LlamaLawyer

https://www.cleveland.com/news/2025/03/nasa-urged-to-move-headquarters-to-ohio-as-dc-lease-expires.html This could be a massive win, if we got NASA HQ relocated to NASA Glenn.

I am optimistic the development is still going to happen. I don’t think many people appreciate how important the next generation of chips factories is for the future of humanity. This delay changed my mind on Intel though. I thought it wad a bad sign when Pat got fired. But now, I think Intel is toast without some kind of revamp/reset. Foundry being spun off as some kind of joint venture with TSMC and others is probably best case scenario.

Holy cow! See this is what Shaker Square actually needs. Talk all you will about how to use it, good designs, bad designs, sporadic petty crime, blah blah. Adding nice new units makes figuring out a plan for the square way easier. I will miss the roof parking lot though. I used to bank at the nearby PNC when I first moved here, and that weird ramp up onto a random roof will always stick out as one of my first impressions of the city.

NRP should certainly look at feedback from locals. Such as the addition of ground-level retail. That's a reasonable request. But at the end of the day, if Asiatown can't maintain its current character after the addition of a whopping *checks notes* 120 apartments, well then it's just not going to survive in any event. But I'm pretty optimistic that growth will help, not harm, Asiatown. Little Italy isn't really a good comparison because there hasn't been a meaningful flow of Italians into the U.S. for about 100 years now. The majority of Italian-Americans here are third- or fourth- if not fifth-generation Americans. What percentage of Italian-Americans in Cuyahoga County do you think actually speak even a little Italian? I would be surprised if Italian is even the second most spoken language in Little Italy. I've been living in Cleveland for over a decade, and I've met exactly two first-generation Americans from Italy. Without a distinctive religion, language, or dialect, it's very hard for a small ethnic community to maintain a distinctive identity long term unless new immigration is ongoing. I bet that if Italian immigration to the U.S. had continued throughout the 20th century that Little Italy would be heavily and primarily Italian to this day. On the other hand, immigration from China to the U.S. is going strong. As long as that's the case, Asian communities in the U.S. should be able to not just sustain themselves, but grow. And if Asiatown can't do the same, it suggests to me that something is very wrong. But, again, I bet Asiatown will grow and thrive if more housing is added.

So, no, not quite. Per BLS, we added 14,462 employed and 3,884 unemployed. It's not a 95-5 ratio, because the unemployment rate rose during the year from 3% to 3.4%. But again, these are healthy numbers, so I view employment and unemployment both rising as a good thing, even if the unemployment rise is currently outpacing the employment rise. Obviously if you get to like 6-7% unemployment and that's still happening, something is wrong. But we're not even close to there. FWIW, you can find the Cleveland data here: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LAUMT391746000000006?amp%3bdata_tool=XGtable&output_view=data&include_graphs=true It also is important to note that our post-pandemic recovery is still not going as well overall as lots of other places. That's mostly because our pandemic decline was so severe. We lost nearly 8% (!!!) of our labor force from December 2019 to December 2020. By way of comparison, Columbus and Cincinnati lost 1.6% and 2.8% of their labor forces during that same period, respectively.

The labor force is approximately 1 million, so it is approximately 18,000 added to labor force. The exact number per BLS is 18,346. Note that is not *jobs*, it is labor force. So it includes unemployed. Same for Ohio. The 105kish Ohio added to the labor force is not jobs, because it also includes new unemployed people. That being said, we’re at healthy sub 5% unemployment, so adding unemployed people is also good, because it signals that fewer people are side-lining themselves.

Some surprising and good news to hopefully break through some of the gloominess on this forum so far this year. This is all taken from BLS data that I hadn't really dug into until now. The data doesn't exist in a single chart, so a little bit of comparison and math is required. Ohio added over 100K to its labor force last year. That sounds pretty good in the abstract, but it sounds a lot better when you learn it was the second highest total of any state, second only to Texas. Not second per capita, but second in absolute terms. This represented a 1.8% y/o/y growth of the labor force from Dec. 2023 to Dec. 2024. The national rate was 0.7%, so Ohio's labor force grew at over 2.5x the national average rate. "Well, that's all well and good," you might say, "but I'm sure that growth is all concentrated in Columbus." You might say that, but you'd be wrong. Because the y/o/y growth in the Cleveland MSA? It was also 1.8%. Exactly the state average. So in other words, if BLS data is to be believed (and yes, the numbers are always a little suspect), Cleveland's labor force grew at 2.5x the national rate last year.

Interesting little tidbit here. Last year, Ohio's labor force grew more in absolute terms than any other midwestern state. EDIT: Okay, so I looked at some more data and, maybe I'm incorrect here, but it looks like Texas was the only state in the entire U.S. that added more to its labor force last year than Ohio did?? Florida actually experienced decline, New York and Pennsylvania had decline, California had very modest gains, and most of the south had pretty solid per capita gains, but not as much as Ohio in absolute per-state numbers. We're not nearly as close to the top of the pack by percentage. But still, it seems pretty shocking and impressive to me that we are second (very distant second) only to Texas in absolute gain during 2024.

There are like five to ten.

Wow, I don't agree with this at all. Severance Circle currently is home to: 1. CH City Hall. 2. CH Muni Court 3. A large and newly renovated MetroHealth facility with a full service ER. 4. Several large apartment buildings. 5. A good sized USPS. 6. A rather large multi-tenant medical office building. And that's not including any of the retail tenants (there are several large ones). It is not "blighted." It's also not a middle-of-nowhere location that should "go back to nature." It was doing kind of okay until Wal-Mart left, which started dominoes of many other closures. That was just over ten years ago. The stores that are still there are plenty nice. It's just a largely abandoned mall complex with a terrible landlord. And it's sort of Wal-Mart's fault more than the landlord, because they broke lease and kept paying rent for years, which gave the landlord little incentive to prioritize the site in any way, since it was still generating good revenue. My impression from the stories is that Namdar (the landlord) is looking at giving up smaller pieces of land bit by bit for development. That seems like a perfectly reasonable strategy that is likely to succeed. New housing can't just "go elsewhere." This is the only site in Cleveland Heights with significant available land south of Mayfield. The next biggest one I can think of is the parking lot behind Marcs on Coventry and that's like two acres maybe. The site is also immediately adjacent to multiple very large Orthodox Jewish communities with absolutely ballooning population. So there would be a huge demand for quality housing options there. Cleveland Heights has had success after success with developers over the last several years. So why would they just throw in the towel on this one when the ONLY real obstacle for the last decade has been the landlord and they're finally starting to play ball.

It's pretty stunning how drastically this area has changed in 10 years. Good reminder for the places we're tempted to cynically throw up our hands and give up on. All that it takes is for the right pieces to fall together, and suddenly you're cooking with gas. 10.5 years ago:

I am disappointed mostly because I *really* liked the original design. Hopefully they can have something pretty similar as the final product.

Some kind of work on Taylor Tudors appears to have started.

Not sure this means either a Cliffs or Nucor purchase is off the table. If Nippon is just an "investor" presumably it's not going to be the only one. And I could still imagine a scenario where a U.S. company gets a controlling interest with Nippon taking, say, 40%.

The DeWine statements changed my mind, y'all. I think the move is more likely than not gonna happen. I also think it won't end up being as a huge a loss as people are afraid of, but it does suck.

Found this rendering and thought it was cool. Reconstruction of a Cucuteni–Trypillia culture site in modern Ukraine, named "Maidanetske." Approximately 7,000 years old. While it was obviously not a sprawling metropolis by modern standards, you can see the incredible density--density at a level that exists in very few modern cities. An area of approximately one square mile and a population estimated at as much as 45,000 (in other words, that would be about 2/3 the population density of modern-day Manhattan). Just a reminder that the dense urban environment has existed since "time immemorial," is a natural environment for humans, and is something we should therefore expect to continue to exist regardless of other changes in technology, the economy, work structure, etc.

The consent decree made the force much, much better than it was before. Hopefully the lessons were internalized and the force continues to operate at a high level even when the consent decree is gone.

One other comment on Moen and why I think our local cynicism gets out of hand. I recently spoke to a friend who works there. I asked what employees are doing. He said people are very surprised and disappointed, but, critically, virtually no one plans on moving. He's starting to think about alternate opportunities in the area and most people he knows are doing so as well. Now, I'm sure over time as the details come into focus and job searching doesn't pan out for all, some decent number of people will relocate. But I actually don't think most people are going to leave. Instead, they'll get other jobs here strengthening local firms, or perhaps launching new startups. In my humble opinion, the era of people routinely moving across the country for office jobs is over. I'm not saying it won't still happen some, but the data shows new patterns are emerging. The job-seeker relocation rate has been declining for decades, and the decline was accelerated by covid. In the 80s, more than 1/4 of new job seekers relocated. In 2023, that number was 2.6%. That is an order of magnitude shift, and my hypothesis is that (therefore) losing a corporate hq matters 1/10 as much now as it did 40 years ago while gaining a corporate hq matters 1/10 as much now as it did 40 years ago. And I expect that number to continue to decline as AI begins to replace huge numbers of office jobs. I'm not saying having corporate hqs is a bad thing or losing them is a good thing. But I increasingly and strongly believe that our metro will have to rely on other features to succeed in the future because the concentration of urban office jobs just will not matter nearly as much as it used to or does now.

I like this because he should be able to do a good job of interfacing with the state and federal government to advocate for the region.

I would have to imagine it's 100% contingent on insurance coming through, lol. Otherwise, where is the money coming from. If they have a good agent and a good insurer, hopefully this isn't a problem at all. Insurance companies can obviously be terrible, but there are still plenty good ones out there. And the process of negotiating with an insurer related to a $60 million commercial loss is not remotely the same as when you're trying to get your home insurance to pay for a new roof. Keep in mind it's not just the developer and the insurer involved. There's also a financier, which is probably a bank, and they probably want this project to get rebuilt ASAP so they get paid too. So depending on who the bank is and who the insurer is, the bank may have a ton of leverage here.

I really hope they don't lollygag on clearing the garage to be used. Because that garage being unavailable may really hurt local businesses.

To be clear, labor force numbers are all up y/o/y. They're just not rising very fast.

The Cleveland definition of "bad traffic" is any traffic that requires you to travel under the speed limit for more than sixty seconds at a time.

Dec. BLS #s are out. Not quite bleh, but pretty meh. https://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.oh_cleveland_msa.htm

It is the same project, but it was started earlier than the other building and therefore is further along.