Ethan

As ridiculous as it is, the best East of downtown site may actually be building it on stilts where I suggested below. It would be hideously expensive, but so would the legal fees and delays from trying to force the acquisition of a super block as in either of the St. Claire proposals above. Like I said you'd have to build a raised platform for Amtrak, E18th extension, port road, freight rail, etc. it's almost certainly not the worth the hassle or expense, but assuming it's even possible, I'm not sure it's any less reasonable than @NorthShore647 options above. Anyway, at this point there are only two (possibly just one) remaining options, so it's all water under the bridge now.

I'm also pessimistic about the mixed use potential of the brook park site, and financing the site seems dubious as well. Getting money from the state or county seems unlikely and undesirable. The city making their offer public only seems to decrease the likelihood of significant public contribution to a Brook Park site. I don't see the County, or Ronayne in particular, being particular forthcoming with funds, and the state hasn't historically given huge public stadium subsidies. I also doubt Brook park can do much more than reduce their tax obligation. Lots of outstanding questions. Are the Browns willing to build in Berea if it means they have to fund it (almost entirely) themselves? What about the required highway and infrastructure upgrades? How much will those cost? Is there any chance ODOT decides they don't want to make those, or can't complete them by the time the stadium will need to open? When do the Browns need to start building/permitting in Brook Park to be ready for the 2029 season? Can't be that long, stadiums are big projects. There are also reasons to be optimistic about a BP move. That opens up a lot of Lakefront space with enormous potential. Hopefully the City has already been planning for this contingency, and we will see updated lakefront plans with the stadium opened up for development. In the short term this move is probably bad for the city, but in the long term this could be boon if handled well.

One additional reason. By imposing a public deadline on the response he's helping to get to a decision sooner. Regardless of which way the decision goes, indecision and delay only makes things worse for the City. Now the Browns have to make a definitive public statement in the next ten days, yes, no, a serious counteroffer, or risk a lot of bad press. In any case, the city will be better off, either due to clarity, a stronger negotiating position, or both. It's very much win-win for the city. Not to mention that if the Browns say no without a counteroffer they will be obligated to say why. That's a PR nightmare, and if they get through that unscathed someone will deserve a raise. There's also the emergency repairs due, council apparently doesn't want to pay for those without a commitment from the Browns. I don't blame them, if the stadium is getting demolished in a few years any repairs should be limited to safety concerns over that period. Any repairs that can be ignored should be if the stadium will be torn down in just a few years. That could be millions of dollars in foregone repairs, not insignificant. With any luck we'll know where the Browns will be playing in a little over a week. The objective of Bibb's Gambit here seems to have been to cut the Haslam's 'will they, won't they' crap. He might just succeed too. Hopefully it at least gets the Browns to put their cards on the table.

A public offer with ten days to respond sounds like a soft ultimatum. I doubt there is anything in their back pocket, so to speak, that hasn't been discussed behind closed doors.

I like the City's proposal. Mostly I like that they're being proactive. But as others have mentioned it seems very just that most of the funds are coming from increasing taxes on the tickets. Ironically, if the Browns funded this privately it would look very similar, since the ticket prices would have to go up either way. Increasing ticket prices via taxation seems like a weird work around, but at least the lions share of the tax burden is coming from the fans themselves. Hopefully the Browns respond quickly, get this mess wrapped up. Browns stay in Cleveland with a relatively small impact on the taxpayers. They probably could, but I don't think the Browns actually need that much money. $450 million in preferential treatment seems sufficient to me.

I remember there was a line in one of the official CHEERS documents saying something along the lines of, nothing in this plan conflicts with alternative plans to move 90 and reconnect Gordon Park. But functionally, you're absolutely right, CHEERS is the alternative to moving 90. Both of these plans in combination would make a truly fantastic park though, larger than Edgewater. Probably won't happen, but would be cool, and technically still could.

That very well may be true, but if that's the case I wouldn't bet on it happening anytime soon. "Because no one's using it currently," is a very bad answer to "Why should I fund your project?" Not trying to rain on anyone's parade, but that's reality as I see it. Money is always hard to come by; decision makers want to be confident they're making good choices. It's hard to be confident in a doubling down on what has to look to policy makers as a mistake at this juncture... I'd love for Cleveland to have a metro system the caliber of a similarly sized European city, but we can't just hop from here to there, we have to chart a course, and that's going to rely on many, very small steps. Opening up the waterfront line on weekends is one such step. Hopefully it's soon followed by opening for nights and evenings, then full hours, greater frequency, some TOD in the form of lakefront development, etc. Edit: I'd actually argue that the most recent daytime weekend opening was too small of a step, unlikely to significantly increase ridership, so I guess I'd amend baby-steps to appropriately sized steps.

It's a tough sell politically to convince people to spend large amounts of money to upgrade and extend a system precisely because it's underutilized. That may be what's needed, but good luck convincing the City/voters that the best use of limited funds is to put good money after bad. Realistically, I don't think there's much chance of a waterfront line extension until and unless more people start riding it. We can't even get RTA to commit to normal hours. The main thrust of my idea was a way to make it financially feasible for RTA to drastically increase frequency. Even if it looped, this service just wouldn't be that useful at 15 minute intervals, it needs to be more frequent. Affordable baby steps. Hopefully with more frequency you'll see more riders, if that happens maybe looping is back on the table (though I'm not sure a downtown loop is actually the best possible rail extension).

Could be a crazy idea, but maybe the waterfront line should be decoupled from the blue/green lines...? With as short as the line is I would think higher frequency could be achieved fairly cheaply if this was just running between tower city and the muni lot. Have a few trains doing just this short section with ~five minute headways, it could function more like a downtown streetcar than a commuter line. Just an idea, it may not be a good one, but it seems like RTA could use ideas at this point.

This is a very misleading way to parse the data. Burke is 3/4 mile from public square Gordon Park is 3 3/4 mile from public square. (Both as the crow flies.) One is accessible from downtown the other isn't.

This is a great analysis, but there's one problem with it, Chicago didn't tear up the runway to develop it. That land was turned into a park. I actually fully agree with your argument if the assumption is that Burke would be primarily used for development. We have too much vacant land to bother developing Burke. What we don't have, and probably will never see another opportunity for again is a Metroparks Reservation sized park in a walk/bike able distance from downtown. Would it be perfect, no, but to me, that's the real argument for closing Burke. Development can happen anywhere, and infill should be prioritized anyway. We won't find another opportunity for a lakefront destination park.

The article is much more reserved its praise, but it's from Clevescene so... Anyways, with this strong of an endorsement it's definitely made it onto my list, thanks!

RTA doesn't seem to realize that the waterfront line is serving the East Bank of the Flats. That's not really a 7pm crowd...

Any chance this includes an update on the Burke study?

Guilty as charged! I've never been inside the landmark building, only admired it from outside. I'm fully willing to believe it's an awful setup. That said, being better than Sherwin Williams current headquarters doesn't make the new setup a good work environment. As an aside, I was somewhat hopeful that the increased popularity of work from home would finally kill cubicle culture. What employee wants to come in to the office so they can sit in a cubicle all day? Alas, cubicles remain, and unfortunately aren't going anywhere. There are better and worse cubicles though, and those looked to be on the lower end of that scale (points for the standing desks though). At the end of the day, this is just my opinion from a quick screenshot, so take it with a massive grain of salt. Hopefully it ends up being great! I'm having the same thought, and it's worrying because I was looking forward to that conversion. Maybe they can do something creative with the interior space. Residential amenity, co-working space, idk.

This seems like swinging for a home run. I'd personally rather have multiple doubles in that space. I understand the urge to fill a big open space with a single use because it's so hard to assemble this much contiguous land in the downtown core, but in this instance I'd argue a more organic feeling mix of smaller uses will be better. If the Browns are definitely moving, I'd say the best thing is to tweak the lakefront plan accounting for the new real estate. With more land we can have both more development and more public space. I'd like to see the area transition from mostly public space to mostly development as you move away from the lake. Ideally building heights would match creating a nice descending effect and maximizing lake views.

My pessimistic take from living downtown up until a few months ago: half of the problem is that everything is so much more expensive downtown that it's rationale to shop outside of downtown--even if you live downtown, provided you have a car. Given that, retail rents either need to go down substantially (unlikely), or you need a) enough residents to create traffic making leaving downtown too difficult for the savings, or b) enough car free residents willing to pay higher prices which will be more than offset by not having a car. Basically, as long as it's rational for downtown residents to shop somewhere outside of downtown I don't see downtown retail thriving. More residents will help, but I think the turning point will come when either of the two above conditions are satisfied.

Agreed, his indecision is already costing taxpayers money by delaying and potentially modifying plans. The Browns need to make a decision so that the City can plan accordingly.

That, looks like an awful place to work. (Pause at 24 seconds). With work from home being more and more common/popular you'd think they'd put more effort into not making cubicle hell.

I feel like we're sacrificing a lot for those windows and natural light into the convention center. Mall B now doesn't meaningfully connect to mall C, and the plans for any landbridge from Mall C are bending over backwards to accommodate the convention centers windows. Imagine how much better the landbridge could be if we didn't have to accommodate the convention center windows. We could have a traditional wide landbridge, without a hole in the middle. If we ignored windows maybe we could make an overpass from malls B to C (we already built half of it), no need to deal with cars, continuous pedestrian flow from shore to core. None of this is likely to happen, but we're missing out on alot of interesting and appealing options by insisting on natural light into the convention center. Personally, I'd say make it a bland interior black box, and prioritize the pedestrian experience of downtown, but I'm not in charge, probably for good reason.

Of the four options, the only one I have a negative opinion of is the landmark building. I was, and am, looking forward to that being converted to residential. I remember one of the Sherwin execs saying something along the lines of, some of the features that made it non ideal as an office space, will work well for residential. Is the same likely to be true of courthouse use?

I've been curious what the root of this problem is, as best as I can tell you've hit the nail on the head with "subsidized." The article above claims the library, "collected $149,267 from the nine core tenants in rent last year." That's an average of 16.5k from each tenant, that's less than what many people pay for an apartment, I don't know much about commercial leases, but that seems ridiculous to me. Had they been charging fair market rate rents they'd probably have money for repairs, but they haven't been, now they don't. Ill advised charity with taxpayer dollars seems to be the root problem here. Also, I read in a different article that the artists turned down a longer extension that would have raised their rents by 20%, which is still too low. The library doesn't seem to be the bad guy right now, but there poor management has caused this problem. I won't bother hoing for accountability, but hopefully there are at least lessons learned.

So much focus is being placed on the exterior design, when it seems to me like the far bigger story is the removal of everything commercial from the design. It's now just apartments. No hotel, no retail, no restaurants. The weirdest thing is the pickleball courts. That space seems perfect for a restaurant. It's an unusual amenity. I know it's the it thing right now, but I still doubt the majority of the residents will utilize the space. I suppose it's a bit better if it's publicly accessible in some way, but I can't convince myself this is the best use of this space.

The pickleball courts are an interesting touch. Not what I would have put there, but points for uniqueness.

I also think the south side of Detroit from W59th to W64th could be a candidate for a Bolivar (building over) or Intro (promise existing retailers space in future building) style development. Lots of surface parking, only a few businesses that would need to be preserved or replaced. Of course this isn't likely due to lots of moving parts, perceived parking needs of existing tenants, and required creativity on the part of the developer, but the transformative potential of a development here would be huge. Realistically speaking, this is just a crazy idea, and won't happen, but it's fun to speculate about. The Cleveland Public Theater lot on the north side of the street is the far more likely candidate.