blinker12

Yeah, Aldi's is better than nothin'. And that's what we've got now... Kudos to Midtown for getting the building on the sidewalk. Also, Wimwar: CVS may be able to build whatever the heck it wants, because the zoning overlay applies only to E. 40th to E. 79th. Since their site is on the eastern side of 79th, the overlay may not apply. Let's hope it does.

Um, you don't have to go all the way to the suburbs to get to a nice West Side neighborhood. Heard of Tremont? Ohio City? Detroit-Shoreway? Clifton-Edgewater?

That is going to be a bar/restaurant, opened by the owners of The Treehouse in Tremont. I heard they're spending $1 million renovating that building and adding the patio out front.

Nice work! I love this neighborhood, and you really capture how it's retained much of its original urban fabric. :clap:

Beautiful!

Nice photos MGD! I think you should have featured these in their own thread! :-P

Oooh, good idea!

Another victim of sluggish pre-sales? Really, if you walk around Ohio City there already seems to be a glut of houses for sale. Newer construction, especially, seems to be selling at a snail's pace (Orchard Place, the Townhomes of Ohio City, the 80s-style townhouses around Fulton and Mabel, a newish house at Fulton and Bunnell). I would guess demand isn't strong enough in the neighborhood to support another new residential project.

Yeah, I won't vote either. Having grown up on the south side (Brecksville -- not my choice), I don't have a strong native allegiance to either East or West. I'm *slightly* more at home on the East Side because I spent more time there growing up. I'm also in love with the museums and culture of University Circle. However, the near West Side at this point offers more intact, walkable inner-city neighborhoods than the East Side (though I believe that is changing), and I don't want to live in a suburb. So I chose to live in Ohio City.

A post by KJP from earlier today made me remember the old Hippodrome theater, on Euclid near E. 6th. It was razed for... a surface parking lot. (See the UH-Atrium thread for a photo.) Even more tragic are the neighborhoods on the near southeast side bulldozed for highways (the old Central Market area and the German neighborhood near where Tri C is now)... but that falls outside the scope of this topic.

Agreed. The last developer tried making the Square into a regional draw, and he failed. The new philosophy of serving the neighborhood, on the other hand, has made the Square more bustling and vibrant than it has ever been, in my memory (which stretches back about 20 years, when I used to go there with my family after church). On a side note, CVS in that gi-normous Joseph-Beth space??? I think it's a good idea to have a drug store, but can CVS really fill it all?

FANTASTIC news! :-o I too thought the building was doomed. Let's keep our fingers crossed on this one. Urbanlife, that's actually the City Club building in your historic photo, not the Atrium.

Hugely encouraging. Jackson might be letting us down on the Innerbelt, but I'm very impressed by how he's making regional cooperation a top priority. He's barely in office, and already this. :clap: By the way, has anyone been named to the regionalism czar post yet?

2005 and 2007 Prospect Avenue... When I Google mapped those, it seems they're both attached to an existing building right across from the Wolstein Center...?

Yeah, I find it hard to care deeply about how the bridge is going to look when I object to an additional bridge in principle. As for the takings, it's time to turn up the heat on this issue. In case anyone missed it, here are photos of what we stand to lose: http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=7101.0 I'm working on an op-ed for Cool Cleveland and have written to Steven Litt of the PD; MayDay has alerted the Preservation Society. Anyone else got ideas?

That's actually kind of a shame. That old mill is nice and creepy, and a historic reminder of 20th century industrialization in the NEO. I remember riding or walking by it as a kid... you couldn't help but poke around (which I'm sure is exactly why they want to tear it down -- to keep kids out!). Too bad they couldn't have turned it into a museum of some kind.

That's what I'm getting at -- why make the thing so blatantly auto-oriented, when you have a large resident population without cars? Even if it was to serve commuters, did we have to advertise that and turn our backs so resolutely on the neighborhood? You're right, of course, that stores are better than no stores. But sheesh, what terrible -- in fact exclusionary -- urban design. That said, I do agree that we are learning from our past mistakes. (Though plans for the new Asia Town Center on Superior and E. 37th, to be fronted by surface parking, are a throw-back to the bad old days.)

Best news I've heard all day! :clap:

Yet as Kuntsler notes in his book, more than half the residents of Hough in the mid-1990s were without cars. What message was Church Square, surrounded by its forboding moat of parking, sending them? Even today, I have heard that one third of all city residents do not own a car (I think that's based on the 2000 Census). We're not as auto dependent as developers and city planners seem to think we are.

Well, first RTA had to destroy some of the remaining urban fabric in Midtown and render Lower Euclid a ghost town. Now that's accomplished, they can really get cooking!

I have a proposal. What about calling these places "Cheesecake Centers" instead of "Lifestyle Centers," to reflect: 1. The ubiquity of Cheesecake Factories at said centers; 2. Their utter cheesiness; and 3. Their propensity for contributing to heart disease -- the urban heart, that is. Used in a sentence: "I can't believe they're building a new Cheesecake Center in North Royalton!"

That North Royalton bit made my stomach turn.

This press release from Midtown Cleveland Inc.'s site includes a bit more information: 1/24/2006 - Euclid Avenue Construction to Begin March 2006 The Greater Cleveland Rapid Transit Authority (RTA) is ready to proceed with the next and most visible phase of the Euclid Corridor Transportation Project (ECTP). Beginning in March 2006, roadway reconstruction will begin in MidTown between the Innerbelt and East 79th Street. The first phase of this two-year project will start on the North side of Euclid Avenue between the Innerbelt and East 55th Street. Work will begin on the North side, followed by the South side, finishing with stations constructed in the middle of the roadway. One lane of traffic will be maintained in each direction throughout the project with one exception - the area below the Norfolk Southern Railroad Bridge. The entire roadway will be closed between East 55th and East 61st Streets for approximately 4 to 6 months in early 2007. During this time, traffic will be detoured to Chester Avenue. The remaining portions of Euclid Avenue between Downtown and the Innerbelt and East 79th Street through University Circle will be bid later in 2006, with construction continuing through 2008. This aspect of the ECTP has been one of the most anticipated, as it will completely transform the look of Euclid Avenue while introducing pedestrian-oriented enhancements that encourage transit usage. During this phase, bus lanes, new sidewalks, new curbs, landscaping, and public art will be introduced. http://www.midtowncleveland.org/news.asp?id=25

It's all better at the left end of the dial, kids: 1. 88.3 (WBWC) Baldwin Wallace College - best radio in town - Sufjan, Death Cab, Acoustic Cafe 2. 91.5 (WKHR) - all-volunteer radio station featuring jazz, big band and other classy stuff 3. 91.1 (WRUW) Case Western Reserve University - indie, alt-country, etc. 4. 89.3 (WCSB) Cleveland State University - reggae, indie, ethnic shows And one at the other end: 5. 104.9 (WCLV) - All classical, all the time (all Cleveland stations; I'm not familiar with other markets)

Maybe it's a kind of "show me the money" thing with Lewis. He wants to see this stuff actually happen before he's willing to jump on the bandwagon. I'm not saying he's justified in that feeling, just raising it as a possibility. Punch, I like your recommendation to "messy the place up a bit." UC could do with more of an organic flavor. It feels so institutional over there right now. That said, we are privileged to be complaining about an area that already offers so much.