8ShadesofGray

This is one of Dave Perkowski's buildings, like the Bloch Building (http://www.tremontlofts.com/blochbuilding/) and Tower Press (http://www.towerpress.com/). He's a really well-reputed developer that does a good job polishing up old industrial buildings. He's leveraged HUD funding effectively to provide low-income rental for artists in some of his buildings, who then tend to be a magnet for higher-income market-rate renters. Each of the buildings have a bit of a theme ... Bloch is "creative commercial" space, Tower Press is visual arts live/work and Hyacinth is media/film live-work.

^^^^ I'd love to see the mid-section get filled in. I think the other solution would be to extend the townhomes down the side streets and then street-fronting along Payne (or a second set of brick facades along Payne. Even with surface parking in the middle, it would at least be lower visibility in a "courtyard" format.

I believe Famicos focuses exclusively on affordable.

I don't want to oversell them. No one's going to mistake this for Uptown :) But nonetheless, I think the roofline series of windows, the french door "balconies" and the wood-esque siding makes it a lot more interesting than it could have been. With the right kind of landscaping, these could actually be pretty nice. Regardless, I think they do look MUCH better than the GERD-inducing rendering we were up in arms over. I've also got to credit CSU for placing them adjacent to the street ... Nice move by a campus that has historically favored setbacks (30 feet setbacks 20 years ago, down to five today :) ).

Okay, this is probably going to be the weirdest thing I've ever said on here, but I actually REALLY like the siding they chose ... maybe even more than the brick they chose :o It has this variable brown and green tint that makes it look more or less like stained wood. I think it looks pretty sharp, honestly, and is about 80 times less obnoxious than the siding used for Euclid Commons. I think these townhouses are shaping up to look far more urban than the rendering suggested ... These could have been sooooooo much worse. At this point, I'm much more troubled by a site plan that still has a high surface parking to building ratio than I am by the aesthetic appeal of the buildings.

The guys that were on the scaffolding a week or so ago were doing something that looked like welding on a number of different levels of the building (sorry, building construction is unfortunately not my gay superpower). It definitely seems like this is about to start in earnest.

Yeah, although 11 and 13 are looking pretty messed up too ...

^ Corner Alley

Not sure if this has been mentioned anywhere else or not ... Sorry if so. Yesterday was the Neighborhood Solutions Summit, an all-day forum for people working on neighborhood revitalization in Cleveland. The premise of the day was exploring how we redefine the community development model for the next 10 years, with a lot of emphasis on whether CDCs start to focus more holistically on issues like health outcomes, education, wealth-building, workforce development, etc., instead of so heavily on residential real estate development. If some of the stuff that's being explored right now gets implemented, this could be a HUGE shift in neighborhood development citywide (maybe new thread-worthy :)). Big philosophical questions are going to be getting answered in the next few months ... Do CDCs work on new housing construction? What's the balance between rehab subsidy and demo? What role do councilpeople play in deciding where federal community development funds get distributed? How can the CDCs react best to an expected severe cut in state and federal aid? Do we focus our community development dollars in our strongest neighborhoods or our weakest neighborhoods or a mix? Which CDCs are going to merge (it sounds like the industry is pre-supposing that mergers definitely WILL be happening)? The way this discussion is being framed, this is revisiting almost every element of the CDC model that's been used in the city with little change over 30 years, and there are very few things that aren't on the table in terms of changing that model. Big. Time. Background research that shows how big these changes might be ... ... A very candid assessment of Neighborhood Progress, Inc., and how their model might change: http://www.npi-cle.org/files/2012/05/Neighborhood-Progress-Jan-2012-Org-Assessment.pdf ... A Levin College assessment of how the field might need to change somewhat dramatically: http://www.npi-cle.org/files/2012/05/CSU-Re-Thinking-the-Future.pdf ... An NPI assessment of how CDCs might play a bigger role in addressing poverty: http://www.npi-cle.org/files/2012/05/Integrating-CD-and-Poverty-Reduction1.pdf

Don't disagree. But it's also not all that complicated to amend zoning to reflect changing priorities around how we encourage particular types of development. As we see more and more people seeking variances to make their developments more "urban", it seems like moving that 2-3 week delay onto developers who want more suburban stock, instead of creating a barrier (however small) for people like Ari Maron, might be worthwhile :)

It looks like that earlier sign was a just a vinyl version of the new raised sign ... Maybe because that one wasn't going to be ready for opening?

That almost made me cry. Haha.

I don't believe this is a pissing match, I am not familiar with the boundaries of Downtown Cinci, so I was asking because in other reports they have stated their population around 5k, now its 13k. Atleast this estimate gives boundaries and breaks down the CBD and the adjoining downtown neighborhoods. Based on some comments this number may have caught some cinci folks off guard. Look at page 11 -- ColDayMan added the Census Tracts up and got a figure above 13,000. Really? As of page 10, his figure for downtown Cincy was 5,657 ... He included OTR after the fact as a courtesy ... So not surprising where the 13,000 comes from but surprising that OTR is being included :) Regardless of what each city's respective borders are, I'm actually more interested that civic leaders in Cincy tend to go with a population total that generously extends population estimates beyond traditional CBD boundaries to include OTR, while in Cleveland, our civic leaders tend to undercount our downtown population below what the Census shows for our traditional CBD. Two very different approaches, and I like Cincy's better :D In Cleveland, it seems like we've always got some advocacy for cutting the West Flats, the Campus District or the prison population. For all of the 3 Cs, I'd argue that it's less important where we count but that we count in the same places in 2020 that we're counting now that we counted in 2010.

Although it's customary to put something inside of planters ... they look a little barren without plants in them :)

Am I totally making it up? I thought a drug store was in the works for the north side of Uptown at some point?

I think the point is that the default policy, for a developer who doesn't care to prepare a variance request, is to develop traditional stand-alone one- and two-family homes set back from the street, with side yards and front yards and back yards and dedicated space to parking. If someone wants to deviate from that formula, they have to make a concerted effort to make a case why. While this might make sense in some neighborhoods, it seems puzzling for places with high demand and proximity to rail. And it seems outright stupefying that developers have to petition for variances to make their properties front the sidewalk or downsize parking downtown or in University Circle. In areas where the private market is dictating more dense development, default zoning should favor dense development. Let the developer who wants a setback or big yards or tons of garage parking be the ones that have to take the time to seek a variance.

Developers are throwing around the $2/sf price tag as a key breaking point for new construction residential in downtown Cleveland, but I'm not sure I totally buy that. If I have my numbers right, Uptown is an estimated $44,500,000 for 102 units (plus retail), which breaks down to $436,275 per unit (which are all 1- and 2-bedrooms). But CSU is estimating that the Campus District development will cost $50,000,000 for 300 units (plus more modest retail space), which breaks down to $166,667 per unit (some of which are 3- and 4-bedrooms, with 3 to 4 bathrooms, which probably means bigger floor plans per avg. unit). Neither project, to the best of my knowledge, had to deal with acquisition cost for land. Unless I'm totally misremembering/misinterpreting the numbers, that seems to indicate that $2/sf might be a breaking point ... for new construction that looks like Uptown. But if Campus Village is really getting constructed at about 40% the per unit cost of Uptown, that seems to indicate that it is indeed possible to be doing new construction in 3C downtowns, provided that you have access to free buildable land and have a product with more modest construction and finishes. I'm all about the quality that Uptown's offering and that places like Flats East Bank is proposing, but given the staggering rental demand, we should also be throwing up a Campus Village every year! Come on City of Cleveland parking lots! :)

At the Census Tract level, it would be hard to pick up little extra sections to downtown ... My Census Tract, for instance, runs from E. 30 to E. 55, so it's not like you can pick up a couple extra blocks around Tri-C without picking up a lot of Central, too. Flats West Bank is a pretty small tract that doesn't pick up any Ohio City areas (but does pick up CMHA's Lakeview properties), and it's typically included in downtown numbers.

11,693 Downtown Tracts + 3,254 Tract 103602 (Ohio City Northeast) + 1,143 Tract 1042 (Tremont North) + 1,873 Tract 109301 (Central Northwest) + 4,393 Tract 108701 (Prospect Corridor) + 1,647 Tract 108301 (Asiatown South) + 1,354 Tract 108201 (Asiatown North) _______ 25,357 These are just the tracts of downtown plus tracts that are directly adjacent. It leaves out several Ohio City tracts, a couple Tremont tracts and an Asiatown tract. Still, it's picking up some population all the way to East 55th ... It's a real stretch to think of this as being downtown ... Or a comparison to downtown Cincy + OTR, which is what I think we're trying to do :)

Or a twofer ... Attract migrating populations that are disproportionately more likely to have children / multigenerational migration? It would be interesting to see if international migration patterns match up to larger household sizes. My guess, anectdotally, is that it probably differs by native culture but that in-migration of international households probably has more "bang for its buck" than does domestic in-migration, all things being equal. If the sole/main goal is population stabilization/increases, I would think this is where you put the focus of your marketing focus.

Not to go toooooo far off topic, but this seems to be a recurring theme in a lot of development lately. It seems like it's time for Urban Ohioans and our allies to start to petition Council and the Planning Commission to consider some common-sense revisions to zoning standards (particularly as relates to required setbacks but arguably minimum number of parking spaces, lot width, etc.). It seems like this is a nice fit in the broader Cleveland 2019 effort. What could be more sustainable than encouraging (or at least not actively discouraging) smaller, denser footprints that are more street-enlivening and thus encourage more pedestrian activity? If there are concerns about citywide changes, test this in half-mile radii of all rapid stations (this project would qualify). Or create some "sustainable overlay district" designation that could be tested in much the same way they've created a live/work overlay district designation.

I think another issue here would be that this stretch of Superior is the dividing line between Ward 3 (north side of Superior) and Ward 8 (south side of Superior). So on a master planning/funding level, you'd probably need at least some level of long-term assurances and cooperation between Cimperman and Johnson ... And prioritization over other East 20s corridors that fit entirely in Ward 3 (like St. Clair) or entirely in Ward 8 (like Prospect or Euclid). Not necessarily an easy sell. The other issue is that while St. Clair Superior seems like an obvious candidate for this work, they already have an insanely large service area (from East 30th to MLK ... or from the edge of downtown to the edge of University Circle). In the absence of greater funding or breaking the CDC into an east and west area, it's hard for me to imagine that they would be able to effectively take on a corridor of that magnitude ... Particularly since they are not currently an NPI Strategic Investment Area. And in the current environment, I can't imagine additional community development funding or cracking the current CDC into two organizations is very likely.

People are correct ... The warehouses in this area do have a surprisingly high amount of residential presence. I've seen estimates of around 500 artists living in warehouses along this corridor. While the city has a live/work overlay ordinance in place for this corridor (and going pretty far eastward ... I want to say into the east 60s?), meant to relax regulations of people residing in industrial buildings. State codes, however, have a number of stipulations that still keep these buildings from being truly live-work without substantial capital improvements, namely elevator modernization, sprinkler systems and insulation standards. So this is a weird stretch of buildings that are more or less under a don't-ask-don't-tell policy ... The city doesn't aggressively check buildings to see if people are living there, but if they are called in for a code violation and see evidence of people living there, they are bound by state code to have those tenants removed. Very few of the warehouses have gone through the costly process of coming up to residential code; the notable exceptions are the Perkowskis' Tower Press (residential) and Bloch (creative commercial) buildings, and both seem to have strong occupancy levels. Most of the non-rehabbed buildings nonetheless have a quiet residential population. I think the slowness in redevelopment of the corridor (as well as the Chinatown development along Rockwell) is at least partially due to being in a bit of a community development no-man's land. Technically, this area is serviced by the Campus District (previously The Quadrangle), although that group's main focus seems to be the southern part of their area, particularly increasing connectivity between CSU, Tri-C, Sisters of Charity, etc. Even though St. Clair Superior's official border is East 30th, they do provide a secondary level of support along this corridor. And I believe (but could be wrong) that the Historic Warehouse/Historic Gateway orgs were instrumental in seeking historic building status on a number of the buildings. So you kind of have several chefs in the kitchen but no apparent head chef. Given the Campus Village developments, the new(ish) apartment building along Euclid in the upper 20s (name escapes me) and suprisingly strong population numbers in Asiatown and the upper Prospect corridor, I think all signs point to heightened focus on the eastern border of downtown. But with a lot of opportunities for both in-fill and rehab (Prospect, Euclid, more Chester, Payne, Superior, a bajillion cross-streets) and no apparent priority list, it might be a while before resources get marshalled strategically along Superior. FWIW, it would also be interested to see how building conversions would affect the relatively underground arts scene along Superior. Because of the costs incurred to modernize these buildings to residential code (barring a change in state policy), rents would have to be much higher than they currently are and probably not something most current artist tenants could afford to eat. Tower Press does provide one interesting exception though ... The Perkowskis leveraged HUD funds and set aside the majority of ground-floor units for low-income residents, and then agressively marketed those units to low-income artists.

Rust Belt chic: Declining Midwest cities make a comeback Gritty Rust Belt cities, once left for dead, are on the rise -- thanks to young people priced out of cooler locales By Will Doig, Salon May 12, 2012 More than any other city in America, Cleveland is a joke, a whipping boy of Johnny Carson monologues and Hollywood’s official set for films about comic mediocrity. But here’s what else is funny: According to a recent analysis, the population of downtown Cleveland is surging, doubling in the past 20 years. What’s more, the majority of the growth occurred in the 22-to-34-year-old demo, those coveted “knowledge economy” workers for whom every city is competing. Pittsburgh, too, has unexpectedly reversed its out-migration of young people. The number of 18-to-24-year-olds was declining there until 2000, but has since climbed by 16 percent. St. Louis attracted more young people than it lost in each of the past three years. And as a mountain of “Viva Detroit!” news stories have made clear, Motor City is now the official cool-kids destination, adding thousands of young artists, entrepreneurs and urban farmers even as its general population evaporates ... ... More at http://www.salon.com/2012/05/12/rust_belt_chic_declining_midwest_cities_make_a_comeback/singleton/

^ 75 words in a 400-word article to explain where to park ... Could we at least mention the direct train service and free park-n-ride?!! :wtf: