Ethan

I know there have been previous posters who didn't think that a park/green space would be the best use of this land, that's why I assumed it would be controversial. I don't think anyone will disagree that this will be an improvement over the current situation though. Edit: @Luke_STo answer your other question, probably not immediately as that bridge still serves Cargill Deicing Technology.

Bit of a controversial bomb in this month's Metroparks agenda. They are purchasing the Ontario Stone property on Whiskey Island. From the agenda: "Cleveland Metroparks has identified the Property as an important acquisition as it provides a protection and restoration opportunity along the Cuyahoga River and will add greenspace to an area identified as an Environmental Justice area and in a disadvantaged census tract as defined by the Climate & Economic Justice Screening Tool."

Cross posted because this East Cleveland School is technically in Cleveland Heights.

This is a great and simple idea from TPL to open up school playgrounds as parks during non school hours. https://thelandcle.org/stories/east-clevelands-caledonia-elementary-unveils-ohios-first-community-schoolyard-design/ This school is actually technically in Cleveland Heights, but since it serves East Cleveland students, I'll put it here.

The turnout for this primary is likely to be abysmal now that Trump has clinched the nomination. I'm not sure who that benefits, but there's at least a reasonable argument that it's Dolan. Wouldn't say I'm expecting him to win, but he has some favorable headwinds. Brown is a very strong candidate but during a presidential election year any candidate with an R by his name will have a real chance. The more moderate the Republican candidate the better.

Moving forward with some federal dollars.

Here's a link if the QR code is difficult to access without a camera. https://urbancsu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0GuHKE15gNhkUYu?Q_CHL=qr This map from the survey is interesting. It makes me wonder if it would be worth it to add a basic (i.e. cheap) pedestrian bridge at the current terminus. It should put the rest of the 9-12 district into the ten minute walk range, and even some of the St. Claire neighborhood.

I'll pay devil's advocate for the city here. I'm not sure they're wrong to focus on their parks. Lakewood is still the densest city of over 10,000 people in Ohio, and while I haven't run the numbers, I'm guessing it would fall well below the national median in terms of area devoted to parks.* Given that, I don't think I can agree that focusing disproportionately on the two main parks is a mistake. If you don't have enough park area for your population (which I would argue is true of Lakewood) it makes sense to invest and make what parks you do have very nice. I of course agree that Lakewood could and should have more apartments up and down Lorain/Detroit, but I don't see that in conflict with having nice parks. Even in distributing effort, this seems like a walking and chewing gum situation. *The border does a weird thing to include part of the Rocky River Reservation, but even including that I think it's probably below the 15% of land area median value.

I made a file with most of the proposals for Cleveland metro rail expansions that have been proposed or talked about on this forum. I thought it would be a useful reference. One version below has my thoughts and rankings, but I've also uploaded one without that table. Feel free to (respectfully) discuss/debate.

He also mentioned they have a hotel lined up, he was under NDA do he couldn't get specific, but seems like good news. I wasn't paying too much attention when this project started, but the presentation got me re-excited for it.

Yeah... Success in the restaurant business is very hard to come by. Most of them fail. Closing a successful restaurant to try something new in the hopes that it will maybe be more successful seems like a generally bad decision, and unnecessary risk. Props to her, that was a bold decision and it definitely showed confidence, but a few years on, perhaps it looks more like hubris? Hopefully she finds success somewhere else, and that location is filled quickly.

They also need just a modicum of detail work. A little bit would go a long way. I understand that they're trying to keep the units as cheap as possible, but those are almost depressing in their simplicity...

Continuation of the debate about public funds use for Stadiums. Here's a decent Cleveland.com piece about potential alternative uses for the money. https://www.cleveland.com/news/2024/02/what-could-cleveland-do-with-browns-stadium-funding-other-than-upgrade-a-stadium.html Here's it being discussed on Reddit.

This development just increases my wish for the proposed E22nd cap to be more than a glorified wide sidewalk. Oh well, sad to see a beautiful, historic building go, happy to see more housing going in near downtown.

It's the Red Line Greenway phase III extension. Rail would be the best use of this space, but if we aren't going to use the space for rail (which if we're being honest currently looks likely), a trail would be better than it sitting vacant. Though if we're going to direct money to bike infrastructure, I think there are many higher priorities than this project.

^ which cities do satisfy the requirements? It seems like it would be a fairly short list, less than half the league I'd think.

I'm very pro-conservation, but that seems incredibly unneighborly on the part of Mentor. In addition, just from a practical standpoint, it seems like a weird area to conserve. It's bounded on three sides by freeways and railways, and the other side is a major retail center. There's barely any trees (it was clearly clear cut at some point), I don't see this supporting much in the way of wildlife or anything of that nature. Conserving land is clearly good, but this particular plot would probably have been used for infill development. If I'm being honest, I can't help but wonder if the motivation for this is more NIMBY than conservationist. (Particularly since the development which has taken place thus far is somewhat dense by suburban standards). Also having permanently conserved land just beyond your jurisdiction seems to be purely a benefit (at least in this case), the green space could increase the value of the land in your jurisdiction, but you aren't losing out on any potential taxes from developing that land. Plus any spillover development now has to take place in your jurisdiction. This makes more sense as a self-interested move by Mentor than one based in caring for the planet...

I understand the theory. Given that theory, one should expect rural and suburban areas to have higher tax rates than urban areas, at least once they reach maturity. However, we not only don't see this in reality, we see the opposite. Rural areas have lower tax rates across the board than suburban areas which have lower tax rates than urban areas. (Pre Cleveland increasing to 2.5%) I can't find a good map for municipal income tax rates, the above is the best I could find, but from what I can tell the trend is less clear, but it still tilts in the same direction as the other taxes. If the argument is that the suburbs haven't reached infrastructural maturity yet, then when will they? Mentor, which is definitely a sprawlburb if anywhere is, grew ~750% between 1960 and 1970 and then grew modestly before starting to decline in population more recently. We can argue about exactly when we start the clock, but it clearly is beyond or closely approaching the 50 year mark and has lower, sales, income, and property tax rates than Cleveland or most of the inner ring suburbs. And I wouldn't say its infrastructure is in worse shape on average. Obviously that's just one example, but I don't think it's an exception. Even if these burbs hit a massive infrastructure repair bill in the next few years, it seems to me that they have plenty of room to raise taxes and still be competitive with the more urban areas on tax burden. I'm not trying to argue for sprawl here, this argument makes sense in theory, but doesn't seem to bear out in practice. Basically, if you're trying to convince anyone that sprawl is bad, I wouldn't use this argument... There are better arguments and I'd stick with those. Don't shoot the messenger.

Most of what this map is showing is population growth, and Columbus is growing by every metric I've seen. Code changes will certainly make a difference, but on the margins. An interesting addendum to this map would be one that shows the percentage of new builds that are more dense than single family housing.

Cool map.

Interesting. Hopefully that didn't happen. With a quick check I can confirm that at least some of the photo links are still valid, so hopefully they all are. As an aside, it is interesting there isn't even a notification of expiring subscription. Though I do appreciate that it doesn't auto renew, like most sites do now.

Interesting, I was a premium user a few days ago. I'll have to check to see if that just expired. Edit: yup, that was it. Sorry for the confusion.

Are we no longer able to add photos, or did things just move around? I only see options to add an image from a URL and an existing attachment. (I'm on Mobile).

... Unfortunately not. One idea I did have was to go about the whole thing in a sideways way, instead of nationalizing all rails, just pass a law requiring private owners to maintain their lines to certain standards, and empower the government to utilize eminent domain for any routes that are behind on maintenance. You could also (maybe) throw a nugget in there that any route currently utilized by Amtrak would go directly to their possession. I think this would be more politically feasible, and from the impression I've gotten from this forum a lot of routes would be eligible for eminent domain from day one. No idea what that would be called though, probably something related to maintenance.

^ agreed. Nationalization of rail infrastructure is one of the things I've changed my mind on since joining this forum. It makes a lot of sense for the reasons laid out above, but the word sounds terrible and brings to mind banana republics. Step one in seeking this idea beyond train fans and urbanists, find a different word.