8ShadesofGray

Couple of quick thoughts. Interesting conversation: - To RnR's point, there are a ton of ways to support revitalization of the city. Living within city limits is one. But so is patronizing city businesses, opening a business in the city, encouraging people to visit and spend money who otherwise wouldn't, volunteering in the city, donating to nonprofits in the city, supporting progressive urban-centric candidates for local and state offices, etc. We could give everyone a "helping the city" score, and not all suburbanites would have a low one, and clearly, not all Cleveland residents would have a high one. I'm one of the loudest critics of suburban lifestyle ... I have a deep ideological belief that I can't get past about suburbanization affects poverty, crime, educational standards, sustainability, livability, etc. That being said, I think we do a disservice to our cause if we suggest that all suburbanites are the problem or are not part of the solution. There are people who just aren't going to live in Cleveland now, and we may never make the case we should. But they can still participate in meaningful ways, and it just seems really wasteful to potentially turn them off from supporting our effort, even if just with their dollars and good will. - I think it's important to note that while there are challenges and shortcomings of raising children in an urban setting, there are also a great deal of benefits not typically enjoyed by kids in the suburbs, and certainly not in outer suburbs. The vast majority of our museums and cultural organizations are in the city, and there is a tremendous amount of after-school and summer programming that's available, often in the middle of residential neighborhoods. I would argue that "city kids" get exposed to a greater degree of diversity and a greater degree of projects and developments and history that can inform their imaginations, etc. And after you get beyond the confines of a particular subdivision, I think many suburbs have incredibly hostile environments for kids walking and biking around, while city neighborhoods tend to be far more walkable. So there are some alternative propositions about child rearing. I would argue that one of the biggest things a suburbanite can do to support the future of Cleveland proper, in the absence of actually becoming a resident, is to make sure their kids have frequent opportunities to take in the city. Raising kids to understand urbanism is necessary to reverse decades of misunderstanding and fallacies about what city living is like. - While I would agree that Cleveland is not always the most kid-friendly place in the world, I do think it's undoubtedly gotten better over the past decade. Crime rates are dropping, educational attainment is going up, density of activity is increasing in pockets across the city, etc. I think one of the biggest indications of a sea change is the formation of Near West Intergenerational (http://nearwestschool.org/). A group of parents on the Near West Side were nearing that school age where they had to make difficult decisions about educational options for their kids (some forumers included). Rather than going the more conventional routes of moving to the outer suburbs or paying a huge premium for private or parochial education, they've worked to develop a charter school based on the TREMENDOUSLY successful Interegenerational School in the Larchmere area. We should be doing more to support those parents who want to say in playing a more active role in creating the infrastructure for doing so. - We should be thinking more about how we make Cleveland a better place for kids. And I don't think that's just in an effort to draw more middle- and upper-income families back into the city. I think as a matter of social equity, we owe lower-income kids an opportunity to have happy and supportive childhoods, too. Even if we don't have a moral imperative to do so, there's also a pragmatic rationale for making sure that kids graduate high school, pursue higher education, find full-time employment, open businesses, etc. And if we build kid-friendly assets for our current residents, we'll also increase the likelihood that the equation for suburbanites moving in changes. Think that's too big an undertaking? Look at what a relatively modest investment in a new recreation center in Collinwood has accomplished: http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2012/01/collinwood_recreation_center_d.html

I wonder if they're thinking of siting the residential in the same spot? Currently, we have that temporary large lawn slated, and there's a relatively large surface parking lot behind the lawn. Would hate to see a situation where the residential is ultimately hugging the river and is then separated by a large surface lot from the hotel and the office building, even if the lot might be subsequently phased out. Just seems a weird phasing plan to tackle the western section and the eastern section and leave a big vaccuum in the middle. Am I misreading this?

Actually, I don't think it's all that bad. Probably wouldn't have used all the same footage personally, but it's certainly more interesting and more organic than a lot of the booster videos we post on here. And I actually like the aesthetic and the editing. I'm just happy that we're seeing more and more people doing their own Cleveland messaging instead of waiting for civic institutions to market on our behalf. This has to be like the fourth or fifth resident-initiated video or video series just in the past year, right?

So a quick aside. I was talking with someone who was in town for work and who had been put up at the InterContinental. As we were talking, he said he wasn't sure what neighborhood he was staying in but thought it was downtown. That's the third time I've had someone say that to me (granted, over a couple years time). Just noting it because with Tudor Arms and the Courtyard expanding visitor space in the Fairfax / University Circle area, it seems like it's really imperative that we be doing a better job giving an orientation of the land. Particularly with the InterContinental, I can't imagine what someone's viewpoint would be walking away from a trip here if they thought the Cleveland Clinic campus was our downtown!

FWIW, I work next door to permanent supportive housing downtown. It's across the street from the Plain Dealer building and right next to Tower Press, where many units fetch more than $1,000 monthly and occupancy rates remain very high. Unless you were specifically told, I don't think the average person even knows that the permanent supportive housing facility is set up for that particular activity, and it hasn't appeared to blunt development interest in the neighborhood. To StrapHanger's point, compare that to frequent comments on the safety anything remotely near the men's shelter at 2100 Lakeside ... Permanent supportive housing is just a different animal. Still needs to be well-run, but I'd say this is a marginal gain for Lorain Avenue, if for no other reason than getting rid of a huge underutilized surface lot.

^ Yeah, that looks like it must be from Main Classroom looking northward.

^ Absolutely agree. The two sites are also within a block of the Intermuseum Conservation Association, the Ohio City Cafe, some LGBT-friendly storefronts / bars and Banana Blossom and only a little farther out is Federal Knitting Mills, Detroit Avenue Lofts and Bounce Nightclub. Good building blocks for further development in this part of the neighborhood.

^ Excellent! If you guys haven't seen the firehouse, it's a pretty breathtaking rehab. Lots of character, and catty-corner from the Transformer Station, when it opens.

The red looks great, but to truly appreciate it, catch it when the sun is out ... It's amazing how much light these capture and the glow it gives them. Very nicely done, particularly when you look back a few pages at the park they replaced.

January 31st deadline approaching, Urban Ohioers :) cleveland arsenal will reward city's most passionate advocates Lee Chilcote, Fresh Water Thursday, January 19, 2012 Are you militant about your love for Cleveland? A recently launched civic initiative entitled Cleveland Arsenal aims to reward the grassroots boosterism you've been doing -- while also spreading some of that love to far-flung corners of the region and beyond. Cleveland Arsenal is a competition that will reward five hardcore Cleveland enthusiasts with $1,000 in cold, hard cash ... ... More at http://www.freshwatercleveland.com/forgood/clevelandarsenal011912.aspx

New $100,000 artist grant program up and running as of today ... Artists in Residence grants CPAC Website Brought to you by Northeast Shores and the Community Partnership for Arts & Culture. Through this exciting new program, we'll be giving artists who live and work in North Shore Collinwood an opportunity to propose creative solutions to some of the issues the neighborhood cares about the most. Guidelines available at http://www.cpacbiz.org/ftp_file/11-12/Summer2012Guidelines.pdf Application available at http://www.cpacbiz.org/ftp_file/11-12/Summer2012ApplicationForm.pdf

New $100,000 artist grant program up and running as of today ... Artists in Residence grants CPAC Website Brought to you by Northeast Shores and the Community Partnership for Arts & Culture. Through this exciting new program, we'll be giving artists who live and work in North Shore Collinwood an opportunity to propose creative solutions to some of the issues the neighborhood cares about the most. Guidelines available at http://www.cpacbiz.org/ftp_file/11-12/Summer2012Guidelines.pdf Application available at http://www.cpacbiz.org/ftp_file/11-12/Summer2012ApplicationForm.pdf

Haha. Well, technically, this is for individuals, not groups. But if individuals were frequent posters on a forum about urban communities in Ohio, and if individuals were through-and-through Cleveland lovers, out there spreading the Cleveland gospel every day, and if individuals wanted to participate in a year-long effort to get out the positive buzz near and far, and particularly to artists, then I'm sure they'd be considered strongly ;)

^^ Sure. The idea is generally that the program intends to reward people (and provide them with a little information and support) who are already out there doing their own grassroots marketing of the city ... People like all of us who are interested in getting people to live and work in the city. The main requirements are attending some meetings where we'll be sharing information about different resources for people looking to move into the city ... financial incentives that are available, homeownership services, etc. The meetings will also be an opportunity to meet, collaborate, etc. with some other people who are doing their own grassroots communications stuff. Ultimately, we're hoping the program raises the visibility of why it's important to validate and financially support individual residents in their efforts to market the city. There's no specific stipulations for who you reach or how you reach them ... Just an expectation that this is something you'll be doing over a year's time and that you'll be able to report on your efforts. Since the money for this pilot is coming from Artists in Residence, we definitely have an interest in people reaching out to artists specifically about why Cleveland (proper) is a great place for them to be, and we want to give people information about our program and about what else is going on in North Collinwood ... But again, there's no specific requirements about when and how and to whom you're talking about North Collinwood. Our end goal is definitely to increase visibility of our work in this neigborhood, but we think it's a win when an artist moves here and gets an opportunity to buy a house or open a business or whatever ... Regardless of whether that's in Collinwood or Tremont or West Park or Slavic Village. Or when you talk up the city to someone who's not an artist. Or when you talk up the city to a tourist rather than someone looking to immediately move here. The initiative truly believes that a win is a win is a win :) Let me know if that gets to what you're asking or if you need any more info.

So excited that the end's in sight! Less excited that they've let their web domain lapse :)

Bummer ... I thought with all the "If I was in charge of marketing the city" talk we do in this thread, there'd be some more excitement about this :)

I've learned a lot about the neighborhood because I'm working on the Artists in Residence program described above. Here's some quick and random details about the neighborhood. I'm focusing on North Collinwood here - don't know a ton about South Collinwood except that Collinwood was once a contiguous neighborhood that had a lot of shared culture and identity, but the highway has largely separated that association. So here's some quick and dirty on North Collinwood: - It has a pretty quirky history. It was settled largely as a vineyard community. At one point in its early history, Collinwood was the largest domestic exporter of grapes in the country. With the railyards came an in-migration of new rail workers, with a very large eastern European and Irish population. Thousands of rail workers used to walk down Waterloo to their jobs every day. It's considered by some to be the birthplace of American polka ... Frankie Yankovich, the "king of polka", was raised in Collinwood, and there was a lively polka scene centered in the neighborhood. You can still hit up a polka and a fish fry at the Slovenian Workmen's Home on Waterloo. The neighborhood was also home to the beloved Euclid Beach amusement park, and lesser known, it was also home to the Cunningham Sanitarium, a large-scale wellness facility with the largest hyperbaric chamber ever constructed, before it was subsequently dismantled for tank metal in WWII. Now you know :) And then there is of course the much more visible legacy of Danny Greene. - The neighborhood's official boundaries (as recognized by the city and the CDC) make it a pretty big one ... roughly East 140th to East 200th, highway to the lake, bounded by Bratenahl, South Collinwood and Euclid. That's about 20,000 residents in two zip codes and five census tracts. - The neighborhood's really pretty stable. While it has a higher renter-to-owner ratio than the city overall, per capita income is also considerably higher than the city average. - North Collinwood gets a rap for being unsafe (I hear this over and over and over), but the data doesn't seem to support this conclusion. As of 2010, North Collinwood had the 10th lowest crime rate of the city's 36 neighborhoods (i.e. the planning areas that City Planning uses) and well below the city average. Crime rates also dropped a significant 13% between 2008 and 2010. So relatively safe and getting safer, compared to other areas of the city. There is a lot of resident activity to address public safety, including a very active block club around East 156th and block watch at East 185th. - The neighborhood's CDC, Northeast Shores, is pretty gangbuster. They landed the Artists in Residence program, are in line for a large-scale $5 million streetscape improvement along Waterloo that's slated to start shortly and are in the final running for at least one other large-scale national grant. Lots of good energy over here. The CDC is very committed to extending ownership opportunities in the neighborhood, both residential (like their emphasis on rehabbing vacant houses for artists) and commercial (making sure the businesses moving in have an immediate opportunity, or at least a strategy, for owning the storefronts they're occupying). - The neighborhood has three primary retail corridors ... Waterloo, where there's obviously a lot of arts attention, and for good reason - In the 11 years since the Beachland Ballroom opened, commercial vacancy along the corridor has dropped from around 70% to about 30%. The strategy seems to be working. Along East 185th, there's a solid, stable retail corridor ... Could be doing better but could be doing a lot worse. I can see the comparison to W. 117th, although I think East 185th has both more local business and is a lot more intact (although definitely some set-back fast food / convenience stuff, too. There used to be a lot (LOT) of bars along the street, and while I think it's yet to land on a cohesive identity like Waterloo, I think most residents seem to be happy that those late-night establishments are gone. The third corridor is along Lakeshore, which is perhaps the trickiest. It's almost exclusively big box, which is all the sadder, since the lake is pretty much across the street. Nonetheless, there are signs of life. A vacant KMart / Big Lots was converted into the city government's first LEED Gold building, a state-of-the-art new recreation center with amenities like an indoor water park. There is massive work being done along Lakeshore to address sewer runoff into the lake, which should also lead to some sustainable design elements being incorporated along the street. - Even though land planning could have been MUCH better in the neighborhood, it still arguably has the best lakefront access in the city, largely because the highway is so much further south here than to the west, meaning that unlike in much of Cleveland, you can walk to lakefront parks without the shoreway getting in the way. There are three different public lakefront parks in a line along the northern border of the neighborhood, while many of the residential streets end in private beaches. Privatizing the beach is controversial for some, but a case can be made that that amenity has attracted and retained a relatively high income population in the neighborhood. Even with all that private beach property, the neighborhood has the longest contiguous beach in the city (at Euclid Beach Park). In a recent resident and visitor survey we did (pretty worthwhile to check out if you want to know more about what people think of the neighborhood ... http://www.cpacbiz.org/ftp_file/11-12/CollinwoodPrioritiesFINAL.pdf), people reported that lake access was the Number 1 asset in the neighborhood.

^ The Cleveland Arsenal launches ... Incentives for people doing grassroots marketing of the city to artists, etc. (referenced in the article) ... The Cleveland Arsenal Do you love Cleveland? How much and why? Not only do we want to know, we want to pay you to tell us – and more importantly, others – why this is the greatest city on earth. No, we’re not kidding. We recognize that there are those of you who extol the honest, hardworking, creative elements of our city without any compensation or praise. You are the true Clevelanders, and you deserve to be rewarded for your passionate advocating. Northeast Shores Development Corporation, in association with the Community Partnership for Arts & Culture, is excited to announce a citywide search for the 5 most passionate advocates who proudly – and loudly – call Cleveland their own. These 5 Cleveland-loving individuals will be tasked with promoting their favorite city and all its creative and artistic awesomeness. In exchange for doing what you’re already doing, we’re going to sweeten the pot with a $1,000 Award for Awesomeness. That’s correct: $1,000 just for telling people about the greatness of Cleveland ... ... More info and application at http://www.cpacbiz.org/ftp_file/11-12/ArsenalApplication.pdf

CPAC and Northeast Shores launches The Cleveland Arsenal to provide incentives to people doing their own grassroots marketing of the city to artists, etc. ... There are definitely some Urban Ohioers that would be a great fit for this! :) The Cleveland Arsenal Do you love Cleveland? How much and why? Not only do we want to know, we want to pay you to tell us – and more importantly, others – why this is the greatest city on earth. No, we’re not kidding. We recognize that there are those of you who extol the honest, hardworking, creative elements of our city without any compensation or praise. You are the true Clevelanders, and you deserve to be rewarded for your passionate advocating. Northeast Shores Development Corporation, in association with the Community Partnership for Arts & Culture, is excited to announce a citywide search for the 5 most passionate advocates who proudly – and loudly – call Cleveland their own. These 5 Cleveland-loving individuals will be tasked with promoting their favorite city and all its creative and artistic awesomeness. In exchange for doing what you’re already doing, we’re going to sweeten the pot with a $1,000 Award for Awesomeness. That’s correct: $1,000 just for telling people about the greatness of Cleveland ... ... More info and application at http://www.cpacbiz.org/ftp_file/11-12/ArsenalApplication.pdf

Relocation to PlayhouseSquare well worth it for Cleveland Play House Saturday, January 07, 2012 By Andrea Simakis, The Plain Dealer As most therapists will tell you, moving is one of the most stressful events in life, ranking only behind the death of a loved one, divorce or illness. But if early box office results from the Cleveland Play House are any indication, the pain of pulling up stakes from Euclid Avenue and East 85th Street and relocating three miles down the road to PlayhouseSquare was well worth it for the local company. Play House numbers crunchers compared the single-ticket sales from the first three shows of the 2010-2011 season, before the move, to the first three productions of the 2011-2012 season in the organization's new artistic home in the Allen Theatre complex. They found that revenue had more than doubled ... ... More at http://www.cleveland.com/arts/index.ssf/2012/01/relocation_to_playhousesquare.html

I love the idea of a Clevelanders museum, but it's not really a great funding environment for arts and culture organizations at the moment. Certainly, the tobacco tax has helped stabilize many organizations, but there's a finite amount of foundation dollars out there, and more and more of it is being applied toward economic development, sustainability, etc. A lot of the corporations that supported local arts organizations are long gone. I think it would be a pretty hard sell to get a museum up and running right now ... The foundations really want to see several years of programming history before they start funding you, unless you're addressing a very key priority of theirs (e.g. Manchester Bidwell), and you can't apply for Cuyahoga Arts and Culture (aka tobacco funds) until you've had three years of arts and culture programming history. You'd really be relying on some passionate donors and some passionate volunteers to get something like that up and running. Plus ... We do have a lot of quirky museums that honor Cleveland people ... the Christmas Story House, the African American Museum, the International Polka Hall of Fame, the Ukrainian Museum Archives, the Money Museum. I think we'd be better off trying to get existing organizations to do exhibits on Cleveland greats and Cleveland quirks instead of starting new groups. I mean, seriously, the Western Reserve Historical Society should be doing EXACTLY this ... by the very nature of their mission!!

^ The sidewalks are super narrow right now, but I think mainly because a good deal of the sidewalk line is inside the construction area ... Definitely some areas where I've had to turn sideways for someone walking the other direction, and I'm pretty skinny :) I don't think they'll be unusually narrow when they're fully open ... They're not sidewalk cafe wide, but they're definitely plenty of room for maybe 4 people to be walking concurrently side-by-side? I dunno, that's been my impression. Anyone else?

^^ I loved Michael's ... Decent food, awesome to be able to get it at off-hours when nothing else was open, great people watching and really nice to have the ability to duck in out of the cold while waiting for a train and grab a coffee. Never had any troubles with them - it's a good staff and a good crowd.

Sure thing! With the caveat that I haven't lived there in 4.5 years, so it may have changed since then. I was on the 7th (top) floor, so I'm sure that cut out a lot of noise that you typically have from units above, but I recall the neighbors being pretty quiet ... Don't recall any loud parties, really. At the time, Shaker Town House was the building where Cleveland Play House had their visiting theatre artists staying, which took up several units. Not sure if this is still the case and what if any impact their move downtown will have on this. There was a parking garage on the ground floor, but I was car-free for a while and was then parking on the street, so don't recall what that was like, except that that's where you brought trash. Did hear about a lot of car break-ins in and around the square, so I suppose the semi-secured parking would be some solid piece of mind for some. I found the building to be well-maintained. The lobbies were pretty dated (early 80s color pallette), but the units were nice. Recall the kitchen appliances being kind of old, but functional. Actually don't recall ever having any maintenance problems per se. Steam heating was quite loud (would make a clanking sound) ... Otherwise, never had any real problems. The unit itself was pretty nice, hardwood floors, unusual floor layout. Certainly wasn't deluxe but did have a healthy amount of that 1920s charm you find around the Square and in many units in Cleveland Heights. All in all, it was a pretty terriffic rental experience. You're right, it doesn't have quite the same level of grounds beauty that some of the other streets, but you're steps away from the Square, and another benefit was being about a 5 min. walk up East 128th from the heart of Larchmere. And because Capital Properties Management buildings have the rooftop decks, you also have some great views of the southeast suburbs, the Square, the Shaker Parklands and downtown and University Circle.

^ Yes, there definitely is. Shouldn't have neglected that one.