LlamaLawyer

The Crains article says they are planning to do the whole project in one phase rather than two. I suppose that must be a good sign!

What you say is totally true. This is also an area that doesn't really need more greenspace. Cain Park is over 20 acres and is a 15 minute walk from the site. Cumberland Park is a similar size and slightly longer walk. To the south, there is some good green space at Farifax Elementary. And of course this whole discussion ignores the fact that the development will include a small park.

Pet peeve of mine: a lot of news stories, lists, or analyses about “greenest cities” or avoiding the effects of climate change seem to have unproductive and nonsensical methodologies. Here’s a new one I found, ClimateCheck. https://climatecheck.com The concept is to have a rating for cities, zip codes, addresses etc based on climate change risk. The methodology equally weights five risk categories based on the projected change in each. The result is some obviously nonsensical scores like Burlington, VT having a worse score than Sacramento, CA or Indianapolis, IN having the same score as Houston, TX. Interested to hear what others think.

The baselines for parking between Cedar Lee and Cedar Fairmount are very different. Cedar Fairmount is occasionally hard to park in but Cedar Lee never really is.

The lot that will be redeveloped is never 100% full. The garage is presumably only full of cobwebs although no one knows because no one has actually been inside it to check. There will be plenty parking 98% of the time. And in that 2% when the garage fills up, there are hundreds of potential spots on nearby side streets. People come en masse to the Cain Park arts festival and there’s actually no lot or garage parking at all for that. The side streets can absorb a lot. This is a nonexistent problem.

I’m really glad it’s NOT a garage. The cost to build would be a mere $80,000 (sounds unbelievably cheap to me), which means the project would pay for itself within 4 browns games (assuming they charge a conservative $20 a spot). So it’s easy to see why this temporary lot is appealing. I don’t see a problem with the project so long as it’s paired with some kind of commitment that keeps the lot temporary. It’s not like construction of something permanent on the lakefront would be starting by February, so the parking spaces they’re making would just be gravel and dirt. So just saying this could be a good opportunity to put a little pressure on the sports commission in exchange for letting them have their spots. The sunk costs are minimal and so there’s no inherent reason the lot can’t be temporary.

We have a new winner for worst take on nextdoor re the Meadowbrook and Lee development. This one will be hard to top!!

I have to imagine they are. Window technology has come a long way since the current ones were installed. There’s no way the existing windows are very energy efficient. What I wonder is how different the new ones will look. I don’t think they can do anything drastically different because of the historic preservation credit, but new windows won’t look exactly the same, and would probably add some cleanness to the overall look.

Does this mean they’re moving forward without worrying about a TMUD credit or is the project still probably contingent on getting one?

So, @KJP, you hearing something about this one?

I'm getting more ok with the pavilion provided it has significant and attractive public uses. I get that it won't be very tall, but how many buildings are there that have more than a couple floors of public use anyway? In light of that fact, how much difference does the height really make? At 50 feet, it would be a similar height to the middle peak of the Old Stone Church, so not out of scale for the square.

Here's another view that popped up on the screen for less than a second. You can see there's a balcony cutout on the west side of the building as well.

My thoughts: The tower looks like it will be quite breathtaking. I'm interested to see how the cladding turns out, but even if it's very bland this will be gorgeous. If there is some public access added to the roof of the pavilion, that would help it tremendously. Even if it's only public part of time! If Sherwin Williams wants a private hang-out area, maybe just make it public Saturday and Sunday and holidays but keep it private Monday through Friday. That would be a vast improvement over nobody-but-SHW-employees-ever-go-in. The request for more retail is probably more important than the skywalks.

Dang, that silhouette is nice.

Speaking of tall buildings, here’s a fun perspective showing how tall the Artisan will be. (From behind Plum Kitchen)

I don’t think Bedrock needs any city approval for what they’re doing so there’s really no reason to announce far ahead of time. It probably took them a while to figure out the precise direction they wanted to go, but now that they know what they’re doing they have every reason to move as fast as possible. Vacant spaces are lost money.

BLS data shows the Cleveland labor force at its highest post-pandemic number. There was an increase in unemployment, which I have to think comes more from people reentering the labor force than anything else. https://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.oh_cleveland_msa.htm

I had always really liked the idea of CityBlock because of the potential huge economic impact. But the fact Bedrock couldn’t make it work suggests they never had the kinds of major tech tenant sign ons that would have been needed to actualize the potential. In light of that fact, I’m over CityBlock. Two significant observations about this plan. 1. TENANTS STARTING IN SEPTEMBER. Ya know, the month after next month. That is huge because it mans this is real and happening. 2. Yes, this is essentially a mall, but the plan seems to fix Tower City’s biggest problem, which was that there was no reason to go there. Bland retail, a pretty normal movie theater, and average to subpar restaurants. Unless you live downtown, there was never a reason to go to Tower City unless you happened to be there already. The idea here seems to be unique storefronts. Bring in retailers, food, or entertainment that doesn’t already exist in four other malls across the county. If they can pull that off (in light of the growing downtown population as alluded above), I could really see Tower City becoming a fun place to visit in and of itself, not just because you took the rapid or went to Jack and happened to be there already. I think a mix of high end and mid/low end retail is great, so long as most of the tenants are unique to the metro.

The proximity to a lot of start up food businesses (among other things) made this a poor location. No love lost on this moving.

I don’t think any decisions have been made, but a new eco-friendly courthouse probably qualifies for the money.

Love all those renders @Geowizical! I hope the actual roofline is close to your render, because it’s very unique, sleek, and lovely.

Not sure where else to post this. I wonder if the “our taxes are lower” sign hit a nerve.

The strangest part to me is they supposedly didn’t start actual design work until last month.

https://www.crainscleveland.com/real-estate/55-public-square-canton-hotel-deal-win-big-historic-tax-credit-contest Anybody have a finger on the pulse of the Warner & Swasey project after this decision?

Something I've been thinking about recently, not exactly related to "sprawl" but not sure where else to put this. The Van Aken phase 2 development will be about 20 stories. Ascent at the Top of the Hill in Cleveland Heights will be 10 stories. One Lakewood Place, whenever it actually gets built, could be up to 20 stories based on previous proposals. I can't really think of other midsized cities that have such high density residential developments in their suburbs. Are there lots of other comparable projects in other areas I don't know about, or is Cleveland sort of exceptional in terms of the scale of the largest residential projects in the suburbs. To be clear, I'm just asking about 10-20 story residential projects in the suburbs of midsized cities. I know there are plenty residential developments in the 5-6 story range in suburbs of other midsized metros. I also know the largest metros have some pretty massive suburban projects.