8ShadesofGray

^ And particularly in the northern section of Detroit Shoreway, the neighborhood is posed to have an AMAZING buzz over the next few years, what with the three new/renovated art spaces, further development in Battery Park, infrastructure improvements along Detroit and (hopefully) the shoreway to boulevard conversion. With a tightening local housing market, we would be wise to put a LOT more investment into demand-side marketing of city neighborhoods to transplants. Tours like the one Map Boy did for PR Newswire and the ones Blinker does through Emerging Cleveland have the potential to steer these consumers at a relative low cost. And I think neighborhoods like Detroit Shoreway and Ohio City would be particularly poised for people moving in (hopefully, a portion of them would be interested in the type of rehab challenges you're describing).

Depends on what you mean by cheap. Several local artists sell poster-quality art in the $15-$25 range. You can get some original pieces for as little as $75. I've seen a lot of stuff pretty inexpensive in both Tremont and along the Superior corridor. Many local coffee shops showcase pretty cheap but cool stuff -Artefino and Phoenix in the Superior corridor, and Lucky's in Tremont, come to mind.

^ Good points. I guess my overarching logistical question is: If Tower City lacks the security forces to properly respond to conduct codes, which would likely only require monitoring a portion of teenagers coming through the Center, how will they have the capacity to enforce a ban, which will require the same security force to monitor the ENTIRE population of teenagers (as well as some who look like teenagers but aren't)? The only advantage I can see in that strategy is it tries to preempt negative behavior before it happens. But look how well preemptive strikes worked out for us in Iraq ... I like your idea about donating to after school programming. I would be a huge fan of seeing such programming occurring in one of the vacant storefronts in Tower City to expose the same workforce that sees the youth as troublemakers to young people engaged in some positive activities.

The crime rate in Cleveland year-to-date is considerably lower across all categories in 2007 than during the same time period in 2006, with the exception of homicides (which is slightly up). Is crime a problem? Yes. Is crime on the rise? No. I really wish the media would do a little more fact-finding, particularly someone as esteemed and with as wide a reach as the BBC.

Whoa! Sloppy journalism alert! Miller speculates that others might not agree with Wright-Alley, someone who had her fair share of concerns about the project but is now an enthusiastic supporter ... but then he offers no examples of business owners who DO disagree. So ... it's alright to posit that business owners aren't excited about the MAJOR infrastructure improvements along the corridor, but then provide no examples? I certainly hope an editor cut a quote or something.

Go check out the comments to this story on the PD website and tell me it's not a racial thing ... Some of the commons have thinly veiled racial undertones ... and some are just blatantly racist. Just as I believe a small number of teenagers create problems, I believe a small portion of Cleveland's population do express racial overtones regarding this issue. There are racial issues that permeate greater Cleveland. Is this the best platform for a frank discussion about race relations? Maybe not. But it is at least A platform. And it's something to which teenagers can directly relate. I still applaud their effort. I'm not going to harp on it ad nauseum, but Tower City's problems have stemmed out of 20 years of retail trends, demographic shifts and conservative management choices. Turning the center into a police state (where you can't be inside the building if you're under a certain age and no one can loiter outside the building after a certain hour) is not going to address the core issues of how to successfully run a downtown mall.

Yes. I worked in Tower City for a year or so, went to the gym there for about three years, road the Rapid every weekday for about four years and shopped there pretty frequently. Maybe I just lucked out, but I never had a bad experience with any teenager over that period of four years (with the exception of St. Patrick's Day, when the Rapid would be clogged with drunk and smoking east side Catholic School kids ... ugh). I haven't been there nearly as frequently since I moved from Shaker Square 1.5 years ago, so it may have gotten markedly worse after that. But my first-hand experience suggested that some (and I do mean some) kids were rowdy. That was all I ever saw. The problem is that this bars an entire group of people from the complex for the actions of a few. The fuller article, for instance, talks about a teenager who was removed from the Caribou coffee area while reading and drinking coffee. This kid was being quiet AND he was a paying customer. To me, that just seems overbearing. But I know other people have had different experiences and have different opinions.

While it's not easy per se, it is possible. A really great resource is NEOCANDO (http://neocando.case.edu/cando/index.jsp). Once you know a parcel number or a census tract, you can find a full range of data about neighborhood and building indicators. And while it's not exactly user-friendly, REDIS (http://www.clevelandplussites.com/) is another great tool; you can put in a particular address and find a plethora of demographic, consumer expenditure and business/workforce data within a certain number of miles or minutes drive-time. A while back I used this data to identify census tracts in the city where single-family and two-family homes were relatively cheap, crime relatively low, and relatively large percentages of residents were walking or using public transportation to get to work. Six census tracts (the western portion of Tremont, the blocks south of Shaker Square in the E. 120s and four tracts in greater University Circle) were in the top half of census tracts for all of these categories. So you can do the research ... it's just time-consuming and still provides only a limited picture of how the market of tomorrow is going to respond to positive indicators of today.

Last I saw, they were still working on the foundations.

The St. Clair building is flying up ... from the webcam, it looks like they're actually just about finished with the fifth floor (the one that looks about halfway-complete in Mayday's most recent pic)! Meanwhile, several of the panels on the east and west sides of the first set of townhomes are now in color (green and I think brown or maybe orange).

Our rock and roll karaoke party. The costumes were crazy-good. Here's Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks and Prince, with Vogue-era Madonna karaoke-ing in the background. We also had two other Madonnas (all from different eras), Michael and Janet Jackson, Ozzy Osbourne, Tina Turner, Little Richard, Billie Joe Armstrong, Paul Stanley, Melissa Etheridge, Bjork, Little Richard, etc., etc. We closed the evening out with everyone on stage for an all-star rendition of "We Are the World".

Only until we get the Amish Rapid Line up and running :wink:

Granted, Tower City has a right to set its own operational standards, and granted, this probably isn't a gigantic civil rights issue, but I would imagine that only a small portion of students in Tower City actually create any disturbance of note or commit any petty crimes. So, if the decision to ban teenagers from the center is based primarily on the actions of a relatively small sub-group of the banned demographic, and if an unspoken rationale is that large groups of teenagers (many of whom are African American), make customers uncomfortable (many of whom are middle-class, white suburbanites), then more power to them for calling the issue out. And even if we don't agree with the stance of the group, I'm personally excited to see everyday people, particularly any teenagers engaged in this effort, participating in civic affairs. Frankly, I wish more people would articulate issues that are important to them, even if they seem silly to others.

Just as a clarification, and sorry this is off topic, but Doug Perkowski was working on this building, not Dave Perkowski. Dave Perkowski is best known for Tower Press and Hyacinth Lofts and is currently working on the Bloch Building @ Superior & 24th-ish. His brother Doug was apparently the one working on this building and is best known for the Federal Knitting Mills building at Detroit & W. 28thish.

It appears a pocket gym also upped in the Superior corridor (at probably E. 25th-ish) ... although it might be an equipment store. I'll look at it more closely the next time I'm by.

Granted. But I don't think that excuses degrading people. If anything, I would think that just increase chances that you'll end up in some kind of altercation. More importantly, it's just really callous behavior.

It's one thing to withhold money from people b/c you think they could find employment or because you think giving the money to a panhandler is not getting funds to the truly needy. I can't fault forumers who take this perspective. But to belittle or humiliate people because of their educational or economic attainment is pretty callous. Personal initiative obviously plays a big role in how people's lives turn out, but environment (poorly funded school systems, familial abuse, exposure to crime, racism, limited opportunities for proper nutrition ... any number of factors) also contributes heavily. That kind of treatment of a fellow human being, no matter how annoying you find their plea, is unnecessarily degrading and I think reflects VERY poorly on you.

That's awesome. From my understanding, this is an actual article ... not an insert. I also spoke to a certain unnamed source who owns one of the featured clubs. They noted that Spin was in taking pictures of the venue and spent a lot of time learning about the intricacies of the facility's history, etc. Conversely, according to this source, the PD had reviewed approximately 3 shows at the venue in the last 6 years. Kinda crazy.

I almost always do. I'm, how you say, a mark. Cleveland would do well to establish "homeless meters", where you could donate small change to anti-homeless efforts. It seems like there was some discussion of this at some point. While that's very nice, that guy's not homeless, a panhandler or a bum ... he's a street performer. You're donating to an artist, or paying for a service, depending on how you look at it. But I don't think you should equate that to fighting poverty. Even if unconventional, that guy is a talented musician, and that's how he's making a living.

Doll-Housing Crisis Set To Worsen, Mean Older Brother Says October 23, 2007 | Issue 43•43 DAYTON, OH—According to 5-year-old Janie Wright's mean older brother, Dave, 8, if unsuitable borrowers Ken and Barbie continue to default on their high-risk subprime mortgages, it could spell the worst doll-housing crisis to hit the plastic couple since someone threw their dream home's roof out a window. For more info, click link http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/doll_housing_crisis_set_to

I was impressed with the riverwalk itself, as well as the new public art installation on the nearby green (can't remember the name). But yeah, the retail did seem a little sparse ... it looked like the restaurants were the only ones doing very good business. Not to be critical, but the atmosphere seemed very mall-like to me.

Some big news! 44,000 ft. tenant is pretty gigantic ... a shame it's in the CBD, though.

The Riverfront in Ft. Lauderdale is nice, but I get the sense that this will be denser, and in some areas, taller. The Riverfront also seems, as Florida Guy pointed out, to be much more single-use than this project, and the design is pretty consistent throughout, whereas Wolstein's project is supposed to have a range of building types (and possibly a range of architects) to make it look more like a natural neighborhood and less like a single "project" (even though it is). Can anyone tell me if there are any plans for inter-connectivity to the buildings to the south of this project? I'm sure there's some thought about this, but I'm not in the know, and the renderings always seem to focus tightly on the boundaries of the project. Without connectivity, to the rest of the bank to the south, and up the hill to the Warehouse District, it just seems a bit isolated to me.

IIRC, WalMart was also choosing Cleveland as a city where they were planning to do some considerable community outreach/funding efforts. I'm sure there's info earlier in this thread about it ...

^ Agreed. As a functional question, though, I wonder how this will affect natural light in the factory classrooms adjacent to the wall of the new center.