audidave

I agree with 327. With the various big construction projects that will be hitting Cleveland in the next 4-5 years we have not heard about any plans for high rise developments. A certain city 100 miles away in PA seems to be constantly building them as they seem rather popular with the folks there. I would think an affordable energy efficient high-rise near E4, the warehouse district, playhouse sq, etc., would do very well in attracting tenants. But I guess its easier to sit on a parking lot to collect cash rather than take a chance and somewhat of a big risk in this environment on building something downtown that hasn't been really done here.

I think this is going in the 22 Exchange St development, so not that close to the new Aroma. Probably the Student Union's Starbucks is closer. IIRC, they are closing the Polsky's Starbucks when this location opens? I can't find anything online to back that up though.. However, closer to Aroma is the Thirsty Dog brewery on Grant St. I was told they were expecting to have their tap room opened "as soon as the end of April". That was a good month ago. Good to have options for whatever type of brew you're looking for..

I've tried looking in this forum for the next Controlling Board vote but can't find it. Will it be in 2011? How will the fact that John Carey and David Goodman will no longer be on the Controlling Board after Dec. 2010, due to term limits, affect the make up of the board?

^The development plans for this are murky at best. I think the school board realizes this. Basically they are needing to take a pittance of the tax money and like it so that this development can be started and be successful. Well maybe the development plans aren't so good then. If $20-30,000 a year in additional tax revenue is going to do this project in, then really they shouldn't do the project. The premise for the project is that Starks wants to put a big flashy grocery store smack up against Portage Trail. A store has not been named. There is a nice Giant Eagle 2-3 blocks away. There is an ACME that is in need of a serious makeover/rebuild about 10+ blocks away. The obvious thought would be to make this a new ACME. But that is not the Albrecht's M.O. The Albrechts own much property in Akron and own ACME and would likely require that the store be on Albrecht controlled land and buildings. Say that Starks has come up with a Heinens to fill the space or maybe a Buehlers. He still needs to fill the other retail spots and is supposedly going to keep it mixed with offices and condos up above the retail below. i think this idea could've got off the ground 7-8 years ago. The reality is Chapel Hill's retail complex is 5 minutes away and it takes 8-10 minutes to get to Montrose/Summit Mall from there. There are still retail shops up and down State rd and Portage trails. I don't believe that Starks has retailers banging down his door to try to get their stores into this development. Even the development he's essentially trying to emulate, 1st and Main in Hudson is having a challenging time keeping their stores from being vacant. So perhaps another more community-minded developer with a bit more vision can put something together without needing to raid the property taxes.

Excuse me? Please explain that. I just flew from LGA-CLE-CMH-CLE-LGA I was on Continental. In addition, Continental flys between CLE & DAY. Sorry, I didn't check with that airline before I made that bold statement. Doing a quick search on flights within two weeks of going to Dayton from Cleveland its over $500 on Orbitz. Otherwise outside of 2 weeks its $340 round trip. I would guess most people if they are making drive vs fly vs train plans are making decisions within a 2 week window. We can make the same type of statement here as the car vs train people, although I'm sure 2cents will find something in error in my calculations. It takes me about 3-3.5hrs to drive to Dayton. If I'm flying to Dayton it would also take about 3.5hrs. It takes me over a half hour to get to the Cle airport. One needs to arrive an hour ahead of the flight. It takes probably 45 minutes of being on the plane to get there. Get another half hour to get luggage if needed and rental car. Drive a half hour to Dayton. I would think it would be cheaper and more convenient to go to a local airfield and set up a flight than to go through Continental.

I'd like to address KJP's request for uses of the 3C train. I do a lot of IT contracting. There are tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people in IT that may work off site or need to travel to other cities. There are many opportunities sometimes in other cities in Ohio to get a job than the local job market. I would likely be able to take a long term contract or maybe even a full time position in Dayton for example, or Columbus, if there were a train that I could take on Fridays back to the Cleveland area. The point is to give people some choice. You can't fly from Cleveland to Dayton or Columbus unless in a private plane(Without spending an arm and a leg..). Its really too much of a strain to work long term some place when you don't live locally. Driving I-71 back and forth is a royal pain. A train would allow more people to accept full time jobs and high paying contract jobs in Ohio outside their local job markets.

Yanni, the All American bridge is actually the Y-bridge. The "walking bridge" is actually part of the towpath as it seemingly dumps people into downtown Akron. I think of it more as the gateway to the Cuyahoga Valley since its the start of a 3/4 mile downhill jaunt heading north to Peninsula. The last area you have pictures of is beneath the Civic. A parking garage was tore out in order to expose this. It is expected that 2-3 restaurants should be opening soon although I haven't heard a word about any of this. The whole point of getting that area cleaned up was to create a patio area connected to the back sides of those buildings so they can have alfresco dining. This looks like it is finally complete from your pictures. Were you able to walk down the steps or was it still blocked off?

Good luck Hubman. For the same reasons that Ohio isn't really tied to national networks Akron isn't really tied to any intra-state networks. Hudson or Macedonia in Summit County will likely be on the rail link but Akron most likely will not.

327, I think you feel that Ohioans are delusional then. I recall years past that a figure in the multiple billions was being tossed around to have some form of high speed rail. I would not expect a mere $400 million with Ohio's underfunded rail infrastructure to add much speed to that rail. Personally, I think the best narrative or way of framing this is to say we are organically growing rail in Ohio. $400 million is the seed money. Its the cost of setting the rights of ways, making the needed infrastructure updates, getting the actual train sets, and updating/adding the stations. Additional emphasis that can be made as part of organic growth is that as Ohio has passenger rail infrastructure created, there are new opportunities to add better service out of Cleveland and Cincinnati instead of the middle of the night drops since there will be a tie-in. Amtrak planners will see there are 500, 1000 or X number of rail passengers coming into those cities a day via train, it might be best to add new service to Indianapolis/Chicago in the daytime to Cincinnati. Or in Cleveland an additional train to Toledo/Chicago and/or from Erie/Buffalo/Albany in the daytime. The point being that the 3C is not in a vacuum. There will be other cities outside/inside of Ohio that will want to link up. The fruits of this labor will be the growing of the system to link it to other systems which will bring more passenger traffic for all systems. So maybe we should start terming it "3C+"

Its mainly 2 options I see for this. If there is a chance of commuter rail via the Erie-Lackawanna rail line from Aurora/Solon to Cleveland and if this blue line could connect or terminate at a station in North Randall, I would say do that. I don't think any of that is likely so the better option is having it end in Chagrin Highlands someplace off of Harvard. The benefit is totally the park and ride option for far east-siders and Summit County residents.

Sounds like competition for Europe Gyro. Should be interesting.. Also, the word on the street is that OBC will reopen in the valley someplace. No more downtown location..

With a building that big and purpose-built, it won't be just 400 employees working there. I would bet they are looking at refocusing their IT departments there. With all the companies they've bought it becomes pretty crucial to have more centralized IT.

Well we are missing something in the rendering.... The parking decks.. Didn't they say they were going to build some nice massive parking decks for this? Or maybe the building is built on top of 3-4 floors of parking deck.. Which could explain why the building is shaped like that

Excellent point 327. That seems to be more the reason for this to get started sooner before more public and industrial entities decide to move alongside the EC..

^Good article. I've said it before if the only "thing" Obama gets done in office is helping to take out the rail obstacles in Chicago, then he will have done a lot. If its inefficient to get freight in and out of Chicago its obviously going to be hell to get passenger trains into Chicago. Alas if those things are corrected, a 4hr train trip from Cleveland would be very competitive with air. But obviously the main thing economically would be the massive efficiencies created by getting Chicago rolling again. This would clearly affect every surrounding state and then many states beyond those and shrink the world once again.

Would have to grab the right of way back from the Portage county parks system: "The Park is open from dawn to dusk, 7 days a week Using the old Erie Lackawanna Railroad corridor, the 7 mile Headwaters Trail runs by beautiful forest and farmland connecting Garrettsville Village Park and Mantua Village Park."

Rather than everyone saying they like #1 or #5 designs, explain the ideas that you like in the designs. I don't think hardly any of the designs are very realistic under $1billion let alone a half billion. I'm guessing the point of the design contest is to be able to extract the best of the ideas to mash into a bunch of great ideas.. I personally like the aspects of the interior design of #1 with the very sick awesome view of the Rock Hall and GLSC in the background. The other aspect I liked about the first design was just the interesting bridge over the tracks. The 3rd design I liked the cross angled sidewalks and the platforms down to also crossing over the tracks to get to the lake. I didn't study some of the designs much since it just looked like they were playing with circles and shapes and weren't focused on realistic solutions.

This is a quick start rail venture. This to me means we are trying to get any kind of rail up and going by 2011 connecting the 3Cs. Not all the costs have been fleshed out and not all the decisions as far as routing are set in stone. The advantage to this is that instead of spending more money on more studies and having more debate about the route and how many stops, we get some kind of rail system going in the most expeditious manner possible. I believe that once the sunk costs are set by 2011 there will be immediate updates to improve the whole system by 2013. We could also wait everything out until 2013 and not have any benefit of train travel until all the studies are complete and then the new set of politicians will have come in to have their say on the whole project perhaps deciding that should put it to a vote of the people or maybe just killing it outright. I live in Summit county about 15-20 miles away from a 3C stop. I think this is needed to help the inner cities of the 3C. I don't think its a big deal that Cinci doesn't have a downtown stop for 2011. I would expect there to be a pledge that there would be one by 2013 whereever they can decide is the best place.

Akron's MSA is geographic range is pretty tiny compared to other MSAs. Its only 2 counties and its squeezed between 3 other MSAs. If it were possible, and I'm not sure that it isn't, I would chop off half of Medina and throw it in Akron's MSA instead of Cleveland's. Wadsworth is a 10-15 minute drive from Akron yet its part of Cleveland's MSA. But also add Wayne County into Akron's MSA. As an example of how interlinked Akron is to Wayne county, Smuckers in Orrville has been using Akron as its Corporate HQ annex for the last 4 years or so as they build out their facilities in Orrville to handle hundreds of additional employees from acquisitions. Wayne county isn't in any MSA currently.

The 2008 uptick Akron MSA uptick could be from LeBron moving back into Summit County from Medina County when his new house was built... :laugh:

This is a very good compromise KJP. I agree that the purpose is not to have a Cleve to Cinci rail system that is set in stone or rail as may be the case. The idea is to have something that is marginally effective that can be grown as service grows. It sounds like Cinci will be the trickiest area to get into and from attempting to read their streetcar thread they are far from decided about how they want their city to interact with rail. I would also wonder about the availability of used train sets. There has to be some trains that are being upgraded some place that could be moved to Ohio. Thats like saying there's no used cars available to buy anywhere. I think we just need trains that will last 4 years before needing to be replaced.

It won't happen like that. There's still a whole lot of wheeling and dealing going on. The Police and Fire unions didn't come to the table to negotiate any unpaid leave with the city or really any options for that matter. Now that they have the list of officers they're thinking about talking. But also there's companies throwing money in to keep them on the job and there's unfilled positions that they can jump into with a bit of a salary decrease if they don't want to be laid off. There's still 300+ cops in Akron. And there likely will still be 350 once this all gets settled. It probably wouldn't be pretty going into summer down to close to 300 but I don't see this being a big deal for the next 6-9 months. Other options would be to cut more of other city services. I heard 65% of budget is safety forces. Not like there would be a whole lot to cut from in the 35% of the budget. Therefore a signifcant portion has to come from safety forces. It seems like the UofA campus police has gotten bigger over the years. They are certainly patrolling a significant section of the downtown area. I just don't see society unraveling in Akron because they might lay off 10-20% of cops.

How I compare Dayton to Akron is the similar periods of high growth happened at the same time. Both cities were known for their technological advances, inventors, and patents. Both cities sit more or less in the shadow of a larger Ohio city. Both cities are considered entrenched in automotive business. Both cities have gone through large changes in losing their primary industries. What makes Dayton different is the air force base nearby. Akron has a national park. Dayton has highway access in and out of town in multiple directions. Very few people decide when they're coming from Columbus on to Cleveland that they should swing by Akron. Dayton is much more at a major crossroad for travelers. Both cities are known for their Americana and critical links to American history. Both cities had wealthy industrial barons that left behind valued community treasures. Both cities have had a similar drop in population while watching various suburbs grow. Neither city has a port yet both started as canal towns.

I can't think of any city I've visited that had its main entertainment district bars, restaurants, and shops so densely intermixed and I don't think with any franchised chains involved either. Its a great organic party zone.

I think the big three cities are incomparable to the other cities of Ohio. However I think Dayton is probably comparable to Toledo or a really big Canton or Akron. To me when I was there 5 years ago it felt like being in Akron 5-10 years earlier. There was no real direction as far as planned "entertainment districts". It was kind of a sprinkling of things here and there to see what might stick. There's no E.4th in Dayton. There's no warehouse district. There's no Tremont or OC. There's a ragged scramble of bars under a colorful railway overpass that is the portal to their Oregon District from the downtown. This is an odd combination of flats mentality and architecture and cleve heights hipster spots all trying to co-exist together along two blocks of an old brick street(good call Jeffrey.). Otherwise Dayton has a smattering of new development but there doesn't seem to be a grandiose downtown plan or really any plan to drive redevelopment. The other cool thing to see is Dayton has electric trolleybuses although I never had the need to ride one..