j73

Even if George's motices aren't pure, I still think I'm in favor of a reduction in size in the # of council members. Given the drop in population Cleveland has suffered over the years, it seems reasonable. If they're not going to shrink, they should at least make some of the council members elected at-large. That would help prevent some of the parochialism we see now. As a comparison, DC has 13 members (8 ward, 5 at-large incl city council president), Boston also has 13 (9 ward, 4 at-large), Cincy 9, all at-large, Pittsburgh has 9 (all ward), Seattle has 9 (all at-large). All of these cities are reasonably similar in size to Cleveland (Washington, Boston, Seattle a bit bigger, Cincy, P'Burgh a bit smaller). Even Philly only has 17 city council members (10 ward and 7 at-large) even though is has 1.5 million people. (Wikipedia is a good thing...) Based off of that it would seem that other cities seem to get by with fewer council members. It's not at all clear to me why Cleveland's needs are so different as to warrant so many more council members.

or Boston for that matter...

^He mentions "federal and state subsidies". I took the latter to incl the sales tax. As for the fare increase, it's about time. RTA is pretty under-priced. I'm concerned that it might lead to a drop in ridership, but my guess is that for most who take it today, it's not really an economic decision: they either don't have an alternative (i.e. they don't own a car) or they choose to ride RTA b/c they just prefer using transit. In the end, transit demand is likely (maybe someone's studied this somewhere?) price inelastic so that they'll end up with more $ in the end. Hopefully this will help them make some improvements to the service/infrastructure. On a related note, after listening to RTA chief Joe C's interview on WCPN, I understand why so many on this board dislike the job he's done. He seems much more focused on pinching pennies in the current operation(admittedly, with some seeming successes) than on anything related to a vision of how it might work differently and help in the development of the city/region.

I'd exclude a couple of areas from those you mention: From #2, I'd exclude Slavic Village (*roughly* bordered by 55th, I-480, and Broadway). Not that it's exactly paradise down there, but I also don't fear for my life walking around either. Also some new development going in down there (Hyacinth Lofts, some new townhomes near St. Stan's and that big development of like 300 homes way down Broadway). From #3, I'd exclude some of the eastern parts of Collinwood (E 185 and in toward the Beachland, but especially the E185 area). It's pretty working-class and neighborhoody up there, with a decent commercial strip along E185. Again, you're never going to mistake it for Chagrin Falls (or Tremont, for that matter), but generally safe. Re-reading your note, you might have excluded this area, not sure. Agree with the rest of it though... The other part of NE Ohio that I'd be careful in is East Cleveland (and maybe some of the surrounding parts of Cle Hts). East Cleveland is as much deserted as it is dangerous, but it seems to excel in both. Parts of Warrensville Hts and Maple HTs aren't all that exciting either...

Found this update on Park Lane Villas on the Marous Bros website: http://www.marousbrothers.com/Work-In-Progress/ParkLane.htm Doesn't include any renderings of what the inside will look like. A couple interesting details: Total budget: $21 Million Began some demo and abatement work in Oct 2005 and says total project duration is 18 months. Don't know what they're counting as the start of the project, but 18 months from Oct '05 means an estimated completion date of no later than Apr '07. Plan is for 56 "luxury" apartments and 4 townhouses. Historic renovation (assuming=old bldg, w/o townhouses) listed as 170,000 sq ft, which means an average of over 3,000 sq ft/unit(!) Even accounting for the hallways, lobbies, and other public spaces, it seems like these units will be pretty big. As a point of reference, the building previously had 185 units (~900 sq ft/unit) in it when it was HUD housing. Townhouse sq footage listed as 16,000 = 4,000 sq ft/unit.

Thanks for the update, wim and glad to hear they're making progress. I'll have to check out the British garden (we were near it, but didn't go through that one). I don't remember all the gardens we went through, but I know we at least went through the Irish, Greek, Italian, German, Lithuanian (I believe), among others. Relative to the others, the German garden is in somewhat better shape (or at least the great Goethe/Schiller statue makes it feel that way). Also glad to hear they're working on the Hebrew garden. That one seems to have lost the most. According to the CSU website, all 13 of the original plaques/statues are missing and the fountain is incomplete. And if you look at the two pictures below, the landscaping has taken quite a hit over the years, too (looks like they clear-cut it, essentially).

Which gardens have been renovated? I walked through many of them back in Oct and they looked the same - lots of great infrastructure, lots of potential, but most of it still unrealized with lots of unmet maintenance. Since I moved to NE Ohio 4 yrs ago, the gardens have seemed like one of the places with really high potential. When you look at the vintage pictures on http://academic.csuohio.edu/clevelandhistory/culturalgardens/ you realize how beautiful (and popular) they once were and how much they've fallen since. I would love to see them fully restored, with all the statuary and plantings replaced, the infrastructure (incl the walls and many fountains) repaired, more country-specific landscaping, cultural programming, and maybe a welcome center to help orient visitors and give some of the tumultuous history of the gardens. You'd think it would be natural for UCI and the Botanical Gardens to get involved (although maybe the Bot Garden is afraid it would pull visitors and $ away from its main bldg). Hope I just missed the ones they've been working on. They didn't necessarily look bad (despite the troubles over the years, the gardens still hold some charm), but I didn't see too many obvious signs of improvement either.

In other words, the RTA now has received and are testing a prototype of the type of vehicle they've contracted to buy from New Flyer for the Silver Line.

^Amen to that. The ability of economic forecasters to accurately predict *this* year's GDP growth is pretty miserable, let alone knowing what will happen a year or two out. This is especially true when they try to predict inflection points - when growth begins to slow or pick up markedly.

The Progressive Foundation (other than the 2 charities it alludes to) just matches the donations of its employees. So if the employees donate to something, the Progressive foundation donates to it. I don't believe the foundation makes investment decisions on its own.

While it obviously wouldn't hurt if those neighborhoods came back, I don't think it's essential to UC's comeback. It's a decent place now and lots of neighboorhoods in lots of places have been vibrant despite being surrounded by less developed neighboorhoods (I'm thinking of Capitol Hill in DC, Jamaica Plain in Boston, Hyde Park in Chicago, even Tremont to some degree, although OC isn't too far). Still, Lewis' main point seems valid - UC is not now a vibrant neighborhood in terms of lots of people walking around and lots of places just to hang out. I mean, who says, "Let's go walk around UC?" unless they plan to go to one of the museums there or just want to walk around the park? Cleveland does have a few neighborhoods that achieve this (e.g. Tremont, OC, Little Italy), but UC isn't yet one of them. What would it take to get it there? Seems to me like Euclid is the natural main corridor, likely stretching a good mile or more from E 95 to E117th or so. So, here's some more idle chatter on would help the neighborhood become more livable, more interesting to visit and more lively (sorry if a similar discussion has happened on another thread, but I didn't see one...): A grocery store (Dave's?) convenient for neighborhood residents and can get some business from Case & Clinic workers on their way home. A bookstore. I've heard that UCI has talked about making Case's bookstore more of a public place - sounds like a great idea to me. Reminds me of what Harvard's bookstore is in Harvard Square - sort of a regular bookstore with a section in the back for the textbooks. You need the textbook part anyway - why not make it something valuable and attractive for the neighborhood, too? I doubt the main bookstore would be too much different than a Barnes & Noble in the burbs, but it's one more reason not to leave the city... CIA art gallery - how about a street level, student-run art gallery in the Clev Inst of Art's building on Euclid? I know they have some public galleries and have a student-run gallery in their coffee house, but neither is very visible. Seems like you'd get a lot more foot traffic (and sell more student artwork) with a more prominent spot. (zaceman - you attend CIA, right? any thoughts?) Club Isabella's - Since UH plans to tear down its building to make way for their new expansion, maybe Club Isabella's could relocate to somewhere people could actually find it... Maybe somewhere on newly developed "Beach" Other ideas?

To be fair, Peter did try to move the HQ downtown some years ago and was rebuffed. Additionally, the money he has given has been his own - not the company's.

The cancellation of this project is really disappointing. This lot and abandoned bank building was always a hole in the middle of the Cedar Lee district separating the northern end of the strip (Cedar Lee theater, Lemongrass, Lopez, etc.) from the southern end (Marotta's, Stone Oven, Wine Room, etc.) This would have linked the two so it would have been one continuous run, and added more density to the mix. I'm also a little surprised they're going ahead with the parking lot anyway - you'd think you'd want to coordinate its design with the design of whatever ended up on the lot. One potential reason the project was shelved: I believe they had to do some environmental remediation at the site and got something like $400K from the EPA to do it (seem to remember reading that there used to be a gas station at that site). Maybe the cleanup was going to be harder than expected?

Apparently the owner of the Medic building has been talking to lots of potential tenants. including Marc's and Trader Joe's.

I actually just found and re-read Litt's column on Stark (May 1, 2005). He mentions some of the ideas generally ("Stark doesn't own any downtown land, but he wants to work with those who do to fill the surface parking lots in the Warehouse District with a million square feet of high-end shops operated by national and local retailers" sounds like Phase 1 and "Stark wants to work in the same way, eventually transforming dozens of blocks from the Warehouse District north to Lake Erie and from Public Square east to Playhouse Square. He thinks a successful redevelopment there would spill naturally onto the long-fallow Scranton Road peninsula, across the Cuyahoga River from Tower City. This would create a district that looks like the letter "Y" on paper, which is what Stark calls it." sounds a lot like the Pesht part and the Y), but there isn't the level of detail that you had in your series. This article is a bit more critical/skeptical (as you suggest that some future articles should be), but without the visuals and the additional detail (he never mentions the specific block for phase 1, for example) it's hard to really get a good sense of what he's proposing or how likely it is. I had read that article back when it came out but hadn't really grasped what he was really proposing. At first I thought they might be waiting for a firmer proposal, but your series mentions a price tag ($1B) and a timeline (open by 2008), so who knows? Anyway, it doesn't really matter, I suppose (well at least not to those of us not in the media :) as long as the thing gets built. Thanks again for your series.

Someone who works on Coventry mentioned to my wife that after Big Fun moves over to the old High Tide, the existing Big Fun structure will be razed and turned into patio seating for the adjacent Panini's. Bad in that we lose a viable storefront, good in that we gain outdoor seating which is pretty rare in Coventry. In other Coventry news, sigsn have gone up in the old Soul Vegetarian/Karma on Coventry space (NE corner of Coventry & Hampshire) that a Thai restaurant to be called Mint Cafe will be going in there. Not sure when they're going to open, but they've replaced the awnings and have curtains in at least one of the two storefronts it occupies. We could use another Thai restaurant - Lemongrass is good, but there aren't many others around.

KJP - As many other have said, thanks for posting your series. It's really exciting stuff. A couple of questions/thoughts: - In the 1st article, Stark talks a lot about the "Y" of WHD, Euclid & Scranton peninsula, although most of his plans seem to be for the WHD. Does he have any plans for Scranton or is he just hoping to prod FCE (who I think owns most of the peninsula) in to doing something? - I'm also a bit surprised at how long the time line seems to be on "pesht" given how critical Stark has been of others' slower time lines. Sounds like a 20-40 year plan if not longer. - Aren't there also going to be tons of environmental issues at the port after they move? - Finally, any theories on why the PD and Crains *still* haven't reported on this? Given how much coverage they've given to other big projects (Flats East, Avenue District, Cleve Clinic, Euclid Corridor, etc) it just seems odd. Maybe I haven't lived here long enough yet to get cyncial about the PD :)