PHS14

Reporters and journalists are not supposed to bring their own biases into things but today the media in the U.S. is an embarrassment. Digging up Slate.com though to prove a point is just pathetic.

Hillary Clinton mentioned Cleveland's lead levels in last night's debate.

Yep. Some judges are true politicians. I think many people forget this.

Completely and utterly amazing. This is one of those magic articles that conjures up every human emotion imaginable for the reader....it's funny, it's terrifying but it's mostly sad. This sentence is my favorite: In a blistering dissent, Judge Timothy McCormack blasted the arbitrator's decision as "a stagnant pool of rancid, stenchful waste." #JudicialEndorsementsMatter. Ugh. You all are completely wrong on this one. Both the common pleas court's and the court of appeals' decisions were correct and the rationale of McCormack's dissent is contrary to law. If one of the other appellate judges had joined with him, the Ohio Supreme Court would have almost certainly reversed that ruling. The DECISION to return this cop to work was rendered by the arbitrator in a FINAL and BINDING arbitration. Arbitration is a form of alternative dispute resolution, which is highly encouraged in our legal system. It is not intended to be an exhibition game. You don't get to "appeal" an arbitration decision. What you can do is file an application to vacate the decision. To grant such an application, which is exceedingly rare, the judges can't simply determine that they would've reached a different result. The arbitrator could even misapply the law and, in Ohio, the courts can't vacate the decision. Only when the arbitrator is found to have clearly exceeded his authority under the contract can the courts vacate the decision. So knock the arbitrator and his decision all you want. But don't pretend that these judges were allowed to conduct a de novo review of the decision and supplant it with one of their own. If that were the case, people would never agree to arbitrate disputes and the court dockets would be even more crowded than they are now. Thank you.

To add, as was shown earlier, SEPTA Regional Rail spur to King of Prussia Mall will be happening and an extension of the Broad Street (Orange Line) subway from its terminus in South Philly to the Navy Yards is expected to get a green light as well. The Navy Yards is, as the name implies, the old Navy shipyard, currently developing as a major commercial center. Urban Outfitters Hdq's, among other businesses, is located there.

Please...stop. I'm interested in where these restaurants are going to located, not Marky Mark's past when he was a kid in Boston.

Philly certainly is in boom-mode. Just last week I noticed these lots on the west side of 30th Street station and thought they would be developed. Center City is seeing current and planned major developments on the east and west sides of the Schuykill River. There is talk about running the Amtrak trains through either Jefferson or Suburban Stations as well. Philly is clearly in a great location in the northeast corridor. As a frequent traveler in the NE Corridor, Philly is my current favorite location. Also, this past week DC has seen major transit developments: the H Street Streetcar started service (the 1st 6 months are free to build ridership) and the suburb-to-suburb Purple Line (New Carrolton-Prince George's County to Bethesda-Montgomery County) has been approved for construction. 16 mile light-rail line with 21 stations, including some with Metro connections, is expected to begin construction later this year.

You're the one leaving the ''mostly black work-class section in the southwestern corner of Shaker Hts.'' out of the Shaker equation, not me. Not sure what this has to do with Shaker's school busing policy or this thread.

I don't in any way consider Crocker Park successful or a model Greater Cleveland should follow. Yes, it's better designed than the typical cul de sac + strip shopping. But CP was carved out of cornfields at the edge of metro area and is auto dependent/transit unfriendly. It's about the furthest thing from TOD one could imagine... I get KJP's proposal, however, to use CP-type housing at the Warrensville-Shaker Rapid station. It makes sense because there is plenty of vacant land around the Rapid station from where the Van Sweringens had planned a depressed super highway (out to their planned Shaker Country Estates) 90 years ago. KJP's plan is both TOD and and within the suburban context of a wealthy neighborhood not far from a substantial residential university with it's on small retail/services district. In the recent past we've gotten it bass-ackwards here in Greater Cleveland building strip and/or big box development along the RAIL Rapid Transit like Chagrin-Lee-Avalon and the W. 117 big boxes and high-density developments like CP away from population centers and transit. Recent developments like Uptown, Van Aken and Intesa/Centric, though, give me hope that the tide it turning. I liked KJP's plan a lot. Wealthy people aren't going to stop existing, nor are they going to stop wanting lavish abodes. Let's entice those abodes along the rails, and not out in West Geauga or Hudson. I think we all agree that Crocker Park is fine except for its location. So I wouldn't hold its location against it as a model for higher-end development in a better location. :P Wealthy people also aren't going to stop wanting some separation between themselves and those people who have radically different values. Indeed, people with options prefer that especially where they live. The location's fine. I don't know what you mean by "values." In the so-called Inner Ring suburbs like Shaker and Cleveland Heights, a lot of wealthy families opt to move there to be closer to more urban experiences and people who are different from themselves and their children. The hallmark of Shaker Heights, especially, is to provide people/families from the middle-income to the wealthy, a community that provides the best of all worlds... There will always be those folks who believe their ideal is to separate themselves from those who are different by moving way out to the homogeneous ex-urbs often in cookie-cutter McMansions... It's a free country. But you can't paint all wealthy people, just like you can't paint all of anybody, with such a broad brush. ... and btw, I can't kick about the quality of the Crocker Park development. It's just such a tragedy, and too typical of greater Cleveland, and indeed, Ohio, that such a development was designed without one thought given to transit... In fact, truth be told, there was thought given to transit: that is, Stark and his people wanted to build far away from transit whereby transit, and the people who rely on it, would be irrelevant. [/quote Notice that Shaker Heights hallmark doesn't include poor people but you have a problem with Crocker Park?

By ''transit lines'' you mean any form of transit?

If that's what it takes to get some Buckeye fans to support light rail in Columbus, I'm all for it! Yeah, it would be kinda silly if the U-M rivalry is what motivates the entire city of Columbus to get moving where it should have been so motivated decades ago but, as you said, whatever it takes . ... Ann Arbor is so much different than Columbus: it's a small, though dense, college town (with a highly walkable core) at the edge of the Detroit metropolitan area as opposed Columbus, which is a substantial metropolitan area of over 1.5M. The largest uses for Ann Arbor's planned system is to a) move students and faculty between UM's Central and North campuses and b) moving large numbers of visitors from A2's circumferential freeway, as well as students from the 2 aforementioned campuses, to the Big House in the Athletic campus to the south on football Saturdays. Columbus is a substantial metro area; however, its population is spread out in 10 counties. Not exactly dense for a large metro that includes ''Columbus region'' with about 490 people/square mile.

but it's just what Cleveland needs....

What is the egregious sprawl-type development in Hough?

More like Hello Cleveland; we got a BRT line instead of light-rail on our dual hub corridor.

That's not what you are advocating. OK Amrap. Coming from the segregated land of Amrap, you shouldn't throw rocks.

Well, when your city customer base has the highest rates of poverty in the U.S. and your downtown office work force is declining, and you open a high-end luxury mall in the center of this, the minorities and those in poverty certainly couldn't afford this place. So they do have a hand in it. As far as urban malls go, Tower City is one the best designed and has stood the test of of time (26 years). It's still open and the Ritz-Carlton is still there so with the professional residential population of downtown Cleveland surging, there's still hope for TC. It's a cool place, let's reinvent it so everyone can use it.

The downtown ambassadors have done a great job in PS and downtown generally.

Not every urban mall was a failure. Also, Tower City tanked by the late '90s, it wasn't due to recent changes in taste. Why isn't there any retail in downtown Cleveland then? Not just TC or Galleria but in general, there is no retail downtown or in the city generally. Could it be demographics and Cleveland's high poverty rates? To say that certain classes of people, in a city like Cleveland, didn't have a part in Tower City's decline is naïve as well. The whole concept of a luxury mall in downtown Cleveland in 1990 as a complement to Galleria (1986) was misplaced. That said, however, with the increasing residential population of downtown Cleveland, there is hope that a revival in Tower City along with retail in general for downtown.

Why shouldn't it? It's been the transit hub since the 1850s. With it being the hub of streets, it's a natural transit hub too. So why is that suddenly bad? All public realms in this city belong to everyone. With the goal of making Public Square more inviting, leaving it as the bus-hub kind of holds it back from those goals. We can't deny that the bus stops have been an underlying cause of unpleasant situations or public disturbances that have given Public Square its reputation. Just because it's been the hub through time doesn't mean it cannot change. Times Square is a hub of streets, but it isn't NYC's bus hub. It's more focused on visitors' experience and the aesthetics, which makes it enjoyable. Moving the hub away from the square would just make the "new" Public Square more enjoyable and more comfortable for those who want to enjoy it peacefully. Times Square was never THE transit hub of NYC. We can argue whether it was a transit hub at all. Let's be honest what moving transit off Public Square is all about. It's about shoving poor people and minorities into dark corners of the city where we can forget about them in furtherance of desires to create a caste system for America where different classes no longer mix. Well it's about time. Get them off the square. Next, apply this to tower city and then we really got something. Opinion as someone who used to own a store in Tower City. *side note* sorry to quote from so far back up thread Tower City, Cleveland's original TOD. Frome Gucci to Hootchie. I knew a store owner in the Arcade so I can imagine what you dealt with in TC.

I'm generally in agreement with you. My only beef with the old design are the the 2 mega-wide streets, Ontario and Superior, cutting the Square into 4 little square-lets. The new design only partially fixes that allowing buses and "special" vehicles to traverse the Square. Even though it's congested, I'm not sure the current temporary bus terminal next to the casino is the worse thing in the world. I'm not for sticking bus riders out of sight, out of mind, but at least at the casino location riders are still very accessible to the Rapid. I actually thought a similar bus terminal on Prospect behind Terminal Tower would be even better ... it has more space and is directly at the entrances to TC and the Rapid ... on both sides of the street. They are almost like subway entrances; but a lot more classy. Cleveland's rail riders are out of sight, out of mind. Unless you're in the Flats, no visitor to Cleveland would know there is a rapid transit system. The Casino is an example of Cleveland's latest TOD. An all indoor connection to the rail hub. How much of an increase in ridership has the Casino generated?

Of course there will be no moving of rail lines or anything but this should have all been done correctly from the get-go. Cleveland's transit mishaps predate Ohio's current lack of funding. What other city is using Cleveland's rail lines as a model for planning? Only the HealthLine. It's what we're stuck with though for the foreseeable future.

Uh, yes it was. It's why Terminal Tower was built where it was built -- on Public Square, the hub of the city's streetcar system. Now the hub of the local bus system. So how is the rail hub not designed to interface with the local transit system? If Tower City is so great, why are you an advocate for creating a transit hub on the lakefront? Hardly a rail hub area, especially since the Red Line will not be a part of it.

Uh, yes it was. It's why Terminal Tower was built where it was built -- on Public Square, the hub of the city's streetcar system. Now the hub of the local bus system. So how is the rail hub not designed to interface with the local transit system? It was originally planned for the lakefront, the site of the isolated Amtrak station near the area you think a new transit hub should go now. The rail hub was moved to the Van Sweringens' Terminal Tower project on PS. Money and politics controlled that decision and it wasn't because of the streetcar system. Same old Cleveland story I know, especially when it comes to transit. How does the rail hub buried under TC interface exactly? You think that's good interfacing? You must not travel much to other cities.

Downtown Cleveland lacked connectivity and PS was a huge disconnect in the urban flow. Cities are all about walking and connectivity now, this redo of PS will connect to the Mall and surrounding areas. This redesign is long overdue.

Move the rail hub from Tower City. TC is the old railroad station, not designed for a local transit system.