jam40jeff

As much as he posts, I don't know why he wouldn't want to explain himself. I asked 2 pretty simple questions about statements he made.

I have two direct questions for you. What are the vast cultural and philosophical differences between University Heights and Cleveland Heights? Why would a merger with South Euclid be more beneficial than a merger with Cleveland Heights for University Heights? Please answer, because as 327 said, some of us live in these areas and don't know what you're talking about. This is the problem with regionalization, we need to understand where each other are coming from in order to see how (or if) we can work together.

Wow. We're talking about a 5-mile radius here, tops. The Amazon Valley is less tribal than what you're describing. Like I would expect, you don't get it. I guess it's easy for someone to sit and look at a map and postulate about which cities look like they fit together. It's not that simple. I'm just really glad that there is no way, legally, for anyone here to force their Utopian view of how this region should look on to others. I'm glad that these things will have to be voted on and in all likelihood, are going to lose embarrassingly. As an insider to the situation, I don't see that much of a difference culturally or philosophically between Cleveland Heights and University Heights. I see the same attitudes, battles, biases, advantages, disadvantages, etc. in both places. The western half of University Heights and the southeastern portion of Cleveland Heights are barely indistinguishable, IMO, in many ways (people, housing, income, "philosophy", etc.). I feel that many University Heights residents think their city is something it isn't, and have a view of Cleveland Heights as something it isn't, when it reality the two cities are incredibly similar in a lot of ways.

I disagree. I think that more suburban locations (especially South Park Mall, which is as run-of-the-mill as it gets) will cause his place to be looked at more like a "nicer Red Robin" than something special. At least Eton Collection is unique as far as suburban junk goes.

I have two direct questions for you. What are the vast cultural and philosophical differences between University Heights and Cleveland Heights? Why would a merger with South Euclid be more beneficial than a merger with Cleveland Heights for University Heights?

I agree. It's scheduled at 12-13 minutes, and it shouldn't take much more than that even at rush hour.

The requirement to be part of the MSA is based on what percentage people commute to the central county out of the total, not what percentage of people commute to the center county out of the total number of people who commute outside of the county. For instance, for Geauga County, nearly 50% of the workforce works in Cuyahoga County. Ashtabula County is not even close to being included in the Cleveland MSA. It actually is closer (but still not very close) to being a part of the Mentor (Lake County) MSA, which would mean then Mentor would be its own MSA, like Akron. However, this is also unlikely, as ~10% of workers from Ahstabula County work in Lake County, and ~5% work in Cuyahoga County.

I view UC as being the hub of a wheel with main artery spokes reach out to I-90, I-77, and I-271. You're not too far from any of those, and you don't need the freeway for too much anyway. Not everyone thinks the freeway is the only way to get from Point A to Point B. And driving 20 miles at 65 MPH is not faster than driving 3 miles at 25 MPH.

I have wondered that as well. My thinking is always something like "if this bridge is gonna fall, I want to be on it for as little time as possible!" as the train crawls over it.

They have this new thing called shades which mutes natural light. It's only sunny here a few days a year, right?

Do you live around here? Cleveland taxes are much lower than nearly every inner ring suburb.

This is a good point, and I was about to go back and edit my original post to address this possibility, but I'll just reply here. If Portage county fit the criteria to be included in both the Cleveland and Akron MSAs, then the Cleveland MSA would subsume the Akron MSA. I could definitely see this happening. Hudson, Aurora, and Streetsboro are all booming, and many of these people commute to Cuyahoga County. The one that surprised me last census was Ashtabula dropping out. I personally know a few people that commute to downtown Cleveland from the city of Ashtabula. It's a long haul, but there are really no jobs out that way. If Ashtabula used to fit the criteria for inclusion, I don't really understand what caused them to drop out. It surely wasn't an influx of jobs into that corner of the state (or northwestern Pennsylvania for that matter).

The success of East Fourth may have caused rents to go way up recently. I kind of had a feeling for a while now that City Blue was getting "forced out".

Without seeing ColDayMan's PDF link, I read the official PDF about how MSA's are determined. I'll try to put into my own words what I see as being the problem. Lorain County, Cuyahoga County, Lake County, and Summit County are all MSA candidate counties due to the fact that they each have an "urban cluster" or "central city" of over 50,000 (Lorain/Elyria, Cleveland, Mentor, and Akrom, respectively). Every single one of these counties also has enough commuters to Cuyahoga County to be a candidate for inclusion in Cleveland's MSA (I'll get to how I know this later). However, we're not done. We need to examine every other county as if it were its own MSA. Lorain County's "MSA" would include Lorain County and possibly Cuyahoga County and Medina County (by the 25% commuter rule). Since Cuyahoga County's MSA also includes Lorain and Medina, Cuyahoga and Lorain (as well as Medina coming along for the ride) may be combined into one MSA). Lake County could likely be combined with Cuyahoga County and Geauga County. However, once again, all of these counties also fall within Cuyahoga County's MSA criteria, so the two are merged (that is why it is called the Lorain-Elyria-Cleveland-Mentor MSA). However, when we get to Akron, the likely counties included in Summit County's MSA would be Medina and Portage. Portage must not qualify to be part of Cleveland's MSA because if it did then both Summit and Portage would be part of Cleveland's MSA. This allows Summit County to "stand on its own". Medina County can't be in two MSA's, so it goes to the county more people commute to (which must be Cuyahoga County). The way I know that Summit County would otherwise qualify to be a part of Cleveland's MSA is that the commuting criteria for a CSA is the same percentage, except that it is only between the two core MSA counties. So Cuyahoga and Summit meet the criteria. Portage is the one hanging off Summit that doesn't allow it to be a part of Cleveland. So there's a few things going on here... If Summit County contained just as many people and as much employment, but didn't have an "urban center", it would be a part of Cleveland's MSA. If Portage County stopped meeting the criteria to be in Akron's MSA, Akron would be combined into Cleveland's MSA. Using county borders for MSA's seems kinda backwards. Macedonia is much more a suburb of Cleveland than Akron, but since it is "south of the border" it has to go to Akron. As a matter of fact, the way the rules are written up for the MSA, if Summit County included nearly every suburb of Cuyahoga County except for a string of suburbs along the lake, all of those suburbs would be included in Akron's MSA as well. So in short, it's an imperfect system using county boundaries that we probably shouldn't worry all that much about.

Gotribe, I definitely wouldn't say "most of the kids at Ignatius" are pretty much from the suburbs. I don't have exact statistics and I can't speak for St. Eds, but I know that there is a very sizable portion of students from within the city limits at St. Ignatius. And Ctownrocks1 is absolutely right...they do a lot to promote the city of Cleveland.

And the lake isn't stopping suburban explosion into Summit and Portage Counties (Twinsburg, Bath, Aurora, etc). But they don't count for our metro numbers, which is insane.

Terrible situation. I don't know if it's Ari Maron's fault or theirs, but something should have been worked out. I think they will lose a lot of business. Athens is a staple in the neighborhood, especially for the 1300+ St. Ignatius students for lunch/after school sandwich.

Can we make the 3 C's Cleveland, Canton, and Columbus and give Cincinnati to Kentucky? (Joking of course...don't get too offended Bengals fans! :) )

The town is nice, it's the stuff around it that is crap. I would be willing to bet that the majority on here really like the town square and immediate neighborhoods in Medina. No kids here yet, but when we do, I hope we have family photos in environments resembling Jskinners'.

I had heard that site would only be used temporarily for a surface lot, which I suppose left the door open for them to decide on a parking garage. Boo.

I hated to see R&R's post for that reason. I hear that crap all the time. The great part of living in the Heights is that I don't need to take the freeway to get where I want to go 99% of the time.

Gee, not one cent of the tax on the gasoline that goes into my lawnmower, benefits my lawn. And as far as I am aware, railroad diesel fuel taxes don't go to the railroads. Cigarette taxes don't go to tobacco growers and liquor taxes don't go to vintners and distillers. Doesn't seem fair. He never said "and vice versa", and I think that unfortunately that's the viewpoint of too many.

I think that area has already been scorched, leaving a complete redo the only option anyway. Besides, I have always felt that this area has a worse reputation than the reality of the problems. Other cities have successfully redeveloped much worse areas. That's one of the best ideas I've heard in a while. I can't think of a more prime candidate on the east side for BRT than Warrensville Center in this area. It seems like a great way to have a good north-south connection to and between the more efficient east-west transit routes.

But who needs a real view of the lake when you have such a beautiful natural-looking perfectly chlorinated body of water right outside your office?

Everybody using the Wall on Facebook to post their personal messages to each other. Why do these people think they have (1) an Inbox on Facebook, (2) email, (3) text messaging, or (4) a phone? How starved for attention are people?