LlamaLawyer

Shh, let me have my joke. 😉

Yeah I was totally wrong before I think. Since the jet has been here more than two weeks, it makes sense that service WAS the stop. I'm still surprised to learn we have, apparently, the best service in the country for whatever is needed here.

It's hilarious to me that SHW gets one crane while the neuro building gets two. Cleveland Clinic does not mess around!

Jeez that’s a sad article. Pittsburgh is such a great city, and it pains me that this institution is going away. I didn’t realize USS was in such dire straights though, and it sounds like being bought out by a neighbor is the best thing for everyone. Maybe Cliffs can rebrand to “Cleveland-Pittsburgh Steel.” 😉

Alright, so this is HIGHLY HIGHLY speculative rumor, but that's what we do here so, I've gotta share. Fourth-hand rumor (i.e. I heard it from somebody who heard it from somebody who heard it from somebody) who works at Cliffs. Elon Musk is definitely in Cleveland and is here not just because he wants the X ticker, but because he wants to buy Cleveland Cliffs (and USS). And with that, I'll be heading back down to the mines under Lake Erie in an attempt to get the amount of salt that this rumor deserves to be taken with.

See, to me the Twitter comment doesn't mean anything. Obviously if a mega-billionaire's private jet flies into Hopkins they're gonna stash it in a hangar well equipped for its maintenance needs. Constant Aviation is a local Gulfstream expert. So, if I'm a billionaire with a Gulfstream flying into Cleveland for business, I want to leave my jet with the people who can double check everything is in working order and fix any little issue. Is there some jet-related service provided in Cleveland that Elon Musk can't get in LA or SF or Austin? I looked at the ElonJet flight history, and I can't find evidence that he's ever flown into Hopkins before, so there's something that's not just routine maintenance happening here. So, again, I'm sure his jet is getting routine inspections, maintenance, etc. while it's here, but it's impossible for me to believe it flew into Cleveland specifically for routine maintenance.

This is kind of relevant to Cliffs, but I'm posting here, because it opens up broader speculation. Elon's jet is still here, 48 hours later. Granted he doesn't necessarily travel on it, but he usually does. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say more likely than not he has been doing something here since Monday morning. It's basically impossible to know what to read into this, except to say that if Elon is actually spending two+ days here, it's not a vacation. Medical treatment? Negotiations with Cliffs? Something unrelated? All plausible IMO. And on an even more basic level, whether or not Elon was on this jet, it flew from the Bay Area to Hopkins and has now spent two days here. Someone associated with Musk is doing something here that's worth spending at least two days and a private jet trip on. Also, Mike DeWine is going to be in Cleveland today (facially because of discussions about Cleveland police). Maybe that's coincidence, or maybe it's an excuse to come up here for a discrete afternoon meeting. Finally, just wanted to comment on this article: https://www.axios.com/local/cleveland/2023/08/15/elon-musk-jet which suggests that maybe Elon's plane just came here to refuel. I'm no aviation expert, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that flying halfway across the country to refuel and then sit for 48+ hours at a random mid-tier airport is the least plausible explanation.

The funny thing is how plausible this is. “Oh, Cliffs buying USS? Lemme see how I can sweeten the deal and make sure I get the X ticker when all is said and done.” I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if that is what’s actually happening.

The pessimism is kind of amusing. Here we have a fortune 500 company based in Cleveland since before the civil war, with Cleveland being part of its name, trying to acquire another huge company and people are talking about maybe Cliffs will move away as a result. I’ve changed my mind. We don’t need 4 steel producers in this country. 3 is plenty. Get the deal done, Lourenco!

As much as I love local businesses growing, the amount of market concentration this would create is pretty absurd. We have antitrust laws for a reason, lol.

As the kids say: 🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨 (pretend these are flags, there's no red flag emoji here lol) The current leadership of Cleveland Heights has proven multiple times now that they have the ability to listen thoughtfully to the screaming and then do what actually makes the most sense for the city and its residents. I'm glad they're working on projects like this, and I have faith in them to get it done.

Just wanna say how proud I am of Northeast Ohio. EVERY SINGLE COUNTY voted No. Even Geauga, Portage, and Ashtabula voted no! Ashtabula, which Trump won by 23 points voted no!

In Cleveland Heights / University Heights / Shaker Heights / Beachwood I have noticed a very dramatic uptick in traffic over the past few months. Any ideas what this relates to? Possible population influx or WFH ending? Something else?

^^This exactly. WFH doesn’t have to last forever. It just has to last ‘till 2026 when AI replaces half of all office jobs. I can’t think of any realistic reuse opportunity for the Progressive campus. In my gut, I think it will be vacant ‘till it gets demo-ed.

Love the beach. We have a major supply-demand mismatch with centrally located beaches. The overall plan gives the impression that it’s based in reality not in hopium. Lots of bones that could be picked, but I will be thrilled if this or even something almost as good *actually* gets built.

No, I bet they don’t. But I don’t think the issue with Cleveland is that the city literally doesn’t have enough money. I think they just don’t think a stadium is worth $1 bil to them. I have no idea whether Brook Park has enough $$ to make it work. I’m assuming any city would have to finance via bond issuance + tax increase. We’re talking about $50,000+ per Brook Park resident, which sounds pretty unrealistic to me. Maybe Brook Park is stupid enough to pass some 100 year levy to support a 100 year stadium bond that someone is dumb enough to buy. I’m sure Jimmy&Dee are happy to get this deal done even if it’s an outrageous long-term risk for the counterparty city.

I may get a lot of hate for saying this, but I actually think the Brook Park location could be a really good spot for the stadium. Right off the highway. Pretty close to downtown. Seriously underutilized piece of land. Not way out in Richfield but also not on prime lakefront land. It could also be made easily accessible via public transit with a little Red Line extension. You could put a station adjoining the stadium. Also, right by the airport (the real one, not Burke). Put another way— If the stadium were there in Brook Park right now, and the Browns said they were considering putting it on the lakefront, would we be happy about it?

RE: the first video. How do we know this kind of thing is new or worse than before? Generally speaking I know statistics show crime ticked up a ton in 2020. At least in Cleveland, the crime rate decreased in 2021 and again in 2022, though. But the kind of thing you see in the video is not the kind of thing that would get reported in crime statistics. It's also the kind of thing that's wild enough most people won't experience it. I live by Coventry and as a result interact with some homeless/panhandler folks on a weekly basis. Some of them are pretty rude and aggressive (not physically), but I've never seen or even heard of someone jumping up on a car. My personal experience is that mentally ill unhoused people act now the way they always have. There are a couple ways the world is different. Compared to when I was young, I think I see a lot more moms with small kids begging for money (usually out in the suburbs). Also the protests/riot in 2020 were pretty unlike anything else I've experienced in my life, though that seems to be a totally different phenomenon from what's in the video @KJP posted. But other than that, I've had a fairly consistent experience of dealing with homeless folks throughout my life. Maybe others have had a different personal experience; I can just comment on mine. So, personally, if I can't judge from crime statistics and my personal experience doesn't show anything changing, I would tend to assume we see more of this stuff on social media due to a sampling bias. Everyone has a phone, and the wildest of the wild behavior is what gets amplified by the network. Is there some non-social media basis on which to judge that petty crime is getting worse and our cities are "out of control?"

I like how they spent a year+ looking at whether to keep the courthouse and redo it or whether to build on a new site and they still ended up sending out a RFP which covers both possibilities. And, to be clear, that's not sarcastic. After all this time and no firm conclusion, the rational thing to do is throw up the hands and say "we don't know what the best approach is; let's see what developers are willing to try." I think it shows open-mindedness and humility.

We're ahead of Columbus based on 2020 population but *barely* behind Columbus by 2022 estimate.

So am I correct in understanding the intent is basically the following: Any TOD project is exempt from parking requirements provided it complies with the program standards and gets approved for TDM registration, BUT such projects are still subject to any other zoning requirements and have to go through an otherwise normal approval process at CPC.

@mam178 Do you have a copy of the legislation you would be willing to share? I'm very interested in reviewing it. Thanks.

Wait, I'm sorry. They took the hoops down in the basketball courts because someone thought they heard a single gunshot? What?

It’s definitely head scratching to me that Ashtabula is now in the metro while Summit is not. Particularly with the new definition of a “Metropolitan Division” seems like Cleveland-Akron MSA would be logical.

I just manually went through and compared the new MSAs and CSAs to what’s listed on Wikipedia, then did some math. I did this for Cleveland and the other MSAs/CSAs that were already close to it in size.