8ShadesofGray

That's understandable. And again, not trying to thumb my nose at the effort ... which is an important one.

I find it disappointing that we tend to overlook large cities that serve as county seats, particularly as many of these cities have larger volumes of historical stock, buildings that are (arguably) of greater historic importance at a national level and have among the most robust programs for designating, preserving and renovating historic sites. Not that there's anything wrong with highlighting the wonderful amenities of Ohio towns or providing an apple-versus-versus comparison. I just think it's a shame that we tend to segregate out big cities when we talk about historic preservation.

Wow. This sounds pretty exciting. Can't wait to hear more specifics on GLUE's Cleveland-based initiative. GLUE Seeks Professional Freelance Journalist April 21st, 2009 by Sarah Szurpicki GLUE is pleased to announce this position in Cleveland/NEO: Northeast Ohio Civic Journalist, April 2009 GLUE, the Great Lakes Urban Exchange (www.gluespace.org), is seeking a freelance journalist to write a series of pieces on a current civic initiative in Northeast Ohio. The position begins as soon as possible and lasts approximately six months. The journalist will work closely with a Cleveland-based team of volunteers from a variety of sectors to report on an important and rapidly evolving civic project that involves a number of local and national policymakers ... ... More at http://www.gluespace.org/blog/?p=385

Yeah, this was such an amazing article. And if my sources are correct, this was VERY high visibility ... I was told this was front-page, above the fold. And I think this is going to have a lot more visibility for artists nationally. As the article mentions, we're going to be holding a second conference in September (with a lot of educational information for artists about finding property in Cleveland) and an online portal is going to be developed to centralize information for artists so they can see just how much (info about real estate, health insurance, business training, grants, etc.). And when you add the fact that Cuyahoga County is currently launching one of the largest artist fellowship programs in the country (up to 40 artists will each be receiving $20,000 grants this year), word is really going to start to spread about the Cleve. I started a thread about last year's From Rust Belt to Artist Belt conference (http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,15497.0.html), which received a decent amount of positive buzz from the Midwest arts community). Ypsilanti, for instance, brought in Brian Friedman to talk about the Collinwood model, and I've never seen Levin as packed as it was during that event ... Conference attendees were sitting along the walls on all three levels of the building, and tables were arranged almost to the Euclid Ave. doors. I'm so excited to get back to Cleveland! Yay Cleve! :)

UUP is housed at the Urban Affairs school, and the research programs have been cited as one of the reasons for Levin's ongoing positive rankings. And coupled with previous rounds of layoffs, such a move will further hollow out support and research staff, resulting in a lower-quality experience for the students there.

Yes, we are facing difficult times and the state has to make difficult budget decisions. But this is a travesty. Between this and the previous deficit, they are in effect gutting the university's premier program, a program, mind you, that outranks Harvard's Kennedy School in U.S. News and World's Report's review of urban policy graduate programs and a faculty and staff that have helped vastly in steering Cleveland toward a more progressive and sustainable agenda. This is incredibly depressing ... PLEASE consider contacting your elected officials. End of Urban University Program at Cleveland State University could force layoffs Posted by Janet Okoben, Plain Dealer Reporter April 06, 2009 CLEVELAND -- The human impact of the proposed elimination of the Urban University Program, based at Cleveland State University, will be decided tomorrow as CSU officials determine how many employees will have to be laid off. Because union rules require CSU to give employees 90 days notice of a layoff, university officials must act now if the UUP program is dismantled in July, said Ned Hill, interim dean of the Levin College of Urban Affairs at CSU, where the UUP is based ... ... For more information, please visit http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/04/end_of_urban_university_progra.html

I'm a bit surprised that everyone seems so ambivalent about the building. Granted, the exterior is not my favorite in the city, but some of the interior space is actually pretty stunning, particularly the lobby on the section closest to Euclid and the connecting walkways going toward the MOCA end. And the complex does actually have an interesting history to it. From their website: The original Play House facility was built in 1927 on farmland donated by industrialist Francis Drury, and housed two theatres that remain in use today. To accommodate substantial growth in the years just after World War II, The Play House operated the 77th Street Theatre from 1949-83 in a converted church a few blocks away. That venue featured America’s first open stage – the forerunner of the thrust stage that was popularized in the 1950s and ‘60s. In 1983, a Philip Johnson–designed addition to the original facility opened, annexing a Depression-era Sears building to the original Drury Theatre building, making The Cleveland Play House the largest regional theatre complex in the United States. http://www.clevelandplayhouse.com/about-history.asp

Hey all ... Thanks for the advice to date. I'm scheduled to move back in exactly two months now, so I'm stepping up my apartment search a bit. After putting (waaaaayyy too much) thought into it and talking to a lot of people, I am now concentrating my search on three areas: - Market Area of Ohio City: Roughly bounded by Fulton, Jay, W. 25th and Chatham. - Lower Euclid and Theater: Ontario, Euclid, E. 22nd and Prospect. - Lower Midtown and Asiatown: E. 30th, St. Clair, E. 40th and Prospect. If anyone has any leads on interesting rentals in these areas, I would appreciate any advice. Would be ready to move in as early as June 15th but could delay as late as the end of August for the right space. As previously mentioned, small and unique units are awesome, and I'm willing to pay up to $750 per month (would consider going a bit over, but only if the space blows me away). Meanwhile, does anyone have any details about the apartment building on Fulton just down from Johnny Mango's? I believe it's the corner of Fulton and 30th (not the West Virginia Building but pretty nearby), but the tree cover on Google Maps is too hard for me to make out. Just wondering if anyone has been inside, has any opinions, has contact info. Thanks guys! Appreciate your help!

I moved to Cleveland in summer of 2002, so I missed the apparent boosterism and optimism of the late 90s. By the time I got here, the Flats were already more or less dead, and I was being greeted by "Quiet Crisis" coverage every day. So I can't really comment on 1998 to 2001, but since 2002, I think there's been much in the way of improvement. Despite some losses in large corporations, the market vacancy rate has remained relatively low (enough to warrant pre-recession conversations of two new headquarter buildings), and the overall economic mix seems to be diversifying. While big corporations might be great for pride, having a multitude of small- to mid-size companies in a wide variety of sectors is probably healthier for our economy in the long run. Meanwhile, the residential population has swelled, and importantly, there has been an upswing in the previously almost non-existent for-sale market. And revitalization efforts seem to be taking place over a wider footprint throughout downtown. The Warehouse District, Gateway and the Theater District seem to have remained pretty strong during this time, while E. 4th/Lower Euclid, West Bank, the Avenue District and some pop-up residential on Prospect have come online. And the interesting and often overlooked transformation of warehouses from E. 19th to E. 26th is pretty amazing as well. Arts and entertainment seem to me to be healthier, too. We've retained all of the powerhouses (Rock Hall, Playhouse Square, the three sports franchises) and seen new smaller improv, live music and theater options come online. Ingenuity and Sparx in the City's Urban Gallery Hop have brought tons of people downtown. Artists have quietly created quite a little community on the east side of downtown (in the previously mentioned warehouses), spilling over into Asiatown. A huge percentage of the public art downtown has been installed since I arrived (including the stuff on the Detroit-Superior bridge, two temporary installations on the Malls, the Spiders at Playhouse Square, the structural pieces on Superior in the E. 20s and the new trash cans, tree grates and other art fixtures along Euclid). And the well-timed passage of the tobacco levy is arguably positioning both artists and downtown cultural gems to weather the recession better than elsewhere in the country. Even more importantly (though less quantifiable), I think, it seems that we're getting more savvy about investing in the core. The city is actually marketing living downtown through Downtown Digs and the Living in Cleveland Center. We've got a nice, new Visitor's Center. COSE has refocused its resources to provide sector-tailored assistance for small companies, including artists and home-based businesses. Business owners leveraged their resources to create a pretty successful Business Improvement District that has helped keep trash and graffiti in check. We've seen the rise of OneCommunity's broadband efforts, BioEnterprise and local health institutions creating a competitive biotech industry virtually from scratch, TeamNEO selling the region more strategically and JumpStart greatly increasing venture capital entering the area. We installed a wind turbine and solar array in one of the most highly-visible locations downtown, created a city sustainability office and have a county government that's actually excited to put resources into an offshore windfarm. Decision-making seems to have become a little less centralized (we're seeing more than just the GCP's agenda), young professionals are more engaged, "mixed-use" is no longer a term just for planning geeks, we're looking at how to create niches for retail based on market and competitive advantage analysis (see District of Design, lower Euclid retail study, etc.), we're expanding greenspace and GREATLY expanding bike routes and generally looking for ways to connect back to the lake and river. EVEN the GCP, the bulwark of old business, seems to be repositioning its agenda to encourage international immigration and green business. So, the civic discussion on what we want downtown to be seems MUCH more robust and progressive to me than it did in 2002 (when, from my vantage point, talk seemed to center almost exclusively on a casino and a convention center ... two discussions still alive and well but not the sole strategies for downtown). We're rich in new ideas, and they're slowly but definitely paying off. The only real major negative trend I can think of is the loss of retail (particularly Tower City) in what was already a bit of a retail desert in 2002. But good things to those who wait :)

Gordon Square has announced a grand opening for the Capitol Theatre: October 1: Grand Gala, Red Carpet Benefit October 2: Ribbon Cutting (11 a.m.), First Feature Film (7 p.m.) October 3: Children's Matinee October 3 - 11: Grand Opening Week http://www.gordonsquare.org/gasp/gasppdf.pdf How's the streetscape progressing?

Thanks for the birthday wishes and Happy Belated Birthday, MTS. Sorry for the delay ... I was on a crazy-ass seminar in the Netherlands and Belgium ... I'm sure you'll forgive me ;)

I love me some Cleve, but this whole affair is starting to remind me a lot of the monorail episode of The Simpsons ... "A town with money is like a mule with a spinning wheel. No one knows how he got it and danged if he knows how to use it!"

Outside of the VERY important issue of the digital divide (as well as the smaller issue of preservation ... will you be able to go down to a library and scan through the full contents of a paper from 2009 in 2029?), I think a lot of people are less concerned with the delivery method and more with the overall eventual quality of the product. When the switch is made to an online vehicle primarily as a way to cut overall staff numbers, it may mean a reduction in number of journalists. Then you end up with people covering multiple areas of news and not covering any of them particularly well. However, with its consolidations in the past few years, I think this has already been playing out with the PD in the past few years. Moreover, switching to an online format doesn't HAVE to mean a smaller staff of journalists; smart papers will use reductions in printing expenses to ramp up the quantity and quality of their writers. Just not entirely optimistic that the PD is a smart paper. And then there's also the issue of ease of read. Not sure about anyone else, but I find it difficult to find news stories on cleveland.com, particularly with their newest format change. It doesn't strike me as particularly user-friendly. They'll have a front page link to a news story from two weeks ago b/c it had a lot of comments written and a news story from today takes a bit of a search to find. I don't really get it. Then there's all of the ads that sweep down over the screen and interrupt reading, not to mention the cleveland.com bombers. So ugh ... not always the greatest website IMHO.

And another one for the I Heart Cleveland groupies, this time from the end-all-be-all of the urban geek press. Next American City's generally favorable take on Cleveland's innovations in the face of the dire financial environment for American cities at the moment. And that's not enough reason to cheer, they also deliver a big "boo" toward Forest City. Cities in Crisis America’s cities are fighting foreclosures, stalled development and budget shortfalls on a scale not seen in a generation. But innovation is taking root in the empty spaces left by economic retreat. A look at how tomorrow’s American cities will be leaner — and greener. By Ariella Cohen Next American City Spring 2009 Issue Empty water bottles littered the table in front of Ray Nagin, whose shaved head reflected the florescent lights above. On a damp night in early Dec. 2008, the New Orleans mayor had come before the city council to discuss the $1.1 billion municipal budget it had just passed after 12 hours of contentious debate. To Nagin’s dismay, the council had unanimously rejected the property tax increase he’d proposed to counter a looming $24 million deficit. As he struggled to control his infamous temper, the embattled leader warned that the city, still struggling after Katrina, was headed for fiscal calamity. “2009 will be a challenge,” he said. “2010 will be a train wreck.” Ray Nagin is not the only one quaking in city hall. Go to nearly any American city and you’ll see the red ink bleeding onto the pavement ... ... For more information, please visit http://americancity.org/magazine/article/cities-in-crisis/.

Some nice press from a national newspaper in Canada ... It seems like Cleveland's "Rust Belt to Artist Belt" concept (http://www.cpacbiz.org/business/CreativeCompass.shtml) is really taking off, and Cleveland is increasingly being recognized as a regional leader in the idea of arts-based community development (as just one example, Northeast Shores ED Brian Friedman was invited to present info on the Waterloo Arts District to the Downtown Association of Ypsilantsi). This is just one of at least 3 high-quality learning networks that have popped up in the last couple years in the industrial Midwest (see also Great Lakes Urban Exchange and the Cleveland+Youngstown+Pittsburgh Regional Learning Network), and all are bringing some much-deserved positive buzz to the city. A 2nd national "From Rust Belt to Artist Belt" conference is scheduled to be taking place in Cleveland in late summer / early Fall, so stay tuned. Arts to the rescue? The Rust Belt looks to polish itself up with new industries James Cowan, National Post March 7th, 2009 The Canada Hair Cloth building was clearly handsome before it was derelict. Red brick with white-trimmed windows and scuffed wooden floors, the factory made fabric for train seats, parachute silk and men's suit linings over the course of its 123-year history. It closed in 2007 and, if one wanted an emblem for flagging manufacturing towns, the old factory would be a good choice ... ... For more information, please visit http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=1363175

With a nice interactive map: http://www.greencitybluelake.org/images/planning_projects/flats_map.htm. Future Flats: Green industrial play spaces Marc Lefkowitz Green City Blue Lake March 13, 2009 Converting old infrastructure—rusted freight rail lines and ill-used parking lots—into exciting recreational and green spaces is driving the latest re-invention of the Cleveland Flats. The city and a group of nonprofit organizations have been working on makeover plans that reflect new values—healthy living and a more nuanced approach to the icons of the past, which the Flats has in spades—making them part of a package of design elements for a city founded on the fires of industry ... ... More at http://www.gcbl.org/blog/marc-lefkowitz/future-flats-green-industrial-play-spaces

I'm doing an apartment search of my own and also ran across this: http://casemed.case.edu/admissions/docs/Relocating%20to%20Cleveland.WITH%20hyperlinks.pdf. This isn't the full guide I was talking about, which actually gave apartment descriptions and contact info, and there's not anything really groundbreaking there, and it's a bit dated, but does give some introductory info about off-campus housing, as well as some links of campus resources for students seeking housing around Case. And looking at it reminded me that Hessler Court might be another option.

Great news, although I too wonder why ground won't even be broken until 2011. I wonder what the estimated completion date is. Meanwhile, this reminds me: does anyone know the status of the walkway between Mather and GLSC? Last I had heard, the Ohio Cultural Facilities Commission had awarded GLSC $1 million for the walkway, but I don't have a sense at all of what the timetable is for that project.

It looks like our discussion of a fair value for the center continues to be timely ... Medical mart deal will be done this month, officials say Joe Guillen, Plain Dealer Reporter March 6, 2009 A deal to sell the Cleveland Convention Center to Cuyahoga County for the medical mart project should be completed by the end of the month, officials said on Friday. Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and County Commissioner Tim Hagan met for about 45 minutes at City Hall in the afternoon to open negotiations between the two sides ... ... For more information, please visit http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/03/medical_mart_deal_will_be_done.html

^^ In addition to that one and the planters, decorative brick, trash canisters, tree grates, etc., there is also another public art project in University Circle and one planned for East Cleveland. But I agree ... more=better.

I think CPA has some conceptual pictures up of these pieces: http://www.clevelandpublicart.org/projects/completed/euclid-corridor-transportation-project, but real-life pics would be much appreciated, too, if anyone feels up to it :)

I did my undergrad just north of IU, and I feel her pain. I believe the Nursing School is near the corner of Cornell and Circle, which would put it in close proximity to Little Italy. That would be my top recommendation. Don't have any specifics on rentals there, but I just saw a Craigslist posting on E. 123rd (I think), and it looked pretty reasonably priced. I would assume prices go up, though, in late summer, as students come back. Coventry and Shaker Square are good choices as well, although you may want to consider Cedar-Fairmount, too. It might be a little sleepier than Coventry, but it's still pretty vibrant, and it's more or less walkable to the nursing school still. Units over there tend to be huge, and the one I most recently heard about on Lennox was like $650. There are also several nondescript but relatively cheap apartments on Mayfield between Little Italy and Cedar Fairmount, and some in and around Overlook and Kenilworth, too. At least one my roommate was in med school, they distributed a relocation guide to the incoming class, although I think the listings leaned very heavily toward the corridor between Shaker Square and Van Aken/Lee. Still, might be worth inquiring to see if you could get a copy (or to see if the nursing school will furnish her anything like that). Best of luck! I think she'll find it a definite step up from central Indiana :)

Not questioning the role of the county in helping to maintain the property or that it is in many ways currently a fiscal liability for the city. But while its value as a convention center may indeed be zip, it is nonetheless a gigantic historic structure over a huge parcel of land in a strategically central and distinct part of downtown. Moreover, while the med mart/convention center is undoubtedly the easiest way to reactivate the center at present, it doesn't mean the building could not be a revenue generator in other ways, although granted, this would require a lot of foresight and resources the city might lack. Finally, the opportunity cost of not only foregoing potential future uses but perhaps more importantly SITE CONTROL to a parcel adjacent to City Hall seems to justify some compensation to the city. Or barring that, the county should at least do what MTS suggested above and enter into a long-term agreement to maintain the historic integrity of the building and the Mall Plan. Just my opinion.

Oh MayDay, I'm so sorry to hear that :( I would offer to put out some feelers for you, but I think our networks overlap pretty substantially. Still, let your UrbanOhio peeps know if there's anything we can do to help ... I like Peabody's suggestion! And yeah, a very, very nice set.

County That's a little alarming to me. If the city won't eventually regain ownership, then I understand a little better Jackson being wary about the site and talking about making sure the city gets a fair price. I wonder what the estimated payment to the city would be as a component of the overall estimate for the Mall site. Granted, this project would be great for the city, but I would hate to see us asked to sell a huge civic monument like that for pennies on the dollar.