jam40jeff

Wait, you're comparing building a house "on the Ohio Turnpike" to developers redeveloping a golf course after people have lived in the area for years (University Heights and the northwestern portion of Beachwood was mostly developed in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s and the rest of Beachwood was mostly developed in the 1970s)? Sorry, but that argument is a major fail.

I have also heard that Fat Casual is very good. A coworker who swears there's almost no good BBQ up North loves it. One of my favorite food blogs approves of it as well: http://exploringfoodmyway.blogspot.com/2011/05/smoke-em-if-you-got-em.html

Has anyone been to Pronzo? I have heard good things. Is there any chance they are the connection with Arabica which provides them cannolis and gelato?

Thanks for the review of Red, R&R. The fact that you are so critical of many restaurants means a rave review like that carries even more weight. I guess there really is a reason for that 28 Zagat rating. I'm pretty pumped for them to come downtown.

Any specific reason? We already have plenty of good Italian, and that place got an 18 Zagat rating, worse than Cheesecake Factory, PF Changs, and Maggianos.

Sure, Millenium Force has only one trick, but it does that trick well. It's still my favorite coaster at CP. Different coasters do different things, I like that Milennium Force is just a tall, high speed version of a traditional roller coaster. For me at least, it gets the adrenaline pumping more than any other coaster.

Downtown Pittsburgh is worse off than we are. We have better restaurants, and more and better retail. Yes they have a heavily subsided Macys downtown that is not doing good, and doesnt look good, but that doesnt attract any other retail. Atleast we have Tower City, with some stores that Pittsburgh would love to have. Yeah, I'm not sure why Pittsburgh's downtown gets so much credit. I mean, I actually like Pittsburgh, and they have a very dense downtown with beautiful architecture. But during off-hours, it's very dead and downright scary in some places. Our downtown is night-and-day different and more lively than Pittsburgh's. Now, Carson Street is a different story, and it would be great if we had something like Squirrel Hill in the city limits.

Yeah, I thought it was confusing when I went back and reread it, haha.

Yikes, I see my half-asleep comment from my cell phone while on vacation created a little controversy. I surely didn't mean anything racial or socioeconomic by my comment. I actually don't even know what I meant, other than I had been in The Loop all day and was amazed at how many people with young kids (black and white) were walking around (and not tourists) and riding the L. I think I especially had in my mind the picture of a few people rolling strollers right onto the L on one short trip, and picturing babies in a high rise apartment in downtown Cleveland just made me think of how different downtown Chicago felt. I was probably overreacting, being on vacation and all.

Red is one of the best steakhouses in the country. I believe it got a 28 Zagat rating.

Thanks, that's great to hear! I'm on vacation in Chicago right now and it's nice to see all of the people with kids in the city, but it's depressing to think of what a stark contrast it is to most of Cleveland.

I've seen trucks make their fair share of dangerous driving maneuvers.

I feel the same way about most Southern cities, but Savannah really is an awesome city.

The Cuyahoga County Auditor website should be able to tell you who owns it if you know the address.

I have looked into CLE to NYC on the train as well as CLE to DC, and yes, both take a long time and are not cheap. The NYC ride especially goes pretty far out of the way (it's actually as far north as BOS and then follows the Hudson down into NYC, which is supposed to be a very scenic ride). However, the CLE to CHI ride makes much more sense. It's roughly the same amount of time as driving (6 hours, so maybe less if traffic is real bad around CHI) and isn't terribly expensive. I loved that trip, so it's something to look into if you really want to take the train somewhere. And you can probably put most of the blame on our crappy departures on our politicians. Ohio doesn't provide any support to Amtrak, so we're actually lucky to have a stop at all. Really, it's just because we happen to be between NYC and CHI (as well as DC and CHI). The times are geared towards making it convenient for people near those endpoints and whenever it passes through Cleveland is what it is.

I'm not sure that driverless cars would lead to more commuting. Couldn't the same argument be made for regional rail or any other mode of transportation where you don't have to actively drive? I actually think it may lead to a redensification, as parking spots would be less at a premium. For instance, right now, if someone from the suburbs drives to Wal-Mart, then Applebee's, then Best Cuts, then to the gym, then back home, they need 5 separate spots to park their car. Sure, there is some parking spot reuse, but as is evidenced by how rarely a suburban parking lot fills up, there is much waste here. The parking spot at their house is only used by them, and the others may be used by 1 or 2 other cars at most during the entire outing (there's rarely someone pulling into the vacated spot as soon as they leave). Thus, this trip has basically caused a need for the equivalent of 3 dedicated parking spots, even if they never were more than a couple miles from home. Sure, it would be a waste for long trips to have the car automatically return home and then come pick you up when you're done. But it may make sense when you're 5 min away. And for office locations there could be "staging lots" where cars park nearby employment centers (these lots actually would likely be mixed use staging lots, for shoppers, workers, etc.). This doesn't sound like much of a net gain, but again, every parking lot is built for the worst case scenario. Many suburban office parking lots are about half full because they each have to have an allotment of extra spaces for those times when some visitors come and everyone shows up to work and there is paving going on in the adjacent parking lot, etc. Even in these once a decade events when the parking lot does fill up, not all lots fill up at the same time. Thus, if all these lots were condensed into one super lot (or preferably, a massive parking garage), then number of extra spots needed could also be greatly condensed. Cars would still be cars and take up more space and use more gas than they need to, but if they could drive themselves automatically and were much safer than human drivers, we would likely see smaller cars become popular. There would be no need for massive SUVs just so people could "see over other people on the freeway" (I've heard many a suburbanite make this argument) and you may event see things like "podcars" or something of the sort, where every car was basically a small self powered single-person vehicle, but could be combined with others to form larger vehicles, such that a four-person car would be roughly 4 times as big and energy consuming as a single-person car, rather than every vehicle having to be built for four or more people. This is all likely way in the future but as much as technology changes, I definitely could see things moving in this direction at some point and I'm not sure it'd be a very bad thing. The reason I think this is that I believe that all other things being equal (safety, schools, income, cleanliness, etc.) most people (even suburbanites) actually prefer a dense environment to a spread-out one. It's just that the car has required people to be spread out if they want the freedom individual transportation provides them. In the old days, people still wanted to move "out", it's just that those outer areas were still dense. Now, they can't be because of the car. Take away the requirement for mega-wide roads (self-driving cars should MUCH more efficiently use roadway capacity) and huge parking lots everywhere and you may not see new construction and outward migration of people go away, but you'd at least likely see newer human settlements being built in a much more acceptable fashion than those of the last 60+ years.

It does seem strange though that they would publicly say they don't know of any plans yet if it has been announced.

If you click through to the full Top 10 article, numbers 6 through 10 contain some even bigger surprises: 6. Las Vegas 7. Atlanta 8. Houston 9. Tampa 10. Toledo

Thanks for the article. I actually decided to leave a little Cleveland love in the comments.

I haven't been to either Huntington or Headlands in a few years, but I don't remember Headlands being cleaner than Huntington (but I also don't remember Huntington striking me as dirty). Of course, Headlands Beach is MASSIVE, so I may have been in a spot that wasn't as clean as some others.

That's a good point...it could partially be an effect of many of what we all know are Cleveland suburbs actually being located in the Akron MSA.

I always find it interesting that Cincinnati has ~5% lower GMP than Cleveland even though the population of Cincinnati's metro area has surpassed Cleveland's. I wouldn't have expected Cleveland's GMP per capita to be that much higher than Cincinnati's.

How awful are the Indians to watch right now? I turn on the game and we're down 2-0 with the bases loaded and Carlos Santana was up. Somehow, I knew he'd strike out.

The new dorms are great, but I'm sure Zak was referring to the old dorms west of E. 115th St., which really do need to go. Also, as a former student, I don't see the campus as being isolated from the city.

OK, I may have exaggerated the cannibalizing bit, but I still maintain that a pretty good portion of the CH crowd comes from Lake and Geauga Counties based on shirts I see people wearing there and also Facebook posts from people I know from Lake County (not urban minded people) that are always going there, some of which live as far east as Painesville. Sure, he will draw new customers, but obviously some percentage of customers will be people who would have gone to CH. Is it enough to make it worth opening a whole new restaurant? I don't know. But I guess my bigger complaint is exactly what dwirthwein posted. He is changing the whole image of the place. The Independence location was bad enough, but I figured it at least made sense if he was going to have locations about 5-7 miles from downtown on the east, west, south, and then maybe open up one in the city proper. Even though the Independence one would be a bit of an outlier, it still would have made sense to me. I like Melt enough that the last thing I want to happen to it is for them to open in 25 cities and be the next Max & Erma's. I see a dumpy strip plaza in Mentor as a first step along that path. Also, AJ, sorry to push your buttons about Mentor, I think that's the most defensive I've ever seen you on here. But I do know Mentor. I grew up less than a mile from where this new Melt was going. Yes, Mentor is nearly all strip plazas, but I still think he could have found a better location. First of all, as strip plazas go, this spot is not very visible. Most of the traffic on Mentor Ave. at this point is concentrated between 306 and the mall, not west of 306. Second, this is a dying strip plazas that has seen a couple of restaurants open and close over the years (wasn't it a Tony Roma's before?) Also, even very suburban-minded people I know think it's dumpy, and these are people that thing newly renovated strip plazas are great. And if he wanted to at least attempt to keep an urban vibe, like Jeni's does in Columbus or even like Yours Truly location seem to attempt to do, he could have located somewhere like the more "urban" styled building on 615 behind the Center Street School condos. I just think it's an odd choice for a restaurant that grew to fame as a hip urban joint.