Cleveland Trust

These other cities without downtown airports are passing us by like we’re standing still and we’re debating why people are leaving!

In ten years a lot of money will be lost to a boondoggle. Ignore the tumor you kill the patient. Bursts of money from national events are not a reliable form of econmic development: there are like 40 pro sports cities, they all have convention centers, it is not unique to Cleveland. Citizens working and living are the best way forward. Wonder why Chicago is such convention hotbed. People want to go there anyway! We seem so content with a few hours of good national media coverage.

Is the new runway free? Someone is spending the money. Someone will be happy. I am not debating that some people can make money at Burke. I wonder if the trade off is killing us. BP left because Cleveland was not an attractive place to live and there seemed to be contentment at City Hall with being below average and shrinking. They could have moved Amoco jobs here but the Chicagoans showed them a good time. The choice was simple for the decision makers.

Yes, he wanted to extend downtown without all the spaghetti infrastructure of other proposals. Blue line would be straightened out and connect to land where Burke sits minus the Burke flight path. Burke should be a park with all the amenities that attract visitors until market demand says the remainder should be carved up and developed. It it would have a bigger economic impact as a kiddie park and golf course with a nature preserve at far end than a airport.

Only problem is that Dock 30 will be valued as a development with an airport landing strip a half mile away. Get rid of that proven real estate value depressor and Dock 30 will be more attractive from a number of perspectives.

Those teams will move.

I’ve talked to Stark about this. Chicago did the same infrastructure spending that he wanted Cleveland to do. Millennium Park attracts more people in a few hours than Burke does passengers in a year. Boom ?

To some extent. It is a good start but it is a truncated version of the plans and realities in other similar cities. We will not be able to keep pace with them in their efforts to lure jobs and talent. We need a comprehensive agenda to shape the lakefront and we have one giant obstacle.

It’s all about the transaction and public benefit. Maybe waterfront property is really not valuable. Maybe real estate people gaslight us into thinking there is demand for lakefront real estate when there isn’t. Or, Cleveland is an outlier in not capitalizing on proven Investment strategies (ignore Cleveland for a minute and look at other city data) in favor of old guard money making schemes. It’s not like there has ever been a scandal in Cleveland involving a boondoggle. About the county airport, read those two reports I posted upthread. It will bring you up to speed.

Look what we are missing out on: Cleveland lakefront compared to what’s going on in Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, Baltimore, our competition. Why doesn’t Detroit wait until they fill in all those vacant lots first? Riverfront Park? That will never attract anyone!

I don’t care about farmland property filling up with McMansions, I want to free up the land north of downtown from the FAA development regulations and use this unique asset as a population magnet. Want a Boom Town? Shutter Burke and split the traffic between County and Hopkins.

An airport got us the GOP Con. plus they always put them in swing states. We can’t live in the past. Do they only put GOP conventions in cities with downtown airports? ? Will we get the GOP Con every election because of Burke?

Maybe Chicago should have waited to develop Millennium Park until all of the vacant lots downtown were filled. Maybe if they had an airport downtown instead of that park they would be much better off. Remember Stark’s lakefront plan? That was designed to create a ? BOOM in a way infill doesn’t. That boom would redefine Cleveland. City hall saw change as the interruption of revenue streams and didn’t give any cooperation. Remember when BP left? That was because Cleveland was too small for the executives. There was no vision at city hall. BP recognized that. They chose a city that offered things we couldn’t. We need to understand what civic magnets attract people and deserve our support and advocacy. I see Burke as a boondoggle. Nothing more. If downtown airports were necessary every city would be building one. They just aren’t doing that. An airport close to downtown is essential but one that dictates the land use and land value is a civic planning disaster. That’s where we are.

We are shrinking.

Okay, I’ll reset this. Our most valuable asset, the lakefront (compare prices of lakefront real estate in thriving cities to inland real estate), is deemed worthless because there is an adjacent “asset,” Burke (airports depress real estate values universally). The presence of one negates the value of the other. We we are in a position where we no longer need Burke. The Port is about to spend a lot of money modernizing a boondoggle. We we have an opportunity to see Cleveland as something other than a backwater laughingstock with people getting rich managing our decline. The city is shrinking. I see this as a problem. I want Cleveland to grow. Burke has been here trough the decline. It is not an economic engine. It just isn’t. We have three airports. We need to pull the plug on the one that would give us the best upside. That is Burke.

Hey New York and Nashville and Chicago, you know what you need? An airport downtown! You’d really see an economic boost. Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!

What happened in Cuyahoga County in 2008? ? Cleveland! Where our lakefront is where you store your limestone!

Yes, all the billionaires here have it so bad.

Okay. Ultimate Air has ONE flight a day to Cincinnati!!! If it is up 7.4% that is not economic development. That one flight vs. $20 billion of real estate that is worthless because of that one flight a day flight path. That is crazy.

Is that true? I thought they were related. More passengers means more t/l taxes = more revenue. More revenue = less public subsidies needed. How would you ever know if you had a boondoggle?

Nice. A little more money being made.

How much should we pay for the new Burke runway being planned? $100 million? $200 million? How much is too much to spend on a failing airport in a shrinking city?

Okay. But your example numbers were off by an order of several billion.

I disagree. Get rid of restrictions and value-destroying flight path and let the developers decide where they prefer to build.

No. At that number Burke would be more valuable than all the airports in Ohio combined. http://www.dot.state.oh.us/Divisions/Operations/Aviation/OhioAirportsFocusStudy/FindingsandRecommendationsDocs/EconomicImpactBrochures/Cleveland-Cleveland-Hopkins Intl.pdf