KJP

Haslam’s Brook Park, Berea developments progress By Ken Prendergast / November 21, 2024 A small but strategic piece of land that was in the way of the Haslam Sports Group’s (HSG) proposed stadium for its Cleveland Browns football team in suburban Brook Park has sold. Its sale gets it out of the way and into the fold of the overall property transaction for the roofed stadium. And in neighboring Berea, where HSG and its partners plan a Browns-themed mixed-use development, site plans are getting their first airing tonight as part of a rezoning request. MORE: https://neo-trans.blog/2024/11/21/haslams-brook-park-berea-developments-progress/

Haslam’s Brook Park, Berea developments progress By Ken Prendergast / November 21, 2024 A small but strategic piece of land that was in the way of the Haslam Sports Group’s (HSG) proposed stadium for its Cleveland Browns football team in suburban Brook Park has sold. Its sale gets it out of the way and into the fold of the overall property transaction for the roofed stadium. And in neighboring Berea, where HSG and its partners plan a Browns-themed mixed-use development, site plans are getting their first airing tonight as part of a rezoning request. MORE: https://neo-trans.blog/2024/11/21/haslams-brook-park-berea-developments-progress/ And the site plan....

Nothing yet on the recorder's site. Auto lender Global Financial (Joseph & Pierce Chelala) took out an open-ended, $1.25 million mortgage to secure future advances on April 22, 2024 from Farmers National Bank of Canfield. The mortgage was collateralized by six parcels owned by 4910 Detroit LLC at the NW corner of Detroit Avenue and West 49th Street. There are two other mortgages collateralized by some or all of the same parcels.

When I was looking out the windows of the Collins at Silverhills across the street, the NRP lady giving the tour said "Don't worry, that's not a penitentiary."

Amtrak Cascades train hits tree that fell onto tracks in Snohomish County https://komonews.com/news/local/amtrak-cascades-train-strikes-tree-on-track-bomb-cyclone-windstorm-damage-western-washington

Unknown. I've heard only that it's very difficult to get their agent to answer the phone. I brightened up that main picture a lot. I wanted to go back down there again today to reshoot it this afternoon but then the rain moved in so that was out.

I didn't include these pictures in the article because the lighting wasn't good. But I thought my fellow urbanerds would like them. So here ya go....

Cleveland riverside neighborhood opens for tours By Ken Prendergast / November 20, 2024 For much of the past 50 years, Scranton Peninsula, across the curving Cuyahoga River from Downtown Cleveland, had become an increasingly desolate place. It saw its two largest industrial employers — Northern Ohio Lumber and Republic Steel’s Upson Nut Division — depart, leaving the 75-acre peninsula scarred and mostly vacant. MORE: https://neo-trans.blog/2024/11/20/cleveland-riverside-neighborhood-opens-for-tours/

The transformation of DC's Navy Yard neighborhood from 2000 to today. In order to achieve this, you have to always have multiple cranes in the background of a Washington Nationals game. And there were....

Cross posted from the transportation section

Yes, Geis still owns it. They're going to be demolishing that crappy little parking garage behind it. A surface lot will replace it "temporarily" so don't get too excited when you the garage getting demolished. It doesn't suggest anything except that the garage was in bad shape.

GCRTA is allowed to order up to 60 railcars. Their first option was for 24 cars with a second option for six more railcars. Those are for the Red Line. Today's 18-car option will bring the total to 48 cars. If they can turn more financial commitments into received funds, they will be able to exercise more railcars options to give them a reserve for emergencies, huge special events, etc.

Barons-Greyhound Lease at Brookpark station OK’d By Ken Prendergast / November 19, 2024 With the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s (GCRTA) board of trustees unanimously approving a lease with Barons Bus Inc. today, the intercity bus carrier and its partner Greyhound have started on a timetable to relocate out of the historic Downtown Cleveland Greyhound station, 1465 Chester Ave. MORE: https://neo-trans.blog/2024/11/19/barons-greyhound-lease-at-brookpark-station-okd/

GCRTA Board just authorized staff to order another 18 railcars. This will re-equip the Blue and Green lines and allow service frequency to increase from every 30 minutes on the branches (every 15 mins west of Shaker Square) to every 20 mins (every 10 mins west of SS) and increase top speeds from 35 mph to 45 mph.

The reason was that trip data from a decade ago showed more people living near the Blue Line were traveling to the University Circle area and more people living near the Green Line were traveling to downtown. That may have changed since, so it's always worth rechecking this data if the opportunity arises again.

FYI... Tomorrow 11/20 is the MetroHealth Line Bus Rapid Transit Community Open House at St Patrick Parish 3602 Bridge Ave. Start Time is 5:30PM and will go till 7:30PM Clevelanders for Public Transit is looking to push for Bus Lanes along the entire corridor, Signal Priorty, and Off board payment with all door boarding to name a few things. We would like to see RTA push for a BRT standard across its entire network inline with ITDP Standards and Guildlines. We hope to see as many riders there as possible to show RTA and the City of Cleveland we want better transit!

This was my idea a few years ago, but I added the International Soccer Training Center, just four short blocks north of an extended Green Line at Cedar.

Cool idea! I like it! BTW, I belatedly added the 1994 views of the parking at four Green Line stations to my post above. I usually took the Green Line to Dyke College downtown in 1991-92. When I had classes starting at 7:30 or especially at 8:20 am, I usually had to park way down at the end of the parking lot at West Green and sometimes on the grass. If my first class was at mid-morning, I might have better luck finding a parking spot at one of the station lots along the Blue Line, like at Farnsleigh or Lynnfield. But that wasn't guaranteed either.

Yay, we're #1!! 😢

The ridership is higher on the Blue Line than the Green Line. Both lines have seen catastrophic ridership declines since the pandemic and neither was strong before the pandemic. The National Transit Database says the two LRT lines (both Blue and Green) combined for a total of 662,113 unlinked trips (individual rides) last year. That's an average of about 900 rides per day per line. Truly awful. Incredibly, that's an increase from 2021 when it carried 465,123 unlinked trips. Gone are the days from the 1990s and before when commuters overflowed the Green Road and West Green station parking lots and parked on sidestreets at most stations (Here are two views from 1994). I have data from the 2000s that shows the Red Line carried between 7 million and 8 million rides per year (7,639,000 in 2008). We used to lament that the Red Line so few riders, ranking it dead last among 15 heavy rail systems in the nation. Last year, it carried 3,472,342 rides -- twice as much as the next-most-used transit line in Cleveland -- the HealthLine BRT which carried 1,714,067 unlinked trips. The Blue/Green lines in the 2000s carried just over 3 million unlinked trips (3,262,000 in 2008). That was enough to rank it 20th among 29 LRT systems nationwide and third or fourth among Cleveland transit lines. When the 3 and 26 ran as a combined crosstown 326 route, it routinely carried more than 3 million riders per year (3,442,131 in 2004). BTW, these were top-10 GCRTA bus routes in 2004 in terms of ridership (unlinked trips) with 2008 rail ridership added: 66 HRT -- 7,639,000 1 -- 326 --3,442,131 67 LRT -- 3,262,000 2 -- 6 -- 2,941,560 3 -- 22 -- 2,041,450 4 --1 -- 2,005,840 5 -- 15/15A -- 1,958,665 6 -- 14 -- 1,888,796 7 -- 10 -- 1,866,657 8 -- 20All -- 1,351,598 9 -- 2 -- 1,228,787 10 -- 40 -- 1,210,848 All that being said, no one is going to be abandoning the Blue/Green lines. GCRTA has invested a lot of federal money in them that would have to be reimbursed if any rail line is abandoned. How much money? It was just awarded $16 million for stations: https://neo-trans.blog/2024/05/28/all-gcrta-blue-line-stations-in-shaker-heights-to-be-rebuilt/ $8 million for a new East 79th LRT station: https://neo-trans.blog/2024/02/25/gcrtas-new-east-79th-rail-station-is-an-opportunity/ $50 million for the Blue/Green trunk (SS-E55th): https://neo-trans.blog/2023/05/01/208m-shaker-rapid-rebuild-down-the-line/ They also spent millions of federal dollars in getting the Waterfront Line extension of the Blue/Green lines back up and running. On the Green Line, some federal dollars have been invested in new roadway crossings, the Warrensville-Shaker station, and some state of good repair stuff. But I don't think this was more than a few million dollars in the past 10-15 years. So yes, they could abandon this if they wanted. But... The big GCRTA expense is the new railcars. And they're ordering 18 cars for the Blue and Green lines. Right now, the most LRVs that GCRTA can muster is nine trains during peak hours to operate each branch on 30-minute intervals. When they get the new trains, they'll be able to run 12 trains during peak hours to increase frequency (and reliability) to trains on the branches every 20 minutes (or every 10 minutes west of Shaker Square). And the hope is to be able to do some new routing stuff with the new trains like running a Shaker Line through Tower City to the Airport and maybe every other Red Line east train through to the Waterfront. Green Road, 1994 Warrensville, 1994 South Park, 1994 Courtland, 1994

It was PR to try and get a property sold. But Jacobs wants too much money.

This is just one man's opinion. but what kind of toxic locker room must there be to foment an opinion like this?

BTW, that previous post probably qualifies as a... And not one of these....

As bad as our hurricane season was, and it was bad, the Philippines have been hit by FOUR Typhoons in TEN days.

Machine Gun Kelly aims for Shooters in Flats By Ken Prendergast / November 18, 2024 If there was anyone who would be a perfect fit to take over the operation of a restaurant named Shooters, it would be a guy named Machine Gun Kelly. The riverside restaurant will reportedly be the singer and songwriter’s second establishment in Downtown Cleveland’s Flats entertainment district and is due to be renovated and reopened in the summer of 2025. MORE: https://neo-trans.blog/2024/11/18/machine-gun-kelly-aims-for-shooters-in-flats/