Boaty McBoatface

Sorry for responding so quickly, I do have a life I swear, but I just happened to check this right as you posted haha. I live south of Detroit. South of Franklin actually, and the houses near me are selling for the amount stated. Now, I do agree with you that absentee landlords/slumlords/suburban “investors” buying up old housing stock for tax purposes is a huge problem which is unfortunately not unique to old neighborhoods in the rust belt. I teach music for a living so I am of no use when it comes to steps we can take to eliminate that, and I also wish we had more retail options to be sure! I know for a fact that the owner of Alexandria Market is a dude who lives in a McMansion in Avon Lake who refuses to do anything to clean up the store because it’s his big money maker and I don’t know what the citizens or city can do to prevent things like this from continuing.

I’ll break down the maim methodology for these studies. “Is your city majority white while also lacking viable public transit? Then you are in a much better position and much happier than those scary, diverse, and walkable places!”

As long as it got approved I’m happy! I live in the neighborhood, and it is a desperately needed project.

I am continuing my streak of only adding anything to this forum by either arguing with negative Nancies, or posting even more photos of the Sherwin-Williams HQ!

Well sure. But Chicago and New York are incredibly different places with different histories of interaction. Also, Chicago is still a midwestern city engulfed by suburban development far more than NYC. It’s not a perfect solution by any means, but people in New York are just way better at interacting with other people just by sheer necessity of space allocation haha. I don’t know that the model will work everywhere, as New York is the most un-American city in the country, but there is definitely a place for mixed income in every city neighborhood and it will only benefit everyone if done correctly. Do I trust that things like this will be done correctly? Probably not. But it’s not as dire as opponents would have you believe. Clearly this is just based on my own limited experience, but living near people of a different economic bracket just helped change my perspective a bit.

This. When I lived in NYC, the only places that most normies could afford to rent were always adjacent to housing projects, and it was beneficial to everyone in the neighborhood. When low income renters are not on an island separate from everyone else, and actually feel like a part of the surrounding neighborhood then they are stewards to the best of their ability. It also keeps so many more sections of an unaffordable city available to more average earners. Living in East Harlem was a perfect example of this and the everyday interaction between the ultra wealthy doctors who wanted to live within walking distance of Mt. Sinai, and the low income renters in the surrounding housing projects meant that everyone had greater access to necessary amenities and curated a greater amount of cooperation between groups that have historically been kept separate from one another. Anecdotal for sure, but I spent so much time hanging with people who lived in the projects a block over from my apartment and when they don’t feel completely overlooked and isolated from the city they live in, they are wonderful neighbors. Housing projects in Cleveland are just kept separate from their surrounding neighborhood which creates a feeling of desperation and isolation. Creating more mixed income neighborhoods in the city would go a long way in improving the lives of all of its residents.

For real. Every post about Cleveland the past few days has been inundated with negativity and a general belittling of the city and its residents of which I am one. Has the forum been taken over by burner accounts for suburban mayors or something? With all of the responses as of late you would think that we would need a few tornadoes to put out all of the fires going on within city limits. JaJa and Pioneer will be fine, and anyone who spent any amount of time on W25th Street 20 years ago would know just how much healthier the neighborhood is now. Just like EVERY OTHER city in the country, there is a disproportionate amount of poverty and crime within city limits because of 70 years of disinvestment and good old fashioned racism. Do we really need all of the negativity all of the time? We live in a city that was declared dead by a few magazines in the early 2000’s, and now we are finally seeing positive growth. Constructive criticism is one thing, but my god.

Playing around with the new camera at Edgewater. Figured it can’t hurt to add even more photos of this thing!

@G00pieYou know? I agree. My wife and I make that joke internally within our household and I forget that it really is an unnecessary jab. It’s more just stated out of bitterness because lifestyle centers in far flung suburbs really do prevent any decent retail from making it into the city, especially in Cleveland, and it is at least partly because a lot of older white people want walkable urbanism but are afraid to step foot in the city. Broad generalizations to be sure and I agree with you that it was an unnecessary misstep as far as my language. I’m glad that you at least agree with the points outside of my minor misstep. Shouldn’t have been said because I can totally understand how that would cloud any sort of rational and honest discourse.

My wording wasn’t clear again haha. I was saying that BECAUSE we are a legacy city we have things like professional sports teams, the orchestra, the art museum, etc. Nobody is clamoring to go to the Avon Museum of Natural History, just how Cleveland is the only city in the county that is in the running for a new soccer team. I’m bad at this talking good thing. While I don’t disagree with you that other metro areas suffer from the same sort of competition, the stark contrast with Cleveland is that those metros are growing, which is in turn helping the city centers continue to thrive and receive investment dollars. It’s not like Seattle will ever lose out on getting a Trader Joe’s because they lost the competition with Tacoma. TJ’s will go to both places very happily. In Cleveland all of our Trader Joe’s that claim to be in Cleveland are not anywhere close to the city they claim to be in because the companies just look at numbers on paper, and most of the money in the region has moved across the border to the burbs unfortunately. And with a total lack of population growth, that means that we are robbing Peter to pay Paul. If that makes any sense. I could be absolutely incorrect, but we have been subsidizing suburban growth by poaching resources from the city for 70 years and it has only made the region weaker and weaker.

“Want Cleveland to stop losing? Then offer a better product!” This is the mentality that needs to change within the region as a whole though, and my main point throughout this discussion. Cleveland shouldn’t have to compete in some sort of capitalistic way with the almost 60 other cities that rely on Cleveland to survive in the first place. In my earlier rant I even said that I don’t care if it stays downtown, just that we can and should find a place within city limits because that should be the most important thing. This is why land swaps, annexations, and any other option should be on the table if we are going to move the stadium out of downtown if the ridiculous number of empty parcels in the city that could offer the Haslems exactly what they want are not even on the table as an option. If Cleveland is able to annex the land that the stadium is going to be built on then this conversation never needs to happen and all is well. But the smaller cities forcing its lifeblood to compete for things that literally are only in Northeast Ohio because of Cleveland’s status as a legacy city is what continues to hold the entire region back. BrookPark suffers zero economic consequences if they continue to not be the host city of an NFL team, but Cleveland and every other city in the region suffers if Cleveland loses it. Then we turn Burke into the country’s coolest IKEA…with a Ferris Wheel!

Apologies to @KJP for what seemed like a bit of a rant. Not my intention at all! I was using the Queens photo as an example and I was just generally responding to other posts with the rest of the diatribe. But to address the point, even if it is not “our” NFL team, should we just be OK with moving it out of the city? No matter how we try to rationalize it, BrookPark is not Cleveland plain and simple. To piggy back of of what @Chris314 said in a much more eloquent way than I ever could, a move out of the city in any capacity would end up being a net loss for the region and we should really do everything we can (whatever that means) to keep the team at least within city limits as it will benefit the region more than a move. That is what I meant and I apologize for any sort of misunderstanding as that is never how I want to actually communicate.

Sorry. I was pointing out that using Queens as an example is a bit off the mark because Queens is a part of NYC and not a separate city altogether. So any of the investment and development taking place in Queens is a benefit to the city as a whole as opposed to a developing say Paramus or Yonkers. Apologies for not being clear haha.

So based on your photo and assessment of Queens before the subway means that BrookPark will allow itself to be annexed into the city of Cleveland once it steals our NFL team? Got it. And to respond to anyone thinking that whenever I say the team should stay in Cleveland thinking I mean all investment has to be “downtown” is missing the point just a little bit. I live in Gordon Square and I see so many cool new businesses that could end up in my neighborhood (or any other number of CLE neighborhoods with empty storefronts in walkable places) go to Lakewood or Van Aiken thinking that they are actually in the city. It doesn’t matter which suburb these places go to, it still takes potential investment away from the city, which for retail or restaurants is fine I guess, but this is a professional football team that would not be in the region at all if BrookPark was the economic and population center. They are the Cleveland Browns, and they exist because of the city. Even if they want to move out of downtown, there are more than enough empty parcels within city limits that could accommodate the things that the Haslams want. Also, as was stated earlier, if a version of Cracker Park gets built around the venue then that legitimately prevents people from ever having to step foot in the city when coming into town to see a game which would be yet another contributing factor to the overall stagnation of the entire area. It doesn’t matter how “walkable” we make a portion of BrookPark, the outcome as far as regional health is still the same. I am all for better utilization of the lakefront, but I also think that we could think a bit more creatively when it comes to where the stadium could go as opposed to just resigning ourselves to letting yet another Cleveland institution move to the burbs.

This. And it isn’t even just a bunch of independent cities fighting for scraps in a population stagnant region. Cities like Brook Park RELY on Cleveland as an economic and cultural hub to survive. The big difference between Cleveland and Akron as opposed to Cleveland and Parma for example is that if Cleveland dies, Parma dies with it plain and simple. The 55 or more municipalities that make up Cuyahoga County simply cannot continue to exist if they keep on biting the hand that feeds them, and having what should be a city-centered organization in name relocate into a different city altogether. The suburbs have grown for the past 70 years while the city has floundered and the region as a whole is in far worse shape than it was when Cleveland was the population and commerce center. Continuing to allow the suburbs to poach assets is just slowly sinking the entire ship.