surfohio

Better yet, partner up with the Coast Guard in the grand scheme of mixed use development. The Coast Guard facility doesn't need to be a completely walled off fortress. A great example of this is the new U.S. Navy offices in San Diego are part of, or arguably even the centerpiece of a huge new waterfront development: https://www.manchesterpacificgateway.com/video.html

This was seventeen lakefront plans ago, but check this: https://www.cleveland.com/metro/2012/03/cleveland_council_oks_lakefron.html

Meaning this. Like is this feasible? https://www.vaakins.com/burke-lakefront-master-plan Working in partnership with EE&K a Perkins Eastman company, VAA developed a redevelopment plan for the Burke Lakefront Airport site. This plan involved restoring the terminal and restaurant, as well as developing a new high-tech waterfront office park, hangar, and parking garages. The office park was designed to consist of four main buildings and floating offices on the lake. The schedule for this project was designed to occur in either four phases: constructing one building in each phase, or all at once.

Look at their portfolio of sucky apartments and it's arguable a parking lot is preferable to whatever they would throw up there.

Is the consultant only going to compare alternatives to Burke Airport "as is?" I don't think it's possible to get a clear picture unless you also factor in the potential for it to become a better airport.

These guys paid like nothing for this property lol. It's possible their plan was always a plan to do nothing.

"There's nothing historic about these structures" -IRG Partner Richard Brown "Historic buildings to be razed in the Flats" -KJP's headlinie I'm siding with KJP on this, and I can't freaking believe how easy it's been to tear down so many buildings in this "historic" district.

Yeah what KJP said....though you're certainly correct!

I had to file some documents at the probate court today....holy cow what a great building!

The pandemic tested and reshaped the hearts of American cities. By German Lopez October 30, 2022 ‘Eerie quiet’ American downtowns are working to recover after the Covid pandemic upended their roles as business centers and community hubs. To find out how these efforts are going, Times reporters recently visited the downtown areas in Washington, D.C.; Hartford, Conn.; Salt Lake City; Seattle and elsewhere. They discovered that some are struggling while others have come back even stronger. I asked Mike Baker, who’s based in Seattle and contributed to the project, about what they saw. German: I was struck by the emptiness in Cincinnati, where I live, during the height of the pandemic. Even today, the city can still feel much quieter than it did before Covid. Is this common across the country? Mike: There’s definitely an eerie quiet. Some neighborhoods are well short of the vibrancy they had a few years ago. There are boarded-up windows. In some cities, there’s this feeling of an empty sidewalk where you’re used to having larger crowds. So people will come downtown and feel like there’s nobody or very few people there. You lose the sense that this is a gathering place for the community. And that contributes to people not really wanting to come back. What did the pandemic bring? There are positive and negative trends out there. So many downtowns have embraced outdoor dining and expanded restaurant patios and have become more walking-friendly. A lot of midsize cities, like Salt Lake City, have seen explosive growth around new businesses and attractions downtown. Some cities have made investments to draw in more people, and they’re actually seeing more visitors than they did before the pandemic. At the same time, major urban centers still have less commuter foot traffic than they did before the pandemic because so many people are still working from home. So some businesses don’t have the traffic to survive. Some downtown neighborhoods are struggling with crime and homelessness. And housing affordability seems to be on everybody’s mind at this point, especially here in Seattle. Seattle seems like an interesting case, because Amazon is headquartered downtown yet is arguably deepening some downtowns’ problems by making it easier to shop online instead of in person. Yeah. Even before the pandemic, Amazon’s explosive growth heavily contributed to housing shortfalls in Seattle. Then all this infrastructure was built to support the tech workers at the South Lake Union neighborhood, where Amazon is. During the pandemic, many of these tech workers started working remotely, and all these businesses suddenly had very few people to serve. These are tech workers with good incomes who are no longer coming to that part of the city regularly. That’s a huge setback. But Seattle might be better positioned than some cities. It has cruise ship terminals, which bring visitors from all over the country on summer weekends. There’s a waterfront under development that connects the Pike Place Market up north down to football and baseball stadiums in the south. There’s an expanding convention center and a new N.H.L. team that plays in the area. You mentioned crime and homelessness. How much are they playing a role in downtowns’ problems? You certainly hear about both a lot from residents, visitors and business owners. I was in Oregon recently to report on the governor’s race, and all the candidates were talking about how unsafe downtown Portland has become. Yet even there, the variation is remarkable: I could walk through the waterfront, and people were walking their dogs, jogging or just enjoying the scenery. But if you turn just a couple blocks from the waterfront into the Old Town neighborhood, you can see widespread homelessness, drug use. There are people lying motionless on the sidewalk or in the middle of the road. There is this tension. Officials talk about trying to build more affordable housing and provide more services for drug addiction and mental health, but that takes time. But there’s a sense of urgency — that we need to do something to get people back downtown, and locals want quick solutions to homelessness. Considering those problems, are cities making progress on revitalizing downtowns? Some places are. One place I visited was Nampa, Idaho, a city of 100,000 people west of Boise. Years ago, the city had this really vibrant downtown with retail outlets that brought people from around the area. But then a mall was built on the edge of town. And then an even bigger mall was built farther away in Boise. Then Amazon came along, popularizing online shopping. And then the pandemic. The city started working to reverse the trends — to build a community gathering place. But instead of building back in the retail-focused style of the old downtown, today’s efforts are more about restaurants than shops, and more emphasis on people living there instead of driving downtown. It’s different, but it’s about adapting to the changes and finding the right mix to make this spot appealing again. So far, it appears to be working. Read The Times’s story on downtowns, and see photos of both vibrant and struggling urban centers. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/26/us/us-cities-downtown-chicago-seattle.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20221030&instance_id=76075&nl=the-morning&regi_id=102158875&segment_id=111512&te=1&user_id=c9e72708f4bc66e6d64b23c3b36509c8

Wow, 538 giving Vance 78/100 chance of winning. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2022-election-forecast/senate/

Are there any public restrooms around?

Just an FYI: https://www.lp.org/issues/immigration/ Libertarians believe that people should be able to travel freely as long as they are peaceful. We welcome immigrants who come seeking a better life.

FWIW I've seen the street ambassadors diffuse potentially bad situations in the past.

^ This. And how many times do we find out the perpetrator of these crimes is some repeat offender? We need to start doing a better job of segregating violent people from the rest of society; in a way that is ethical and when possible, rehabilitative. But people who are one argument away from shooting another person do not deserve to walk freely among us.

^ Football genius Stefanski cannot figure out how to use Kareem Hunt lol.

I sometimes can't help but laugh when the tone of these national articles imply or even outright declare that Cleveland and NE Ohio is some sort of cultural backwater! I originally thought a sports bar was part of the equation, but maybe one of the restaurants can take on that role on game days.

I'm still not sure who would live in Riverside or SB unless they absolutely had to. It's always reminded me of a land of outcasts.

Undoubtedly there is an element of "public" control, but I'm not sure anyone really knows what that means in practice. Aside from the height restrictions with Burke, anything can happen down there. It could very well be another Flats East Bank type of situation where a single developer's vision is given a green light for the sake of development.

Cleveland, and really the state of Ohio could really have benefitted from regulatory body to ensure that development adheres to certain principles. The historical bad decisions in Ohio and lack of coherent planning has really ruined most of the shoreline or at least kept it inaccessible. Until there's more concrete framework in place I'm afraid the future and shape of a large portion of the Lakefront is simply dependent on whatever some developer can get away with. In California the Coastal Commission exists to provide a well-established set of guidelines for developers and government agencies to adhere to. It's maybe too late for Ohio, but until these shiny Lakefront plans have some regulatory teeth it's going to be extremely difficult and not to mention time consuming to get all stakeholders on the same page. https://www.coastal.ca.gov/whoweare.html The Coastal Act includes specific policies that address issues such as shoreline public access and recreation, lower cost visitor accommodations, terrestrial and marine habitat protection, visual resources, landform alteration, agricultural lands, commercial fisheries, industrial uses, water quality, offshore oil and gas development, transportation, development design, power plants, ports, and public works. The policies of the Coastal Act constitute the statutory standards applied to planning and regulatory decisions made by the Commission and by local governments, pursuant to the Coastal Act. The Commission is an independent, quasi-judicial state agency. The Commission is composed of twelve voting members, appointed equally (four each) by the Governor, the Senate Rules Committee, and the Speaker of the Assembly. Six of the voting commissioners are locally elected officials and six are appointed from the public at large. Three ex officio (non-voting) members represent the Resources Agency, the California State Transportation Agency, and the State Lands Commission.

Love it. Now how about our huge paper airplane?

I do believe Lerner was the architect of the move. But the League should have never let that happen to begin with, just a real slap in the face to a fanbase that did nothing but support the team. Then three years without a team! Insult to injury, but the NFL had to set a precedent that cities would be punished for dragging their feet on stadiums. The franchise has never recovered and a generation of fans only know the Browns as unprecedented losers.

Here's what's so crazy: Last season the Browns are coming off a playoff run. For the first time in 30+ years everything is looking up. Browns play and awesome game but come up short vs. KC losing 33-29 in what surely looks like the future AFC Championship game. No worries though, Cleveland wins the next three games....except they don't look so good vs. Minnesota. And that's sorta when the wheels came off. Baker is injured and the highest paid backup QB turns out to be dead weight. The season slips away and yadda yadda yadda the Browns are suddenly back to being the laughingstock of the League. The universe just has a way of correcting itself. What's happened with the team in such short a time is just unprecedented.

How to catch a rapist? Study finds Cleveland, Cuyahoga authorities failed to collect DNA from nearly 15,000 suspects over 7 years Oct. 23, 2022 CLEVELAND, Ohio – In early 2012, a 14-year-old girl was raped by a stranger in Cleveland Heights. A rape kit captured a man’s DNA, but no match was found in the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, a sort of federal clearinghouse for DNA data that helps law enforcement identify suspects and match them with old and new crimes. Three years after the unsolved Cleveland Heights rape, a man named Marquice Miller pleaded guilty to felony theft in Cuyahoga County. Per Ohio law, authorities should have swabbed for Miller’s DNA and sent it to the data system. That never happened, and Miller was put on probation. https://www.cleveland.com/news/2022/10/cleveland-police-county-authorities-failed-to-collect-dna-from-nearly-15000-suspects-in-seven-year-period-violating-ohio-law-study-finds.html

And I just had a friend move out of her beautiful house in West Cleveland because she was robbed at gunpoint in her driveway. Her neighbors saw what was going on and did nothing.