Dan

When I lived in SE, there seemed to be a sense that the community had no clear identity of its own. Cleveland Heights was the left-leaning urban suburb, Beachwood was the upscale Jewish suburb, University Heights had John Carroll and a gorgeous residential housing stock, and Lyndhurst the emerging home of upscale retail. South Euclid ... well, it's south of Euclid, and ... uhhh ... sign amortization made the Mayfield strip look a lot better, and ... uhh, it's got some Russian immigrants, old-time Italians, young Jews who couldn't afford Beachwood or Pepper Pike, and vacant houses where blacks used to live, and ... Warehouse Beverage is cool, and .... uhhh, is it part of the Heights or Hillcrest, and ... you get the idea. SE has the mom-and-pop stores, but what's there for the young professionals that city officials want to attract? Lots of salons and hole-in-the-wall bars aren't exactly as much of an attraction as Coventry, Cedar-Lee and Legacy Village. Then again, neither will be a big box center. Desperation? Well, South Euclid doesn't have the non-residential tax base of Cleveland Heights, Beachwood and Lyndhurst, and its housing stock don't pay the bills as well as the "beautiful homes" of University Heights. The foreclosure crisis hit South Euclid hard, because ARMs made the housing stock temporarily affordable to working-class African-Americans looking to move out of East Cleveland and Collinwood. One problem with Oakwood, IMHO, is that it really isn't going to solve the problem of South Euclid's identity crisis. Does it want to be a college town? A suburb for young, single first-time homebuyers? If I was South Euclid's planner, a couple of my solutions would be to rebuild the city's once-pedestrian-oriented downtown (Mayfield-Green area), and work with ODOT to make Mayfield Road more civilized and pedestrian-oriented, as in Cleveland Heights. "Stores need more parking" is a 1970s-style solution to the city's woes, and we know how well that worked out elsewhere.

I don't live in SE anymore, but I still own my house there, so I'm following this project with great interest. I can't add too much that hasn't already been said. The Heights/Hillcrest area is already oversaturated with retail space, but South Euclid really doesn't have its share compared to surrounding communities. Considering the revenue generated by retail, it's no wonder the city is supportive of the project. I'm disappointed they didn't follow a New Urbanist or lifestyle center model; there's many examples of such development that isn't necessarily upscale outside of the Cleveland area. Some national chains that come to mind that aren't in the Heights/Hillcrest/Chagrin Valley area: * Lowe's * Sam's Club * Sears Grand * Dave & Buster's * Tractor Supply :-D * Uhhh ... I can't think of anything else right now. I would imagine that with J.C. Penney now opening plaza stores, they might be enticed into fleeing a sinking ship like Richmond Town Square. Could this center also provide an entry point into the Cleveland market for Meijer (now in Mansfield) or Menards (in Canton, Mansfield and Sandusky)? I don't see Valu coming down from Buffalo; they prefer older strip centers similar to Golden Gate and Eastgate. Wegmans supposedly scrapped plans for NEO and western PA to concentrate on the Northeast Corridor.

Old post, I know. It's just that I'm compelled to post because there's a lot of disinformation in here, along with the factual data. Background: born and raised in Buffalo, and witness to LRRT construction from the start. I still have the monthly newsletters from the NFTA dating back to the 1970s tracking the planning and construction. (I really should have gotten rid of them earlier; I'm the opposite of a hoarder in most ways.) FWIW, I'm far from a Buffalo booster or "homer". I'm criticized on other message boards for being so negative about Buffalo. Still, it seems like the whole of Buffalo is being made out to be like the worst parts of East Cleveland or Detroit, and that's far, far from the case. 1) Why does Buffalo have a subway? It's part of what was called the ABC Plan -- Amherst Buffalo Corridor -- drafted in the mid-1960s. After the state decided to build a new SUNY campus in Amherst, but before construction broke ground, the ABC Plan was drafted and adopted. It called for a corridor of dense residential and commercial development along Main Street (NY 5) between downtown and UB South, and Millersport Highway (NY 263) between UB South and UB North. An important part of the ABC plan was a heavy rail system to connect downtown and the two UB campuses. The rail line was planned to eventually be extended to the south to Orchard Park, with an east-west line from Cheektowaga to the west side of Buffalo. The lines would meet at Layfayette Square. Main Street downtown was to be covered in what would have amounted to the nation's largest shopping mall, with a gallery looking down to the subway at the lower level. The original subway line was to be elevated north of Delavan Avenue. A group called "No Overhead Transit" opposed the plans, and the opposition gained momentum. Ultimately, the current system was built with the money that was budgeted for the longer heavy rail system. Tunnels are much more more expensive than elevated rail, especially through the bedrock at the north end of the city and underneath the buried Scajaquada Creek tunnel north of Delavan, so the system was shortened, and the rolling stock changed from expensive heavy rail to cheaper light rail. 2) Why Main Street? Buffalo's dominant direction of growth has always been to the northeast, but there was no rail corridor or other corridor of vacant land along the "Golden Spike" (the affluent area west of Main Street from downtown out to the suburbs) where a line could be built. Thus, Main Street and the blocks nearby was the only alternative. At the time, and it's still very true to some extent, Buffalo's bus routes were based almost exactly on old streetcar lines. Buffalo has excellent transit leading downtown, but at the time crosstown service was poor. Many bus lines would follow Main Street for some distance, and then branch off to one of the perpendicular streets. It was hoped that the rail line would relieve the bus traffic on Main Street, and free up more of the fleet to increase headways on crosstown routes and create new routes; LRRT would replace the Main Street portions of 20+ bus lines. 3) Yeah, but Buffalo? It's so small. Population projections for the Buffalo area in the 1960s had the same faults as those in Cleveland; no accounting for shrinking household sizes, outmigration from the region, or urban blight. They assumed the typical household would still be a large Catholic family with three to six children, and that children would remain in the region, the children of those children would stay, and so on. The Buffalo metro area was expected to have a population of over 2,000,000 by 2000. UB was expected to have 80,000 students at buildout. Remember, Buffalo almost landed a major league baseball team in the late 1960s and mid-1980s. 4) The population density in Buffalo is low. FALSE. Buffalo has very few townhouses, and much less 4+ unit multi-family residential development compared to Cleveland or Cincy. However, the modal house is a two-flat. The standard Buffalo building lot is 35' x 120'. That's 20 DU/AC in areas where two-flats are predominant. Some lots had two two-flats on them. On the East Side, the little telescoping houses often had a rear unit, and they were on even smaller lots; 25' x 100'. Some city neighborhoods had population densities approaching 30,000 per sq mi or more, even without apartment buildings in the traditional sense. Buffalo maxed out at around 600,000 in 42 square miles in 1950, and that's including industrial land, square miles of swamps immediately south of downtown, institutional properties with no permanent population, and so on. More in a bit ...

My guess: decent but not-quite-lifestyle-center-upscale retail. Maybe Bed, Bath and Beyond to pick up the void left behind by the closure of Linens n Things in Golden Gate. Probably a few of the non-downscale urban-oriented businesses will move in from Richmond Town Center, such as Barnes and Noble. A card store has to be in the mix. Restaurants: probably some mid-end chains that don't have an East Side inner ring presence, like Pizzeria Uno, Rockne's or Max and Erma's. Chipotle will probably be back, and I'd guess a middle-end Asian noodle bowl restaurant will make its presence. DiBella's Subs (Rochester chain) could be a likely tenant. The first Jamba Juice in Cleveland?

Even though Cleveland has a huge Jewish community, there's not much of a local presence on JDate; it's dominated by the NYC and LA crowd. I'm Jewish, but just a middle class guy in the Hillcrest area. The women on JDate from the Cleveland area tended to be doctors, lawyers and other high-end professionals in Beachwood, Pepper Pike and Gates Mills. (What are childless single women doing living in Gates Mills, anyhow?) "Dating down" is unheard of in the Jewish community, so my brief foray into JDate was a bust. When I was on Match, the Cleveland-area membership seemed to be very much West Side-oriented. Looking through my matches was like reading a gazetteer of West Side communities: Lakewood, Rocky River, Lakewood, Westlake, Lakewood, Lakewood, Cleveland with references to The Harp, Berea, Cleveland with lots of Crocker Park and Detroit Street references, Lakewood, Lakewood, Lakewood ... you get the idea. Not many on the East Side in the Hillcrest and Heights area, but there were plenty of "my kids come first" soccer moms in Lake and Geauga counties, and tough-looking mountain women in Ashtabula. I'm in a long term relationship with a wonderful woman now, so no more online dating! :)

Allentown = Tremont + GBLT Lakewood Elmwood Village = Coventry + Cedar-Lee + Cedar-Fairmount + Shaker Square + Detroit Street + Little Italy Chippewa Street = combination of Warehouse District and old East Flats; somewhat smaller than, but much wilder than the Warehouse District. North Buffalo/Hertel Avenue = Little Italy + Cedar-Lee X 2; great urban fabric but not as much pedestrian traffic as either Cleveland-area 'hood. University Heights = Cedar-Lee + a lot of grit East Aurora (suburb) = Chagrin Falls in 1990 As far as where to eat: I recommend the wings (and atmosphere) at Gabriel's Gate on Allen Street. There's a lot of Italian restaurants, pub grub, and a growing number of upper-middle end restaurants along Hertel. You'll find a huge variety of places along Elmwood. Dining/restaurant trends in Buffalo are several years behind Cleveland, and about 10-15 years behind the nation, so don't expect much in the way of cutting-edge cuisine. Obscure ethnic dining (Ethiopian, South American, etc) is nonexistent, and even Mexican food is hard to find. There's no shortage of old-school 1950s-style menus (meatloaf, roast/fried everything, surf and turf, etc.), especially in blue-collar burbs like Cheektowaga.

There's really not that much on the US side of the border, to be honest. Head down Pine Street to Niagara Falls' Little Italy, which is a more workaday Italian-American neighborhood than a tourist destination, and check out Como, an Italian restaurant that is supposedly a favorite of Buffalo area Mafioso. It's the kind of place that is dark and very old-school, with signed photos of Sinatra and the like on the walls. Niagara Falls is a VERY Italian-American city, but don't expect much in the way of unique dining; Buffalo-style red sauce Italian cuisine is dominant. It's damn good, but a bit monotonous. If you're an urbanist kind of person, there's really a lot more to be seen in Buffalo; the Elmwood Village, Allentown, and North Buffalo neighborhoods in the city really don't have an equivalent in Cleveland. East Aurora is Buffalo's answer to Chagrin Falls, but it's in the Southtowns, on the opposite side of the metro from the Falls.

The Swindon photo is the "Magic Roundabout", and it's actually considered quite efficient. It replaced a regular intersection of several streets.

That's probably a good description. Buffalo is a very old-school, very ethnic, very Catholic city, with a dominant blue-collar culture that even upper income and young professionals embrace. (In Buffalo, it's said that you may be Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or an atheist, but you'll still grow up Catholic. Only in Buffalo do Jews celebrate Shabbat by going out for a fish fry, or Lutherans able to recite the Hail Mary from memory.) Its suburbs tend to resemble Parma, Brooklyn, Westlake, Strongsville and the like more so than Shaker Heights, Pepper Pike, Gates Mills and the Chagrin River Valley. Cheektowaga can be more Parma-ish than Parma itself. (Amherst/Williamsville, though, is like a combination of Beachwood, Solon, Lyndhurst and South Euclid. Like Beachwood and Solon, Amherst is the suburb everybody loves to hate.) Elmwood Village, the Delaware District, Allentown and North Buffalo are more urban/bohemian, where you'll most likely run into the rare Buffalonian that leads the "Stuff White People Like" lifestyle. One thing I noticed about Cleveland is that the Northern Cities/flat a accent is commonplace among the working class/blue collar crowd, but much less so among the white collar and professional set. However, in Buffalo, almost everybody -- well, almost all the natives -- has the "eyacksint", whether they work "eyat thee pleeyant" or "eyat thee beeyank". Even television news announcers have the accent.

This is an old thread, I know, but after working as a planner in the Cleveland area for over four years, I thought I'd add in my two cents. This is quickly drafted and not very eloquent, so bear with me ... 1) Planning? What planning? In most other metropolitan areas in the US, a municipality with more than about 10,000 or 20,000 residents will have a full-time staff planner, if not a small planning staff. In the Cleveland metro area, by comparison, there are relatively few municipal planning agencies. The state of local government planning in Cleveland reminds me of that in Buffalo, where, surprisingly, suburban municipalities are much larger than in Cleveland; large building departments, an emphasis on CDCs/community development (free paint programs, affordable housing, etc), and a very strong emphasis on economic development (look at the qualifications for the Assistant Planning Director position in Lakewood), but as for "planning planning" - land use, zoning, urban design, and the form of the built environment ...well, who cares, as long as the schools are good and the streets are plowed, right? Because there's so little local planning, there are few to actually implement and champion the plans that are actually in place, Once some consultant gives a community a freshly minted comp plan (seems like only the counties and NOACA draft plans in-house), where do they go from there? If there was a staff planner, they can carry it forward and work on implementation. Without a planner, it'll usually sit on the shelf as a reference document, to be leafed through and interpreted like a holy tome only when NIMBYism rears its head. 2) Strong resistance to contemporary planning techniques. There's almost too much to say about this, so for now I'll just offer my experience with New Urbanism. While NU and traditional neighborhood development is embraced elsewhere, here in northeast Ohio it's a very, very hard sell. Why? Here's what I wrote in a post on Cyburbia a while back: * Negative associations with urban-like built environments are still stuck in the heads of much of an insular and aging population, thanks to lots of cultural baggage left over from years of decline, flight, and racial tensions. * Very low land values offer no incentive for compact development. Developers can build $200K houses on 1/2 acre lots and still make a tidy profit. * Outdated zoning codes often have no PUD requirements, or mandate very low maximum densities in PUDs and even multi-family districts. We're talking about codes that still mention telegraph offices and haberdasheries. * Conservative local developers and builders are leery of straying from a "tried and true" formula of single family houses on large lots in a cul-de-sac filled subdivision. There's nothing on the ground in the area, so they're leery of being the guinea pig for NU. * Conservative lenders/bankers. See the above. * Land ownership/platting pattern: there are few large parcels available for a good-sized NU development, and it's very difficult to acquire and agglomerate smaller parcels. * Possible cries of NIMBY because of the much smaller lot sizes associated with NU are likely. The small lot suburban development (5,000-6,000'^2 lots) that is the norm in California, Colorado and the Sunbelt is rare or nonexistent in post-1960 Rust Belt suburbia; those in the Rust Belt aren't accustomed to the sight of higher density suburbs. In the eyes of many, small lot sizes = cheaper houses and more intensive traffic. * There is widespread belief that cities should copy the built environment of its suburbs. The roots of this may be a spurious relationship logical fallacy. "Solon is growing. Solon is dominated by low-density residential development. Therefore, Solon is growing because it is dominated by low-density residential development on winding drives and cul-de-sacs. For our community to grow, it needs to be more like Solon, and have plenty of low-density residential development in loop-and-lollypop subdivisions too." * Desperate local officials have low expectations and a fear of scaring developers away from their communities by asking for more than the bare minimum. "Any development is better than no development." * Perceptions of design limitations; not just the usual concerns about emergency vehicles but also about snow storage. 3) Extreme not-invented-here syndrome. In my day-to-day work, I'm constantly confronted with one recurring question: "Has it been done in Ohio?" As a planner who has worked throughout the US, we always looked far and wide for inspiration, ideas and successes. In the process of writing a sign code for a community in Florida, I quoted various codes in Colorado, Kansas, Arizona and California, with barely a blink. Here in northeast Ohio, though, it seems like the mantra is "Has it been tried in Dublin?" or "What do they do in Delaware County?" If you're introducing a concept from out-of-state, it's approached as if one who has a great fear of dogs is suddenly confronted with a smiling, tail-wagging Labrador Retriever. "Will it bite? Is it dangerous?" I can understand this mindset in townships, but in incorporated communities it's stifling. 4) Bad plans. Most of the more recent comprehensive plans I've seen for Cleveland-area communities seem rather old-school; lots of inventory, little critical analysis, and concluded with vague goals like "maintain the integrity of the housing stock" -- the only meat of the plan -- lumped together at the end of the plan in paragraph form. Contemporary plans have very specific goals and policies spelled in the individual elements, usually in an outline-like format. More later ...

Back to the OP: what's the old station like today? I don't hear that much about urban exploration in the Cleveland area except for abandoned factories, and I'm surprised there's no photos of the lost station's current state. I wonder if there's any old photos of the old traction track area from the 1930s and 1940s. I've seen photos of the concourse, but nothing from track level. Track plans show several more tracks, but photos seem nonexistent. I'm fascinated with parts of the Shaker rapid that were only partially built, like the loop provision in Gates Mills and the graded ROW in Beachwood. From what I understand, Shaker Heights was originally planned to extend eastward to the Chagrin River valley (Shaker Country Estates), but I've never seen maps of what was originally planned for buildout.

Kaisertown, located on Buffalo's East Side, is a blue collar neighborhood that was developed between 1900 and 1915. Despite its name, Kaisertown is a predominantly Polish-American neighborhood. It's a relatively stable neighborhood; an enclave in a section of the city that is otherwise quite bruised and battered. Let's check the place out ... This is Clinton Street, the main business strip of Kaisertown. Almost all the businesses are located in buildings styled after Buffalo's famous two-flat house, with the business located downtstairs, and the business owners living above. Clinton is a classic streetcar strip; trolleys stopped running along the street in 1950. Kaisertown's housing stock is typical of Buffalo's East Side; small frame single family and two-flat houses on long, narrow lots. Some Kaisertown flavor. Can't forget the little old Polish lady. Where's the babushka?

Moderators: please move this to the City Photos - USA/World subforum. Thanks!

Here's a small portion of Elmwood Village on Christmas Eve/Eruv Chanukah/two days before Boxing Day eh, 2005.

Despite the severe economic decline the Buffalo region has experienced since the 1950s, there are still some bright spots in the city. One of them is Elmwood Village, one of the nation's largest bohemian/creative class neighborhoods. The neighborhood is really quite an anomaly for a blue collar city like Buffalo. I describe the area to Cleveland's East Siders as "Cedar-Lee on steriods", and West Siders as "like Detroit Avenue, but a lot more urban". These photos were taken in Fall 2001. Elmwood has really changed a bit since then; more infill, a notch more upscale, and believeit or not, it seems like there's a LOT more pedestrian traffic. Enjoy.