LlamaLawyer

This was kind of what I was thinking. Occupancy is so high in general, that it seems like the worst case scenario is they have to cut all their rents. That could really screw over the developer, but it won't necessarily be bad for the city. And any other developers who are looking at the building as a case study hopefully won't be dissuaded by the lower rents because the building's issues are so widely known at this point.

Again, not saying any of this is good. Just looking for a silver lining.

I am mostly talking about the construction jobs.

I obviously want all government monies at every level to be spent responsibly. That includes city, county, state, and federal. I'm just questioning whether any of the money they're using was actually local money. In other words, my only point is that if it's revenue that would be just going into the general fund otherwise, we probably do benefit from it more if it's being poured into a massive construction project in the county. Even if that construction project is dumb and inefficient. Yeah, I too don't get what the endgame is here. Very high chance of DeWine veto. Remember, he has line item authority, so he can strip out bond without jeopardizing anything else. And beyond that, if the County and City are united against chipping in, I'm not sure where the rest of the money comes from. Maybe bribing the statehouse was just phase 1 of Jimmy's plan and phase 2 involves bribing Cuyahoga County council.

It's still working with state-level taxes though, no? Isn't it just reallocating taxes that would otherwise go to the general revenue fund? Or are you saying that they're actually taking away sales tax and property tax that the County would normally have authority to collect and spend?

I really have got to get down soon and see this construction in person soon. Short North is one of my very favorite places and it's changing so fast (to be clear, in a good way).

The bright side of this all is that it's a huge influx of money from the state into Cuyahoga County, a region which will benefit from it and has been overlooked relative to other areas. It's not like Columbus just sends us $600 million every day. And the state has a stellar financial/credit position. So it's not like Ohio will be meaningfully harmed if the investment doesn't pay off. But outside of that angle, this is so stupid. DeWine can still do a line item veto, I'm assuming.

Feb. BLS numbers are out, and they look much healthier than January. In particular, the establishment survey numbers are now in the positive y/o/y territory again. https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/oh_cleveland_msa.htm This reinforces my suspicion that January numbers were not well adjusted. Also, the unemployment rate ticked up to 5 for the first time in about three years. That's still pretty healthy, but something to watch.

I read the majority of Bowling Alone (I have a bad habit of skimming certain kinds of books). It's a good book, although a lot of the trends he identified have reversed since he released the book. I should probably check out some of his less dated work. Also, I should add to my above point that my perception about where people are getting more vs. less connected is just an average. So there are obviously some rural areas where connection may be increasing and some urban areas where it's decreasing. And by urban areas, I really mean neighborhoods, since a city the size of Cleveland will have dozens of distinct neighborhoods with their own constantly evolving dynamics.

I really don't think crime is urban vs. rural anymore, although the perception hasn't caught up to reality. Cleveland has a lower rate of property crime than Chillicothe. (See here: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/table-8/table-8-state-cuts/ohio.xls ). NYC and San Francisco both have a lower rate of violent crime than the national average. Personally, I think the dynamics of how supportive and connected a community is matter more than anything else for crime rates. Community creates a social safety net that disincentives crime. It also creates accountability and responsibility. It used to be that small towns had a strong community culture where everybody knew their neighbors, while cities were more like random assortments of rootless and disconnected people. But I don't think that's the case anymore. Most of the folks I know who live in the country or small towns are not actually part of a community. And my personal experience over the last decade tells me that people in urban areas are becoming more connected, more civically engaged, more likely to know their neighbors, etc., while people who live in small towns are getting increasingly isolated.

Well, not to detract too much from the traditional handwringing, but here's something POSITIVE that I just realized. Per the current census estimates, Cuyahoga County is up 7,500 in population y/o/y. Obviously the census estimates are unreliable and one shouldn't extrapolate from one year of data, blah blah blah. But, if we do match this rate of growth each of the next few years, then in 2030, the population of Cuyahoga County will have risen not just since 2020, but since 2010. Pretty cool, eh?

I would assume that they wanted it to be halfway between Tower City and Rocket Arena. Right now the walk from Rocket Arena to the W. Huron entrance of Tower City consists of a busy six-lane road with a steep drop-off on the one side and a wall of imposing concrete on the other. It is currently incredibly unlikely for a pedestrian visitor at Rocket Arena to aimlessly wander over to Tower City. The street-level activity draws one toward E. 4 or Huron Rd. E instead. By building some attractions between Tower City and Rocket Arena, you are making Tower City and Rocket Arena actually feel sort of connected to each other.

Household survey data is fine for January; I'm talking about the establishment survey (e.g. nonfarm employment data). Establishment survey shows 1071.4K jobs in January 2025, which is not only less than January 2024 but it also less than January 2023. Net negative job creation over 24 months is recession territory, IMO. The establishment survey data got revised going back several years too, so I am hoping the January numbers are incomplete and look better when they're revised later on.

I also looked at Columbus and Cincinnati, and they got revised up too, but not nearly as much. So it's possible they did a bunch of revisions including adding Ashtabula all in one. I will say, whatever the cause of the other revision, I hope the January numbers get revised up later, because hoo-boy they're bad. And, just subjectively, it's a little hard for me to believe we're currently in a localized recession--which is what those numbers say.

Wayback machine to the rescue. Here's what the numbers looked like before: And here's what they look like now: I'm pretty unsure what to make of this, unless it's the addition of Ashtabula and they just didn't get around to doing it till now.

The BLS numbers just got MAJORLY revised. Not just recent ones, but old ones. I think they modified the numbers going back more than ten years. Maybe this is from adding Ashtabula, but that seems really late and I thought they did it already. I'll have to dig in and see if I can figure out what is going on, because it's all out of whack. https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/oh_cleveland_msa.htm#eag_oh_cleveland_msa.f.2 EDIT: And just to be clear, the revisions push the size of the labor force UP. By a lot. Like, maybe more than 3%.

Very powerful and compelling presser by Ronayne. This has me really pissed off. If what Ronayne is saying is remotely correct, the Haslams' proposal is about 50% larceny 50% fraud. I'm sorry, but they're predicting $800 tickets and 100% uptake on $100 a game parking?? Tons of new taxes? All this for 30 years. GTFO. Go to Baltimore again for all I care.

Paywalled, so I can't read the whole article. But this looks like excellent news. https://www.cleveland.com/community/2025/03/fire-ravaged-marquee-at-cedar-lee-apartments-coming-down-in-cleveland-heights.html Hard to believe it's been fewer than 90 days. Felt like forever ago. But I think this is a pretty quick turnaround in retrospect. Good on the developer and city for getting this done.

I think this video is a good example of why the Small Towns approach of incremental development is so powerful. Big projects like the above are awesome when they work, but if they don't? HOLY COW. It's just such a huge risk to put all your eggs in one basket like that. At least with projects like Bedrock Riverfront they're doing it in stages, so you can reassess what worked and what doesn't after each incremental step. Also though--the "Peninsula"--that is *NOT* a good location. I was in downtown Baltimore recently and had no clue that it existed. According to Google Maps it's a 45-minute walk from Inner Harbor and a 60(!!) minute walk from downtown. Literally, you can walk from E. 55 to Downtown Cleveland in less time than you can walk from the Peninsula to downtown Baltimore. Appalling. If you took that same development and plopped it down on our lakefront where the stadium is, I guarantee it would be doing way, way better.

No, lol. It’s TFR.

The thing about birth rates is that there's only one developed, urbanized, democratic country with a birth rate meaningfully above replacement. It's Israel, with 3 births per woman. There are no other countries that meet these criteria. If you sort countries by per capita GDP, the next richest quasi-democratic country with a birthrate meaningfully above replacement is Kazakhstan, which I would consider developing, not developed. There are a few middle eastern theocracies that have high per capita GDPs and relatively high birth rates, but I'm not counting them because they're not truly industrialized or developed. They're basically traditional societies that struck liquid gold and built cities in the desert with it. So there's something about being in a modern industrialized country that just stops people from reproducing, and the only country that is immune is Israel. You can talk about interventions like free day-care, etc. I think those are great. But the countries that have them usually have lower birthrates than we do, so it's obviously not a solution. EDIT: Also, if you don't like per capita GDP, you can do it by HDI instead. Here's a handy graph showing that. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-vs-human-development-index Israel is the major outlier.

Well, it is all relative. NJ is still way cheaper than NYC.

Y'know what? The numbers are what we have, so I'll take good ones even with all the questionable methods. FWIW, I think we were probably undercounted in 2020 due to the very poor response rate.

I disagree. There are many modular pieces of the federal government that don't really need to work that closely with the others most of the time. NASA is a prime example, since it has a mission that is largely independent of what other agencies are doing. It would be a bad idea to move, say, the state department or intelligence agencies, out of DC. But as far as I'm concerned, the research and science focused agencies can be located wherever. At present, fewer than a quarter of federal employees work in D.C./Maryland/Virginia. The jobs already are spread all over the country. The only thing that is really centralized is the high-level leadership. People are concerned about the independence of agencies. Well, isn't decentralizing some of them a good way to maintain their independence?

EDIT: I should just always read Ken's articles before I post anything, lol.