Ethan

This but unironically. A downtown parking spot can easily cost $300/month, and whether the business or the employee is paying for it, that's a $3600 reduction in salary, far from inconsequential. If parking options are reduced that will only increase. Add in on average higher taxes and rents in the urban core, and the economic case a suburban company HQ can become compelling. Recent successes like Sherwin Williams show that the downtown can still make it's case, but in the era of work from home I've got to imagine that case is only getting harder. Unless a lot more people start living places they can get downtown without a car, I would expect the trend away from downtown offices to continue. In Cleveland and elsewhere.

While I hesitate to insert myself here, do you see any issue with this question phrased in the reverse? Which cultures place an above average value in education? Or do you think the answer is none, and that all cultures place exactly the same emphasis on education?

I never went to the OG Nighttown, but from an outside perspective it seems like they kind of fumbled the roll out. I wasn't sure what this place was when it opened, a jazz club, a restaurant, etc. Whatever they wanted it to be, they should have been clear from the start, and to the extent that music was going to be a part of that plan, it should have been from the start. Not bringing in live music until several months after it opened was a mistake. I think a jazz club could still be successful at this location. I have no idea what caused the original Nighttown to fail, but there are few jazz clubs in Cleveland. I'd love if the next owner leans into the history and goes full on jazz club, no confusing halfway nonsense.

I appreciate the defense (genuinely) but you've softened my argument to the point of distorting it somewhat. I was specifically talking about people biking with an intent to get somewhere, not people out purely for enjoyment. Though it does bring up a highly controversial axiom underpinning my thinking. Almost all bicycling is to some extent recreational. Sure, there are some people bicycling for economics reasons, but the average cyclist owns a car and is choosing to ride their bike in part because it is more enjoyable than driving. I'm assuming people are rational and are weighing their personal utility against the costs, both time and money, as well as risks. My argument, more accurately phrased, is that a person choosing their transportation between points A and B will weigh not only risk, but also expected utility in choosing their transportation mode and route. To further clarify my point, most people enjoy cycling, but they don't love it, nor are they passionate about it. The expected utility of street riding isn't high enough for them to cover the cost (in time) that they incur relative to driving. In order to entice these people to ride from A to B the expected utility will have to increase, and I even contend they may be willing to pay a higher time cost than the most direct route for this added utility, but, importantly, I am still talking about people who have somewhere to go, not recreational riders. No need to apologize! Disagreement in good faith is welcome. For what it's worth I actually think your passion (and the perspective that comes with it) is precisely why we disagree. I mean no offense of course, but as someone who quite clearly loves and is passionate about biking, I think you might have a blindspot for how someone who enjoys biking, but isn't passionate about it, might need a slightly more enjoyable ride to justify the additional time relative to driving. For what it's worth I 100% agree with your points about how far too much of our bike network is disconnected, and how we overemphasize major projects. I think a well connected web of bike lanes feeding the trails should be considered the goal. One of the reasons I think policy makers might get misled if they listen too much to vehicular cyclists is that they will overemphasize risk in the assumed utility calculations of their constituents, and underweight enjoyment. I say this because vehicular cyclists generally love biking, and as a result they are nearly maxing out utility by being able to take their bike at all; therefore, they tend to make their decisions exclusively on time and risk. That just isn't the case for everyone, some people will need a more enjoyable route to justify the time lost relative to driving. Using your commute to demonstrate my point, assuming the Towpath version of your commute is closer to 40 minutes instead of 45, I'd probably choose that route. I'd rather take the more enjoyable route, even though it's longer, and I have somewhere to be. Though obviously that's not infinite, I can't say for sure without knowing your commute, but my initial thought was that I might be willing to add an additional 20 minutes round trip for a more pleasant ride, but not an additional 30. This is the kind of utility maximizing equation I am talking about. Obviously people don't normally express it in these explicitly economic terms, but I do think this roughly approximates what people are implicitly doing. Again, no offense meant, but this is precisely the kind of attitude that I was talking about vis-a-vis protected bike lanes undermining traditional more attainable bike lanes. To be useful bike lanes need to be relatively widespread and connected. A well connected network of protected bike lanes is so much less attainable than a comparably dense network normal bike lanes that I worry we'll get nothing. If you'll only accept a perfect bone, then policy makers might decide to not throw you anything. -- Anyway, these were my two cents, hopefully they are valuable. I can't say if I'm unique or if there are a lot of persuadable riders who think like I do.

Something I've been thinking about lately. This may be me being a bit counter narrative, but, at least on this forum, I think bike trails are underrated, and protected bike lanes are overrated. This is largely just my own personal opinion, based on my experience biking as someone who wouldn't go so far as to call themselves a cyclist. Bike trails: Bike trails are a pull factor. I think we tend to overemphasize the push factors when it comes to biking, danger, stress, etc, but I don't think enough attention is paid to the pull factors. Biking can be more enjoyable, particularly when riding through nature under the cover of trees. I'm much more willing to pay the time price of biking relative to driving if it's going to be an enjoyable ride. Nature does wonders for that. Protected Bike Lanes: The problem with protected bike lanes (which isn't really a problem) is that no amount of concrete or bollards does anything for the enjoyability of the ride. They may remove push factors but they aren't adding any pull. You're still riding on a road, and unless it has the tree canopy of Cleveland Heights it's probably not very scenic. Another issue with protected bike lanes is that they are just harder to implement. I worry that pushing too hard for protected bike lanes may counterintuitively prevent bike lanes from going in. My concern is that there are lots of roads that could relatively easily add bike lines, but can't realistically add protected bike lines (the main example being two lane roads that are three cars wide for safety and emergency vehicle access), if normal bike lanes are viewed as not good enough, why build them? Obviously, public servants need not, nor shouldn't, view it that way, but it seems an easy, and therefore likely, logical error. For me at least, the reduction in push factor from normal bike lanes to buffered or protected bike lanes is fairly marginal. I don't know if I'm unique in that, but normal bike lanes seem sufficiently safe to me. But they don't make for a particularly enjoyable riding and neither do protected ones. I also personally just wonder how many more people are willing to pay the "time price" of biking if all push factors are removed, but no pull factors are added. How many currently non vehicular cyclists will start regularly biking anything more than a few blocks down a treeless, boring streetscape, surrounded by traffic noise if it is made to be perfectly safe? I don't know the answer, I'm sure it's some, but I suspect it's less than many on this forum might suppose it will be. If instead, people can divert for the middle portion of their journey down a nice trail I think that will make more people seriously consider biking more than a few blocks, even if it adds a few more minutes. I view trails as effectively bike highways. With cars the point of going on the highway is higher top speeds; with bikes I think it's more about getting a more enjoyable ride (though they very often have fewer stops as well). I think I foreshadowed this above, but of course there are ways to add pull factors to street riding. A quality tree canopy is the number 1, 2, and 3 best way, but things like a quality streetscape and i̶n̶t̶e̶r̶e̶s̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ beautiful architecture are also great pull factors. Luckily those are all things we're already interested in here, but none of them come close to the pull potential of a quality trail. Anyways those are my thoughts, at the very least I think the concept of push/pull factors is an interesting way to think about bike advocacy, and I'd like to see more focus on pull factors.

For what it's worth, I enjoyed the park. It's a nice break from the hustle and hustle of the city. What I'd say it principally needs is more trees, that would basically solve all of its problems, erosion, feeling empty, functioning as a real nature preserve, etc. I agree that the transformative potential of Burke is far larger than that of Northerly Island, but if something similar is really the best we'd get, I'd still close Burke without a second thought. A second rate park would still do more for the average Cleveland resident than Burke ever has. To be clear, I think the potential exists to turn Burke into a truly transformational park (though it will take time), but even if it falls short of that goal it will still be put to better use than it is now.

When are we supposed to get that report on closing Burke? I thought that was supposed to be soon if not already.

Are you in effect arguing for highly visible surface lots instead of parking garages? I guess I can understand your argument, but I think it stretches credulity. Even if we grant your argument that daytime break-ins and carjackings will be slightly more common in less visible parking areas, I would still argue that the benefits of a more active streetscape will outweigh the cost. I'm a lot more sympathetic to parking concerns than most people on this forum, but the idea that parking should be up front highly visible surface parking in an urban area just makes no sense. That will kill all walk ability of an area. Why would suburbanites, people with options, come to the city if it's just going to look like suburbia but with higher taxes and prices? Make pleasant, enjoyable, and (most importantly) safe(!) places and people will come. Sure safety is the most important, but if we fully sacrifice pleasant urban spaces at the altar of perfect safety we remove what makes cities nice. It can't be an either or situation. There are ways to make parking areas safe (assuming your hypothetical problem is real and substantial) that don't require making the city unwalkable. CCTV cameras, police presence / drive bys, controlled entry to parking areas, etc. All that said, while I'm not expert, my understanding is that most car thefts and break ins happen at night when visibility is low. Given that, where the parking lot is relative to the street isn't all that important. I have a friend who lives in the West Bank and he leaves his car unlocked to stop people from breaking his windows. He parks on the street, highly visible, doesn't matter. What would help is if he was less cheap and parked in the garage, because it has controlled entry, despite being much less visible.

I understand your point, and I'm sympathetic to it, but for the money problem. If the public contribution wasn't expected to increase for a new stadium at Brook Park I'd probably prefer the Browns moving to Brook Park. A football stadium isn't a good use of lakefront land, and if we could put that land to other uses that would be better, but it isn't an even exchange. Even if we ignore the half of the stadium construction costs the Haslams expect the taxpayers to pick up, there will likely be hundreds of million in infrastructure upgrades to accommodate a large venue at the Brook Park location. Downtown is already built to accommodate events like this, that's efficiency and savings. Downtown has optimal transit access, and plenty of parking garages, hotels, restaurants, and other supporting infrastructure that is a benefit to and benefits from a stadium. All of that would have to be built at Brook Park, and will only maybe be sustainable outside of game days. Given where they plan to place the mixed use district from early renderings, I'm not convinced they know what will make this development successful. That being proximity to the airport and redline, not the stadium. In theory this could end up being like the Van Taken district +stadium, in which case it really could be a benefit to the region at large, but as of yet, I've seen very little to suggest that is what we'll actually get. If the Browns want to go alone and risk their own money building at Brook Park, great! But if it's going to be taxpayer money, I think the concern is justified. We aught to be concerned about the likely payback of this investment, as well as how it will impact previous public investments, many of which have been downtown, and have started to bare fruit. Basically it's not that Brook Park is necessarily a bad idea, it's just a risky bet, and one that I don't think makes sense for responsible stewards of public funds.

^ about a 6 min walk per Google. I'm curious why they decided to build on that lot instead of CWRU lot 44 which looks to be closer to main campus as well as the rapid. Seems like the better lot to build on, but I'm sure they have their reasons.

There's a lot in the new building code designed to promote urban trees and increase the tree canopy in Cleveland. I think these changes will make a difference over the next few decades. The two biggest things are quoted below, but some of the smaller changes, such as making outdoor patios easier to build may also indirectly add trees. I think the surface lot requirement in particular will a lot. "Smart Code orders developers to contribute. By law, street trees must be planted in what's called the furniture zone—that space between the sidewalk and the street—and planted every 20 to 30 feet. The philosophy is that City Hall's coffers can only do so much. Builders have to do their part." "For every ten parking spaces, a builder must place an island with at least one large tree, and one at least every four parking rows. And every lot of cars must be screened, or wrapped, with trees, walls or fences—the goal being to hide machinery behind greenery."

I think the single best case scenario for Cleveland would be a minimal renovation at the current location combined with a medium length (~10-15 years) lease. During that time a new downtown (or downtown adjacent) stadium location would be sought and procured. That could be the the post office lot, catty corner to be the baseball field, Burke, or somewhere in the eastern half of downtown. Where isn't too critical in this hypothetical (though I have my preferences). This way we have the stadium on the lakefront long enough to attract the funds that might come with it, but it will leave around the time when we will hopefully have fully finished lakefront phase 1 and will be ready for additional development.

Sad... But looks very fixable.

Probably, but that's only because they've managed to frame this as an A/B decision, with both options being incredibly favorable to the Browns. If the question was 600,000,000 taxpayer contribution to stadium renovation they'd get laughed out of the room, indeed, it's conceivable that already happened, likely when they presented the first land bridge rendering. I think what's more likely to have occurred is that Browns were originally looking for a substantial stadium renovation. Towards that end their first (or first phase of their) strategy was proposing the land bridge to get the public excited about the area. When that didn't work, they reframed the issue and played a bit of brinksmanship. By flirting with Brook Park and threatening to leave, they brought Cleveland (and the County) to the table, and even got them to positively argue on favor of giving the Haslams $600,000,000 in money and special treatment. After all, it's actually saving the taxpayers $600,000,000 compared to the alternative. Everyone wins, Ronayne and Bibb get to show off their civic muscles, and the Browns get their special treatment. It's even conceivable that Bibb and Ronayne are in on it. Probably not, but they could have said something along the lines of "I don't have the political space to do that, I can't be seen giving tax breaks to billionaires. ...but if the alternative was..." To be clear that probably didn't happen. The Haslams could have orchestrated this play without the known involvement of the political power players. Most likely they just played into their hands. I don't think they do want a significantly higher public contribution, I think they did . They've stuck with a 50/50 framing and are arguing for it by proposing a larger 50/50 split. It's very clever. Half of 1.2 billion looks small in comparison to half of 2.4 billion. The City's offer has already basically accepted this framing, getting close enough to half that the County and State can fill in the rest. The Browns might actually prefer Brook Park, but even if they do, by pursuing option B they have gotten everything they could ever want out of option A, so even if they lose, they still win.

Part of me wonders if the Haslams are actually playing 4D chess. They've managed to set up this game with the City/County, such that if they lose they only get 600 million dollars in public money and subsidies. If they actually wanted to stay at the Lakefront they couldn't have devised a more ingenious plan. Hell, the City even gets to give them a sweetheart deal worth hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money and look like they are fighting for the little guy in the process. I'm not saying we're watching a play, I don't know that, just that if we are, it's very well scripted.

Second your point about going south from anywhere not along the towpath. I tried to cycle my commute from Cleveland Heights to Valley View but I ran into issues enough times that I decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Does it have to be up E9th? It looks like the current plan is to continue the multi use path up W3rd, at least across the railroad tracks. They are also planning on adding an extension to E18. Here is what they've previously planned, which does include a multiuse path, though it's also a wide boulevard crossing. Maybe if the added a small median stopover point for Pedestrians/cyclists and added some minimum landscaping along this extension it wouldn't be so bad? It also requires crossing the port road, but that should be low traffic. And here's the current W3rd proposal. No idea if these are both still in play. Alternatively maybe E18 becomes the primary car route into downtown and E9 can become more accommodating to pedestrians and cyclists. Idk, but having different roads serving as the primary route for cyclists and cars seems preferable to me.

Nice puff piece from Crains on the state and advancement of NEO's bike trail system. Northeast Ohio's robust cycling trail system keeps growing https://www.crainscleveland.com/sports-recreation/northeast-ohios-becoming-cycling-hotspot "Many may not realize it, but one of the biggest advantages the Cleveland area has over other cities in the region — including our traditional rival Pittsburgh — is superior bike trails. ..."

Just answering my own question above, and doing some more digging in the Hawthorne valley purchase. Here's a great Cleveland.com article. https://www.cleveland.com/metro/2022/10/cleveland-metroparks-to-buy-38m-golf-course-return-it-to-natural-state.html "The park district plans to maintain the land as a scenic area that will serve as a habitat for plants and wildlife, Gerling said. Trails will be developed, linking with South Chagrin Reservation. A large pond will offer fishing opportunities for blue gill and bass." Also if interest, there are two landfills near the southern end of this area. One of which the Metro Parks has already sought a Brownfield grant for, so a Brighton park situation is definitely possible at some point in the future.

Two of the more significant purchases from the Metroparks over the past two months. "WCC [West Creek Conservancy] will acquire the Olson Property on January 8, 2025, for the purposes of extending the future West Creek Greenway north from West Ridgewood Drive to Grantwood Drive. The Olson Property is a missing link in this greenway corridor and future trail connection. WCC will purchase the Olson Property for $300,000" It looks like this section of the South Chagrin reservation is being substantially built up into a much more significant park section. Curious to see what they do with the golf course, and if they end up seeking to expand this area further in the future.

My main question is how this will work after the boulevard conversion. I know the relevant parties have been in conversation, but I haven't seen the two plans combined yet. (Perhaps it was addressed in the press briefing, but I didn't watch that). As it is now, I agree this is a somewhat symbolic project. The current situation is already very bike friendly, largely because there's basically no cars on this road for most of this stretch.

I don't agree with this, at least not for the longer trails on the route. From a Cleveland perspective, renaming the Towpath trail is a nonstarter. It's a well known name with historic significance. A proposal to cover up the name with OTET wouldn't be well received. And while I understand your point, the number of people that are through riding this trail is miniscule compared to people doing individual sections. Covering up the local trail names might cause more confusion overall, since far more people are relying on local trail signage (and I'm sure they're less experienced at way finding on average as well).

If I were negotiating for the City, I'd do nothing in the short term, at least not publicly. If the Browns are pushed back to the lakefront by a lack of funds, the City's negotiating position will have improved, and I'd come back with a slightly lower offer to reflect that. I'd say it reflects additional costs incurred as a result of delay. In the meantime I'd try to keep the pressure up behind the scenes. The City needs a decision so that they can plan accordingly. But we don't need it today. If it takes a few more months that's okay, just make sure that the Haslams understand that the offer isn't going to get any better, and will likely only get worse.

Today's the deadline for the Haslam's to respond. I'm expecting to see some sort of public statement in the next few hours. I'm betting on an attempt to kick the can down the road. Glad to see the County strongly backing the City. With both the City and the County against the Brook Park proposal, that leaves the State and Brook Park to come up with 1.2 billion. That seems a tall order, and it may force the Haslams to reconsider. Perhaps we'll find out soon enough.

"Insiders" may also be seeking to persuade rather than inform with this information. The City funded audit found a need for ~100 million in repairs, that's a huge delta from the Haslams renovation ask.