Zagapi

@KJP Hey Ken, not to revive comment of yours from literally 17 years ago, but I may or may not be owning my own little slice of heaven in the Eastman here in the next few weeks. To refresh everyone's memory, its on the NE corner of W. 111th and Detroit. I was trying to do a deep dive on this building but could not find any historic photos or illustrations for it. Vintage or otherwise. The Cleveland Memory Project yielded some results of the immediately surrounding areas, but no sign of the building itself. Considering that it was built in 1903, this building has to appear in something, somewhere. Any tips on where to look/who to ask? If anyone else reading this is able to suggest something, please feel free to share!

I currently live about 150 feet from this building, at least for another month. I always felt like a "City Target" would be perfect in the retail portion of this building. Trader Joes or the "Market Meijer" would also be nice. It will be interesting to see how much of the space is dedicated to retail and if they can attract a large tenant. A Target type store with homewares and cheaper clothing would be an absolute game changer for Downtown's livability and appeal to prospective residents. It would be even nicer if they were condos rather than apartments, but that will come in time. Regardless of how the retail is utilized, it makes me very happy to see more housing in Downtown, and furthering Cleveland's reputation as the nation's best at converting offices to housing. Not to mention how refreshing it will be to see that gorgeous building being used again!

Lol, the garage of this building is where I park my car, as well as the other residents for across the street. We used to park in the garage at 1060 Bolivar when it was sold and construction started for the apartments shown in the photo here. If you need any inside scoop on this Ken, just let me know and I'll do some digging! 🤣

*Accidentally posted twice*

Today, I just learned about Roldo Bartimole and his "Point of View." Forgive my ignorance, but I blame it on his relevance predating my birth. What's the consensus on this guy? Based on some brief digging, I don't really have a nice way to say my opinion. To put it bluntly, he seems miserable, self-righteous and like he thinks he's the smartest guy in every room. As someone who prides themself on being optimistic, especially about Cleveland, he's the antithesis of everything I believe in. Also, a personal endorsement by Ralph Nader did not really helping my opinion of him. This excerpt from Sam Allard's 2018 article on Roldo (now with Axios Cleveland) sums up everything I read: Roldo's unrelenting criticism led leaders to wave him off: He was regarded by many as a contrarian blinkered by his world view, and who therefore only saw the negative. As if to prove a point, in 1968, a City Club member asked whether or not Roldo could name anything that the media or the government was doing that met his approval. Roldo denied that he should have to. "You can always find something going on that's good," he said. "And I don't think we ought to spend our time saying what's good when there's so much that's wrong. I don't care whether the media does something nice ... I don't think there's any meaning in pointing out what's good about the media because if they're doing their job, they're supposed to do it." Sam has written a few things about Roldo, and he seems to really admire him. As subscriber to the Axios Cleveland Daily Newsletter, this explains the beef I have with Sam's writing. While I generally think he's a good journalist and certainly a big proponent of Cleveland, his coverage and opinion pieces have a lot of populist, anti-establishment sympathies that I find pretty lazy and pessimistic. I can see where Roldo's influence has rubbed off on Sam with his coverage of the Mayor/City Council. Everything is framed as deep rooted corruption. While there's plenty of things to critique about our local government's integrity, lets not pretend like we are living in the Cleveland of the 70's and 80's, or hell, The Jackson andministration. At least Roldo was reporting when we were a mob-run town. Don't get me started on his writing on housing policy. With that rant out of my system, what's the forum's opinion on Roldo?

Maybe I'm just a naive optimist, but I think Cleveland has a better shot at an NWSL team than we're making it seem. Cleveland submitted a bid back in 2022, and there's undoubtedly much more noise about the bid this time around. As someone mentioned, Cleveland is a completely untapped market for both professional soccer and women's sports as a whole. With the current women's sports boom, Cleveland is a prime market in my opinion. Minnesota already has the USLW team (who's trying to earn the promotion to the NWSL with this bid), an already established MLS team and the Minnesota Lynx WNBA team. Also already having the Vikings, Timberwolves, Twins, and Wild, how many more franchises can Minneapolis-St. Paul support? They are the 16th largest CSA, and Cleveland CSA is the 17th largest with only Cavs, Guardians, Browns, and Monsters. Cincinnati has an MLS team with Louisville's NWSL team only 1 Hour and 45 minutes away. While, Cincy has a solid soccer resume, that's a ton of market overlap for a a league with only 16 teams. Worth mentioning Columbus has an MLS team, but I'm not sure how much that affects things. But to put it in perspective, the closest current NWSL teams to us are Louisville and Chicago. Both 5 hour drives. While they said that they wouldn't add a team in states where abortion access was under threat, Ohio's amendment we voted on last year gives us some of the strongest protections in the country, from what I understand. Even with all that drama, the state already committed the symbolic $1 million towards the stadium, and I think that counts for something.

Oh that might mean the Healthline will be able to get through there again! Always a pain when it gets stuck in the traffic when I'm trying to get to work.