8ShadesofGray

Travel Cleveland has a good list of Cleveland "bests": http://www.travelcleveland.com/About_Cleveland/Quality_of_Life/rankings. Among them, we are a Top 10 Summer Vacation Destination, according to msn.com, a Top 10 City for Walking, according to the American Podiatric Medical Association (then why the hell aren't we walking?!), and the 4th best beer nationwide, according to American Heritage.

Yep. But it's showing up in tourist-oriented websites all over the place, thanks to their concerted efforts. Here's another: http://www.milwaukee.org/. I'm all about a city branding thread ... Will finally give me a chance to design a spec logo for Cleveland. :-D

Great find, Mister Good Day! I really think this is a step in the right direction; hopefully, this taskforce will have some teeth and actually address alternative energy issues. Anyone know who all is serving on it? In a semi-related note, I recently attended a city branding session at a national arts conference. One of the panel participants presented on how Milwaukee civic leaders had worked to establish a city logo. The group ultimately chose the rather striking wings on top of the Milwaukee Museum of Art. They also worked to make sure that those wings showed up all over the damn place: on prominent websites, in national ad campaigns (in the background of an Accura ad, for example), and in the communications of major players like their CVB. It got me thinking about what Cleveland's single identifier would be; I can't help but think that the wind turbine, given its novelty in an urban setting, simple design and its positive "green" spin would be the best choice. I certainly think it would be in line with efforts to promote Cleveland's attention toward a new economy. Dunno ... think I just have a little graphic design fever this morning.

Yeah, I was feeling lazy that day. Next time, I'll do 11 shades next time and it'll even out.

Me.

As a recent emigrant from the Square, it makes me a little sad. It is such a unique space, and I hate to see it go to CVS to be honest. And frankly, it wasn't like I was walking a mile to another drug store; it was right around the freaking corner! I've been happy to see the Square filling in a little, but I'm disappointed that it's been at heavy expense to the Van Aken plaza. Among other tenants, Coral has picked up CVS, a drycleaner and a grocery store; meanwhile, Van Aken Plaza is home to ... a CVS, drycleaner and grocery store (not that I'm comparing Dave's and Market on the Square ... Dave's is markedly better). I guess I just wish there was some way to recruit and retain tenants on a larger scale between the two developments.

I'm totally baffled. It looks a little like the edge of one of the surface lots in Little Italy, just south of Algebra Tea House. But that alleyway would be out of place :( Perhaps I just have coffee/tea houses on the mind, but might it be the alley that runs parallel to Juniper off of Ford?

Think again, then. I live in the east 30s, just off of St. Clair; my neighborhood is hardly a stranger to the urban poor. My "cushy suburb" lies not too far away from the largest homeless shelters in the region. The results of Section 8 housing depend on how well it is carried out. http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/familydevelopment/components/7565_09.html. And unless it's done horribly, I still think it's remarkably better than concentrating poor people into slums. If you feel inclined to run from neighborhood to neighborhood to avoid the urban poor, that's your business. All I'm saying is that we shouldn't start making claims that Section 8 residents are the problem unless we have more than anectdotes to back those claims up. Because if we're using anectdotes, I think the ones presented in Myth of the Welfare Queen (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684840065/sr=8-1/qid=1154959468/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-4680174-2508927?ie=UTF8) and Rachel and Her Children (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0449903397/sr=8-1/qid=1154959381/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-4680174-2508927?ie=UTF8) are a lot more accurate and a lot more compelling.

And note that they said "in the world" as well. There are a lot of peninsulas, isthmuses (isthmi?), islands and island chains out there! Venice comes to mind.

Just ran across our profile in Wikitravel: http://wikitravel.org/en/Cleveland. As always, I'm a little cautious about believing anything from the Wiki-family (the website, for instance, announces that "shoppers have been flocking to Northeast Ohio since the development of several lifestyle centers have attracted upscale retailers" ... ugh). But if the stats are true, here are some more great things about our city ... for those of you who are still interested in documenting Cleveland amenities ... ahem :-) - Most golf courses per capita in the country - Ranked 2nd (of more than 350 metro areas) in recreational options by Places Rated Almanac - 5th in nation, ratio of major cultural resources per million residents - Okay, I have a real hard time believing this one, but if anyone can verify, I'm going to start selling the shit out of it ... more miles of shoreline than any city in the world. Now that I've shared the nice things they shared about us, here's what almost made me croak: East Side Driving Tip: A good rule of thumb is - once an East Side suburban "Road" becomes an Inner City "Avenue", turn around and get directions to Euclid, Chester or Carnegie Avenues. Example: Cedar Road in the East Side Suburbs (where it becomes the "Fashion District") is a really nice corridor, but once it becomes Cedar Avenue in the City of Cleveland proper, you should pick one of the above mentioned roads that run parallel to its north. Similarly, Chagrin Boulevard (which connects the upscale communities of Shaker Heights, Beachwood (including Cleveland's "Restaurant Row" and the bulk of the East Side office market}, Pepper Pike, Orange Village, Moreland Hills, Hunting Valley and Chagrin Falls) turns into Kinsman Road (an "underground pharmaceutical" neighborhood) once crossing into the City of Cleveland proper. I guess for their target audience, this kind of advice makes sense. But for someone who lives adjacent to one of those "Inner City 'Avenue's" (and not one of the safe three listed), I'm frankly a little offended.

It continues to shock me how picturesque and how underutilized the banks of the river remain. I know CMHA is working on their innovative riverfront park plan, but after 210 years, a riverfront park is still innovative? Are we nuts? We should be swamped with riverfront parks, peppered with mixed use developments! And how about a nice houseboat-based development? http://www.houseboatmagazine.com/?pageID=3. Sorry, I get a little caught up.

I've just never understood why really pretty lipstick lesbians go for what are sometimes referred to as the "bulldogs". I'm a fan of love wherever you find it, but it's always shocking how different gay men and gay women are. Oh well ... we still get along okay, right?

Blasphemy corrected, David. As a kid who grew up on the Reds (I suppose a blasphemy in and of itself for someone who subsequently moved to Cleveland), my parents would be mortified. mrnyc, those numbers are also from our most trusted friend Wikipedia. And according to Wikipedia, Lakewood is indeed very dense - 3,940.7/km2 - the "most densely populated city between New York and Chicago." Sorry to have gotten off topic. Sometimes my mind moves all over the place before I arrive at my point. I suppose I was suggesting that the variables are interconnected - that density of buildings in a downtown area has important implications for redevelopment opportunities, particularly given the 3 Cs' increased focuses on building vibrant residential sections in their downtowns. Furthermore, while having a density of buildings in a downtown area can be a great asset, cities that lack a corresponding density of people are those that feel like ghost towns. Granted, I've oversimplified things a lot: Why stop at city limits? Given Ohio's penchant for sprawl, why not county-level or MSA? What about daytime population v. residential (evening) population? Is there really a correlation between total city population density and downtown population density? Well, what can I say - I'm too lazy to seriously contemplate all that stuff. And now I'm going to try and let the thread get back on its original course. And stop misspelling Cincinnati.

Really? I thought the bed tax was completely tapped out. The info that I had heard, prior to the "recess" of the taskforce, was that the commissioners were contemplating a sales tax hike to pay for the convention center. The commissioners still have the ability to raise sales tax by 0.5 cents (per the General Assembly) without a popular vote. My understanding was that they were weighing whether 0.25 cents or 0.5 cents was a better option and were also assembling a number of add-ons (economic development, scholarships, etc.) to make the increase more palatable.

Just as a reference regarding Cleveland, our city's current density is a little less than 2,400/km2. If we had retained our peak population, our density would compare with cities like Montreal (4,327), Boston (4,640) and Chicago (4,923). That being said, we're still comparable to Seattle (2,626) and St. Louis (2,225) and blow Houston (1,302) and Atlanta (1,221) out of the water. FYI, Cincinnati stands at 1,498/km2. Granted, population density does not at all equate to building density in CBDs, but I thought the digression was worthwhile. :-D

I did a quick rundown of the list (so please forgive me if I've made any omissions/outright errors). Here's the lead cities, with Cincy taking the #2 spot in the nation. Granted, some of the cities on the list may be satellites of metropolitan centers, but at least on the surface, this looks like very exciting news for Cincy. Houston, TX (6) Cincinnati, OH (3) Amityville, NY (2) Dallas, TX (2) Denver, CO (2) San Diego, CA (2) San Jose, CA (2) St. Louis, MO (2) Sunnyvale, CA (2)

Oops! As a native Michigander, I should definitely be offended at my own omission. Michigan (0)

While I don't favor an isolated big-box convention center, I don't think a CC has to be a de facto "life blocking monster". I recently attended a convention at Milwaukee's Midwest Airline Center (http://www.midwestexpresscenter.com/) and was pretty impressed with how it was interwoven into the surrounding urban fabric. And despite the fact that the convention center was connected to a number of hotels via skyways, large crowds of conventioneers did in fact venture outside.

Congrats to Ohio at large ... With 4 companies in the top 100, Ohio leads the Midwest: Ohio (4) Minnesota (3) Missouri (3) Illinois (2) Kentucky (1) North Dakota (1) South Dakota (1) Indiana (0) Iowa (0) Kansas (0) Nebraska (0) Wisconsin (0)

Regarding construction of new housing, central cities are often leading their suburban counterparts. For many years now, Cleveland has led all other municipalities in Cuyahoga County in terms of new housing units developed. So individuals can enjoy the amenities of urban living and the benefits of new housing stock simultaneously (although having historical housing stock, including century homes, should not be discounted as a community asset). Perhaps I'm being a bit of a Pollyanna, but it seems to me that the tide is changing back toward urban living. It might just be the crowd I run with, but the fellow Gen X'ers I know would not even CONSIDER living in the burbs; most of my friends choose to locate either within the central city or at the very least in the first-tier suburbs. I think that growing up in the suburbs, if anything, has propelled our generation TOWARD urban living; we recognize that the dream life espoused by our grandparents and parents was not born out in suburbia. I grew up in a exurban/rural community, and I can say firsthand that young adults are not inclined to stay around, if they can at all help it. I think that the big box retail, car-oriented, cookie cutter molds are starting to look less and less appealing to the X'ers and Y'ers; I'd look to see the big suburban exodus back to the cities to occur in the next 10 years or so (while current young adults form a fairly small demographic population, a second "boom" generation is just around the corner from reaching adulthood).

I'm really surprised that people are operating under the assumption that Section 8 housing increases incidences of crime and decreases housing value. I'm afraid I won't believe that until I see some hard data associated with it. My intuition tells me that Section 8 actually lowers incidences of crime because a) theft and break-ins are associated with financial hardship; subsidized housing reduces the financial hardship associated with housing needs and b) the program decentralizes poverty. Instead of ghetto-izing the poor, it decentralized the economically disadvantaged, moving those who otherwise could not afford it to raise their families in safer, more economically integrated neighborhoods. I think our country's fear of the urban poor really prevents us from achieving the full potential of our cities. Again, I don't have any hard data to back up my thoughts on the topic, but apparently, neither does anyone else in this thread. I would note that while I wish more municipalities would share in providing subsidized housing, participants in the Section 8 program often do not own cars. Plopping families down in Pepper Pike only works if you either ensure job opportunities/workforce training close to home or organize a commuting program. As for Old Brooklyn, it is a nice, stable neighborhood. Nothing too flashy, IMHO, but a nice neighborhood nonetheless. The major community development groups have started branding the neighborhood in association with the zoo, an obviously major asset for the area. I am in the neighborhood a lot and have been struck recently by the plethora of for-sale signs popping up. This might just be because we've hit the summer season, but it does seem like there is considerably more turnover this year than last.

Everyone should check out Strapped (http://www.demos.org/pub663.cfm), a great book about the dire financial situation facing 20- and 30-somethings today. Author Tamara Draut did a forum at Levin College earlier this year. Despite being a researcher and author for a prominent and highly visible think tank, she shared that as a NYC resident, she did not think she'd EVER be in a financial position to buy a home. When you compare that to a market like Cleveland, where excellent housing stock in trendy neighborhoods can be had around the $100K mark, I think that is an incredible selling point for the young professional crowd.

Here's the Euclid Corridor public art master plan: http://www.clevelandpublicart.org/ECTPmaster.pdf. This is a sample of public art that could be installed; if all of the projects would be carried out, they would almost certainly exceed the 1% budget allocation. I spoke to someone associated with the E. 55th project several months back and was told that they are still planning on an installation at the bridge but that it was taking much longer than anticipated. Meanwhile, the first big 1% project is slated to take place at four sites along Superior, in association with the Superior resurfacing that took place a while back. And a public art installation will also be installed later this year at the wind turbine site.

I'm apparently having a difficult time expressing myself in this thread. I love the Malls. As for the Group Plan buildings, I think they're beautiful but not exactly welcoming (I think Jane Jacobs has my back on this one). For the record, I am not for demolishing, reconfigurating, incinerating, obstructing or otherwise lessening the value of this corridor. I just think that a) some intersparsed retail in the area (significant improvements at 6th and St. Clair, redevelopment between Franz Pastorius and Ontario) would help to bring additional attention to this lovely neighborhood and b) that while it is beautiful and hope individuals (including visitors and conventioneers), get to see it and partake in movies or bocce or whatever their hearts desire), it is not as convenient a location as the homebase for conventions. Live long and prosper Malls A through C ... just not as a Convention Center.

Granted, it's a five-minute walk, but if I attend a convention in Cleveland during the late fall or early spring (or, God forbid for all those poor Sun Belters, winter), I think the average conventioneer would like to ride escalators up to their room, rather than dragging wheeled luggage through Public Square and then into the gusts that rip through the malls. Or grab a cab for a four-block trip. Believe me, I'm all for giving people the opportunity to explore the city, but I still think that a convention site should not only be picturesque but should also afford as much convenience and comfort to visitors as possible.