CLEeng

Don't forget that a lot of the executives from MD stayed in place at the new merged company.

McDonnell-Douglas says hello I'm guessing the board of Cliffs is extremely unhappy behind closed doors right now after that disaster of a press conference. I highly doubt they oust Goncalves, but I'm guessing he's not having a fun few days after that.

OK, that's great, but it has absolutely zero to do the design of facilities from an Architectural and Engineering standpoint. I can guarantee you the sale of gum has never once come up in a facility design meeting. Teams do keep in mind where things are located or how they're laid out to aid the facilities maintenance crew in doing their job more effectively, but an airport banning the sale of gum is not something that an A&E design team would ever talk about.

For a project that has a master planning component like you need to here for FAA approval, that's actually not that unusual. I'm going to guess the Jimmah-World proposal has similar soft costs to it buried in total cost, they just don't break it out, they just say the project will cost X with everything required to get it there included. There's a whole rabbit hole here (hard costs vs soft costs, design fees, the bidding model, etc etc), that is a way off topic discussion. I know a certain local hospital had years of master planning go into their own billion+ dollar campus plan, and I'm guessing the consulting/design fees were a similar percentage. Us design consultants gotta eat too!

That's not design, or even remotely close to it, that's operations. Dumb, if true, but design has nothing to do with that.

I'm not sure how the PD is, but I know a lot of publications do say the author generally doesn't create the headline, so maybe that's the case there? I don't read Cleveland.com or PD stuff nearly often enough to know who a lot of the writers are anymore, so the name didn't stick out to me. And I think it's fair to say that upkeep isn't quite there, I guess with some of the horror shows I've seen in my travels I put Hopkins middle of the pack. I'll never forget an entire area of O'Hare that just reeked of backed up sewer gas, or some entire concourses of Philly International, or the absolutely tiny bathrooms in Dulles International, or the entirety of Orlando MCO. I do agree that Cleveland has dragged their feet a bit on the rebuild/reno, but master planning takes a LOT of time, as does the design process. Usually each master planning concept will have a budget estimate created against it and the last few years of rapid inflation since COVID probably meant a lot of having to rework concepts to get things on budget. I'm not on any airport projects personally, but my company is, and some of them have been in design for literally years and they still aren't fully complete. It seems like Hopkins is stuck in a bit of a (pun not intended) holding pattern with the airport. They don't want to spend anymore than they have to because the master plan is coming but the length of that process is just making things that were maybe OK, but aging out seem that much worse. I can absolutely see the cramped criticism of A and B terminals though, I generally spend most of my time in C and the skylights help a lot to keep it from feeling enclosed.

I have to laugh at the JD Power ratings every time I see them brought up for Hopkins. For a few years in a row I was flying in and out of Hopkins on really, really regular basis, so I got to know it pretty well. It's fine, the bathrooms complaint, I get, but that also seems to vary wildly depending on which terminal you're in (A and by security are the newest, C is in the worst shape). Restaurants and amenities are fine as well, but the hours aren't always great. Coffee shops for example tend to not open up until around the time the early morning flights are boarding, which is unfortunate. Security is another pain point, it's just not laid out well in the TSA age of doing things, lines across the entire lobby area from either the north or south checkpoint aren't unusual. I actually really liked the United Lounge there too, sure, it's not as nice as what you'd find at a United Hub airport like O'Hare, but it's spacious, comfy, quiet and the food is decent. If you want a truly hateful lounge experience, go to the United Lounge at MCO. I had to spend nearly a full day in it a few years ago after some brutally timed weather delays, and boy was it bad. That all being said, it of course can use a facelift, it's showing it's age in a lot of ways, the design isn't really suited to the airport that it is now and you can see the seams of updates and projects more than at other comparable airports. The Plain Dealer idea is interesting, but given how counties outside Cuyahoga react to anything Cleveland related, good luck. I can't imagine the meltdown if the idea of closing CAK for a larger regional airport from the Akron region was actually proposed AND a tax to support a "Cleveland" amenity. The PD's coverage of Hopkins has been, interesting to say the least though. I saw they had a headline of passenger "declines" towards the end of the year. Well, turns out traffic still grew year over year, but it didn't grow as much as projected for a month or two after Spirit declared bankruptcy. I guess they got me to click on the article, so it worked I suppose, but it was just strange to phrase it the way they did. And well, we all know that no one loves to hate on Cleveland more than Clevelanders.

I'll keep it to this to avoid going too far off topic, but look up the things that came out from when Sashi Brown was GM and the things Haslem said/did around the office.

I believe the city or county own the existing condition reports, so I think a FOIA request would do it? Discovery of HSG's internal conversations about the process will be very fascinating, and likely very damning. Using my very much not a lawyer brain, I would expect the Haslem's to ask for court records to be sealed so they don't get out. Given their history, who knows, maybe we get something Jimmah said that's at least racially charged to start the process of forcing him to sell?

You'll appreciate me taking that with a massive grain of salt. I don't know them personally, but the loudest voices for people returning to offices 5 days a week are often real estate developers/owners and middle managers who feel like they need to watch people during work hours to feel like they've done something. Coyne's quotes in the article read a LOT like the other things I've seen developers say about the "importance" of being in the office 40 hours a week. You also left out the rest of my post talking about a bunch of your points. If companies want people to return to the office and not revolt at the thought, it's on them to improve the amenities and draw for people. Simply giving a blanket mandate to return because of perceived benefits it's near good enough. Productivity levels of people working remotely vs in the office is highly, highly debatable. There have been studies to show both sides of it. Culture for that matter too, my group in my company is one of the most scattered across offices, yet we have one of the healthiest cultures in the company. Maybe good corporate culture doesn't come from being in an office every day and rather it comes from the people working together well and personalities meshing. Companies may not like it, but 2020 changed the game entirely, it showed you don't need to in your cubicle from 9-5 5 days a week so Bill Lumberg can come talk to you about your TPS reports.

As usual with these "we need to return to the office!" things I read, it's commercial real estate owners/developers that are yelling the loudest for it. I wonder why. Look, I work a hybrid schedule, with my office downtown and working remotely from my home or on the road either out of the city or state to meet with clients. And for what it's worth, in a typical all office week, I'm downtown more than I'm at home. There are upsides to being in the office, but let's stop pretending that there's any real difference in productivity between the two. The balance is different for every person for where they work best. The discussion of having buildings with amenities that people actually want to draw people into the office is a start, but what's happened with people bailing on companies that have issued RTO mandates is people leave and morale plummets. Even worse if they choose a shudders suburban office park. If you really want people to come back to your fancy, expensive offices, give them a reason to choose to come, don't force them to, ESPECIALLY when in a lot of cases you won't see the executive teams in the offices 5 days a week. Don't focus on improving the situation for office building owners, focus on improving the city in general and the people will come.

Is there something the taxpayers could do to compel the release of the lakefront plans? We all know they exist, and the stadium is owned by the city. I'm guessing the project team is under a what I'm assuming is a pretty punishing NDA from the Haslem's since nothing has leaked so far. It's clear that they don't want it out because it's probably a pretty compelling plan that the region would rally behind and probably even easily get all his public funding for, but there has to be something to compel it's release that can be done. If HSG wants our money for his vanity project, we deserve to be fully informed of the options.

Didn't Coucil pass a resolution to enforce using the Modell Law? I don't think that's Bibb's call. And you can be sure that if he wasn't at least working to keep the team in the city tons of people would be calling for blood there too. Public sentiment seems to largely be on his side that Brook Park is a terrible call. I can't speak for neighborhoods outside of downtown really since most of my time in Cleveland is in downtown, but it does seem like things like snow removal have been going better since Bibb took office. I remember downtown being a dumpster fire of snow under Jackson more than a few times. And yes, winters are trending more mild, but even the bad storms downtown is still cleared pretty quickly.

I mean, the Bears and Jets might have something to say about that crown... Maybe they should look at this Baker guy in Tampa, he'd be a good fit. Going right back to the topic, it does seem like the Browns bought in to the hype that they'd be riding near the top of the league and planned things out to announce the new stadium during the heart of a playoff season. The renders and master plan documents likely started to be created at least a year to a year and a half ago.

Yep, exactly, I was going to add that, but my post was already getting pretty long as it was. I really liked both players (I have a Gimenez jersey), but these were honestly smart moves, even though they're pretty shocking on the surface. Not to mention the Guards farm system is rated top 5 by at least one agency, and a bunch of those top guys are at AAA already. Edit: A few other things, Gimenez reportedly refused to consider moving to SS to free up 2B for the likes of Brito and Bazzana and Josh supposedly refused to DH every once in a while, insisting to only play 1B, both of which had a significant impact on lineup flexibility.

It's not nearly that simple. Gimenez was a great defender, but his hitting was far, far below replacement level other than one single season (the one that got him his contract extension). They also have guys like Brito at AAA and their first overall pick Bazzana likely ready in a year or two at 2B. The fact they picked up a ready starter now, plus two top pitching prospects is amazing for a guy who's contract is very likely to be underwater in a year or two. Josh was a good hitter, but his conditioning had also become a real concern, which apparently the front office talked to him about after the season. His hitting numbers in the second half are a sharp drop off from the first half, and his playoff numbers were atrocious. Given his injury history there's a real chance that his production drops off sharply as conditioning gets worse and worse. The draft pick and pitcher they got back are both pretty far above the value other comparable 1Bs are moving for this offseason. Plus, this opens up plate appearances for Manzardo next year. Look, there's plenty of reasons to be impatiently waiting for Blitzer to take over as the majority owner, but since they basically used the Gimenez money to resign Bieber and the Naylor money for Santana, this really isn't one of them. The front office saw an opportunity to trade for positions of organizational depth (1B and 2B) and bolster areas of the team that really need it (SP), so they took it. Not to mention their organizational history of developing pitchers out of nowhere, Kluber is a shining example, he was a nothing prospect and a throw in player in a trade who turned into an ace.

So, going to load up on disclaimers here first, I'm in now way saying that any of the parties involved in this project are thinking what I'm about to say. I have no direct contact with any of the architectural or engineering teams involved with the project. This is purely my speculation based on my own experience of my own company declining to bid on projects in the past because of the expected public blowback. Now, that being said, I have to wonder as this gets uglier and uglier if the HSG design partners might consider walking away. A&E firms DO consider the impact on their public image when taking on projects, and given HKS's at minimum national reputation, being tied to a contract for a project that's getting this ugly, this fast will likely be fine for a while, but if it continues to spiral they might start to get nervous. The fees from a multibillion dollar project do paper over a lot of issues and soothe any damage to public perception for sure, but projects like this are as much marketing exercises as design ones (feather in the cap in your design portfolio and all that). It truly is amazing how badly the Haslem's have handled this entire process from start to finish. I REALLY want to know what it was that triggered them to suddenly pivot to a "dome or bust" approach while seemingly negotiating with the city in bad faith for an extended period of time. Given history, we all know it was something shiny that caught their attention and caused them to get jealous, but would love to know what it was.

Thanks for the survey link, I answered it too. What a terrible, terrible survey, it's not even trying to hide it's agenda. So wish it had a free response section though... The fact they did this at all though seems to indicate they realize that they're losing the battle for the public's support. I'm guessing we're going to see a pivot in messaging here soon from the Haslem's side.

So you're saying there's concepts of a plan?

That seems to be a pretty generous title for the article. Seemed to be a lot of "we still haven't figured out a lot of stuff." I know Haslem and the Browns haven't exactly been bastions of patience or good planning or sound business decisions or listening to experts or.... It's honestly amazing how badly this has gone for them. Aside from a few useful idiots at places like 92.3 and The Plain Dealer, the reaction to this seems to largely be to tell Jimmy where he can stick his dome. Part of me wonders if this really is a bid for them to try and move the team, since they clearly "tried," but given the rumors I've heard for quite a while that he isn't well liked in NFL league circles plus the headache it brought to the league the last time they let someone steal the Browns away makes me think that isn't likely either.

I had a long post typed out that I just ended up deleting yesterday (stupid real work responsibilities) that basically said the same thing. Go for a walk down Madison or Detroit and basically with every step you're at a business of some kind, some new, some old. There is probably something worth discussing if the quality of the new places isn't as good as the old (RIP El Carn!), but I don't think it's necessarily linked. It seems like all the high profile closures in Lakewood over the last year or two have been for various reasons with no real thread to connect them. There's also other success stories, when the Cambell's on Detroit closed, we got Boom's, Burgers 2 Beer closing led to Arepaz right across the street, etc. etc. Look, Lakewood isn't perfect and has things it needs to work on (the glacial pace of developments for one), but there doesn't seem to be some general problem plaguing the whole city, plus it still has a general reputation statewide as a place you should be looking at if you're coming to the Cleveland region. On the other side, when Melt basically had to close everything to stay alive, they chose their Lakewood location as the one to keep. They could have just easily picked a location in one of the suburbs or Columbus to be the last one standing, but they wanted it to be Lakewood.

In their defense, the original press release on these sales said that the proceeds went to charity, not the team.

Of course Dennis! has to crawl out of his hole to remind us he exists...

Major props for doing that in Cities Skylines, I was trying to do the same to just have fun building out a "dream" Cleveland, but I could never get the scale right. I was also trying in 2, so maybe that was part of the issue?

Ha, had to re-find my password, but figured this was worth it. It was pretty clear that Haslem has had his mind made up for a long time and was just acting like he was actually discussing with the city in good faith so he could later say he "tried." If Haslem was truly discussing with the city for years then suddenly shifted, makes you wonder what new "shiny" caught his attention. Making rash decisions because something new caught his attention is completely on brand for him (firing Chud, drafting Johnny Football, ousting Baker for Watson, etc, etc). If Haslem wants to pay for the whole thing himself, by all means, have fun with your Cybertruck inspired vanity project. Just a matter of time until people are complaining that the "ballpark village" ends up being an Applebee's in a sea of parking (that costs $30 on non-game days). Meanwhile the Cavs and Guardians continue to invest in the city and the areas around their stadiums, and are the teams worthy of the region's support. The likes of Watson and Haslem deserve each other.