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Another thing, yes we have a lot of restaurants downtown but I feel we lack in the national names. Even having a Chick-Fil-A downtown, Five Guys, etc. would help. The restaurants we have now are geared towards late night dining, sprinkle in recognizable names to fill in those gaps would create a more consistent amount of foot traffic. As a city, we also need to recognize that Euclid isn't our only street. We have emphasized development of Euclid so much that visiting streets outside of it causes our downtown to seem like a desert town, Superior and Prospect are okay but we can do much better. We need to find ways to attract people to those other areas with creative ideas.

As I think about it, there was always going to be more required than the 20K residents number (our actual number varies so much that I doubt we ACTUALLY have that). On top of the 20K residents I feel we need to see a significant uptick in non residents visiting Downtown. I'm not saying Cleveland needs to turn into Chicago but we need to get it to where our "busy days" become our normal/light days. How do you do that? Create a downtown that attracts families downtown (both residents and tourists), you can do that by having attractive lakefront attractions and unique things like the recently opened Museum of Illusions. Downtown Cleveland needs to have building landlords that are willing to swallow their pride and open up their retail spaces Downtown to new to market national retailers by offering them an EXTREMELY subsidized rent or free rent for a year, this causes people to want to visit downtown because they can't get that store or experience anywhere else. In an online centric shopping world you need to get extremely creative. The building owners are already getting ZERO dollars right now, why not get some retailers down there by offering subsidies, they literally have nothing to lose. That model was used in Detroit and has been pretty successful.

So this isn't the Skyline changing hotel project then

I'm actually optimistic about this. The 9 owners have been magnificent at creating spaces that are useful, quality and draw a crowd.

You sure do know how to get city nerds excited lol. I can't wait!

A lot more in a bad way? Or is a major positive shift in this development is coming?

Part of me feels like he is getting a kick back from the developer on this. There is no way someone works this hard to get a GAS STATION built. If it was a 115 unit transformative project receiving pushback? Sure go for it. But a gas station, something that is common throughout the city, is odd.

I reread KJP's article and it mentioned a 200 space garage, idk why the Cleveland.com story mentions something different

I reread the article, I feel like I read that the garage is only 55 spaces. Was that a typo?

I keep reading and hearing about these approval process complaints and zoning complaints. When do all of the changes the city announced to the permit process and zoning go into effect?

Fairfax and University Circle offer the best views of Downtown.

I was born there as well

Do you have an idea of what project this is or when this announcement could be made?

I always said that I would love the ground floor contain bars, restaurants and other attractions like Main event and Dave and Busters etc. that would require larger floorplates. That would attract tourists, families and friends that want to hang out. The next level can contain local boutiques mixed with new to market stores such as Adidas, Gucci etc. (just throwing stores out there). The ground floor would be the draw and the second floor reaps the benefits especially when the riverfront work starts.

By scaled back you mean the company is potentially bringing less workers or something worse?

Wasn't Cleveland supposed to announce a new company coming to the city? I could have sworn Blaine Griffin mentioned it in a story.

Why so aggressive? Two things can be true at the same time, it can be ugly (to some) due to the time period it was built.

I highly doubt it the elevation drop off is similar to the Flats so I compare it to the scale of the Flats East tower. Since the buildings will be built behind Terminal Tower you may see it peak through the cracks but not really impactful. The other side though? It'll look extremely dense.

According to Forbes, Cleveland is a very very smart city. This Ohio city was ranked by ‘Forbes’ as one of the most educated cities in the U.S.

Did you see a coming soon sign in Crocker Park? How did you find out?

We talk about the hypothetical here a lot on UO and with Apple being such a closed off company we'll probably never know. What I will say is after working in retail for so long, stores have to meet certain performance criteria consistently over a certain amount of time to "level up" which is why I mentioned performance, I used to work in stores that accomplished that. Also at the end of the day money talks so if they both were similar in performance they would upgrade the store that made the most financial sense.

That's all well and good but Crocker Park probably has a better performing Apple store compared to Easton and also probably received a better deal here. It's okay we can have nice things too, Columbus doesn't need everything.

Which is interesting because he subsidized rent at his Downtown Detroit properties, at least initially, which drew H&M downtown.

This. One can argue that one reason people are leaving the city for the suburbs and don't have a reason to come back is the availability of QUALITY affordable housing. When the affordable homes were built by Knez a few years ago in Glenville they sold FAST, The Davis? It leased quickly and I believe has a wait-list. I would imagine the same will happen for the High-rise on Hough Avenue. The demand is there, the supply isn't. If Cleveland can pull this off I can see significant growth in various neighborhoods over the next 5 years. Glamorous? No. Necessary for sustained growth in the city? Absolutely.

What's different from the normal one?