KJP

Here's some Ohio photos. In the 1950s, there were two attempts at developing lightweight, high-speed trains for the Midwest-Northeast. One was the Aerotrain, which operated on several different railroads, including the Pennsylvania RR. The other was the Xplorer, which operated over the New York Central, frequently over their Big Four routes such as between Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati. Here are some pictures of the New York Central low-slung, high-speed Xplorer in 1956, as seen at: Columbus Union Station Columbus Union Station, showing how close to the rails the Xplorer was, and thus its center of gravity was much lower so it could take curve faster Worthington The photo credit for this shot also said "Worthington" but I think this also was Columbus Union Station... Then there was the New York Central's Mercury. Its initial service ran between two of the railroad's biggest customer bases -- Detroit and Cleveland. Later expansions of Mercury service came to the Chicago - Detroit corridor and even Cincinnati - Detroit. New York Central saw the Cleveland - Detroit corridor as an untapped market. It was a terrific route for business travelers, among the steel, auto and shipping industries. But the rail service between them was slow -- taking four hours in the 1930s. In 1936, in the midst of the Great Depression, New York Central rebuilt some commuter coaches into snazzy parlor, coach and dining cars, and added art deco streamlining to standard steam locomotives. The result was NYC's Mercury, The Greek God of Speed, which departed from Cleveland each morning around 7 a.m., arriving in Detroit before 10 a.m. and returning to Cleveland in the afternoon. It regularly cruised at 90 mph, and offered the finest cuisine in its diner and drinks in its rear all-glass observation car. That is, until the Ohio Turnpike opened in 1955 and the eventually Mercury faded away... There is a terrific book about the Mercury, by Richard Cook, and can be found at Wings Hobby Shop in Lakewood. It's on Detroit Avenue, near St. James Church.

I like the idea of building it in the water. But I suspect they would have to "fake" some exhibits to make them appear as if people are looking into the water to see some wildlife, because: A. I doubt there is much underwater wildlife in Cleveland harbor, and B. I doubt you could see them even if they were there.

Nice article. Glad to see it came from Sun.

Smoking is also bad for your spelling, Pope.

Interesting that they would put a timeline on that. Sounds like it may be coinciding with the Baker Hostetler situation?

Sorry. I have no fix to offer. I've been out of the loop these last 10 days, trying to save my lovely little kitty Abby from a fast-moving, terminal disease called FIP. She succumbed to FIP on Wednesday. I guess my life wasn't hard enough because I'm now trying to quit smoking. BTW, that 113 St. Clair building is on the east side of Ontario, across from David's restaurant and the Marriott. The article about the purchase probably shouldn't even be posted in this thread. Still an interesting development though.

If you want to follow the progress of the case(s), go to http://probate.cuyahogacounty.us/pa/pa.urd/PAMW6500 , click on each case then click on dockets.

He was at the first meeting only. He arrived late enough to miss my presentation on why the Lorain-Cleveland element of NOACA's NEORail plan should be given a second look. He made his speech and then left. What a great listener. I would consider an e-mail or phone call, unless you want to write to his district office in Lakewood. Never send regular mail to Congressional offices in D.C. It has to be irradiated and will add a month or more to delivery time.

Nice shots of some nice looking trains.

All, I had the chance to speak with Kucinich today for about five minutes on the commuter rail proposal. I learned the unfortunate news that, for whatever reason, he has not been told a thing by his staff about the ongoing West Shore Corridor Regional Rail stakeholder meetings. The next one will be held at 9:30 a.m. Oct. 20 at the Lorain Community College's Spitzer Conference Center. I encourage anyone reading this and supporting commuter rail service in the West Shore Corridor to please write, call, fax, e-mail or meet with Kucinich and/or his staffer Marty Gelfand to tell them you support the rail service. And, if you should hear of an event where Kucinich will attend, please go there and speak with him directly. Please ask him that you support federal funding for a transportation alternatives analysis of the West Shore Corridor which requires a significant public involvement process. For Kucinich's contact information, go to http://kucinich.house.gov/Contact/ (send regular mail only to his district offices). For more information about the regional rail service and to consider some talking points, click on this link http://members.cox.net/kjprendergast/West%20Shore%20Corridor.pdf to view a powerpoint presentation (may take a few minutes to open for dial-up users). Edited to include contact info and powerpoint link.

"No Excuses" - Donna Rice

Plus all the art galleries and what sounds like steam escaping. Oh, wait, that's just the gay guys chatting... <ducking out of the way of thrown expresso>

Thanks for posting that. But for some reason I remember there also is a room with a higher cieling that looks like an old train station concourse. Perhaps I'm not remembering it right? BTW, I think the thing that caused that site to not be used for blimp travel were the high winds atop the Huntington Building (ex-Union Trust Bank) which made it difficult to attached a mooring rope. The building was finished in 1924, but the Hindenburg didn't crash until 1937. The Empire State Building was also designed for mooring an airship, but suffered the same problem with high winds.

Especially since it parallels (in some stretches by a matter of feet) the MARC line out to Brunswick and beyond.

I do hear foolishness, too, but not from the age range of people I'm usually around. A lot of my coworkers are younger than I -- 20s and maybe into their 30s. Those who convey ignorance generally tend to be older than I, and therefore should know better. But we're all creatures of our past, and for them the Cleveland they grew up with in the 60s, 70s and even into the 80s was one where decline and danger were the dominant themes. It's hard for them to accept any new views when the past is so deeply ingrained in them.

We already have one of those downtown. Are there pictures of it anywhere? It's gotta be one of Cleveland's biggest secrets!

...Or continuing the image of what they already have in N.O.

Interesting comments by the Detroiters, jamiec. While I do occasionally come across a suburbanite who is scared to go downtown, it's pretty rare. I think most realize that downtown is pretty safe during the day, though some (especially women) have concerns about walking around at night, especially in areas where there isn't much pedestrian activity.

So has Buffalo, Pittsburgh or St. Louis, and Cincinnati isn't far behind. When that happens, it's indicative of a policy failure, especially when only some U.S. cities declined so dramatically or not at all. Interesting that many of these declining cities are concentrated in the same general region. There is no one explanation for this. My Cleveland developments/planned projects map is even more impressive. I don't have the sites identified, but I'm sure many of you can figure out what most of these are:

As much as it pains me to say, I would rather see 200 Public Square be filled out and support the leasing rates. An unanswerable question right now is what will the absorption rates be over the next couple of years when Baker Hostetler is ready to make its move. If the past year is an example, the market may be ready for a new office building in a couple of years. But a lot can happen between now and then. Baker Hostetler can probably predict its own future two years from now to some degree of variation. The downtown office market, however, has too many variables affecting it. So make the financially conservative move now and let developers see where things stand in 2008. BTW, I don't know if this image has been posted before, but I came across this rendering of the proposed DFAS office building on the Flats East Bank, inside the Waterfront Line's hairpin curve. A site reserved for a Waterfront Line station is in the foreground...

David, The area is heavily Asian. See the photos at the start of this thread if you haven't already. I've been to the Asia Food Co. (a supermarket) a few times, and I was a minority there. Most customers are Asian, and speak in their native languages. And, the last photo in the opening message gives a pretty good indication of the neighborhood's ethnicity...

A name that already rings with people, like Chinatown, usually only rings because it has been done before. And, as said before, it won't fit the item you're trying describe because you're forcing a square peg into a round hole (ie: there's more than just Chinese in Chinatown). But if you use a new word like "Xerox," "Panasonic," "Kleenex" or "Brownfield," and explain it with a marketing campaign or some other means of repetition, it will become inseparable to the item it was designed to describe. It is like building the hole around the round peg. Use the phrase "The Near East" in a marketing campaign for the area just east-northeast of downtown and it will soon become applicable to that area -- and nowhere else (even throughout the U.S.). But if we want to borrow someone else's name for purposes of expediency, that's too bad.

Someone needs to give Carl a spell-checker and a crash course on punctuation. I've run into too many reporters in broadcast media who think they are writers. But ask them to write a story in AP Wire Style and I'll bet most will have no idea what you're talking about. Will they admit to it? Hell no!

My office is about 500 feet east of the Stearns-Lorain intersection. It will speed up my trip to work, but slow it down from work. Making a left-hand turn out of my office building's parking lot is hard enough as it is. I can't imagine what it will be like after Crocker-Stearns opens. I covered this project for nine years when I covered Westlake. I saw the plans for it several years ago, and I don't think people realize how big the Lorain-Crocker/Stearns intersection will be. Within 500 feet or so of the intersection, Lorain will be widened from five lanes to seven and Stearns widened from two to five or six lanes. Add the Crocker/Stearns segment north of Lorain, and it will be quite the traffic nightmare in only a few years after it opens. As experience has shown for the last 50 years, adding pavement only encourages more traffic. And the investment yield -- free-flowing traffic and economic development -- diminishes as capacity increases. It's simple economics. So is another principal -- supply and demand. There are, of course, only choices for equalizing supply and demand: increase supply or decrease demand. Since we are unwilling to decrease demand by increasing the price of using roads, our only option is to continue increasing supply. Urban sprawl at the expense of existing communities is the price we pay. That's our diminishing return.

Start with letters to the editor of your local papers and write to folks at Team NEO and the Greater Cleveland Parternship. Your elected leaders may hear you if you contact them, but they will listen to the Team NEOs and GCPs of this region. By the way, I may have been a little too conservative with the Kinsman Yard site. There is enough vacant land around the original area I delineated so that the footprint for the intermodal yards and supportive warehousing uses could be expanded to at least 210 acres. More contiguous areas of supportive land uses could be included if the Blue/Green Lines were relocated down the median of the Opportunity Corridor Boulevard (see http://members.cox.net/neotrans/OpportunityCorridorRapidREV.pdf ). Note the larger area delineated in orange... NEW VERSION.... OLD VERSION....