jamiec

All the downtown shopping is great, but I actually am just looking forward to a little attention to detail downtown. You've got to admit, at Crocker Park, they get the details. During Christmas, it was decorated festively and during the summer time, they have music and stuff. The whole experience does nothing for me because it feels like a movie set, but I think I'd like it if it were to be in an authentic setting. I hope he starts small because then the first little makeover will happen faster rather than some Goliath project. Get a new block with residential, some office and stores there that are in demand. I think this'll help bolster the merchants down there already. That's my hope anyway.

That doesn't even make sense! Cleveland is 28 miles away and Akron is 14! According to wikipedia: [Hudson] is an affluent exurban community and is part of the Akron, Ohio Metropolitan Statistical Area according to the U.S. Census Bureau. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson,_Ohio

Well, that's cheating!

Yeah, I thought that was sort of weird. I don't think anyone there ever considered themselves "East Side." It's physically closer and more well-connected to Akron. It takes 20 minutes to get to downtown Akron and 45 to 1 hour to downtown Cleveland. Is Akron now a suburb of Cleveland, too?

If this is considered progress, Northeast Ohio is out of its damn mind.

How about we move Cuyahoga County somewhere else and start over.

And the threats begin, from our own elected official, no less. Nice. Cuyahoga County Commis sioner Peter Lawson Jones, intent on saving the vacant Ameritrust Tower downtown, may instead be swinging a wrecking ball on his relationship with his fellow commissioners. Commissioners Jimmy Dimora and Tim Hagan voted to raze the Marcel Breuer-designed tower to make way for a new county administration building against the objections of Lawson Jones, who sides with preservationists. But the vote hasn't ended his activism. Jones has lobbied the city's planning commission in hopes that it would deny a demolition permit. "They should stand up for their position just as I should stand up for mine," he said of his commissioner colleagues. "They've talked to members of the planning commission to express their perspective. They've talked to the mayor. They're lobbying as well." Dimora said if the building doesn't come down, it would be put up for sale rather than renovated for county use. "What kills me is no one cared one iota for this building until we talked about it," Dimora said. "It can sit as a vacant, empty building." Said Lawson Jones: "It would disappoint me if that were the ultimate decision of the board." http://www.cleveland.com/tipoff/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1179131823228010.xml&coll=2

Hah! I knew you'd like that little bit, MTS. Did we ever figure out if Tbone is a guy or girl? I'm trying to figure out which neighborhood has the most cutest girls. I'm surprised no one leads off with this question when they ask about relocating. That's the first thing I'm looking for when I pick a place to go!

This is an interesting question. Really, any of the neighborhoods listed would be great. I live in Lakewood near W. 117 (the Cleveland border), and I like it over here. I have a reasonably price apartment with a parking lot, and crime hasn't been much of an issue in the year I've been here. If I were to do it all over again, I would have picked an apartment a block east in Cleveland so I wouldn't get hosed on income taxes (no reciprocity in the suburbs). In the future, I'd like to live in Ohio City, Little Italy, Shaker Square and maybe Tremont. Downtown is cool, but right now it feels a little cold and dead to me, especially on the weekends. Don't kill me, but I was thinking about it the other day, when I go out to have fun, I end up in Tremont, Lakewood, Little Italy and University Circle. These are the nodes I found attractive. I'm not much of a club person. I think that if Bob Stark gets digging, though, things will change big-time, and I'll be there more often, especially if he gets good stores there. Just as an aside, this might be a great time to get a condo in the WHD. My friend lives in Westlake right near Crocker Park and he's moving to Lakewood because his landlord is raising the rent $100 because of that lil' outdoor mall's popularity. Imagine how much you could get with all those historic buildings and proximity to the West, East, South and the Lake. This will sound sinful, but downtown could be the new Avon Lake!

They left Akron off that list! I want to see where that museum ranks. And Toledo is actually quite well-known. I believe the director of MoMA or the Met in NYC started his career in Toledo... Good for the Columbus museum! I'm all for expanding arts offering, particularly the "traditional" museum. I don't think you're ever going to see them get in the same league as Cleveland or Detroit for "traditional" art historical pieces -- the prices are so high, they could sink that $80 million on four paintings and not build a thing. Antiquities are also problematic due to questions of provenance and questions of theft in the early 1900s. But if they could find an undeserved niche... Also, the thing that I find weird about museums are, a lot of modern art works are either of such scale or setting, they make a museum nearly useless. I'd really like to see a museum try something ballsy and outside-the-box.

Saw the tighter enforcement first hand this evening. Walked to Edgewater Park and noticed a squad car rolling down Edgewater going unusually slow. He seemed to have no objective other than observation. Later, when I got to Cliff Drive, anxious to look down on the lake and skyline, there were two cars stopped on the side of the road and one of the drivers was out of his car leaning into the second. I thought it looked a bit fishy, and sure enough, that squad car I saw 10 minutes before came rolling up slow. In the past, I would have expected him to slow down as he passed the drivers and told them to get their cars out of the middle of the road. Instead, he stopped like thirty feet behind them and just sat there. They looked at him and carried on whatever they were talking about. He got on his in-car blow horn and said "No parking in the road." OK, it wasn't Die Hard or anything, but I almost feel like simple stuff like that is just as important.

haha, thanks! My interior design skills are rather simplistic. I do what I can, which includes blue paint and pictures of Salma Hayek and Robert Rauschenberg paintings. Mov2Ohio, good idea. Maybe I could throw up an art or concert poster up there. I think I might be a little uncomfortable if I had a "visitor" and Larry Hughes was up there throwin' up a jump shot.

I don't know if this'll work cuz they're all flickr photos I posted. So, here's my version of Cribs. It won't take too long... First off, MTS' favorite colored blue wall. The "dining room" is pretty small, but it works for me. I painted it last weekend. This is how small the kitchen is. I said before it's really, really small. I felt like Salma Hayek should be on the cupboards. Looking out the window at the tall lakefront condos Now from the other side of the room! The bathroom is really small, too Where the magic doesn't happen.

AT city hall! This must be big news.

This story is inaccurate. It should read: Developer Bob Stark, who for a year has been pushing a vision for a revitalized Warehouse District, plans to move his firm's headquarters to downtown Cleveland, The Plain Dealer learned after reading UrbanOhio and pretending we did our own reporting.

I'm only afraid to drive downtown when I'm passing Channel 19's studio.

Loft-living. That's too edgy! Next thing you know, people wil be smoking crack pipes, playing bongos and talking about Rothko on their stoops!

The sidewalk on the southern side of Euclid is so narrow, it could be a mountain-bike trail. And can't they come up with a better way for people to cross Euclid on East 9th? People have to physically enter the traffic lane to get across, and someone is going to get hit.

Does anyone know if there's a place in Cleveland or even Lakewood (sorry to bend the rules) that just sells fresh-cut flowers like they do in New York? There's something really nice about walking down the street and hitting the corner and seeing all those colors. Plus I live in an apartment and I can't grown anything besides spices, hah. Thanks!

^Well, apartments at CSU wouldn't help the person who is going to Virginia Marti. I agree with Edgewater. There are some cheap houses in Lakewood. My co-worker is getting a 2BR duplex near Warren and I-90 for $600. My rent is now $650 in the "exclusive" Gold Coast ;)

Well, it's actually dull blue but I like to say it's bright because that makes me sound like I'm a more positive person, lol. You'd have to see it, but it works pretty well because the wall is going into my walk-in closet kitchen, so it's small but is just big enough to give the area a little punch. I could post a picture of it, but the colors are all out of wack, and the blue looks different than in real life....

Exactly! Don't these people go to other cities or watch HGTV or read magazines? Just take those thrifty design ideas and blow them up to "city scale." For example, my apartment needed a little pop, so I painted a wall bright blue and brought some plants home this weekend. That cost me $50. A couple of months ago, I bought a $5 poster frame and put my beat-up NYC subway map inside. I don't mind this Cleveland+ stuff, but they are marketing to the locals all wrong. It's like they used to say in journalism school: Show don't tell. Prove to people this is a great place to live by making it so.

They could fit all of downtown Akron in the vacant lot at Euclid and E. 55th. SNAP! Two rips in one post! But, seriously, what I'm saying is, can we actually work on improving things rather than trying to convince people that things are better when they are not yet. Instead of putting tacky banners over buildings, why don't they work on fixing the buildings? The gaping empty windows in 668 Euclid are going to cancel out any happy talk from multi-story banners, especially for visitors. If that's too hard, why can't they hire a "design czar" who could dress up downtown. There is no sense of civic pride being created downtown. I saw an old picture where they used to hang banners across Euclid to promote events. The only place I see any attention to detail is outside the Medical Mutual offices where they have big flower beds on the Huron side. It's like they just want someone else to do everything. I can't go down there and decorate! They'll pull it all down, if I did! Sorry, I guess I'm just generally frustrated by the lack of creativity being employed. There are so many things that could be done, and I'm sick of writing letters to every damn department and non-profit! I have a life, too!!!!

I hope not! It seems like every year a suburban brat vandalizes a cemetary somewhere!

The x-factor in this case is how much the judge likes lapdances.