LlamaLawyer

With Notre Dame College's campus up for sale, what are the prospects that it gets bought out by another school? It seems to me that the campus becoming "The Ohio State University at South Euclid" or something like that would probably be the best overall outcome. I'm struggling to see any other reasonable use for the property.

ROFL, @KJP these have got to be the best email confirmation quotes I've ever seen.

My willingness to think that Jimmy Haslam may be negotiating in good faith has gone down sharply after this reporting. I understand why Jimmy would want public money for a location on the lakefront, since he wouldn't actually own it and the development around it. But what's his excuse for wanting public contribution for a piece of property in Brook Park that he would own outright?

I get the dislike, but I don't see how you can deny this is at least an okay if not an above average design. This will be across the street from the Quarter. It's a significantly better and more interesting design than the Quarter, in my opinion. It's a significantly better design than what NRP is planning on the Scranton Peninsula. It's a significantly better design than Aura at Innovation Square. It's perhaps a better design than Medley. It's a better design than anything I can think of recently or currently being built anywhere in Hough or Glenville. It's a much better design than Via Sana at Metrohealth. Better than Innova by the Cleveland Clinic. I can think of *several* buildings from the last few years that are clearly superior to this design. But there are many more that are, in my opinion, much worse looking.

I'm thrilled to see this is getting built in this lending environment. The design is fine. I'd even go so far as to say it's pretty good. Far above average five-over-one. If it weren't for the previous designs, I suspect we'd all be pretty happy with it. The more momentum the developer community can build up, the more really nice designs we can get.

https://ascentapt.com/floorplans/ Top of the Hill leasing page shows a grand total of two units currently available, with a few more coming online this summer. Very impressive, and from the timing, I'm guessing Match Day probably leased it out, because it was only about 75% leased when I last checked a couple months ago. Very good sign for the Meadowbrook-Lee development, I'd say. Hopefully they can get some retail soon though...

Is there any movement on Warner & Swasey? Wasn't clear on that from the article.

200 PS residential conversion anybody? Seems inevitable, might as way get it underway now! (sort of kidding)

Was looking into this a little and realized that there are actually FIVE separate retail units for lease in the Ascent building. And they're not exactly huge spaces. The smallest is just 1200 sq. ft. It's a little troubling that not even one has been filled...

https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/oh_cleveland_msa.htm March BLS #s are out, and are somewhat more positive than February. They still basically don’t make sense, with the establishment survey showing an almost 1.5% y/o/y gain while the household survey shows a roughly 1.5% y/o/y decline…

I feel like it's probably not related, but I find it fascinating that this disconnect began occurring *right* when the U.S. dropped the gold standard and Bretton Woods collapsed.

The thing is that there are so many areas with tons of room for development. Some development is happening in Glenville. Knez is building a ton of new homes there. But Hough and Fairfax have more area that is immediately adjacent to the Clinic, so they're getting more of the initial investment. I would expect more development in Glenville will occur when Fairfax and Hough are a little built out. There's just so much room for infill. Honestly, it's the city's biggest opportunity. We have basically intact infrastructure for 2+ million people in Cuyahoga County, but we have a population that's a little over half that. It's why even with the solar eclipse and Final Four, traffic on most roads here never got as bad as it is in most places five days a week.

I believe it's caused by two things. I think about two thirds of it is what you pointed out above. The other third is a genuine economic phenomenon based on the last couple decades of slow growth. If you look at U.S. GDP growth by decade for the last 80 or so years, you'll find that there was growth every decade, but that the overall trend has been toward slower growth. I believe that people feel financially successful not based on what they have in absolute terms but based on comparing what they have now to what they had five years ago. For the median American, the how-well-off-am-I-now-versus-five-years-ago differential has declined, even though in absolute terms, the median American is better off. So people feel like they're worse off than their parents were not because they actually are but because their parents were X% better off in 1985 than in 1980, and they're much less than X% better off in 2024 versus 2019.

This is the obvious location. Hopefully someday in the future it will spur a waterfront line extension that follows 2 east past Asiatown and then follows 90 south down through Cleveland State and to the STJ transit center.

If Jimmy pays completely for a development at Brook Park, that makes me a lot more enthusiastic about the move. Remember how big a deal ARPA money was? That was like $540 million. Imagine if you could wave a wand and give the city 2x that, but the only condition was the Browns had to move to Brook Park. Good deal in my opinion.

The post office site is actually a little bit closer to Progressive Field than the current Browns stadium is.

[changed my mind about putting this here]

Maybe it's just me, but all jokes aside, I think the post office area is plenty big. We've been using SoFi as a placeholder, but SoFi is a freakishly big stadium. Like, it's about twice as large as Allegiant, Mercedes Benz, and U.S. Bank stadiums all of which are pretty nice and new. The plot currently occupied by post office and its parking (this doesn't include the Guardians staff parking or any area of the hill leading down to the river or any disconnected parcels) is almost 40 acres (see below). Compare this to Allegiant in Las Vegas, which is 64 acres and includes a crap-ton of surface parking And just to make it a fair comparison, here's Allegiant stadium but I'm only outlining 38 acres of land. It just wouldn't be that hard to have a stadium, some "ballpark village," some structure parking, and even some lot parking all fit in 40 acres.

"Enough room?" What a 19th century concern! Has Mr. Haslam heard of these newfangled multistory buildings? Matter of fact, I've got a design proposal for what Haslam's ballpark village at the post office site can look like. His billionaire friends will be just fawning over *this* phallic beauty. I'd even go so far as to say "If you build it, they will..." well you know.

The response rate for both surveys has declined, unfortunately. The household survey seems obviously suspect because a y/o/y 2% decrease in labor force (with an accompanying fall in unemployment) seems implausible. But I wouldn't assume the establishment survey is accurate either. They do lots of seasonal adjustments and the "birth death" adjustment, which tend to smooth out the trends, but the methodology of these adjustments is at times suspect. Because a significant part (10%+) of the workforce is self employed, the establishment survey has to guess how many of these people there are. Also, by the way (since data for other cities is out now too) among large Ohio metros, Cleveland posted the only Jan.-Feb. loss in household survey while also posting the largest gain in the establishment survey by a factor of two. So I think something is extra fishy with the Cleveland numbers, since Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, Akron, and Toledo were all relatively flat in both categories, while Cleveland had huge loss in one, big gain in the other.

https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/oh_cleveland_msa.htm February BLS. Nonfarm (establishment survey) looks pretty good (better than average for state) while labor force (household survey) looks TERRIBLE, with labor force and employment at the lowest levels since February 2022. You can get divergence between the surveys even with perfect data due to people living outside of metro and commuting into it. But I don't think that's what's happening here. One of these surveys is wrong by a substantial margin.

Anybody know when the report(s) on economic impact of having/closing Burke will be completed? I feel like it's been going on a very long time.

I feel like we really can't judge what is mostly a closed-door process until it concludes. Seems to me like the big problem is that Cleveland can't sell (or give) the reclaimed land to Jimmy Haslam so that Jimmy could actually own the whole stadium and (at least part of) village area. I understand that is due to state law. Well (not saying this is actually happening, but) what if Jimmy Haslam and Mayor Bibb are actually on the same page but they have to make a record of the dispute because the goal is to get a special piece of legislation passed in Columbus that would allow the lakefront land to be sold (or just given) to Jimmy Haslam? Seems to me like that would be a very smart idea and best case scenario. City just gives the stadium and about half the land north of it to Jimmy H along with an 80-90% property tax exemption. Jimmy H gets what he wants; City is now free from stadium expenses while maintaining all the same revenue and potentially even getting some additional property taxes. Win-win. I mean surely, if the state house can pass bills targeted at getting a new interchange in Brunswick, they should be able to pass a bill to keep the Cleveland Browns in Cleveland. This seems like the simplest fix that makes everyone happy. Am I missing something major here?

What exactly does Brook Park get out of this deal? Why would they agree to this?

According to Nick Castele's analysis from last year, the income taxes generated from the stadium being in Cleveland are somewhere south of $2 million a year and the taxes on ticket sales are somewhere north of $4 million a year. His analysis concludes that the stadium loses the city money overall (to be clear, that's not including a renovation; just the stadium as it is). https://signalcleveland.org/the-public-cost-of-cleveland-browns-stadium-hundreds-of-millions-and-counting/ I don't know if those numbers are correct, but they're not obviously wrong. So if $2 million is what's lost in income tax revenue, and $4 million is what's lost in taxes on ticket sales, you have a total of $6 million in lost taxes if the Browns leave Cleveland. Then let's assume Nick Castele's estimate is wrong by a factor of two and throw in an extra couple million just because. This seems really high, but maybe it's plausible. Now we're up to $14 million a year in revenue lost to the city. Ouch. But if we're missing that $14 million because the city refused to pony up $1 billion, is that a bad deal? Paying $1 billion for $14 million a year in revenue would be like buying a bond that pays out 1.4% interest. And that's assuming the city breaks even on leasing the stadium to the Browns (which the city historically has not). Looks like a terrible deal to me. And this is using back of napkin math that probably grossly overestimates the tax benefits of the stadium and grossly underestimates the cost of building a new stadium. Now, I want to be clear that I agree the stadium moving is a loss for downtown. But the stadium moving is probably a net neutral thing for the region (there are pros and cons to both sites, and Brookpark is still a part of the urban core, unlike Richfield) and probably a financial plus for the City of Cleveland. So I'm just overall ambivalent about the move, and I strongly disagree with anyone who would preach doom and gloom or say this is some kind of HUGE loss. Downtown is very vibrant on many days that don't include a Browns game. And the coming development from core-to-shore-to-core, if it's anywhere close to what it's cracked up to be, will more than make up for the loss of the stadium.