Confiteordeo

Nice job CLE, ranking third in the Midwest! We can catch up to Minneapolis in transit, but we've got a long way to go in terms of bike commuting (they're at triple Chicago's rate in that category!)

I couldn't find a topic specifically about Brooklyn Centre. My apologies if one exists and I missed it. Just as I feared, the opening of the Steelyard Commons Aldi on November 20 is leading to the closure of the one Pearl Rd. in Brooklyn Centre: http://www.oldbrooklyn.com/OBN/13OctOBN.pdf A couple of quotes from the article- [yeah, right] Tony Brancatelli: Ed Garber I think this is a really big blow to a quite charming and fairly stable (if somewhat unknown) neighborhood. The strip center just north of Aldi on the other side of Pearl is certainly no retail paradise. I would love someone like Dave's to come in with another grocery, but the point raised in the article about a possible no compete clause is valid, and in any case, Dave's Ohio City store is only 2.5 miles away from this location.

I agree with both of these points. Our regional economy is more diverse now than it's ever been, and there are a lot of physical improvements happening in the center city that have and will continue to change our image both locally and nationally. I know one barrier (but not the only one!!) to economic growth has been a difficulty in attracting talent to Cleveland because of how they city is perceived, and that's certainly been improving over the last 5-10 years. However, I do get frustrated like Oldmanladyluck by the constant stream of negative data. It feels like we're spinning our wheels a lot of the time, but I just keep reminding myself that things have been improving (albeit slowly), and the seeds have been planted for future growth.

If you look at the back data, it seems that there was a big jump in both the number of jobs and employed people in the spring of 2012 that wasn't duplicated in the spring of 2013. But we had a big jump in the middle of this summer that basically caught us up to where we were last year (there were only about 1,600 fewer jobs in August 2013 than in August 2012, and there were actually 800 more people employed in August 2013 than August 2012). Overall, it looks like both the number of jobs and employed people in the region have stayed pretty much stagnant over the last year, and have only inched upward slightly since the recession. I guess it's better than a huge drop, but we're really falling behind by standing in place. http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.oh_cleveland_msa.htm

I think it would be interesting to build dorm space around the Wolstein... It could be CSU's answer to the Village at 115 dorms at Case

Ah, thanks for the correction. It's been at the current location literally my entire life, since the fire happened before I was born, so please forgive my ignorance.

It's still there... There's a music venue, but most of the building is being converted to offices- http://www.clevelandagora.com/

Also, "Cleveland" doesn't necessarily mean "CMSD" (although I will point out that the three "schools" at John Hay collectively send something like 90% of those kids to college). There's a lot of economic and social diversity in the city, particularly on the west side. I do alumni interviews for my alma mater (a very competitive school on the East Coast,) and every year I interview a surprising number of kids from West Park and Old Brooklyn, many of whom go to private high schools (especially Ignatius), though I have met more than a few CMSD students.

Why? There are 400,000 people in Cleveland, and that's a third of the county. Private college classes are usually so geographically diverse that I'd bet that if even 20 or so kids from Cleveland went to Case, that would be enough for Cleveland to be the second most common hometown.

I think that just goes to show that even though the bones are there, people need something to walk or take transit TO, and that's a very important caveat for young people. As I see it, there's little at present to walk to in that neighborhood- within a half mile in either direction of the West Boulevard Rapid Station, there's practically nothing along Detroit Avenue, and other than the CVS, nothing much worth walking to on Madison. However that could change, and I do think that it will as development continues to radiate out from Gordon Square- as you noted, there is much more to build off of in that part of Cudell than in a lot of neighborhoods. Unfortunately, growth in Cleveland is slow, but I think that area has some of the greatest potential in the city as far as benefiting from the demographic shifts we've been talking about goes... eventually. I just hope it doesn't slide too much farther first. I don't have statistics, but I personally know people that live in our neighborhood and reverse-commute to American Greetings (currently in Brooklyn but moving to Westlake), Parker-Hannifin in Mayfield Heights, and someone who bike-commutes every day from Ohio City to Parma Heights for a welding job. I know even more that work downtown or in University Circle and take transit or bike. It's been said in other threads, but we've been seeing a quiet revolution of sorts with younger, hipper companies taking advantage of relatively low rents downtown. But as GCrites80s pointed out, those big "legacy" companies will take a long time to catch on... if they ever do.

^ Why does Downtown have to undo the region's population loss alone? It's not about growth rates for individual neighborhoods, or even raw numbers right now. The important thing is that larger trends are changing. Today's young adults make up what, like 15-20% of the regional population (depending on how you define them.) If people continue to choose the urban core over suburbs as they come of age, those inner neighborhoods will represent an ever-larger fraction of the regional population over time. It's undeniable that our more walkable, transit-accessible neighborhoods are seeing an influx of development and younger residents. Many are light-years ahead of where they were just three years ago when the census was taken. Best of all? Those neighborhoods show little evidence of losing steam. Our leaders would be crazy or at least horribly inept to not try to recreate the conditions in all of our neighborhoods that have proven to attract reinvestment, especially improved transit, walking, and biking infrastructure.

I thought I read an article earlier this year from Columbus Business First lamenting that films were coming to Cleveland and Cincinnati, but not Columbus. I looked for the article and couldn't find it, but here's one from April 2012- http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/blog/2012/04/cleveland-stars-in-report-on-ohio-film.html?page=all At the time that was written, Cleveland accounted for 7,000 out of 9,000 jobs, $13 million out of $19.5 million in wages, and 13 of the 27 projects that had come to Ohio. That was pre-Captain America (and a number of other films)

Did you guys notice that the lawyer representing L&R is also the chairman of the Historic Gateway Neighborhood's board?

Off Grayton Road, across 480 from the airport

Well, the alternative is likely dumping all the debris in a landfill, since the city and county are pursuing an aggressive demolition strategy and those houses are coming down anyway. We might as well make lemonade from our lemons in a refurbished industrial building in a depressed neighborhood.

Thanks! I've always loved Lorain's (mostly) intact street wall. Unfortunately, its redevelopment has taken a back seat to Detroit Avenue (with the exception of Kamm's,) but I'm hoping that changes soon, especially in western Ohio City, the stretch between W. Boulevard and 90, and the W. 65th, 117th, and 130th areas.

That stretch looks really nice! I'm glad to see that they included benches... They're surprisingly uncommon around Cleveland, although they have been included in some of the more recent streetscaping projects, so maybe that's changing.

Lol!!

Remember that under state law, if CMSD wants to sell the building, it first has to offer it to charter schools. I would mostly like to see that site developed if it means building over the block-long parking lot that faces the street. A mixed-use apartment/retail building would go a loooong way towards improving the cohesiveness of Detroit Avenue and connecting D-S to OC.

There are plenty of families in that part of the neighborhood, but they tend to be more at the "vanilla-chocolate soft serve" price point than the "baklava crunch" demographic. I didn't think OCIC was that expensive, but they were a bit pricier than the Dari Delite, and since they were more dependent on neighborhood walk-up traffic than say, Sweet Moses (which I view as a sort of destination ice cream parlor,) I can see that being problematic.

I too have noticed a lot of water in this area in the past, and also small piles of crumbled concrete along the base of the wall. When I read the headline, I knew instantly where the collapse had occurred! I wonder if there are issues with natural sources of water (springs or something) in this area. I know this is the case in the Flats, and there are several spots along Columbus road that have been constantly wet for that reason.

All I heard was "Ah deun't have no accint" :evil: Embrace it. It's a badge of honor ;-) Seriously, though, I read somewhere that the NCVS is thought to have started because people in the Northern cities started exaggerating the distinctions between certain vowel sounds in an attempt to distinguish their speech from what they thought to be lazy, drawled accents in the southern parts of their states.

That's the one. If it wasn't built as a Catholic church, I'm not sure how inclined they are to renovate or use it for anything.

I don't mean this in a snarky way, but I don't think I've seen anyone here say our economy was healthy. We got smacked harder than most in both recessions last decade, and never even fully recovered from the first one when the second one hit. Employment is down, so population is decreasing. Decreasing population means a smaller labor force, but one more appropriately-sized for the available job pool, so unemployment is better than expected. I've personally come to the conclusion that the regional economy has gone through a really tough "right-sizing" period. It probably isn't fully over yet, but overall employment has generally been flat over the last couple years, which is better than more dramatic job losses. Our regional economy is more diversified than ever, and parts of our core are getting healthier and healthier. We're not there yet, but I see Cleveland better positioned for future growth than ever before. Now of course, that's no reason to be complacent. As a region, we need to make a better effort to attract and retain jobs in a coordinated way, but the way I see it, the foundation is there.

There was also a shooting death last night: http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/02/man_shot_killed_on_citys_east.html#incart_river_default