LlamaLawyer

Why don't you ban cars while you're at it. I hear they get into accidents sometimes. ;)

I didn't ask. I bet an investigation will have to be done and we may never know for sure.

I talked to someone with first-hand knowledge. It is a total loss. About 70% of the building has either fire or water damage. They cannot practically try to save the last 30%. They will have to demo and rebuild.

Can they use the horizontally distal parts still potentially? I understand all parts of the vertical stack where the fire occurred could be a loss. But the building is probably nearly 100 meters long and the fire seemed localized to one end (although I haven’t been to the site since it happened yet; just judging from pictures).

On the bright side, it seems like the building on Lee (the one that actually has move-in ready apartments) is unaffected. So probably nobody’s signed lease will be impacted. Also the affected building was far enough away from being done that they probably hadn’t installed most finishes/appliances yet. Nevertheless….this really sucks.

There's been a whole lot of handwringing here in the past weeks, and I think it's unnecessary. 100 people in admin roles laid off at the Clinic is nothing. I think we should try to contextualize a bit better where the economy has been, where it is now, and where it is going faster than we would probably like. With every day that goes by, office jobs become more precarious. And that's not a Cleveland issue; it's a secular issue. If a coder using AI is 50% more productive, then a company with three coders who each make $200K says "ok we now have 50% more coding hours than we need. To maximize profit, we either develop more than $200K in new revenue or we fire one coder." Some companies faced with this decision can generate the new business and grow, but some can't grow, or at least can't grow enough to make the calculus make sense, and so they fire people. Or maybe it's a small, tight-knit group, and they like their employees so they keep them all and accept reduced profits. That's what happens when coders are 50% more productive. What about when coders are 100% more productive? What about when they're 1,000% more productive? The numbers get worse and worse and it's harder to justify having large teams of people work on projects. Most of these jobs will be retained far longer than makes economic sense, because humans are both irrational and risk-averse. But eventually the jig will be up, and entire categories of jobs that employ millions of people now will simply stop existing. That is what's going to happen, and it will happen relatively quickly to most job performed primarily in front of a computer screen. Look at this graph from WEF: This is their estimated replacement potential for various skills based on comparison to GPT-4o, which isn't even the best model that exists right now, let alone in one, three, or five years. The wage labor based economy has existed only for a couple hundred years. When Cleveland has founded, the industrial revolution was still nascent. 75% of Americans worked as farmers. It feels like it was a long time ago, but in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't. It happened over several generations. What's coming next has yet to be determined (we have agency; we get to make the future), but it is likely to unfold within years, not generations. And as such, we should be forward-thinking because the job losses of the coming years are likely to be predominately secular as opposed to Cleveland-specific. And the ability of any city to survive as a city in 2030 and beyond is not likely to be tied to the ability to retain office jobs.

It's basically all the same outbreak. It's been going on with a fury for nearly three years now. My understanding is that there are issues with attempting mass vaccination, so instead of attempting herd immunity, they just cull entire infected flocks and then start over. It's like a game of whack-a-mole. And the fact that it spreads so well among mammals now makes it really hard to insulate the chicken populations.

I think the slow decline of office jobs is not really a big deal. Actually, so long as it's not so severe that the metro loses total jobs, I think it's good if it keeps slowly happening so that we, as a metro, can learn to cope and deal with it. Because automation is coming for office jobs the way it came for manufacturing jobs, only much faster. And in the next decade, those metros that rely heavily on high-skill knowledge workers for their GDP are likely to experience something along the lines of rapid deindustrialization. Just it will be for knowledge workers, not factory workers. This may sound a little dramatic, but I mean it seriously. The major economic turning point of our lives is coming soon. And it's hard to know exactly what it will mean, but I would not personally want to be in one of the major office-relocation-destination metros like Austin or Nashville.

This video puts the state in a very good light.

I don't think this is the case. Look at their recently announced projects. There's stuff all over the state. https://www.jobsohio.com/news-events/news-press Columbus is just better positioned to get huge manufacturing developments because they actually have space for it.

Absolutely not intended as Columbus bashing in any way. My post was reacting to and criticizing the cynicism that inevitably poisons Cleveland related discussions. FWIW, I grew up in Columbus and much of my family lives there now. If I didn't live in Cleveland, I would almost certainly live in Columbus. I vehemently disagree with some of the negative perspectives by others above, but I won't directly engage to avoid this getting sidetracked. The only point I'm making by the comparison (which I think is keeping this thread about Cleveland, but tell me if I'm wrong) is that we (Cleveland) can adopt a growth mindset by looking at the things Cleveland does well and trying to capitalize on those things in light of what's happening around the state. And we can look at what is working for our neighboring cities (e.g., Columbus, Pittsburgh) and try to support them in it and create mutually beneficial relationships as opposed to mindless emulation or envy. For instance, Cleveland has a port on the great lakes, so let's focus on utilizing and leveraging that port to support and enrich not just this city but the whole state. Cleveland has a lot of smaller remediated brownfield sites, so let's focus on securing the kinds of smaller manufacturers that supply necessary parts for manufacturers like Intel and Anduril. Cleveland has the nation's best orchestra. So let's promote it in a way that creates awareness throughout the state and draws more people from other cities so they can also enjoy what we know and love. If we look at things happening throughout the state as missed opportunities instead of what they are--opportunities--then we're totally missing the ball. That's all I'm trying to convey here.

The Pickaway site for Anduril was a no-brainer. It's right next to an international airport and the highway. I don't see how Columbus getting these huge projects is anything other than good news for Cleveland. Basically all of silicon valley is actually located in the San Jose area, but it's obviously a huge benefit to San Francisco. We need to focus on shared prosperity, not on jealousy. For a long time the three Cs have been equally large and economically important metros. But it seems extraordinarily likely that within a decade or two Columbus will stand out as the largest and most economically significant of the three. That's just the way it is. And it's going to benefit Cleveland and Cincinnati, not harm them. Both legacy cities will get a bunch of spinoff and support business, which will enrich them. They will also continue to be more important cultural centers than Columbus, will have their own industries in which they shine above and beyond Columbus, and they will both probably be more affordable as Columbus eventually becomes actually expensive, not just midwest expensive. The main takeaway should be how essential high-speed rail is. You should be able to get from downtown Cleveland to downtown Columbus in an hour and from downtown Columbus to downtown Cincinnati in 45 minutes (or maybe an hour if Dayton is a stop on the way).

https://www.anduril.com/article/anduril-building-arsenal-1-hyperscale-manufacturing-facility-in-ohio/ Big deal.

I think people are being very sky-is-falling and cynical about this. Also Goncalves is the chairman of the board and has a history of being a blowhard. The idea that he's going to be ousted because of sales puffery attempting to become the world's biggest steel producer seems pretty unfounded. HQ location pretty much doesn't matter except on paper. Oracle moved their HQ to Texas first, then shortly after to Nashville, but they still have more employees in the Bay area than anywhere else. And that's for offices that aren't close to each other. The idea that a company is going to relocate a bunch of jobs two hours away (in the remote-work era no less) just sounds ridiculous to me. It's a two hour drive. I bet most employees probably wouldn't even blink at having to drive from Cleveland to Pittsburgh for meetings a couple times a month. So why would you break your lease and sign some new expensive lease in Pittsburgh when everyone can meet together in person relatively easily without anyone having to move? Forcing all those employees to move to Pittsburgh would make no sense. Also, it seems unlikely that the CEO would just fire a bunch of Cleveland people. The SVPs that he knows and that work for him are in Cleveland mostly. The VPs that work for them are also mostly Cleveland people, etc. To fire the Cleveland people means he would have to want his company run by the people who ran US Steel into the ground as opposed to his friends. Doubt that's going to happen any time soon. If he thought the US Steel people were better, he would be selling his company to them, not the other way. Just another thing to throw out there. Our incoming VP is a life-long Ohioan who literally wrote a book about steel jobs leaving the state. I think the odds that he allows the administration to just meekly go along with Cliffs pulling out of Ohio (which again, nobody with knowledge has actually suggested is happening) are low.

He has always been this way.

He is 100% whacked, haha. I have to think the discussion about keeping USS in Pittsburgh is an attempt to get Shapiro and everybody in Pittsburgh totally on his side. It's pretty hard to sell the PA steelworkers on "AMERICA AMERICA, NOT JAPAN, AMERICA AMERICA" if the small print is oh and by the way we're moving the hq and all your boss's jobs to Cleveland. They're presumably gonna be in 200 Public Square for ten years, given their lease. Goncalves is 66, so who knows if he's even still the CEO when the lease ends. It does seem like having the Cliffs-USS HQ in Pittsburgh creates a long-term risk of losing the jobs. If we want to avoid that, the city just needs to make a compelling case why those jobs should be located here. Like it or not, we need to do that with every company here all the time anyway.

That's just how he is. He's world renowned for flying off the handle and berating people on earnings calls.

The ambiguity, lol. My fear is it's cool like this.

Cliffs and Nucor are making a joint pitch to get parts of U.S. Steel. High $30s per share. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/13/cleveland-cliffs-partnering-with-nucor-on-potential-bid-for-us-steel-sources-say.html This might have legs. Edit: Specifically, Nucor would be getting Big River Steel, and Cliffs gets everything else.

Wow. So Nighttown is truly dead. I had hoped for another resurrection, but with something else in the space, I can't imagine it's ever coming back.

New BLS numbers for Cleveland. https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/oh_cleveland_msa.htm They look pretty good. Supposedly, we have the lowest unemployment rate in more than two decades.

The change may be secular. In 1940, fewer than 5% of Americans had attended four years of college. By 1990, the percentage was above 20%. Now it's something like 38%. I'm all for education, but it's not obvious to me that 40%+ of Americans will be attending four years of college in the future. If that percentage drops down to just 30% (which, mind you, is still much higher than 1990), lots of schools are in for a world of hurt. For all I know, college enrollment may increase once again in the next decade. But I personally would not bet on it.

Both this project and Top of the Hill have above average finishes such as interesting brickwork and paneling that doesn't look cheap. It's really amazing how much better they look than a lot of the new builds around Little Italy and University Circle.

Realistically...data centers are going to be everywhere. No region of the country can support it all. The entire country's power generation capacity probably can't support what's coming. This might not be a popular sentiment on this forum, but the single best thing we can do as a region right now is probably invest in big new nuclear projects, and the second best thing we can do is invest in natural gas.

https://www.cleveland.com/politics/2024/11/gov-mike-dewine-says-legislators-still-need-to-address-gerrymandering.html This article makes me feel cautiously optimistic. Basically DeWine is saying he feels the current system (and maps) are terribly broken and he wants a fix ASAP, just not the one proposed by Issue 1. DeWine favors a system like the one used in Iowa, which seems like it could be better than the current situation. All that being said, DeWine was a basically passive observer on the panel that gave us current maps. So I will maintain a degree of skepticism.