8ShadesofGray

I've heard some rumblings about a Cleveland location for Melt ... It wasn't downtown but there was a focus on lunch crowd. Not sure if this is still actively being pursued, though ... this was several months back.

Whoa.

I wonder if that means improvements to the parking garage or the retail spaces. IMO, that is an extraordinarily unappealing storefront space ... short, narrow and deep storefront ... one of two at the base of a rough-looking parking garage where car entrances/exits have more street frontage than do the two storefronts.

According to the fiscal officer's website, Dunham Square Land, LLC, owns 5 parcels (with a total of 6 buildings) on that block, with the most recent transfer happening in March 2011. Judging by number of buildings they own on a block without a lot of buildings around, I would guess they do have that building ... but if they do, they've had it for over a year? Confusing.

cleveland.com has a site map of Phases 1 & 2: http://media.cleveland.com/business_impact/photo/13cgflatsjpg-163b32475325c6bc.jpg I'm not sure if we have any definitive confirmations that every building shown on the map is getting built out in Phase 2 ... This might be a Phase 2a and 2b situation. Comparing the site map to the rendering you posted above, it looks like very little has changed in the way of building footprints, although there are some changes in use, and who knows if the heights, etc. will remain the same. In looking at the site plan and your renderings, it looks like the following buildings are not part of Phase 1 or Phase 2, presumably a third or fourth phase :) : - Two residential towers (with ground-level retail) along the riverfront (End of Phase 2, shown as greenspace and if I'm looking correctly, a restaurant/entertainment space. - Again, if I'm looking at it correctly, it looks like what was proposed for "residences over galleries and boutiques" is now sited for restaurant/entertainment and a parking garage to be done at the end of Phase 2. - One-third of a residential block with courtyard in the middle. Unclear what this missing third would be at the end of Phase 2. The other two-thirds are still to be residential over retail and parking. - Residences over neighborhood retail and 10-screen cinema (it looks like this was supposed to be the hotel site and where the hotel is going was to be residential?). Surface lot at the end of Phase 2. - 27,000 sq. ft. gourmet market. Surface lot at the end of Phase 2. - Second office complex, what was proposed at the Eaton headquarters. Not part of the FEB project at all, so remains undeveloped at end of Phase 2. So a lot of development to still do if it's to look like what was initially proposed. BUT ... We do end Phase 2 with 18 stories of offices over structured parking, a 150-room hotel and several street-level restaurants, 140 apartments over structured parking and riverside retail, plus what looks to be 6 stand-alone entertainment venues/restaurants/other (a couple stand-alones are unlabeled but are listed as being part of Phase 2). So, honestly, if Phase 2 goes as planned, they'll have accomplished a LOT. My concerns are not about how much they're getting done - This seems like a very reasonable amount of in-fill - My concerns are how spread out these developments are. This would be a very impressive amount of in-fill if it was all adjacent to each other, but as is, the apartments are separated from the office and hotel by a wide swath of surface parking (and then the Waterfront line). The stand-alone buildings are all separated from each other by 100 to 200 feet of greenspace, with a couple also separated visually by the Detroit Superior Bridge overhead. Doing good work, and I like the look of it so far ... Just wish they were marshaling their 23-acre site a little more effectively. I wish Phase 2 was developing the parcel adjacent to the hotel, incorporating as many of the restaurants/entertainment venues/retail into the ground floor and leave the "beach" that was proposed along the riverfront until you're ready for more residential in-fill in Phase 3. Once you've finished all your big buildings and built up a bit of an urban grid, THEN explore stand-alone buildings if needed :)

I think this really fits in well what seems to be a common vernacular in Cleveland new construction the past several years ... lots of glass panels that appear to overlap or float opposite a relatively muted base material in beige and/or grey. Glass-to-base ratios vary, but it seems like this fits generally into the same design category as 515 Euclid, the Pinnacle, the Education building at CSU ...

I don't know if there's research to back this, but it also seems like the more interesting the building, the less attention is paid to fitting into the general fabric of a neighborhood or applying general new urbanism structures. I know this is a stereotype, that the two aren't mutually exclusive and there's a counter-movement in the architecture community toward integrating the two, but experience suggests that "starchitecture" tends to stand alone on purpose, looking cool but creating activity vaccuums around it. All sorts of examples exist, but taking it to the extreme, look at starchitecture capitols like Brasilia or Rotterdam of what stand-out architecture can do to a city's urban fabric without stronger district-wide planning and design. I'd rather see our collective capital invested more broadly in buildings that fit into the kind of "stately" aesthetic of downtown, with lower design and construction costs that can be stretched over larger swaths of land, rather than architecture that tries to make a statement just for statement's sake.

The most hilarious part for me is that I hear people both locally and elsewhere referencing "Flee to the Cleve" or just "the Cleve" much more often than anything related to the Cleveland+ campaign. For free, the writers at 30Rock generated a marketing phrase that seems to have considerably more sticking power for people than what our civic leadership dedicated a great deal of time and resources to generate. I agree, it was very well-meaning, but I don't think it's been a particularly successful campaign. The phrasing has always read kind of awkward and "corporate/boardroom", not to mention the unintended link that "Positive" creates for some to HIV. The biggest issue I have with the campaign is that, in an interest to support regionalism, it tries to sell Cleveland as being not just the city but also Akron and Canton and Youngstown, etc. I think that was well-intentioned, but I think it reads a little apologetic ... "A visit to Cleveland not enough for you? Well, when you get bored here, you can check out Amish country. Or our Lake Erie islands. Or how about the Football Hall of Fame?". Until we can more successfully market more of our urban neighborhoods and inner suburbs to visitors, it seems like a stretch to be marketing attractions that are an hour away, if you have a vehicle handy, to the same crowd. Part of the problem, IMHO and it's just an opinion :), is that we tried to marry the marketing messages for business recruitment/retention to our visitation strategy, even though the decision-making processes of those markets are dramatically different. Marketing Canton as part of the package for small business attraction makes sense to me; Marketing it to a casual visitor or a conference attendee seems far more awkward, particularly if the campaign in question is already kind of corporate in theme.

^ The East 12th streetscape improvement definitely improves that corridor, too. I have a few qualms about the design (the decorative fencing, seating, etc. seems very squat, particularly next to the building heights of that street), but definitely has made that stretch much more walkable, softer, etc.

Don't think it's been reported here yet, but Grace Brothers Farm*Garden*Pet is now open at 1907 W. 65th St. http://www.gracebrosnursery.com/id68.html

On the whole "Why are there waiting lists downtown" thing, I can think of four possible reasons. First, you're only typically going to see rent increases happening at the end of a tenant's lease period, lest you stir up any number of contractual battles. I would imagine that the vast majority of downtown leases have start dates of April to September, when people are most likely to be moving ... the rest of the year, you're kind of tied to whatever you're already charging. So if someone does an occupancy count in December or January, and that's the first time you realize just how tight the market is, you're not going to see rates opening up new occupancies in any large number for several months. Second, it may be that the market demand is less elastic than landlords anticipate. A landlord might anticipate that adding $75 to everyone's monthly rate will open up a lot of space to wait list people. But if the vast majority of tenants are willing to stay put even with that increase, then you still have the vast majority of your wait list, and you have to wait another year before you raise rents again (see reason 1). Third, the opposite might be true ... Landlords anticipate market demand is VERY elastic. They're concerned that raising rents even $75 might push out a lot of current tenants and also scare away a lot of prospective tenants. It may be that even with 96% occupancy, relatively small rents could have an oversized impact on people's desires to live downtown. If that's the case, or if you're a landlord that suspects that might be the case, you might not be all that interested in experimenting with rent rates. Fourth, while demand is high, as an individual landlord, you might be wary of being the first one to raise rents in any meaningful way. DCA lists 32 apartment buildings downtown. Add in several new buildings in the works, warehouses that aren't being marketed as residential but that people live in nonetheless, a smattering of single- to four-family units on the edges of downtown and rental markets in nearby places like Ohio City and Tremont, and that's starting to look like a whole lot of competition. If you're raising your rents and no one else is, you might be scaring tenants off to other buildings ... Your 90% occupancy at a higher rate might not be as profitable as someone else's 100% at a lower rate. I would think people who own one building or a smaller number of total units would be particularly wary ... you're really waiting for someone like Maron or K&D to make the move on rents before you do. Finally, I would also question how active these wait lists are ... If someone put themselves on a wait list 6 months ago, or even 2 months ago, chances are, they've entered into a year-long lease somewhere else in the meantime. Unless those wait lists for East 4th or 668 are all people who inquired within the last month or so, I'd say the stand-by line is a lot shorter than it looks. It's probably good from a marketing standpoint, but it doesn't mean that everyone's still interested ... or that they were 100% interested in the first place. If that's the case, it makes tinkering with the rents all the scarier for a landlord because your "relief" tenants aren't as plentiful as people think.

Absolutely agree ... Definitely a market for that. What's really great about it, too, is that I think there's definitely a niche market who wants to rent a whole unit this size and virtually no one serving it. I'm thinking particularly of current students and recent alums that, even after accounting for wanting to save money on their living situation, may also just prefer to have multiple roommates and already have potential roommates lined up. I literally was talking to a co-worker the other week in his early 20s who has a brother, cousin and friend who all want to move in from the inner ring to downtown or Near East/Near West and was wondering where he should look for 4-bedrooms. I was telling him his best bet was to rent out a big house, take two two-bedrooms next door to each other or subdivide a big open loft space into multiple units. I think the idea of having 4 bedrooms and actually each having a bath, together with common areas, will actually be a big seller for them and other renters like them.

I think the trick is finding firm metrics that could be checked on an annual basis, once the "measures" have been established. The worst thing ever would be people getting in an e-fist fight over which nabe is the best ... which we are known to do :) And the last thing we need is another "Forbes ranking" with questionable methodology ;) With a lot of "squishier" indicators, you'll probably be looking for proxies for what you're really trying to measure. For instance, with walkability, you can use an existing aggregator like WalkScore, or using a proxy like "% walking to work / taking public transit to work", or using pedestrian/bike counts. Other potential measures are crime rates, median housing values, median rents, ethnic diversity, age diversity, residential and commercial vacancy, educational attainment ... Could go on and on. One of the tricky things is finding data that's available not only for the city neighborhoods but also for the suburbs ... and ideally, data sets that are also being tracked in other Ohio cities. For instance, I've been able to find a whole lot of crime stats for Cleveland neighborhoods, but I haven't found that stuff for the suburbs. The other challenge is finding data that's updated regularly; if you're using data that's only updated at the neighborhood level in the decennial census, that's going to be tricky. For really squishy stuff, we're actually trying something new in North Collinwood ... we're annually surveying residents, workers and visitors about their perceptions of the neighborhood across 29 different indicators. Is the neighborhood generally clean? Is it a good place to raise kids? Do you think you'll still live here in 5 years? Is the neighborhood getting better or worse? We just started this in the fall, so in the first year, we're basically just "grading" these indicators as Good (60% or more respondents agree), Fair (40% to 59.9% agreement) or Bad (less than 40% agreement). We're also doing cross-tab comparisons - Do residents have different perceptions than visitors? Do people living on the east side of the neighborhood think differently than people on the west side of the neighborhood? How about people under 40 v. people over 40? Over time, we'll be able to track changes in perception. So, for instance, you can have a "creativity curve" that shows whether people think the neighborhood is becoming a more or less creative place over time. I would loooooove to see this used throughout the county so we can start to make side-by-side comparisons and nerdy new maps (like an "authenticity" heat map that shows the pockets that people think are the most/least authentic :o) Full report is available at http://www.cultureforward.org/Reference-Desk/Research-Library/Neighborhoods/Picturing-Collinwood-2011

CLAP EMOTICON!!!!

^ Yeah, that's nuts ... 4-bed, 4-bath! Actually, it looks like all the floor plans have one bathroom for every bedroom.

Yep, it's safe to say that pretty much any type of road work along Lakeshore is sewer overflow improvements (same reason Lakeshore is torn up between E. 140 and E. 149). This is a massive project and is going to take a long time to get done, after which Lakeshore is due for street improvement. So it may be a long time before the road is construction-free, but it should be more than worthwhile in the long run.

Or how about the Fox News traffic helicopter overlooking the highway, the lake, condos and marinas and ... sheep.

Haha. Hey now! I think I'm going to volunteer to be a shepherd. What a lovely, crazy little city we live in.

Sheep touted as mowing alternative Mary Beth Breckenridge, Akron Beacon Journal April 7, 2012 PENINSULA: Laura DeYoung doesn’t need a lawn mower to keep her grass cut. She has about 80 living grass-cutting machines roaming around behind her house. DeYoung raises sheep as the owner of the Spicy Lamb Farm in Peninsula. She’s also a partner in Urban Shepherds, a coalition of three Ohio sheep farmers that’s promoting the use of sheep to cut grass by grazing instead of using humans and machines. The group is in discussion with its first client, Cleveland’s St. Clair Superior Development Corp. If all goes as planned, Urban Shepherds will have sheep grazing later this month on green space near the lakefront east of downtown Cleveland ... ... More available at http://www.ohio.com/news/top-stories/sheep-touted-as-mowing-alternative-1.292472

From the St. Clair Superior e-newsletter ... crazy cool. From what I've heard, volunteer interest in becoming a shepherd has been high! St. Clair Superior Development Corporation and Urban Shepherds are looking for Volunteer Shepherds for Cleveland's first urban grazing program. Volunteers will be asked to make regular visits to a flock of sheep on North Marginal Road from May to October. A free, one-day training will be provided to all volunteers, which will go over how to work with sheep and spot common ailments. If you are interested in becoming volunteer shepherd, please email us at [email protected]. Be sure to provide your name, mobile phone number, email address, and a home or work address. In addition please let us know which days and times of day that you are generally available throughout the week. Please note that we may not be able to accommodate all applicants and will maintain a waiting list for this and future projects. Stay tuned for more updates on the sheep coming to St Clair Superior!

I don't question this. Truth. Our casino will fill a niche not offered by any nearby casino in terms of urban integration. I just think some of the recent comments have been a little Pollyanna about just how quickly and how well this will magnify the renaissance of downtown. Just don't want us to lose sight of the fact that the biggest gains for city building tend to be in the small, decentralized, multi-tenant, multi-use developments ... I'm personally much more excited about CSU-steered investment or Uptown or the West 25th storefront work than I am in the casino for long-term growth prospects. And I also want to remind everyone to be vigilant about what the casino means for decision-making downtown. Understandably, the city is interested in expediting decision-making to make sure the casino is a success. But the result is that we've had some serious shifts in how fast the urban fabric can change, with the valet center being a primary example. Without reigniting a historic building v. welcome center debate, that decision was made in next to no time. Not does this fit into a 10-year plan? Can we build taller instead of wider? Decision made. Buildings gone. New buildings up. So my larger point is that people need to critically assess everything related to the casino and be willing to advocate, assemble, write letters at a moment's notice on behalf of anything that impacts surrounding streets. And as keepers of all things urban, those foot soldiers need to be us :) Not trying to deflate enthusiasm ... Just keepin' it real.

I'm really optimistic about how much downtown visitation the casino is going to drive, but I think we also should be cautious about overstating what it means for the city in the long run, particularly when 3 other casinos come online in the state and the geographic allure of our casino naturally shrinks a bit. Don't get me wrong ... I think it's going to be great ... I'd just caution that we tend to be a little starry-eyed on UrbanOhio, and we can look to the Galleria, Tower City and the Flats, maybe even North Coast and Gateway to a degree, as examples of one-use, stand-alone investments whose impact on downtown revitalization were positive but overstated. I think our civic leadership is much more cognizant of integrating this investment into a broader multi-use, multi-impact strategy for downtown now than they were in the past, which should hopefully mean the casino has more of a positive impact than previous investments. Still ... New employment, new visitation, new tax revenue, yes. But also historic buildings being converted into a parking facility, the potential of a pedestrian bridge rising over Ontario, a wait-and-see approach to how we reconfigure Public Square based on traffic concerns, the entry of chain establishments into a district that until recently was defined by its all-local charm ... To say nothing about how people behave inside and outside downtown's first massive 24-hour establishment. Jane Jacobs warns that cataclysmic investments of cash in a neighborhood can have all sorts of implications of unintended consequences and rash decision-making. Be optimistic, be cautious, be vigilant, UrbanOhioans :)

One interesting (but probably not surprising) note here ... The Asian population in Little Italy grew pretty steadily, with a 14.1% increase in that demographic, now making up 25% of that census tract, or approximately 750 residents of Asian background. For comparison, the Asiatown tracts (108201, 1084 and 108301) have a collective Asian population of around 1,250. Another fascinating tract for me is 112301 in Cleveland (Western Hough / Midtown). The tract grew 1.8%, with a pretty uptick in white population (211% increase to 6% of total resident population). I'm trying to wrap my head around what's driving that. I can't think of any major development projects in that tract in the 2000s. I think the vast majority of the Hough McMansions and the more recent low-income housing / senior housing developments are well to the east of here. Is this larger household sizes? Or single parcel rehabs? Personally, when I think about positive prospects for the East Side, I tend to draw a bright line down E. 55th street all the way to University Circle ... the on-the-ground experience, coupled with Midtown's almost exclusive focus on institutional in-fill rather than residential, has driven me there. But this census tract's proximity to the previously mentioned Asiatown and Prospect tracts, together with positive growth in several nearby Central/North Broadway tracts (4.3% in 109801, 11.0% in 113801 and 5.8% in 1143), seems like the situation is not as hopeless on the Near East Side as it is a little bit further to the east.

FWIR, they're aiming to have 75 units ready for occupancy by August (!) and the full 300 done by fall 2013. To stay on that timeline, I would imagine these are going to continue to fly up! Does anyone know anything about the status of the first "Tower of Light"? Installation was scheduled to be completed in April.

Townhouse design aside (I'm trying to hold my assessment until they're finished), I do wonder if CSU is going to ultimately regret having retail space in only the center building instead of all buildings fronting Chester. One of my dream initiatives is having a competitive process among recent CSU Master's recipients interested in launching storefront businesses adjacent to campus. Winners would get 1-2 years free tenancy, plus a small stipend/start-up grant. CSU would get incremental retail in-fill, developed by students for students ... It might even be an admissions driver for people entering the program, knowing that they'll have a chance at starting their own businesses after graduation. City ED or TeamNEO or DCA could follow up with "runners-up" to pitch low-interest business grants, location assistance, etc. For something like this to work, it would be ideal for CSU to be able to offer space it owns, rather than have to subsidize the winners' rent to adjacent private developers. Which is why they needed more retail fronting Chester :D That semi-pointless aside aside, it seems like as the density of North Campus increases, three blocks of storefronts beats two blocks taken up by people's living room windows ... Certainly seems like it would encourage more pedestrian activity.