LlamaLawyer

I think you mean 1% y/o/y, since 1% m/o/m would be gangbusters. Look, we have no population growth right now. The fact that we're adding jobs at all with a stagnant population is something to be thankful for. If we maintain a tighter labor market during this downturn than places like Austin and SF do (which, again, I'm optimistic we will), then we'll get people who come here looking for jobs and the population figures may get more rosy. Regarding the Trade Transportation Utilities sector, the national economy is slowing down. The last few Philly Fed manufacturing surveys have been appalling. I'm guessing the decline is mostly in warehousing and shipping as industrial production across the country is doing poorly. If you look at the TTU sector in other states and metros, you'll see it's doing relatively poorly in a lot of places, although Cleveland seems to be a bit worse off.

April BLS numbers are out, and they're pretty good. https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/oh_cleveland_msa.htm Eds & Meds posted a nearly 5% y/o/y increase. Unemployment is 3.4% which is retesting multi-decade lows. My base case is still that we have a substantial downturn, but I think we're well positioned. In March, Ohio and Florida led for new job openings. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jltst.nr0.htm By contrast, in Texas and California, new openings are down sharply. In California, the unemployment rate (while still low) is now the highest it's been since February, 2022. https://www.bls.gov/regions/west/california.htm The same is true in Texas, where unemployment remains unchanged at 4%, which (again, I recognize it's low, but nevertheless...) is the highest since February, 2022. I strongly suspect we may have a very regional recession that feels mild to moderate in the eastern half of the country and quite severe west of the Mississippi.

IDK about price. Given there are two breweries, a brew pub, and like five to seven bars all within a five-minute walk of this site, I would think it should attract young professionals who like beer.

I retract all my criticisms of the design process re Stokes West, since this was a minimal delay. Maybe it's just me, but I don't strongly prefer either design aesthetically. And the new massing looks like a better street presence. I've parked in that garage dozens of times. It's in fairly bad shape. Your point about demo cost is well taken. When it's made into a easily buildable lot, I would expect this to be the most desirable parcel for development in all of university circle. I'm confident that's not an exaggeration.

I agree with all of that. Not saying this area is less desirable; it has a lot more to do than Cedar Fairmount does actually. I just think they're not directly comparable to each other.

Does anyone know where we can get yard signs for "Vote NO on August 8"? This ballot initiative seems completely defeatable if we can just raise enough awareness that people go out and vote.

Thanks. This is one I would just love to see get across the finish line, since it's a really critical intersection and (would be/will be) such a beautiful building. It's also currently the biggest symbol of urban decay that you see when you drive from downtown out to the east side. Unless I'm mistaken, Pennrose has been working on the project for five full years now.

If the availability info on F&C's site is reliable, Ascent at Top of the Hill is now 70% leased out. In my mind that's pretty good given about half the units were only completed within the last couple months. I'm not really sure how reliable of a proxy that will be for the "Marquee" since Ascent is walking distance from the Clinic. But I would think this project should do well.

@KJPDo you think Warner & Swasey is finally close to ready, or do they still need more funding?

I'll be interested to see the effective real rate in 2023. The low property values / high property taxes thing is like a chicken/egg scenario. It's a self-reinforcing cycle in any event. I strongly suspect that overall effective tax rates will go down as property prices go up.

Today I again played my favorite game of "let's see who just bought a house in Cleveland Heights." Once again, virtually every house above roughly $170,000 in asking price was bought by individuals, typically young or middle aged professionals. Of those buyers I could positively identify via LinkedIn, a large percentage, but probably less than half, appear to be from other parts of the country. I think Cleveland and the inner ring suburbs have a massive advantage in this real estate environment, because (pre-covid) we had a pretty large inventory of dilapidated and unoccupied homes. I've personally witnessed several houses within a block of my house that had been vacant and moderately run down get remodeled and sold off to a young couple. Supply is still very tight because nobody who has a 3% mortgage and a choice would sell right now and be forced to move to a new home with an 8% mortgage. And so it's a huge advantage that we have lots of moderately distressed properties that can be rehabbed and then sold for less than the cost of brand new construction. It's also still surprisingly cheap to get a house here. I know lots of young people from the area experience sticker shock, because they're used to seeing move-in ready starter houses go for $120,000, and the same house now probably goes for $200,000. But the best comparison point for me is Columbus, which I know is not a very expensive metro. But homes in Franklin County are on average in the range of 30-60% more expensive than comparable homes here.

I gotta make one other comment here-- The food desert concern in some eastern wards is real. That's a genuine problem that the city has to address. It harms some of the most vulnerable, particularly children. But the east-side councilmen complaining about funding WSM don't actually seem to have a plan to address the food deserts! If Starr were saying "I've got a developer lined up who wants to build a Whole Foods in the Central neighborhood, and the only thing holding them back is they're $5 million short" well then fine, let's discuss spending the money on that instead. But as far as I can tell there is no other plan for this money. Maybe I'm not giving the councilmembers enough credit, but it seems like the simplest explanation is that they have no idea what they're doing and just instinctively recoil at the idea of giving money to a "rich" neighborhood.

The fact that they can't get the additional $5 million for the market is just asinine. Glad at least something was approved. Does the market own the huge parking lot by it? How much money could be raised by either selling the lot off to a developer or charging for the first 90 minutes of parking?

I'm sort of confused. Why would whoever is actually behind the curtain not want to be in dialogue with the city about what will happen to this site? Have any other sites of this size been developed where nobody at the city knew what was coming before initial investment activities started?

It does sound like a good setting for the modern retelling of a certain Mary Shelley novel...

Oh, I have little doubt that you’re right. THAT is the problem. There should be some more leeway so that projects like this one (which is probably going to get approved eventually) aren’t delayed by stupid procedural rules.

It's idiotic sometimes the way we do things in this city...

Great news. I actually like the redesign a bit better. Seems to have more street presence.

My belief stated about ten days ago is unchanged. Key's balance sheet is not super risky (relatively). They have diverse depositors, relatively low HTM losses, and fairly low exposure to CRE - Office. I give them a better than 90% chance of making it through the turmoil. If Key does fall apart, I would be confident about ten to twenty other regional banks do too. The headwinds are just bad though. This yield curve inversion is so deep, and that's toxic to banks.

I think both of the above are true. We're doing better than almost anyone else, but the financial system is not healthy. I'm not sure how much unemployment will rise actually, because there's a lot of labor force strength. But this is truly a historic risk asset bubble, created by 15-years of free money. It's probably a good thing long-term that it pops, and I think we in Cleveland are relatively well positioned to weather the storm.

Basically all regional bank stocks are way down. I actually think Key is going to be okay. They had deposit growth last quarter, and their balance sheet is less risky than the banks that are really tanking like $ZION, $PACW, $WAL, etc.

I think it's a great opportunity. A feature, not a bug. University Circle and downtown are about 4 miles from each other, and the entire stretch between them along Euclid, Carnegie, and Chester is severely underutilized but with good infrastructure. That whole area is just screaming out for more development, and it's starting to get it. For comparison, Downtown and UC are closer to each other than the Freedom Tower is to Central Park in Manhattan. So when the area between Downtown and UC is fully developed (and I really think it's when, not if), I think we'll be glad the points of interest are separated, because they'll anchor and sustain the entire four-mile stretch as opposed to just anchoring one cluster in the middle of the city.

I think Ohio is relatively well positioned because we have major investment coming online and lots of relative affordability even with increases since 2020. Unfortunately the good positioning is only that, relative. I know several people here who were laid off in the last few weeks. Just look at the layoff news across the country, particularly in Silicon Valley. It's getting bad, and most of the layoffs aren't reflected in official unemployment numbers yet because tech employees are getting handsome severance packages. In a few weeks the official numbers will start to look bad too. Personally, I think something broke back in 2008 that has never really been fixed. From 2009 until 2017 we had basically 0% interest rates. And yet, the 2000s and 2010s were the two slowest decades of growth since the great depression and had basically no inflation. (See chart below). The ability of the market to accept 0% interest rates while avoiding meaningful inflation signals to me that something is fundamentally broken. When the Fed started hiking rates back in 2018, everything started going south and the Fed put on the brakes, even though the rate never got above 2.5%. Now, we're looking at hitting twice that number and maybe higher! The inflation of the last two years was largely a result of supply shocks which will not be repeated. Obviously nobody knows the future. I'm not an expert in these things. But my guess would be we're in for a fairly nasty recession that will hit the Bay Area and Austin, TX hardest but won't spare us here..

I think you have to think of this development as being an extension of Larchmere more than a part of University Circle. The walk down to restaurants on Larchmere would not be bad at all. If you think of it as being a part of Larchmere it seems a lot less isolated than if you think of it as University Circle but also more than a mile away from any real points of interest in University Circle. EDIT: Also, there are lots of people who would rather live right next to a park and half a mile from other points of interest than vice versa. So I wouldn't pan this location at all.

Fair enough . I’ve got the reverse problem of where west siders point at everything east of Asiatown like “is this East Cleveland?” To me everything west of Lakewood is an amorphous blob of Bay Rocky River Village of North Olmstead Falls.