CBC

^ Nice piece. Interesting comments too....

Ugly soils that is. I think we can all see why they are using the auger cast pile for the foundations based on the existing site conditions. The pics are much appreciated. Thanks MayDay! Isn't that all infill? I thought the original bluff ran basically along Main Ave. I could swear reading that they were using a pad for the office building. I might have gotten confused, it may have been general discussions about building in Cleveland and why we have a lot of 10-15 story buildings. Anyway, good to see them working on it. That's been an open sore...

^gotcha. That is definately a potential problem, although we aren't there yet :) I welcome the day when the boosters are the main people protecting the Status Quo,

Plenty of residential in that area already. There are some great town homes along that stretch of Madison. I guess you could concievably put more residential as a continuation of the neighborhoods to the east, if the site is acceptable to build residential on. The site is sort of pinned by the railroad and the indstrial buildings, that underpass on Madison that would be the direct shot to the rapid station is pretty unfriendly IMHO. I think that I would tend to agree that the best bang for the buck at a sight like that would be some sort of large institutional building (hospital, agency adminstrative building, etc) that employeed several hundred people. It would act as a buffer for the residential to the east to the industrial and hopefully give the places along Madison a shot in the arm with lunch/dinner business.

Looking North under the Main St bridge. The backs of the buildings on the right are the building facing W 9th. Edit:Oops Mayday got it already. Enjoying the holiday, Mayday?

Took me 45 minutes to scrape the ice of both of our cars this morning...yay. Time to clean out the garage...

I believe that is a superfund site, if I am thinking of the right spot.

I don't get it. What is the problem with boosterism? Why can't they spread the good without hanging an asterisk on the end of every positive statement? There are enough people, local media included who spend their time beating down the city proper. Nobody is going to forget about the poverty or the corruption, it gets enough coverage. I don't understand the harm that bossterism could do? Yes it can be annoying but is it real causing any harm.? And sometimes you have to have a bit of cognetive disonance in order to keep putting up the good fight. Otherwise it would be just to damn daunting to carry on. Yes a new coffee shop is insignificant in the face of crumbling ghettos but it is a small battle victory if the stoefront was previously vacant for the last 5 years. For the record, I tend to be a reserved booster. More pragmatic than overly sunny and rosy.

Mac and cheese and French fries and mussels drenched in garlic butter? Sounds like I am going to need and EKG on the side. ... In all seriousness, thanks guys. So basically I am will be good to go with anything on the menu. That's good to know. Now if i can avoid the dreaded," What you ordered looks so much better than mine" from my wife, it will be a good meal. I'll tell her the MAc n Cheese was highly recommended.

Thanks for the account. KJP. That explains a lot. I do agree with the posters who wish that more of the previous structures could have been incorporated, especially given the scope of the project currently. Have you ever tried your hand at writing fiction? You have a great start to a lightly fictionalize murder-crime mystery. Enough seedy characters and corrupt officials for a whole series, in fact. Start with the investigation of the murder of one of the club owners around 2002 and work the story to the days of the longshoreman's bars. You could do for Cleveland what Pelcanos did for DC in crime fiction.

Too bad about the Lakewood B Spot not happening, but I totally see the problem that they had trying to find a location. Most Lakewood spaces would be too small or not have enough parking, or both. Wife and I are heading over to Tremont Tap House tonight, any suggestions?

^NORC. I like it.

I am too young to really remember the Flats in its best days besides a couple of trips there during the day with my dad prior to Browns games and Indians games, but I am old enough to remember the post 2000 3 or 4 year seedy stage, where there were still a lot of bars open but quite honestly they were pretty crappy. Mike White may have did what he did, but I think that the Campbell Administration were the one's who were in a position to resurect the Flats but they neglected it leading to the eastbanks death. Am I out of line on this? Or had Wolstein already locked up most of the land rights that he needed by that point and was slowing strangling the remaining businesses?

^ yeah sorry about that I kind of jumped subjects with that last line. I totally agreed. Grandview is the hot place to live among my college friends in Columbus (of course most of them are from there.) I was speaking about the post war burbs, like Middleberg Hts in Cle or the north of 161 area in Columbus by the old Northland mall (before the immigrant wave) . I think most of the "street car" inner ring suburbs such as Lakewood and Grandview Hts missed that originally because there was virtually no new housing built from 1930 to the late 40s. I actually think that Lakewood has gotten much younger in the 8 years that I have lived there. It always has had a large population of young families, due to good schools and affordable housing options, but the large number of "babuska" old ladies seems to have declined dramatically, which makes sense because I assume that a large number of families started there in the late 40s and early 50s, filled up the housing stock. Most probably lived in the same house for 50 years. These people would now be in their late 80s and 90s and either moved on to the great urban enviromentt in the sky or into a nursing home/assisted living.

I live on a very kid filled and family friendly street of single family homes in Lakewood (western CLE inner burbs) and even though there are at least 60-70 kids on the street due to the relative density of the housing , I am pretty sure that if I did the math our average would be under 3 people per house. About half of the families have kids, but most of those families have two kids, probably a quarter of the families with kids have one, there are two families with four kids, a handful have three (like me) and their is one family that have 6 kids. The rest are either retired/kids moved out couples or younger couples that don't have kids. These are big 2500 to 3500 sqft mostly foursquare, century houses that have walk up attics and the such. The original Exurbs of Cleveland. I imagine back in the day these were filled to the brim with kids. Lakewood has seen it's population tumble from a peak of around 75k to probably just about 50k today. I imagine the drop off due to household size had a bigger impact here because tradionally Lakewood was know as a big Irish Catholic city, so there were a large number of stereotypically large catholic families in the 60 and 70s where 5 or 6 kids were fairly common. A big problem in a lot of these post war suburbs, is that the population didn't turn over fast enough and the area ends up graying with the residents.

That's awesome... Edit:..after looking at it, it's very creepy too. Wow we all are going to be part of the Google borg collective.

@ Keith: I think you have that going on in the 50s/60s ranch home sprawly part in SW Rocky River, where you can drive down the street and it seems that everyhouse has a buick, caddy or lincoln in the drive. I am willing to bet that a large portion of these homes are still owned by the original owners who had a houseful of kids or teenagers in the 1970's.

^^ I think the majority of that change in the inner rings is driven by change in US demographics, according to the census burea Average US household size delined from 3.14 to around 2.6 during the 2000s. If you look at Rocky River, which is a very stable (middle ring suburb, half prewar/half post war) and was completely built by the 60s you will see that the decline in population from 1970 to 2000 lines up almost perfectly with that figure. We just have less people living in the same number of units. Very few inner rings are suffering from flight, most of the change is made up of a household demographic shift. Am I out on a limb with this theory? Also the percentage of single person households in the US increased from 17% in 1970 to 27% in 2007. So over a quarter of our housing units are occupied by a single person. www.marketingcharts.com/.../census-data-average-us-household-size-declines-to-26-10679/ ^ That sounds about right.

http://www.waitingfornextyear.com/2011/02/cleveland-indians-motivational-posters/ These are worth a look. The Peralta one is a classic..."because you already failed at spelling." LOL

^Makes me wish that I could see youtube at work.

Agreed. I think post-war suburbs and the sprawl outward are considered 'the burbs in this conversation. While cities such as Lakewood and Grandview Hts are really just municipalities that for one reason or another just never were annexed by the city. I read that article and shook my head, it just was cherry picked factoids.

^ Exactly. The Lakers were sleep walking but the Cavs played with intensity and actually had a hot streak shooting. Thank god my kid likes to listen to the games as he is falling asleep or I would have even thought to turn it on.

^ Maybe he is going to retire and be our OC. Haha

Stephen King: "Under the Dome", Sci-fi/horror about a small main town cut-off from the world by a mysterious force field/dome "A House Divided" by Fredrick Barton, A fictionalized account of an account of how a dirt-poor white boy from central Louisiana survived his own turbulent family, the cultural, educational and material deprivations of the Great Depression and the horrors of World War II to stand for justice in the civil rights movement. Sherlock Holmes and Mark Twain's " A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" using the Google reader app on the ipod. Great to have something to read when I am car pooling or waiting on my kids.

It's been a while since I have had to travel through there regularly but the neighborhood north of Lorain centered around 130th always seemed nice and had a ton of police that lived there, so I am imagining it is very safe. Also there is Mohican Park right there, and the afore mentioned Triskett RTA station and George's Kitchen.