8ShadesofGray

^ Welcome back! I think this is actually a three-week iteration of the previous Made in the 216 events, basically a storefront that will be selling locally created design products ... home interiors, clothes, graphic products, art, etc. Not really holiday stuff per se ... much cooler selection of stuff more geared toward the hipster and bobo crowd. Check out the blog here: http://blog.roomservicecleveland.com/?tag=made-in-the-216.

Hmmm. I could be totally wrong ... I didn't move to Cleveland until 2002, but are you maybe thinking of Grumpy's; I believe they did sustain some pretty bad fire damage and subsequently reopened ... But it's located over by Lava Lounge.

Just as a reminder, panhandling does not equal homelessness, and while these anectdotes are amusing, they don't really illustrate anything about the plight of the homeless in Cleveland; IMHO, there are probably more appropriate threads for this :)

Hate to take us off the topic of the White Games (:)), but how exciting - the favorable national press coverage has arrived! Regardless of your feelings about the Gay Games, I think this is going to be a multi-year PR boon for Cleveland, particularly if we can segue this into coverage of our increasingly progressive civic policies ... the completion of the Towpath Trail, which if complete in time for the games, would give participants the option of riding between the site locations through a National Park; a massive planned investment in bike lanes; the conversion of the Shoreway; a downtown bike station and bike rental; an offshore wind farm; Amtrak service from three directions; creative re-use of vacant lots; a burgeoning local/organic food scene and an urban farming movement; door-to-door strategic foreclosure prevention, etc., etc. We just have to be proactive and make sure the recurring story isn't "Cleveland, rocked by decades of industrial decline and devastated by foreclosures, still managed to secure the Gay Games". Interestingly, I think this is also going to be a PR boon for the Games themselves. I think they'll get a lot more coverage for choosing a city that's perceived as being an unusual choice, rather than if they had gone with DC or Boston and a lot of credit for reaching into a (perceived) non-traditional location when it comes to gay population.

I love Chris Maag's work ... Forget Chicago: Cleveland Gets the Gay Games By Christopher Maag, Time Magazine Thursday, Oct. 01, 2009 Let Chicago and President Obama compete for the Olympics. Cleveland — yes, Cleveland! — just won the Gay Games. Citing the city's world-class athletic facilities, hotels and public transportation, the Gay Games Federation announced that Cleveland will host the games in 2014. An abundance of enthusiasm, some Midwestern pluck and a boisterous night on Lake Erie didn't hurt ... More at http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1927211,00.html.

Yaya! I am not sure why this is making me teary-eyed, but it is :)

There is a lot of space left, but most of it is already at least tentatively slated for uses, and when you look at the number of storefronts that have been activated in the past 5 years in this area (Detroit Studio, Room Service, Luxe, Kitsch City, DuoHome, a slew of galleries at the W. 78th Building, Latitude41, the Big Egg again, the Happy Dog, RedStone, Stone Mad) ... it's not hard to see an optimistic trajectory for this area. The extra space has also been a boon for holding special events, like Billy Naininger's photography show a couple years back or the wildly successful Made in the 216 event.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to attend a multi-site conference bisected by a rapidly forming streetscape rehab? Me either, but I got to find out anyway at Rust Belt to Artist Belt II. The event took place in the midst of what I can only say is BY FAR the fastest street work I've ever seen being performed (move over, Warehouse District sidewalk). The rush was on to get done by the streetscape dedication ceremony taking place this Saturday. I was told by folks in the know that we can anticipate seeing 80% of the work completed by Saturday, which means the street will look strikingly different than it did just a week ago. Still to be installed will be the Maschke bus shelters and public art elements by Susie Frazier Mueller, but the vast majority should be ready. Oh, and our group was inside the Capitol Theatre for a couple sessions, and that's definitely shaping up to be a lovely theater. It looked more or less in finished shape while we were there (although we were only downstairs in the main theater).

Just focusing on trains and not my adventures with Greyhound ... Boston Chicago Cleveland Washington, DC New York Oh, and the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic :) Amsterdam Berlin Bonn Brussels Duisburg Essen Gelsenkirchen The Hague Istanbul London Munich Paris Wuppertal (Best System Ever! Well, for kitsch value, anyway) Guelph to Toronto Seattle to Portland A bajillion RE and ICE trains through Germany Berlin to Amsterdam Berlin to Prague Brussels to Paris Cascais to Lisbon G'dansk to Poznan to Berlin The Hague to Brussels The Hague to Haarlem and Den Helder Porto to Lisbon Pula to Ljubljana to Zagreb And even a pushcar from Berlin to Zossen. Haha. Best Rides: Porto to Lisbon (a good stretch is along the water, and the Portuguese system was surprisingly nice); Traveling to and from Ljubljana (beautiful tree-covered hills everywhere!); and Munich to Garmisch-Padenkirchen ... love those Bavarian Alps!

Wow, they out-PDed the PD. That "article" was so dripping with hyperbole that it was difficult in places to determine whether material was satirical or allegedly factual. The tone was so negative that I could barely make it through it. Negative enough that I will probably never, ever read The Independent again. It will be interesting to see where this shakes out. If corruption is occurring at the level the article suggests, it's hard to imagine this not prompting legal intervention in the very near future. But I actually walk away finding this news outlet more suspect than Nehst.

Nope ... tied again :)

It looks great. Can't wait. And thank you, thank you, thank you for using some local music ... good bands on your Media section. Have you guys started talking about local (Cleveland) screenings yet?

That would have been wise, but I unfortunately did not think to do so ... gone, gone, gone, unless they're in an UrbanOhio file backup somewhere or searchable with the Wayback Machine :)

The salary doesn't seem out of line with the size of the budget they'll be managing or the scope of activities that they will have to take on. A president of a corporation of the same size would likely realize more money than this in just productivity incentives; a person that makes the activities of this agency transparent to the public, solicits public feedback, identifies innovative processes for assembling land and/or for redeveloping or clearing it and that can identify and secure multiple revenue streams to support its activities ... absolutely, they deserve that pay IMHO. That being said, it will be interesting to see if Frangos is ultimately the right person for the job. It is not unusual for an individual within county government to assume leadership of a new agency (given their existing awareness of current county administrative practices, etc.), help set it up and then leave after a year or two when the group is on solid feet. Cuyahoga Arts & Culture experienced a similar leadership in its first couple years. That being said, ultimately I would hope the Land Bank would have a national search for its long-term leadership.

1. Mine is done. Sorry for the delay. 2. I also want to say thank you to the moderators for doing this. Just going through 53 pages was excruciating ... I can't imagine what it must be like to comb the site. Again, please let us know what non-moderators can do. 3. It was so sad to delete all that content. I understand the news outlets' positions, but many of them do not have any kind of publicly accessible archive of material. So now they still might pull ad content, but people will be forwarded to "Page Not Found". When deleting articles from 2006 (and, in some cases, articles from like a month ago), it was sad to realize that there is no longer any online versions of this information, unless you have access to a paid online news archiving service. It's just information that's largely lost forever. Frown-ey-face.

I'm inclined to agree ... it took me almost 2 hours to get through 350 posts ... and I have about a thousand to go. So I think I can meet that deadline, but I can't see how the small group of moderators are going to be able to modify all the posts from people who aren't active on the board anymore ... Grasscat alone will take a week. If there's anything us non-moderators can be doing to help with that process, please let us know.

I agree ... I do think improv would do really well right there. That being said, I also think they've done pretty decent at Tower Press ... which is technically still downtown :)

The CSU Farmer's Market that started today rocks my world. It's good-size, while still smaller than their version at Shaker Square. Several hundred of people congregating along Euclid Avenue at a couple dozen tents, buying local produce, meat, breads, condiments, while local musicians perform in the background, all in perfect weather as buildings go up on either side of the block ... it's official, I Heart Cleveland. Check it out at Euclid and E. 19th, Thursdays from 10:30 to 1:30, until late October.

Me too ... that's what I voted for, as it's the best link for my personal travel needs, and I think it's the most critical link for connecting Ohio to the east coast.

I didn't see this addressed upthread and it may be a silly question, but can the 3-C funding be broken apart? That is, could the project receive partial federal funding, and in that case, would the DOT expect states to either pitch in more substantial local funding or to only develop one segment of a proposed route? I ask because, in reviewing rail proposals from other states, it appears that some are requesting far, far, far more than what would be their proportionate scale and seem to be operating under the assumption that only segments of their proposals would be funded. Washington State, for instance, is submitting proposals totaling roughly $1 billion ... an eighth of total funding available. But it appears that they are prioritizing specific components and segments, were they to receive partial funding. To date, I haven't seen a prioritization of specific activities for the 3-C. Ohio's proposal seems much more realistic a choice for total funding, but I do wonder, in the event of partial funding, whether Ohio might focus exclusively on CIN to COL or COL to CLE or whether there is some alternate strategy in mind for partial funding. I also am curious as to whether DOT is requiring that kind of prioritization as a component of the application.

Ewoops, sorry to raise another concern, but the map on that invite appears to be wrong ... at least on my operating system and browser, it's directing people to go to like Lakeside and E. 28th-ish, rather than to North Coast Harbor.

Love it! I think Youngstown is such an interesting place at the present moment, and it's good to see so much in the downtown in relatively good shape. That Realty Building is stunning! Oh, and Deee-Lite has a NEO connection?! My life is more or less complete!

I've been riding the Healthline 10 times a week since moving back in June, and generally, I've been pretty happy with travel time. Out of over 100 rides, I would say that I've only had two or so that were significantly delayed (delayed by more than 10 mins. of the estimated travel time). I would take these buses, and the streetscape improvements they brought (LOVING the bike lanes ... best ride in town!) - 1,000 times more often than the 6 ... which along with the 326 was one of the most uncomfortably overpacked, frequently stopping lines I've seen in the Cleve. My sole complaint on travel time is the frequent bunching, which leads to some rides being 15 minutes and some being 30 for me. The bunching seems particularly problematic eastbound during rush hour ... there have been times when I've stood for 20 mins. only to see 3 coming in a row. The machines ... well, I still hate those. I think most of the kinks can be worked out, so I wouldn't call it a "fail" per se. I applaud RTA's efforts with BRT and with proof-of-payment riding. But even as an avid fan, I can say that it's a frustrating and confusing system ... all the more frustrating if you get to a stop just as 2 or 3 of the buses are pulling up and you know that you'll likely be stranded there for a while. One very strange and very frustrating issue I've faced ... A couple of times at the E. 24th stop, the display reads "Welcome to Stokes Windermere Station" or something to that effect, and then it seemingly gives the train times rather than the BRT times. Not sure what is causing this glitch, but I've seen it twice at this station now.

Really sad. As a note, they are completely folding ... ending both their Akron and Cleveland operations, not just losing this particular location.

I like the idea of this kind of display, but aren't storefront owners going to be reluctant to do something that's rather ... political. Believe me, I'm a fan of the idea and your project ... I just haven't to date witnessed art-filled storefronts anywhere yet that have really pushed the envelope within a social or thematic context. Don't want to see you lose your baby prematurely. That being said, the paper has been informed over and over and over about these issues. In fairness to them, it does seem like the amount of non-biased coverage has increase in the past several months. That being said, enough of these one-liners slip through to lead me to believe that they haven't established a company-wide policy on when it's appropriate to include such a line (e.g. in certain editorial content) and when it is most certainly not (e.g. in any news story that is not directly related to the attitude they're describing). Here, this was a news story on participation by a famous actor in a series of fundraisers for a local theatre ... I don't think that one-liner would meet even the loosest of relevance or objectivity standards ... if they had them in place. It seems like a pretty simple fix ... IF THEY WOULD JUST STICK TO SUCH A QUALITY STANDARD!