PHS14

FIST was considered an example of the former and people complained about that, but the reasons why it was filmed in Iowa turned out to be interesting. As per Wikipedia: Most of the filming was done in Dubuque, Iowa. Dubuque was chosen firstly because the older sections of the town looked more like Cleveland of the 1930s than Cleveland did at the time, and secondly because of the absence of roof-mounted television antennas due to most of the homes having cable television. Because of the large bluffs, over-the-air television signals had problems reaching homes in the low-lying areas, so a cable system was developed in the mid-1950s, which was considerably earlier than many other municipalities. ''The Fortune Cookie'', a 1966 Billy Wilder classic and the first pairing of Jack Lemmon & Walter Matthau, set in Cleveland has always been my favorite Cleveland movie. Matthau won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award. Matthau plays a shyster lawyer with an office in the Terminal Tower.

That's right, 7 S Dearborn, forgot about that one but I do remember there were a few of these.

College educated workforce on the low-end in Cleveland. The Cleveland Public Schools turn out ''graduates'' with zero to minimal skills. Corrupt and inept school officials interested more in cheating on standardized exams for bonus money. Political Correctness run amok. Entrenched, long-term poverty stricken residents, most of whom elect ''leaders'' like councilman Dow to represent them by blocking developments with Cleveland Clinic and CWRU, two local economic anchors. These are just a few of the local ills. Yes, Cleveland is attracting advanced degree professionals. Most likely in the Health Care field; certainly not enough to offset the continued manufacturing drag. Downtown is nice now and getting better. Developing and closing the gap between downtown and UC is happening (see old school Clevland issue with councilman Dow again). Wonder if Dow will get on his soapbox about creating opportunity in Cleveland after these population results.

Not in the 1990s. Although it was a shadow of the growth prior to 1960. Maybe the jobs situation was OK in the '90s but the City of Cleveland continued its population decline, the county and region were stagnant.

The PD posts negative pieces with no real analysis. No argument there. It's just that there never is any real analysis anywhere about market issues. It's either CSU or DCA trying to pump Cleveland up or the PD trying to tear Cleveland down. It would be nice to read something looking at why Cleveland continues to struggle why most areas aren't without the usual slant. I guess that is hard to do. Inept, corrupt, self-serving political leadership. The City of Cleveland is in its 6th decade of population decline; followed by Cuyahoga County and NEO. Throw in a horrible national reputation and you have all the ingredients of sustained decline.

Once Cleveland, Cuyahoga County and NEO start creating jobs and attracting new residents with paychecks, not only The Avenue but the whole region will draw people back.

Hmm...you always focus on the negative; sound familiar? If the City's rep for RTA and an RTA Board member time just rode the Red Line for the 1st time and noticed the trash piling up along the Airport-TC route since the 1970s, you must have some high expectations from RTA to properly mark the WFL. The transfer between the light rail lines and the heavy-rail line is awkward, no one knows about the WFL unless one is familiar with the system. Once the ped bridge is open, downtown visitors will use it, not the WFL, to access the lakefront, Rock Hall etc. Perhaps from the lakefront to FEB/Flats, since access to this area on foot can be hike for some. What would work is people at the Q, Gateway, 9/12 District jumping on the WFL that runs up and down E 9th RTA has a poorly routed WFL and a poorly marked line to boot. Visitors to Cleveland would never know there is a rail system. Perhaps they can catch a glimpse of it in the Flats, WFL and overhead Red Line, but would never why or how to use it.

Chicago has had a few 2,000'+ towers proposed; none, however, got the ''hole'' digging stage like The Spire, but times were different 10 years ago.

The height of ''the big short era'' hubris...this hole being an appropriate reminder of the financial greed of the early '00s which, ominously, is all but forgotten today. Throw in Chicago's built-in hubris and you have the The Spire. 2,000 condos in one building starting at 750K. Chicago was expecting world-wide investors (Arab oil folks etc.) to own properties in The Spire so they could, I guess, watch Chicago's Air Show and shop on Michigan Avenue. The one big time contract purchaser was the guy who created beanie-babies. Hope he got his deposit back since the developer went bankrupt.

Yep, direct street access which is why I thought the same thing on Huron/Prospect and Ontario Streets. I've stated I thought Gateway should have had its own separate station, especially now with the entertainment and residential development. Say street access at E 4th/Huron. An access portal from the redesigned Public Square, like the ones in Philadelphia's Dilworth Park rehab adjacent to City Hall. Not enough money for this, of course, though. The Tower City Station is in an awkward location, especially as being the hub and only real downtown station.

I'll have to check on this when I have more time... My recollection, though, was although the walkway-to-Gateway was a selling point for Gateway package which, of course, was then sold to the voters, even if it wasn't THE selling point. I do know that enticing the Gund Brothers to move the Cavs back into downtown from their happy perch out in Richfield, may have been what ultimately convinced County voters to pass the sin tax to finance Gateway. My recollection is that there was no Gateway walkway as part of the original plan. Not that this is a big deal. I recall it being a separate RTA project announced after the sin tax and Gateway was a go; an add-on perk paid for by RTA. At the time I wanted a separate Gateway rail station and as the project got underway the rail connection was announced: RTA's tunnel to Gateway. Either way, a connection was needed but I don't think it was paid for with sin tax money. Moving the Cavs back was always part of an overall new stadium plan in the 1980s. Remember the dome stadium idea that had several potential locations, including the Warehouse District, and a voter-defeated financing plan in mid-'80s? The Cavs were supposed to be included in this deal as well. It ended up being Gateway in its present location, the old Central Market district, as an open air baseball stadium and arena. No football stadium. We all know what happened later on that topic.

Mine "100 years" of history is to show why something is the way it is today. Every public policy, program, tax, regulation, budget, and even personal behavior is based on what has come before. And when you read through the history, you realize just how tenuous everything is, and how susceptible to change we really are. Just the tiniest of policy amendments have major repercussions on people's person behaviors. In the end, we are all sheep. Get rid of transit at Tower City and it would die. There's 30,000 people getting on/off trains there everyday, plus another 45,000 getting on/off buses on Public Square daily. Individuals may not have the loot the support a Fendi or Bally's, but their collective purchasing power is far greater than many suburban malls that have since died or transitioned into strip/"power" centers. I once did an analysis of why so many grocery stores and banks were located along the entire West 117th Street. The reason is the collective purchasing power of residents living near that retail corridor... http://www.cleveland.com/sunpostherald/index.ssf/2012/12/clevelands_west_117th_street_h.html Not only is West 117th accessible to a wide range of customers from a large area, its immediate neighbors also have lots of money to spend. But how can an area that’s not wealthy have money? “There is money in the neighborhood because there’s lots of population in the neighborhood,” said Chad Dasher, executive director of the Westown Community Development Corp. “Look at the number of the banks to determine the spending power of a neighborhood. Just about all the banks are here. Banks won’t set up shop in a neighborhood if there wasn’t any money here.” That bold statement is backed up by population and per capita income data collected for the 2010 Census and the 2007 American Community Survey. Neighborhoods in Cleveland and Lakewood that are within two miles of West 117th have a high population density — about 95,000 residents. The per capita annual income in those areas is about $27,000. That means the neighborhoods within two miles of West 117th have approximately $2.57 billion in annual purchasing power. That’s nearly double the $1.37 billion of annual purchasing power of affluent Westlake, where its 32,700 residents have a per capita income of almost $42,000, according to Census and ACS data. ____ Sure, there's no luxury retailers along West 117th. But there are many everyday retailers with a high utility. A similar situation exists with Tower City Center. The volume of transit riders aggregates otherwise small individual disposable incomes into a collective purchasing power to be reckoned with. Cleveland needs a good retail mix: high, middle and low. It also needs a good population mix. Let's see what Gilbert's plans for The Avenue are but if the idea is to cater to the built-in transit riders, then nothing will change. Why bother?

Answer: yes. I take the long view. Has TC struggled with retail to a degree, esp in losing it's high-end retail since it opened in 1990? Sure it has. But retail has struggled downtown in a lot of cities, not just Cleveland. Pittsburgh recently shuddered it's Macy's. Philadelphia, whose Metro area's twice Cleveland's, is down to just Macy's as its lone major department store (there is a junky Burlington Coat Factory, a Century 21 and a small Marshall's in Center City, but come on-- Philly does have some high-end specialty stores along Walnut Street). Even titanic Chicago has taken retail hits downtown, including losing it's beloved Carson Pirie Scott department store in 2007. So downtown Cleveland's not alone in its retail struggles, although I would like to see us do better. But it's undeniable that Tower City is a model for cities around the globe as a mixed-use, inter-connected group of hotels, office buildings and retail directly connected to an underground rail transit station. And even though the Vans old Union Terminal Group was pioneering for it's day (only New York's Rockefeller Center, opened 2 years after Terminal Tower in 1932, matched the Terminal Group for its size and air-rights/mixed-use innovation), Tower City's 1989/90 revamp represented a significant leap forward on the original concept: the empty, deteriorating train station waiting room was expanded into a (still) beautiful, multi-tier urban shopping mall; an upscale Ritz-Carlton Hotel was built along with the Skylight office building. Other substantial office buildings were added over the years, including the Lausche State Office (1979) and the 23-story Stokes Federal Courthouse -- not to mention the fact that the RTA walkway to TC and the Rapid helped spawn the Gateway sports complex with both The Q and Progressive field: a model for downtown sports stadium grouping... TC's unique and convenient development at the center of town was influential in landing this summer's RNC. ... and yes, despite whether one loves the Horseshoe-turned-J*A*C*K casino, I much prefer it, and the constant activity it draws, to the desolate, near-empty Higbee Dept. Store building. So despite the ebbs and flows Tower City has had over the years, overall I can't consider it anything but an unqualified success and one of Cleveland's gems; ... along with being a pretty cool TOD on top of that. You may be the only person considering Tower City a success, esp given its hoopla beginning. Forest City didn't consider it a success. But yes, the long-view may be in order here given that Gilbert has purchased The Avenue. The idea that the tunnel to Gateway helped spur the stadiums is misplaced; the tunnel came as an after thought. I always thought, and especially now, that a separate station should be developed for Gateway/E 4th Street. Thus far however, there has only been ''a flow'' and ''an ebb'' with Tower City; not ''flows and ebbs''. Gilbert should be able to create a ''flow'' again. Also, I wouldn't use Chicago or Philly's downtown retail scenes in comparison to Cleveland's; the former have retail scenes, the latter doesn't.

Off Wikipedia: Historical population Census Pop. %± 1850 131,107 — 1860 161,687 23.3% 1870 212,535 31.4% 1880 284,499 33.9% 1890 403,731 41.9% 1900 552,359 36.8% 1910 774,657 40.2% 1920 1,103,877 42.5% 1930 1,397,426 26.6% 1940 1,432,124 2.5% 1950 1,680,736 17.4% 1960 2,126,983 26.6% 1970 2,321,037 9.1% 1980 2,173,734 −6.3% 1990 2,102,248 −3.3% 2000 2,148,143 2.2% 2010 2,077,240 −3.3% Yes, the current 5 county region. Trust me, Cleveland-Akron were considered one for many years (2.9 million). y

It was, at one time. During the late 90s and early 2000s it was one of the nicest malls in the area. Of course it worked, for a while. Transit didn't save or in the end help Tower City. It still is a nice looking mall as far as urban malls go and it is still open but it has fallen the past 10+ years. This place has a lot of potential to be a great shopping mall given the uptick in population and visitors to downtown. Looks like Cleveland may be getting over its ''rich people'' hang-up so perhaps high-end stores can come in again, but we shall see.

Then please stop offering opinions that weren't earned (including that one about a lack of infill residents). Cleveland is a MSA. Akron is a MSA. Both are still part of the Clevleand-Akron CSA as is Canton now: http://www2.census.gov/geo/maps/econ/ec2012/csa/EC2012_330M200US184M.pdf You sure are high-maintenance. When am I up for tenure? For years the Cleveland metro area population was close to 3 million. In recent years, the Cleveland metro is sized at 2 million. Where did the 1 million go? I now the CSA is much larger but Cleveland is now heading to be the 3rd largest MSA in Ohio. As to infill, Clevleand is currently shuffling people around. Maybe the core is seeing population growth but the metro has been shrinking. Hope to see significant population gains in both the city and metro when the 2016 estimates are released tomorrow.

I have no idea what your point is. For one thing, you overlook Uptown (including MOCA), which includes a mixed-use project of 200 apartments (from smaller, dorm-types to $1,900/month units) over a seriously upgraded and expanded retail area -- all on top of what was 2 block-long surface parking lots north and south of Euclid Ave. Uptown is the definition of TOD; not surprising, as KJP notes, that it merited the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy's "Silver" standard. But then I ask: what is your definition of Transit Oriented Development? Little Italy is a tight, dense neighborhood -- perhaps Cleveland's densest per capita -- which began developing in the 1890s and was probably originally oriented to nearby streetcar routes. Now the neighborhood has the UC/LI Red Line station sitting at its front door retail district, with the southern part of the area near the Cedar-University station. Is LI not transit oriented? (and btw, what is transit-proximate? I've never heard this as a term of art). Fact is, while Cleveland is far from perfect in terms of it's transit system's developing TOD, it's not as bad as you paint it especially when considered viz-a-viz similar-sized older cities in the Northeast and Rust Belt. Compare Pittsburgh or Baltimore or St. Louis. And yes, I do look at areas like Shaker Square, Tower City and the entire City of Shaker Heights as highly successful TODs generated by the Rapid system -- they just happen to be old, as are the Blue and Green Lines. I'm not saying Cleveland couldn't be doing better -- and it should; not just an RTA initiative, but should be planned jointly between RTA and the City -- RTA can and should take a leading role, though. OK, I'd just as soon not get into a semantics pissing contest, but this was more than just a "vision." It was a concrete proposal with a (below) detailed artist's rendering. IIRC there were, at the time, both financing and retailer approval challenges, but it was given prominent play in the PD with considerable positive feedback. http://www.dimitarchitects.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=154&Itemid=60 You consider Tower City a success? Maybe now that Gilbert bought the place it can be reinvented and become a success.

Then please stop offering opinions that weren't earned (including that one about a lack of infill residents). Cleveland is a MSA. Akron is a MSA. Both are still part of the Clevleand-Akron CSA as is Canton now: http://www2.census.gov/geo/maps/econ/ec2012/csa/EC2012_330M200US184M.pdf You sure are high-maintenance. When am I up for tenure? You don't have to respond at all...Cleveland's MSA is worse off than I thought and it is losing people to Akron's MSA. So Cleveland's heading for the #3 MSA in Ohio? Wow. The CSA is still decent but losing ground but Cleveland's MSA is in trouble. Est. pop. figures come out Thursday. I'll be gone soon anyway...I do hope all works out in Cleveland.

Most of the land use in the cities of Cleveland, Lakewood, Cleveland Heights and Shaker Hts were designed as TODs to maximize transit use. Shaker Square is used in urban planning textbooks nationwide as one of America's preeminent examples of TOD. And if you want something more recent, Uptown won the top Silver score from Institute for Transportation and Development Policy in competing against projects worldwide. https://www.itdp.org/library/standards-and-guides/transit-oriented-development-are-you-on-the-map/best-practices/ What I'm getting from his comments is that the TOD of last century isn't really cutting it as employment patterns have changed, and RTA is still clinging to the old patterns. I would disagree with this assessment to a point as we are seeing University Circle-Cleveland Clinic (the second biggest employment concentration in this area) becoming a mini-hub of sorts for the 32/9 et al. However, RTA still overstates the importance of downtown in the overall picture, and I would suspect that is due to bureaucratic inertia and a lack of competition than any set policy. There's still quite a bit of redundancy on some of the routes between natural hub points and downtown. The Shaker Rapid leads the pack in this regard, both lines don't really need to go downtown and a direct rail connection between Shaker Square and UC/CC has more potential than anything else in town with the possible exception of the Lakeview Terrace site. University Circle isn't developing because of transit, certainly not the Red Line. The HealthLine is a nice complement but the growth in UC is not because of transit. I don't see or read any promos for transit with Uptown or UC in general. Same thing with Flats East Bank. Transit is there, for now, but wasn't even running full time when the project was announced and opened several years later. Now the WFL is on the ropes again. The WFL, like most of the Red Line, is routed poorly. Cleveland continues to sprawl so much that Akron has become a separate metro. The real problem is the thinning population with the sprawl and the declining population in particular. Jobs and new people are the answer to all these transit dreams. Does it matter so much as to whether Flats East Bank was built because of the WFL or that it is easily served by it? ... or that if the answer is the former, this necessarily makes the WFL a failure and not worth continuing? And can you even prove that FEB wasn't at all influenced by the existence of the WFL? Is it not irrelevant that if, at the time FEB was announced, the WFL wasn't even running full time as you note -- and if, btw, you're right, don't you think that the absence of a development like an FEB (for your purposes, I won't even call it TOD) helped contribute to the WFL's struggling, part-time operation/condition at the time? .. Btw I totally disagree with your premise that University Circle's current thriving situation is not at least, in part, influenced by its accessibility to high-quality, high-capacity mass transit. Of course it doesn't really matter if FEB was developed because of the WFL or as now that it is served by it; what matters is that the WFL is still not attracting sufficient ridership. I don't think it's time to scale back the WFL, the PD stated it due to other RTA cutbacks. 400 daily riders is lame; there has to be a pretty big step-up in ridership soon. Of course UC's current situation is due, in part, to its proximity to transit. Mainly the HealthLine, though, at this point.

Not worst case scenarios, just current case scenarios. How many people live in Shaker et al and work in FEB? Not enough obviously to carry the WFL. North Point has been there since the '80s and didn't help the WFL in its 1st round of full service. So what's the ridership bump on the Red Line from the Maron projects? I hope the Maron Bros can turn transit use in Cleveland around as they need to keep the Red Line orientation to prove their point. I bet they don't use the Red Line either...lol. The Intesa project couldn't retain the commercial part of its initial promise. Someday, perhaps it will take off. The Red Line does offer the best potential and, of course, if the WFL-Light Rails were tweaked a bit, they, as well, could attract jobs, residents and riders again.

Never said I don't like rail, just Cleveland's routing, esp its WFL. No U.S. city is looking to Cleveland for its rail system. The WFL offers very limited one-seat of office door options; some of the people that live along the Blue-Green Lines in Shaker and still work downtown and the even fewer working at the E&Y Tower. You are still focusing on the bar crowd using the WFL again. First, it's not the same crowd in the Flats using the WFL in the '90s. The WFL is not convenient for visitors staying downtown and why would someone living in the WHD or even the Flats use it to get to work? Going to airport? walk to TC for the Red Line unless one is using a cab, uber or simply driving. Why would someone, say, living in North Olmsted or Euclid take the WFL?

That's not true. FEB was first announced near the end of the Campbell administration in 2005. At that time, the WFL was running full service. It wasn't reduced to part time service (weekends and special events; see link, below) until 2010, but was restored to 7-day/week service on May 30, 2013, around the time the E&Y/Aloft Hotel portion of FEB opened. http://www.riderta.com/news/may-30-waterfront-line-opens-seven-days-week Couldn't remember when the WFL hit the skids, thought it was earlier, but nonetheless, FEB was not built because of access to the WFL. The project was revived while the WFL was pretty much inactive. No one was using it during its slow, initial death, so it's kind of tough to remember it since its novelty had been wearing off for a long time, and, as we all know, its back in intensive care again.

Sorry, but, for example, of the 3Cs in Ohio, Cleveland has the best transit and is not seeing the job and population growth that Columbus has had and now Cincinnati is starting to see. COL and CIN has dismal to barely any public transit yet Cleveland, with its great transit options, was just named the most distressed U.S. City, worse off than Detroit. Where are people like Congresswomen Fudge? She has some of the poorest most distressed zip codes in the country. Where is her pull on creating jobs and transit? Then Cleveland serves up someone like Dr. Valarie McCall, the honorary CSU PhD that actually uses the ''Doctor'' title but doesn't use public transit. She's the City mouthpiece with RTA and serves on its Board and was idiotic enough to state that she just noticed the trash on the Airport-Tower City segment of the Red Line last year. Translation: I've never been on the Rapid to or from the Airport before and am only on it now because of the decades old garbage pile-up and the RNC. Yet somehow she's making informed transit decisions for transit users. You should have her job. Also, the cited examples include, TOD at the E 120th Street Station (now closed) and, despite the WHD developments, the WFL closed. The apartments and people stayed but the transit line didn't. The WFL is still attracting riders from the WHD to justify its continued existence. As you point out, the WFL went the way of the Flats; all the train riding boozers left. Has anyone mentioned the poor routing of the WFL? Where are the jobs? The project adjacent to the new Little Italy Station may be proceeding, without commercial portion; new residents, but no jobs.

And that "anything else" represents significant governmental intervention that externalizes the costs of sprawl to others, including onto poor people isolated by it. That's what new investments in modern TOD can address -- putting jobs and opportunity (and even affordable housing) within reach of people whether they have a car or not. Cleveland needs jobs and population to create real TOD. You can reference all the history books you want about railways, roads, cars etc. but Cleveland needs real jobs to attract people.

Most of the land use in the cities of Cleveland, Lakewood, Cleveland Heights and Shaker Hts were designed as TODs to maximize transit use. Shaker Square is used in urban planning textbooks nationwide as one of America's preeminent examples of TOD. And if you want something more recent, Uptown won the top Silver score from Institute for Transportation and Development Policy in competing against projects worldwide. https://www.itdp.org/library/standards-and-guides/transit-oriented-development-are-you-on-the-map/best-practices/ What I'm getting from his comments is that the TOD of last century isn't really cutting it as employment patterns have changed, and RTA is still clinging to the old patterns. I would disagree with this assessment to a point as we are seeing University Circle-Cleveland Clinic (the second biggest employment concentration in this area) becoming a mini-hub of sorts for the 32/9 et al. However, RTA still overstates the importance of downtown in the overall picture, and I would suspect that is due to bureaucratic inertia and a lack of competition than any set policy. There's still quite a bit of redundancy on some of the routes between natural hub points and downtown. The Shaker Rapid leads the pack in this regard, both lines don't really need to go downtown and a direct rail connection between Shaker Square and UC/CC has more potential than anything else in town with the possible exception of the Lakeview Terrace site. University Circle isn't developing because of transit, certainly not the Red Line. The HealthLine is a nice complement but the growth in UC is not because of transit. I don't see or read any promos for transit with Uptown or UC in general. Same thing with Flats East Bank. Transit is there, for now, but wasn't even running full time when the project was announced and opened several years later. Now the WFL is on the ropes again. The WFL, like most of the Red Line, is routed poorly. Cleveland continues to sprawl so much that Akron has become a separate metro. The real problem is the thinning population with the sprawl and the declining population in particular. Jobs and new people are the answer to all these transit dreams. Does it matter so much as to whether Flats East Bank was built because of the WFL or that it is easily served by it? ... or that if the answer is the former, this necessarily makes the WFL a failure and not worth continuing? And can you even prove that FEB wasn't at all influenced by the existence of the WFL? Is it not irrelevant that if, at the time FEB was announced, the WFL wasn't even running full time as you note -- and if, btw, you're right, don't you think that the absence of a development like an FEB (for your purposes, I won't even call it TOD) helped contribute to the WFL's struggling, part-time operation/condition at the time? .. Btw I totally disagree with your premise that University Circle's current thriving situation is not at least, in part, influenced by its accessibility to high-quality, high-capacity mass transit. For starters, FEB was never promoted for its access to the WFL at all and still isn't even though the WFL line is running again. At the time of FEB announcement the WFL was reduced to stadium events and paltry weekend service I believe. FEB is not tied in with the WFL. Where would the patrons and residents go on the WFL anyway? Too inconvenient for regular use. Never said UC patrons and residents don't use transit. Again, Uptown and UC do not promote transit access. When is Cleveland going to have a developer announce that a project is happening because of transit access? Current TOD standards can be a bus line. Not too hard to avoid being TOD otherwise. Is the 515 Euclid project going in because of the HealthLine? No, of course not. Is the lakefront harbor and Rock Hall being developed because of the WFL? Nope. The Ped Bridge will eliminate the need to use the WFL to reach the lakefront for downtown visitors. Where would they go as well? Back to the bowels of Tower City?