coneflower

Van Aken shows TOD can work even in suburbs. It definitely doesn't feel like Crocker Park. They've done a nice job of keeping cars away from people and focusing less on giant national chains to create something that is more like a neighborhood hot spot vs. a mall. I would love to see more of this all over the place.

I agree with this. I was there for dinner on Friday night and it was bumping. I'm a big fan of Van Aken.

I know a ton of people who did leave those big cities and are still elsewhere. One thing I will say that frustrates me a bit about this region is the toxic relationship between Cleveland and the surburbs. Some suburbanites act like Cleveland is a horrible lost cause, while the "cheerleaders" of Cleveland seem detest suburbanites right back and at least online (though not here so much) basically tell them they aren't welcome. I understand that history and current events are fraught with injustice and is complicated, but it makes no sense to tear each other down when the bigger picture is we need to attract people to move here.

I'm not someone who holds this position, but it's a difficult issue to navigate in a county with such high property tax rates compared to neighbors and even the rest of the state. Our aging population leaves a lot of people here on fixed income who don't have a lot of wiggle room in their budgets. Most of our regional school levies failed in the last election, for example. The Browns are going to need a compelling vision and a broad coalition to get that public money. The expert interviewed by Crain's offered some compelling ideas (at least to me) that packaged the idea of a new stadium with added benefits to the community beyond football stuff, like new housing and access to the waterfront that everyone can enjoy. I'm no politico, but I bet running a campaign for a tax that results in a new dome stadium for the Browns and guarenteed lakefront redevelopment would be popular enough to get over 50% of the vote. Trying to rope neighboring counties in seems too hard to me, so I doubt that goes anywhere.

He seems pretty cavalier about the ease of raising property taxes or getting other counties to pitch in.

Great, well-argued points and lots of helpful resources here. Thank you!

I posted in the Browns thread on this topic. I personally don’t view this as some corrupt scheme and I see the reasons for support. No one is asking me, but I am not adamantly opposed or anything. But I still have the concern about the idea of walking across the land bridge from downtown. It just seems like a big hike, especially when you’re walking through large open spaces, which in my experience feel longer than they actually are and aren’t super inviting. There isn’t really anything to do around the Mall and is that really expected to change? It’s not like the land bridge would be something you’d pass through during a normal day unless you intentionally made a point of going there like the National Mall in DC. Which is an amazing amenity but not really a transportation solution. Maybe a way to address my concern is with a circulator bus that travels across the land bridge to the waterfront? I note all the comments in the thread that this idea is longstanding. I am not from here so I plead ignorance on past debate of this over the years!

The commenters here are more knowledgeable than me about urban development but I try to read the news coverage about the land bridge and I don’t really get it, either. Just looking at the mock-ups, it seems like a really long way to walk from downtown to the waterfront. And I’m a big walker who has no issues putting miles on sneakers. I think my hang up is that you’re going to walk through big wide open spaces, which feel longer than walking in dense neighborhoods, and I doubt most people want to do that. I’m not sure I understand the use case. The recent comments about Using it to hide parking that opens up surface lots by the water for development makes more sense to me and I think makes a more compelling pitch. The way it’s being positioned now, the land bridge feels like “The Big Thing,” but it’s really about the lake, right? Everyone wants to be able to have fun by the water, they don’t care about a land bridge. But maybe that’s just me.

The only thing I know about SW's corporate approach is they fired that kid at one of their paint stores for making popular TikTok videos where he made new colors by mixing paint. A lot of brands beg people to do that sort of thing. In all seriousness, it indicated to me how conservative they are.