8ShadesofGray

For what it's worth, the Chinatown sign is referencing Old Chinatown, a one-street corridor down Rockwell between East 21st and East 24th. Asiatown is the area bounded by St. Clair and Payne, East 30th to East 40th (sometimes with the residential blocks immediately to the south of Payne included in the mix). The two neighborhoods are rarely branded together ... They're divided by the highway, Rockwell doesn't cross the trench, they have different CDC representation (Chinatown is Campus District, Asiatown is a collaborative CDC effort but generally led by St. Clair Superior), they're in different city wards (Chinatown in 3, Asiatown in 8). So I don't think this is really a Chinatown versus Asiatown thing we're talking about. As for the Asiatown name, there was a deliberative planning process that involved many, many (MANY) meetings where there was a lot of discussion about whether it should be Chinatown, Asiatown, Asian Village, Near East Village, etc. At the end of the day, given a considerable Vietnamese and Korean population in the neighborhood, Chinatown was not the favored choice of residents and merchants. So regardless of whether we like the name, that's what the people invested in the neighborhood (or at least the couple hundred who showed up at planning meetings) decided. I've heard my neighborhood called Goodrich-Gannett. I've heard it called Payne-Sterling. The arts community tried branding it and the area across the trench as the QuARTer. Online maps typically have us listed as Josephatowa. I've heard people mislabel my area as downtown, and I've heard it mislabeled as Midtown. I for one am happy that Asiatown seems to be sticking, and that increasingly, it seems like people know where that is. And I'm happy that the CDC is working on some really stellar projects, not just in the Asiatown section but also further into St. Clair Superior. Stay tuned!

Anyone get a chance to see Zone Rec Center post-park improvement? Ribbon cutting was Saturday. Sounds really nice ... tennis courts, basketball courts, dog park, baseball diamonds, playground, new landscaping ...

I'll be really interested to see how they handle the ground level retail space. I'm not sure that 100 potential tenants above, or the mid-density of people in walking distance, will justify the mid- to high-end retail that was expected when this was a full three-block development of large buildings, lofts and townhomes. There's some great daytime population right around there, but it's also adjacent to the Galleria, which has a great deal of free space and soft tenancy, althought it's getting slowly better. At the same time, it looks pretty bad all boarded up like it is now ... That last sentence in the article is real intriguing ("With the litigation resolved, Lindner said Zaremba could tackle an apartment development on a parking lot just south of the townhouses, along Superior Avenue."). Is that just an extension of the townhome siteplan to the area fronting Superior but with a rental focus? Or a new type of building footprint for that spot? Or a completely different project on another parking lot (only one I can think of is the one next to Ambassador)? Interesting.

FWIW, there's a very good Next American City article on CDCs leading the charge on things that municipal government once did. The major focus is on Midtown Detroit, Inc., and how they were able to make a direct, aggressive and well-reasoned case to Whole Foods to test an inner-city market approach in Detroit ... Additional bonus is a big focus on the tremendous leaps and bounds UCI is making: http://americancity.org/forefront/view/welcome-to-your-new-government So in addition to the company itself looking for certain market demographics, city incentives, etc., it clearly helps to have local groups, either city or county government or community development / economic development organizations or private developers pushing for investment in particular target areas and creating a sense of momentum and positive trajectory that stretches beyond current demographics. Someone's got to make the compelling sell. Locally, I'd say there have been successful examples all over the place for investment that demographics don't justify ... UCI, OCI, Maron, etc. To relate this back to this thread, at the end of the day, you need either Steelyard developers aggressively pushing upper-scale retail into Phase 2, Tremont West doing that or the city or Team NEO or someone doing that. And that group needs to make a compelling case around current sales volume, demographics of surrounding neighborhoods, demographics of buyers, geographic pull, etc., as well as a convincing argument for how the center will change over time (no one wants to be the stand-alone tenant of its type, even in a relatively stable, successful retail area ... See Glazen's "Project Light Switch" idea for Waterloo).

Mad Man Alan Glazen, the son of a carpenter, built a successful ad agency pitching political campaigns and creativity. But in his second career, he's redirecting his manic energy into workingman bars, coffee shops and restaurants in the city's emerging neighborhoods — including an idea to flip the switch at a handful of spots on the same night in Collinwood. Rebecca Meiser, Cleveland Magazine August 2012 It is impossible to have a conversation with Alan Glazen outdoors in Ohio City without the ad-man-turned-neighborhood-developer stopping to wave at passersby, inquire about a homeless man or squeeze the shoulder of patrons. Glazen wouldn't have it any other way. Sitting around a cast-iron table on the patio outside ABC the Tavern with co-owners Linda Syrek and Randy Kelly, Glazen looks like the host of his own backyard barbecue. Tanned and fashionable in a navy polo and a pair of large, round, owl-like glasses, Glazen jokes with his partners, slapping them on the back and nudging them with his elbow as he tells story after story, stopping occasionally to nibble calamari ... ... More available at http://clevelandmagazine.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=E73ABD6180B44874871A91F6BA5C249C&nm=Article+Archives&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=1578600D80804596A222593669321019&tier=4&id=21864F9E06F5409BB8134A675633EF9B

St. Clair Superior (part of "the Quarter" and Asiatown overlays). Payne is the cut-off point between St. Clair Superior and Midtown.

To recap: $11 million wildly popular LEED-certified rec center (http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2012/01/collinwood_recreation_center_d.html) + $1 - 6 million project from Glazen and other entrepreneurs for 2 - 11 restaurants and entertainment venues + $5.5 million streetscape improvement to Waterloo Road, roughly the same scale and scope of Gordon Square's (http://www.noaca.org/waterlooroad.html) + $500,000 Artists in Residence program that helps artists get space in neighborhood and is providing $125,000 in funding for artist-led community projects (http://www.cultureforward.org/Our-Programs/Residence/Grants) + $500,000 Collinwood Rising program that addresses vacancy through the arts, including the formation of a new artist-inspired playground and arts incubator (http://blog.cleveland.com/architecture/2012/06/clevelands_collinwood_neighbor.html) + What could be considerable green infrastructure improvements along Lakeshore Boulevard (http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2011/10/regional_sewer_district_to_spe.html) + An increasing (though still very tentative) likelihood that the Metroparks could take over and make substantial improvements to the neighborhood's three (!) lakefront parks (http://www.cleveland.com/naymik/index.ssf/2012/07/ohio_makes_more_progress_on_cl.html) + Tons of other efforts by private parties (a new artist co-op on Waterloo, a new barbecue restaurant opening up across the street from the Beachland next month) and by the CDC (fully rehabbed houses for as little as $65,000 and moderate condition houses for $5,000, several community chalkboards, etc.) = ... What could be a dramatically different North Collinwood over the next few years.

^ The blue sections of paneling have also been getting added to the Chester-facing building between 21st and 22nd, and some of the wood framing is now going up in the second block.

According to my sources at grindr, there were also a fair number of gays involved in that madness.

Brussels has a modest but very cool little Comic Center on the history of Belgian comic art: http://www.comicscenter.net/en/home

Let's make it a Comic Art Hall of Fame, and we can add Calvin & Hobbes and Ziggy to the Superman / American Splendor mix :) Cleveland is also home to some true up-and-coming comic talent. Niki Smith comes to mind: http://niki-smith.com/

The application process for the 2013 Creative Workforce Fellowship is now underway. The program will award 20 $20,000 awards to craft, design, media and other visual artists (and then dance, literature, music and theatre in 2014). Through 2012, the program has distributed more than $1.6 million to 86 local artists, making it one of the largest publicly funded artist support programs in the country. Go Cleve! http://www.cultureforward.org/Our-Programs/Fellowship

The first Artists in Residence grants have been made ... a graphic designer distributing posters of children's activities throughout the neighborhood, music classes for young children, a vacant lot converted into a sculpture garden along Waterloo Road, a short documentary about everyday heroes of Collinwood, a community printing press that anyone can use after training and a pop-up fashion incubator for neighborhood high schoolers. Good stuff :) The next $45,000 in grants is now up for grabs! http://www.cultureforward.org/Our-Programs/Residence/Grants First round of Artists in Residence grants is announced by Mariel Behnke Collinwood Observer Six artists who live or work in North Shore Collinwood were awarded a total of $30,000 to support their community art projects through the Artists in Residence grant program. This program, part of a special two-year neighborhood arts initiative of Northeast Shores and the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture, aims to support artists in the community and involve residents in making the neighborhood a better place to live. It will award another $95,000 in two more rounds of applications between now and fall of 2013 ... ... More available at http://collinwoodobserver.com/read/2012/07/14/first-round-of-artists-in-residence-grants-is-announced

The first Artists in Residence grants have been made ... a graphic designer distributing posters of children's activities throughout the neighborhood, music classes for young children, a vacant lot converted into a sculpture garden along Waterloo Road, a short documentary about everyday heroes of Collinwood, a community printing press that anyone can use after training and a pop-up fashion incubator for neighborhood high schoolers. Good stuff :) The next $45,000 in grants is now up for grabs! http://www.cultureforward.org/Our-Programs/Residence/Grants First round of Artists in Residence grants is announced by Mariel Behnke Collinwood Observer Six artists who live or work in North Shore Collinwood were awarded a total of $30,000 to support their community art projects through the Artists in Residence grant program. This program, part of a special two-year neighborhood arts initiative of Northeast Shores and the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture, aims to support artists in the community and involve residents in making the neighborhood a better place to live. It will award another $95,000 in two more rounds of applications between now and fall of 2013 ... ... More available at http://collinwoodobserver.com/read/2012/07/14/first-round-of-artists-in-residence-grants-is-announced

"Collinwood Rising" program wins prestigious $500,000 grant from ArtPlace program of the National Endowment for the Arts Wednesday, June 13, 2012, 3:30 PM By Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer It was only nine months ago during a visit here that Rocco Landesman, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, threw down a challenge for Clevelanders to apply for a prestigious new ArtPlace grant. Today, Cleveland has one. The privately funded grant program, a collaboration among top federal agencies and 11 leading U.S. foundations, announced that the Northeast Shores Development Corp. in Collinwood has been awarded $500,000 to engage artists in community development ... ... More available at http://blog.cleveland.com/architecture/2012/06/clevelands_collinwood_neighbor.html

Just to cross-reference some recent postings in other threads that show the traction our community is gaining on the national funding level around this concept ... detroit shoreway nabs $50k nea placemaking grant Thursday, July 19, 2012 The National Endowment for the Arts announced its 2012 Our Town Grant Recipients, with $5 million going out to creative placemaking in 80 communities across the country. Detroit Shoreway Community Development Organization received $50,000. "The Detroit Shoreway neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio, is home to more than 14,300 residents. Revitalization efforts in the neighborhood focus around the Gordon Square Arts District, an emerging arts and entertainment destination" ... ... More available at http://freshwatercleveland.com/inthenews/placemakinggrant071912.aspx

That's awesome! These are super competitive grants that require a joint proposal from a municipality and a community organization. Congrats to Detroit Shoreway and the city! Between this and the $500,000 ArtPlace grant in Collinwood (http://blog.cleveland.com/architecture/2012/06/clevelands_collinwood_neighbor.html), Cleveland's going gangbuster with the national arts-based community development dollars :)

^ Heart.

It was part of a show SPACES put on that just ended a few days ago ... ... SPACES will become the unofficial visitors center for Cleveland—a city with its own unique charms—in its exhibition The Cleveland Convention and Visitors Bureau (May 11 – July 13, 2012). This project seeks to engage the idea of tourism through the lens of a city that is not a traditional tourist destination. Participating artists engage Cleveland as a subject and medium in both critical and laudatory way—show that the city is singular and generic, foreign and familiar, and how that plays into notions of nostalgia, pilgrimage, place, history, community, displacement, commerce, and attraction. The front gallery of SPACES will be converted into an ad hoc visitors center complete with postcards, brochures, a tea room and a friendly staff to guide visitors through the exhibition and the city ... http://www.spacesgallery.org/project/the-cleveland-convention-and-visitors-bureau

^ Agreed. This could be such a great tool for getting more people in the pipeline for retail space ... ShopBox to pop up to permanent space ... Kind of the retail equivalent of a food truck. And how cool that this was created by a Chilean designer doing a residency in Cleveland and reusing local discard materials to fashion these? One of those quintessentially Cleveland reimagination projects :)

How cool! Anyone know if this is on site yet? The BookBox is a mobile unit of Cleveland Public Library (CPL) that seeks to connect with users in an upredictable location. BookBox is an evolution of the ShopBox which was originally designed by Cristian Schmittan, an architect from Santiago, Chile who spent six months in Cleveland developing his idea for a changeable, portable retail unit. CPL saw the ShopBox concept as a way to engage in community outreach in a new way and the idea of a kiosk that provided reading materials was one that kept surfacing during the redevelopment of Market Square Park. Knowing that the park could be a viable home for a mobile unit, the BookBox idea was born. The Bookbox will arrive in Market Square Park on July 12th and make its home in the Southwest corner. Before the official opening, LAND studio, the project architect, and CPL will work on and install a series of exterior graphics to ensure that the BookBox is a visual amenity to the neighborhood and the park even when it is not open for service. CPL will provide reading materials, access to electronic books, and programming in the park. The BookBox will be staffed on Saturday’s during the summer and fall. Depending on success, the BookBox hours could increase to be open when the West Side Market is open. It is also possible the BookBox will have staff on site on Friday and Saturday nights to provide an additional retail outlet when the neighborhood is busiest. The library will offer free wireless during BookBox hours so that the digital collection can be accessed. http://www.land-studio.org/our-work/bookbox

^ Are these the glaciers? I'm trying to remember what is going at the W. 76th site.

Opening exhibit is September 8th. That will be such a great space to have right there!

This was nice, balanced coverage, so hard to do with crime stories. Love this quote from a victim of one of the thefts: "Let me make it clear that I love Shaker Square," Soltis said. "I thought it was great as a kid, and I love the way the Coral Co. has done a great job in developing the square. "When something happens like this, you feel violated. I'll come back to Shaker Square, but security needs beefing up here. A lot of people told us petty thefts have been happening here."

True ... Altough the rear is now about 20 feet from the new SASA restaurant :)