LlamaLawyer

I thought the exact same thing. It's surprisingly *almost* nice looking in that last photo.

It is from the pandemic, you're right. I was just surprised at how bad it was. Ohio was 6th worst overall, according to these numbers. Cuyahoga and Franklin were each almost as bad as Bronx County, NY and Arlington County, VA in TOTAL $$ (not percentage) outflow.

This data just looks absolutely horrible for Cleveland, Columbus and the state: https://eig.org/interactive-income-flows/ Hopefully that's not really accurate.

This gave me a good laugh. I've known some very nice amish folks but other communities are shady AF. Probably would be selling heroin if we had a better climate for opium poppies. It's very hard for me to imagine the law will be substantially neutered given the way it passed. It had broad support in some surprisingly rural areas. I could see them re-writing the tax provision to just give all the money to JobsOhio or something like that. Honestly, I wouldn't even be very upset if they did that.

I disagree with this take. Great, livable cities have lots of small potato things.

Pretty interesting article here that bears on the state of the office market in general: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/downtown-building-maintenance-costs/675848/ I think the article's main point is very important that 25% vacancy with $75/sf rents is probably a lot better than 20% vacancy with $18/sf rents. I think Cleveland is pretty well positioned, as we have a low vacancy rate comparatively. Actually in basically every part of the metro, the office vacancy rate is either better than average or essentially average. In downtown, the vacancy rate is only 15% which is like 2/3 of the national average. Personally, I feel like the MOST IMPORTANT reason we're doing this well is our established track record of residential conversions. I also think that continuing to incentivize and pursue residential conversions is probably the number one thing we can do for the real estate market overall. I know some folks here get concerned about bleeding out office space, but the trends certainly make it look like that will happen, here and everywhere. If we are diligent about residential conversions (and they still have substantial demand), we'll be much better positioned than cities like Austin or Nashville, both of which have smaller downtown populations than Cleveland and minimal office-to-residential conversion history. I always like to recall the fact that the commute-to-downtown-office-job routine is a 20th century invention, whereas the people-living-in-dense-urban-communities routine is as old as agriculture (or older!!). I find it plausible that at some point in the future people will stop commuting to downtowns almost entirely.* But I find it implausible that people will ever stop living in downtowns. * I am not saying I think that will happen, just that it's possible. Sources: https://www.avisonyoung.us/documents/35486/80971301/AY US Office Report Q3 2023.pdf/acb2a1d3-b4d5-98d5-d9c1-d0a0fc6a049c?t=1696369455997&_gl=1*1bn1r3r*_up*MQ..*_ga*ODAyNTYxMTc2LjE2OTg5MzcyNTg.*_ga_NB1T86YXFD*MTY5ODkzNzI1Ny4xLjAuMTY5ODkzNzI1Ny4wLjAuMA.. https://www.avisonyoung.us/documents/91132/193782646/Cleveland_Office_Quarterly+Report_2023Q2_MASTER+TEMPLATE_2023.7.7.pdf/a4561a44-dc03-dd5b-5503-ea2c420e2678?t=1690230799985&_gl=1*14epbis*_up*MQ..*_ga*MjI5MDMzMTg3LjE2OTg5Mzc2MTA.*_ga_NB1T86YXFD*MTY5ODkzNzYwOS4xLjAuMTY5ODkzNzYwOS4wLjAuMA.. https://www.cbre.com/press-releases/cbre-analysis-cleveland-has-highest-percentage-of-its-office-stock-targeted-for-conversion

What immediately popped into my head: 🎵"Through Birmingham we have to go now. CHOO -- CHOO -- CHOO."🎵 Y'know, from the Lynyrd Skynyrd song "Rail Hub Alabama."

That was my exact first thought. I would be in love with this idea if I were confident the details would be compelling. By which I mean a typical visitor to the city is surprised to learn the construction year is 2025 and not 1885. If they don't pass as the originals, it's going to be very hokey in my opinion. On the other point, Dublin has 2.5x the population density of Cleveland, and more people per square mile than Cleveland has ever had. While not necessarily dense by European standards, it's more dense than Chicago and Philadelphia and almost but not quite as dense as Boston. I don't think the "lack of density" will be to our detriment.

I’m accepting suggestions!

Let's just hope that no long-awaited projects **cough, Centennial** decide to delay for two to three more years while they chase this program.

I too subscribe to the GPT-4 premium version. Right now it's a fun toy for me. Not practical for much. I think it's a lot better at coding than legal analysis. But that will change. Based on what I've read from folks more knowledgeable than I, it seems AI will be more than just a nice new tool. Seems like a suite of transformative technologies on the same scale as the industrial revolution, coming at us in perhaps a tenth of the time the industrial revolution took. But for now, I like it for creating images that I could imagine but never actually create by myself. Stuff that maybe we'll build someday. Like this:

Any potential interest in a near east side location? I may attend a symposium at CWRU that day, and I'd potentially have a free hour for lunch.

Seeing the Hessler development in context makes the vigorous objections to the project even more laughable than before. It looks pretty much like everything else on the street.

Thought it was worth having a topic on this specifically. I don't know how much any of y'all have played around with AI image generation for buildings, but it can be preeettty cool. See the below example, which is one of my favorites.

It says more spokes are being announced on an ongoing basis. They intend for the network to represent "all 50 states" and right now there is nothing in Ohio at all. So I would assume we'll get something. But yeah, missing out on the hubs is fairly disappointing.

I'm assuming that by "this" expansion of supply, what @KJP is talking about is this specific project, not projects in general. In other words, we need more housing and this specific project is getting panned because of pickiness about design. Because obviously window-dressing type design concerns are not the main reason most projects are held up. And, yeah, I totally support what @KJP is saying. Cuyahoga County (as of the most recent data) is still losing population. It's just silly to be super picky at this point. It's like the out of shape guy who wants to get fit and spends a bunch of time worrying about what is the best fitness plan rather than just doing SOMETHING.

Agree but also: 1. For a long time, the city settled for nothing. Now we’re settling for something. 2. SOME of the stuff getting built is really cool. We don’t constantly have to settle, just often. 3. Some of the meh projects of today will be demolished in 30 years to make room for something much cooler.

This is an above average 5-over-1 design in my opinion. Obviously a downgrade from previous visions. But idk, I think it's a fine design.

It's going to be way more attractive than that building.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/initial-jobless-claims-plunges-near-12-month-lows-thanks-ohios-fraud-fix Interesting stats here.

When it's introduced in a widespread way it will already be at least 10x and probably 1000x safer than human drivers. I don't think anyone really knows how long it will take. Maybe it will be 50 years. But if forced to guess, I'm guessing autonomous vehicles are widespread in 2028. And yes, when you see it, you will believe it. 😉 I think there's a difference between hardware and software adoption. The hardware exists right now. The first fully self-driving cars will be a software update of cars that exist now and in the near future. The second generation will probably be even older vehicles that are retrofitted with cameras and computers. Five years after the initial introduction, it will be a standard feature. And as far as volume, I think it will look different from current consumer sales practices. For rideshares, you can have one car to every ten people. So 1 million self-driving cars could support 10 million car-less individuals. I'm not saying that people are going to stop buying new cars any time soon. But I don't think you can discount the impact that self-driving is likely to have this decade.

Interesting list here. Cleveland, Chicago, and Detroit all have a relatively high percentage of homes sold at a loss (relatively low delta from a year ago), but the average home has a robust capital gain and the typical losses are quite small. Makes me think that's just a result of being housing markets with a lot of distressed homes, whereas clearly something different is going on in cities like San Francisco and Phoenix. https://www.redfin.com/news/homeowners-selling-at-a-loss-2023/

I expect in the next decade we will see auto ownership plunge as autonomous rideshare vehicles become a reality in many cities if not everywhere. Elon Musk has basically said his goal is to just make as many cars as possible right now so that he can use existing vehicles for a Tesla autonomous Uber-like service. I know autonomous vehicles have been promised for a long time and missed predictions, but ... I'm not sure most people realize how close we may be.

Sorry, I'm not available for this one. None of them have worked out for me so far, but I will make it to one one day!

End of an era. Lotta memories in that rubble. 😪 Seriously though, I can't imagine this site will be vacant for too many years. Perfect spot for a 10-15 story apartment building with ground-level retail.