbidden, but it should be limited, and anyone who believes the Second Amendment forbids gun control forgets it was intended to facilitate militia, and not handgun proliferation. (I am constantly amused by the fact that most Second Amendment 'supporters' believe in a literal reading of the Constitution, but not literal sentence construction.) Outlaws will still get guns, but the fewer guns we permit to slip through the cracks, the fewer they will get. There is, and should be, no law against a responsible, law-abiding, and registered/trained citizen owning a firearm for the purpose of personal defense or recreation, but those regulations need to be strict, they need to discriminate based on age, criminal records and mental illness, and they need to be enforced with unforgiving, draconian uniformity. That enforcement would actually serve the interests of gun advocates by making it clearer when and where private guns are permitted to be owned, carried, and used. The fact that gun owners always are now pre-emptively rushing to defend their interests against some spectral threat to their freedom when school shootings happen is an indication of how deep the problem has become. I have yet to see a serious government proposal that would actually take guns away from responsible owners. That our government is one particularly vulnerable to special interest lobbies just makes it worse.

Good. I'm pissed that in less than a month after I moved into the City Club building, the coffee shop closed for a damn noodle place. There's always another coffee place. There's only one Noodlecat. :)

It's interesting, which is more than enough to justify posting it, but there are a lot of applications. For instance, a lot of people who do immigration law argue that the anti-immigration policies are actually counterproductive, because immigrants tend to create, not 'steal' jobs. So, if you believe that (or not) they can be taken as an economic indicator of likely growth (or not), especially in the small business area. If a particular community or nationality specializes in one field, it can be even more specific. Also, it helps government forecast the need for particular services, and it helps businesses, charities, and non-profits do the same. Cleveland is interesting because there are surprisingly few Mexicans (lots of people from PR, but they don't count as foreign-born, obviously) and only a tiny African population, mostly Ghana/Nigeria AFAIK. But you can see how fast the proportions are changing, but they're changing even faster (away from European to others) in other parts of Ohio.

It's still a dump, but I've seen workers enter in, do what appears to be very little work, and then leave for...a year or so. I had no idea what was going on there. Apparently this. McNulty might be right about Barley House, but he's also partly responsible for the advent of the party bus weekend on W. 25th. There's plenty of insanely drunk people passing their Friday and Saturday nights on W. 25th, and generally they are not a problem since they're kept confined to a few establishments, and MOST people at Bier Markt and Market Garden are not the LETS GET WASTED BRO HURRRR type of crowd. While bars tend to be less of a problem than nightclubs, that doesn't preclude the possibility of a responsible nightclub operating, but I'm hardly thrilled, and I'd imagine the others who live right in 25th in the lofts and Fries-Scheule aren't too thrilled to learn about this. Most of the noise on 25th is currently limited to traffic, the occasional idiot showboating their car sound system, and drunk people. If I hear pounding bass or raucous crowds outside this place, I will not hesitate for a second to make myself as annoying as possible to the club operators. If no problems, then no problems, wish them well. I think OC is about at the saturation point for this sort of thing, though - future development needs to move away from the central area if it's not just going to be bars, bars, bars. Edit: I just realized this building is directly adjacent to a residential building, there are apartments above Howard Hanna. That does not seem like a good arrangement.

Me neither. The design for the corner across from MOCA is pretty innovative! That's awesome! Coolest apartment building design I've seen for Cleveland. And it works, since it's across from something even more unusual, and not far from the crazy CWRU Business School building and Seidman. Nice.

Like all landlord holdouts who think they can get a big payday from an eager developer, this is only about money, and the building will be destroyed as soon as the two sides come to an accommodation. The City is just putting the screws to them so they come to some agreement before the building is condemned (and the City clearly favors demolition). I guess the Maloofs could decide not to cave, let the building be demolished, and still not sell the land - but at that point, it would be pure spite. I do not believe for one second the Maloofs truly intend to restore the building. That's just posturing. It's as good as gone.

I am probably one of the more 'ehhh' people on here when a building is proposed for demolition or conversion, but holy god, this is a terrible idea. Worst I've seen. I agree - the building is sound, let it sit empty if this is the only proposal.

Controversy over homelessness reopens old wounds in Ohio City: Joe Frolik http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2012/02/controversy_over_homelessness.html Saturday, while a lot of us dug out from a ferocious reminder of winter as it usually is on the North Coast, Kate Monter Durban battled another kind of storm, not by wielding a shovel, but by leading a group of Ohio City residents on a tour of a handsome, brick apartment building near the main campus of MetroHealth Medical Center. Monter Durban -- assistant director of the Cleveland Housing Network, a nonprofit developer of affordable housing -- has been leading more tours than a college campus guide the past three months. She's also been going to block club meetings in Ohio City and talking to anyone with questions about plans to build a 55-unit permanent supportive housing project on Lorain Avenue. That scares some residents, who fear for their safety and their property values. Monter Durban tries to put them at ease, with South Pointe Commons in Clark-Metro as Exhibit A. ---- ^ As someone who lives near this location, I can attest to some of the truth of the comments on Cleveland.com, but not to their severely hostile attitude. There's obviously a tension between locating homeless people near essential services and upsetting residents of a successful neighborhood, but I'm not going to oppose a combination non-profit/state funded project if it gets people off the streets and out of shelters. If they're a real problem for the neighborhood, it might be different, but I don't think we can blindly assume that. If I could be assured somehow that police would enforce loitering ordinances and etc, I'd feel better about this - but I know they have more important things to do. I guess on balance I'm alright with it, but I have reservations, and Ohio City really does have a huge share of project housing already.

Listened to this as well and agree with you, CBC. I wonder where he's getting his legal advice from, and what facts or law they're relying on to make this work...I don't see it. Unless he's counting on somehow winning concessions by playing up the political aspects of the water system. Not sure why the Water Department would do anything other than pay increased attention to maintenance and service issues there, though - Cleveland is clearly (unless there's something in the contract they didn't mention) not on the hook, and Westlake would be if they break the contract (which certainly didn't sound 'year to year' to me). The woman from Westlake who called in - what was her point? 'We should do it because we won't do it unless it makes sense, and we'll save money. Oh, and Cleveland water is fine, but I use filtered water.' Seriously? I think I posted about this before, but a family member in the west burbs had repeated issues with CWD, they were using decades-old data to estimate a bill. After receiving the complaint, they responded and have basically waived the bill up until the balance is where it 'should' have been, they also replaced the meter and did manual reads. They are not a model public utility but they are getting better, and the product really is outstanding.