KJP

I've got more information on Erieview. Something else has happened pretty recently that makes the project viable. I hope to be able to share it very soon. But, yes, this is a difficult time to be pursuing projects. If it wasn't for TIF financing, tax credits or other incentives, many of these projects never would happen.

Tracks are back

That's bad news. I thought MCPC has deep pockets. If anyone could pull it off, it would have been them.

Ohio GOP loves your embryos but hates your kids

Add another east-west street immediately north of the tracks. It would probably have to be at a higher elevation to account for the street bridges over the tracks. That would send the noise from the trains upward rather than outward, making things quieter for neighboring developments.

Not that I've seen. Thanks to all for your compliments. Especially the part about sounding like a younger man!

I did a Google search and found out they're 14 feet 6 inches tall.

Sometimes, yes. Sometimes they just say, it's okay.

Erieview Tower redo faces setbacks By Ken Prendergast / June 14, 2023 Despite winning $23 million in tax credits to enable a $100 million historic and transformational redevelopment of the Tower at Erieview, two major proposed tenants are reportedly backing out of the project. Conversion of the 1964-built, 40-story office tower and its Galleria mall, 1301 E. 9th St., with more mixed uses could be facing an uphill climb with the apparent withdrawal of a luxury W Hotel and co-working chain Industrious. MORE https://neo-trans.blog/2023/06/14/erieview-tower-redo-faces-setbacks/

Erieview Tower redo faces setbacks By Ken Prendergast / June 14, 2023 Despite winning $23 million in tax credits to enable a $100 million historic and transformational redevelopment of the Tower at Erieview, two major proposed tenants are reportedly backing out of the project. Conversion of the 1964-built, 40-story office tower and its Galleria mall, 1301 E. 9th St., with more mixed uses could be facing an uphill climb with the apparent withdrawal of a luxury W Hotel and co-working chain Industrious. MORE https://neo-trans.blog/2023/06/14/erieview-tower-redo-faces-setbacks/

Sorry, I have no further information on timing. Under federal law, it would depend on someone other than Amtrak (like a state or an MPO) taking the lead on the filing of applications for planning and development funds. So far, no one has.

It be me. I hate doing narration. I suck at it because I sound like I'm reading. We had to break up the reading into three sections and the last section took me eight takes, and I increasingly didn't care how bad it sounded. I don't read out loud very well. But the boss thinks I have a good radio voice (hopefully not a radio face) so she's encouraging me to keep at it. Now she's got me doing walking tours of downtown for new arrivals to Cleveland.

Check out the fresh drone video we commissioned of the site, too! Scranton Peninsula then and now https://neo-trans.blog/2023/06/13/scranton-peninsula-then-and-now/

Why underrated Cincinnati is the place to pursue every American dream - Ireland Live https://www.ireland-live.ie/news/travel/1194477/why-underrated-cincinnati-is-the-place-to-pursue-every-american-dream.html

LOL!

The Eighth District Court of Appeals is there, too. But they're also proposed to be moved out, if the judges can be convinced. Domestic relations doesn't want to be there because case parties are mixed and in divorces/custody cases, things can get heated. So they need to be in a newly designed, more secure setting that the new Courthouse will offer. If you move everything out, the only thing that's left is a wedding venue. A mid-size tower was preferred (don't know if it still is) because a skyscraper would be more expensive to build. At 877,000 SF and floorplates averaging 25,000 SF, we're talking a 35-story tower. At 1,077,000 SF and floorplates averaging 25,000 SF, it's a 43-story tower. But those could be roughly halved if you build two "towers" connected by a glass-topped atrium or something like that. But now you're talking a footprint of something like 75,000 to 100,000 SF. And none of this accounts for parking.

And then they'll complain about homelessness. Meanwhile...

That's still a very tight clearance. The upside is that Superliners' roofs taper along the edges to increase clearances on the sides of the train so that any rocking through the station prevents impacts. I don't know how much you can lower the tracks. There is a drainage tunnel running from near Public Square to the river so you can't lower the tracks by very much if at all.

And still no tower crane....

Their intent to issue an RFP was announced in April but the RFP hasn't been issued yet. The city issued its RFP for the CPD HQ shortly before Nov. 2 when they announced it publicly. It had a response deadline of Nov. 14 and they announced their decision Nov. 29. I'm not saying that's what will happen with the county's RFP, but I'm saying that it could move that fast. Back in 2020, I wrote: "The Justice Center’s 25-story, 420-foot-tall, 600,000-square-foot courthouse tower is in very poor condition. It will cost hundreds of millions of dollars to renovate it, and by the time that work is done, it will still be a 50-year-old, poorly-built building, planners said. And that cost doesn’t take into account expanding it for the domestic relations and housing courts plus other county court-related offices located in other buildings. "Planners said that the courthouse tower needs to measure 877,000 square feet to address overcrowding. A new courthouse could grow by roughly 200,000 square feet if the Eighth District Court of Appeals and the Cuyahoga County Probate Court are also relocated into a new courthouse tower, pending further study." https://neo-trans.blog/2020/01/24/new-downtown-courthouse-tower-nearby-jail-campus-comes-into-focus/ In other words, this is going to be a whale. But it's not guaranteed to be a skyscraper like SHW's HQ. It could be a large, squat building like the Clinic's Neurological Hospital.

To me, this is all "good ol' days" stuff that is based on nostalgia, not economic reality. If some suburbs in Cuyahoga County were still running their own transit, that would be one thing. If they were running it well, that would be another. But none even exist. And like Brian said, running your own transit system with a tax base that has bled 550,000 residents and perhaps as many jobs is not going to work. Even so, in a built-out county with lots of aging industries and polluted land being forced to compete for taxbase with clean-n-green forests and fields aka development sites bolstered by local/state/federal subsidies, not to mention other countries with slave labor and no enviro regs means your county is going to bleed taxbase. A transit system funded almost entirely from that county's taxbase is going to suffer mightily.

Not until sometime after the RFP is issued. Even the RFP will stipulate that it be a downtown location. No other sites outside of downtown will be considered.

I just had an architect measure the clearance above the RTA tracks using a laser. Clearance from the top of the ties to the lowest visible structural overhang above the tracks was 17 feet. Amtrak uses double-deck Superliners through Cleveland on the Capitol Limited to Washington DC. Superliners are 16'2" tall. 100-pound / yard rail is 6 inches tall and can be used on all station tracks. That leaves about 4 inches of overhead clearance.