MidwestChamp

^I'll edit my above post to say Tower City did fail as an upscale mall for the reasons I stated above, but I do not view it as a failed mall or one even in decline today. I think it was realigned to serve the population that travels through the doors of the place, largely driven by RTA.

I don't view Tower City as failed or even in decline. Sit in the fountain court and observe all of the people as well as occupied stores (compared to other downtown malls like Tower Place in Cincy) and you'll sense it. I think the mall is maintaining based on the shoppers it attracts and hopefully it will be on an upswing along with other developments in the city. As someone pointed out not all retail is upscale. Yes Tower City was build with the vision of being upscale, but there have always been two competing interest...one being new downtown residents that demand the "better" retail we all wish for but the other group being the transit riders. Tower City is RTA's largest, central, and most important hub, always has been, and the truth is with the exception of maybe the Shaker lines and a few suburban bus routes, RTA's ridership is largely lower income and they pass through Tower City / Public Square to get to school/work/family/etc. Tower City may not be filled with upscale shops BUT the shops are mostly filled...and it's filled with a mix of shops that serve the people who pass through...Jones New York, Victoria Secret, Brooks Brothers, as well as dollar stores, urban fashion stores, mall carts and food that represents any budget. To me Tower City reflects the city's population, and if you take time to sit at fountain court at lunch or rush hour you see it. I love it because in no other place in the city will you see business suits and sweatpants all mingling in a true urban fashion...shopping, transit connections, heading to offices or hotels, and now gambling. I say all that to say where most every other downtown mall in mid sized cities has failed, ours has been a success, if success is defined by occupancy and utilization, and not the Gap. There were issues with unruly teens which I think have been largely fixed, and there are of course improvements that can be made, but I don't see it as decline as more representing the needs of the people who walk through the doors. Now as more people move downtown, as the Phase 2 casino is built and gamblers travel through TC between the two, then I can see the scale tipping back towards a move even balance between basic stores and more upscale offerings. But I'm glad TC is doing as well as it is...it's a great asset that given the city's momentum can only get better.

So about 400 current rooms spread over about 22 floors (subtracted a few to account for lobby an meeting spaces) means about 18 rooms per floor...so adding 10 floors gives us a hotel right at the 600 room size thats been referenced on here as minimum convention size. I wonder what the cost of this vertical expansion would be versus the cost of acquiring the county admin site, demolishing it an building new.

^Never knew that. Do you know how many additional floors can be supported?

^Agreed. This is built for people who work in University Circle but live south and west of Cleveland, not for residents in this area or for current rapid riders. At present people coming from the south and west can only take congested freeways all the way downtown on the innerbelt and exit Chester and Carnegie, which also back up during rush hour, particularly Carnegie at the Clinic. When this road is complete these people can bypass downtown and the crowded innerbelt and hop on little used 490 and get to 90 west, or 77, 71, 176 South. This road is about an easier commute for these folks. With that said the adjacent communities brought into this idea on the promise that an efficient road that will be highly visible and traveled will attract Euclid-esque development along it. Ideally once this thing really gets built hopefully Euclid through Midtown will already be built out with new development creating demand for some TOD to occur between this route and the red line. That for me would create a win-win.

This has got to be the quickest progression from a phase 1 to a phase 2 in Cleveland history...great news!!

Yah!!! :clap:

If only we had built dave68's plan in 1999. That is a dramatic difference. In that plan I can see the stadium with a retractable dome and a connection to the CC, justification for moving the port further from downtown to encourage the development he's shown, and heck that would make an impressive place for the intermodal transit hub to be built. Alas that didn't happen in '99, and honestly building a stadium over the tracks and shoreway would take an investment from the federal govt akin to getting the olympics...hey any hope we can get this done in time for the senior olympics or gay games??? :-D

I think people should give the malls a chance and see what the views will be like once this is complete. I was skeptical about the slope until a couple weeks ago. I was at city hall for a meeting and saw the mall c gate open so I walked on in to see progress. I took a couple crappy (very crappy) cell phone pics. It's interesting that while you lose that sweeping view into downtown and the war memorial fountain, you gain two very neat linear axis that I think give greater prominence to the old federal courthouse and the old library. Mall B was still gated so I did not get up on the hill, but I'm sure the lake views will be fantastic and someone earlier posted the city view from the hill which was also fantastic. The hill may not have been the perfect solution, but I think it will add visual interest, as well as functionality to the CC. Now it's time for creative minds to program the hill and the rest of the space!

Columbus is looking to host one of the political conventions in 2016 as well. I think both Cleveland and Columbus should each go for both political conventions, and in a best case scenario both conventions come to the nation's ultimate battleground state. Normally I'd think that the parties try to spatially spread out, but in this era of Ohio is the end all be all state of presidential politics, I think both conventions coming here is a very real possibility. http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/print-edition/2012/11/16/is-it-our-turn.html

Cleveland is looking to host one of the political conventions in 2016 as well. I think both Cleveland and Columbus should each go for both political conventions, and in a best case scenario both conventions come to the nation's ultimate battleground state. Normally I'd think that the parties try to spatially spread out, but in this era of Ohio is the end all be all state of presidential politics, I think both conventions coming here is a very real possibility. http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2012/12/readying_a_2016_convention_bid.html#incart_2box

Pop up shops, Slovenian Carnival (kurentovanje), Hope-Sketch arts project...there is lots going on in St. Clair Superior...and not just in AsiaTown!! st. clair superior celebrates new retailers, upcoming public art project THURSDAY, DECEMBER 06, 2012 This summer, the St. Clair Superior Development Corporation launched an initiative called "Retail Ready" with the objective of filling a slew of vacant storefronts along St. Clair Avenue.... Although the project has taken longer than anticipated, it has sparked a lot of fresh interest in the area, says St. Clair Superior Executive Director Michael Fleming. The faded strip also recently celebrated a new tenant, Nx Dance Studio, which opened its doors on Sunday with a room full of line dancers and music spilling out into the street. Three additional retailers are expected to open early next year. Now, thanks to a $25,375 grant awarded by Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, St. Clair Superior is gearing up for a major public art project this summer that will beautify the street between E. 62nd and Addison. "Hope-Sketch: St. Clair Avenue Reimagined" will create large-scale public art with community input... http://freshwatercleveland.com/devnews/stclairsuperiorhope120612.aspx

I was thinking Eaton on 12th as well...

It's early in the Phase 1 Casino's life, so retailers may be waiting to see up to a years worth of traffic and demographic data before committing to TC again. I think as long as Phase 2 keeps moving forward that offers the best chance for a TC mall redo...what better way...Vegas style really...to connect two casinos than with an upscale mall. Hopefully this is a reality by 2020.

Awesome...love the shots of TT and the casino lit up together form the square.

The phase 1 skywalk proposal is looking for new life... Horseshoe Casino skywalk scheduled for Nov. 15 hearing By Thomas Ott, The Plain Dealer on November 01, 2012 at 6:00 AM, updated November 01, 2012 at 6:09 AM Email | Print CLEVELAND, Ohio -- With Cleveland's looming winter as a backdrop, the Horseshoe Casino's landlord will try to clear the way for construction of a skywalk linking the casino to its parking garage. At a Nov. 15 hearing, Forest City Enterprises will ask a National Park Service appeals officer to overturn the agency's rejection of a bridge to the second floor of the casino, located in the historic former Higbee store on Public Square. The park service oversees the National Register of Historic Places, which includes the Higbee Building and the rest of the Tower City Center complex. http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2012/11/horseshoe_skywalk_scheduled_fo.html

Great news all around!! :clap: Booking blues? Not at convention center Event commitments jump; medical mart more than 50% leased By JAY MILLER Nine months from its planned opening, the under-construction Cleveland Convention Center has 44 conventions booked, up from 26 four months earlier, and the adjacent medical mart is more than 50% leased and filling quickly, Cuyahoga County Council was told last week. http://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20121029/SUB1/310299989

My brother and I drove first to Montreal then to Toronto his September. From Cleveland it was a beautiful drive through upstate NY and Canada, just be prepared for every sign to be in French once you hit Quebec, but nothing a good GPS couldn't handle. Montreal was absolutely wonderful...loved the view from Mont Royal, which contains a fantastic urban parc much like central park. It's definitely a large, dense city but with a more human scale than Toronto, which was awesome but also overwhelming.

Would a realistic temporary solution to having an actual convention hotel be to get Positively Cleveland to jointly market the Marriott and Westin as such? Each is across the street from the convention center and with a combined room count of almost 900 rooms, and substantial meeting rooms/ballrooms between them, they could essentially operate as our convention hotel, at least until demand supports a new hotel. My guess is convention planners like convention hotels over dealing with several smaller properties because they don't want to have to talk with different event planning staffs/reservation systems etc., but maybe this is where Positively Cleveland can step in, be one point of contact for room blocks, reservations, meeting space, etc...coordinating with the Marriott and Westin to meet their needs and make it easy. What made me think of this was a convention I attended in Cincinnati in August. Some meetings/events were at the convention center, while trainings were spread out between the Hilton, Hyatt and Millennium. It seemed to work well.

Man no love for comic book movies on UO huh... I thought the Avengers was great! It really tied the story lines of the Iron Man, Thor, Incredible Hulk, and Captain America franchises together. This success means they'll all have multiple sequels and connecting comic stories. Hopefully Cleveland gets to star in more of these movies as the are made. Good job Marvel!! (DC better come strong with a Justice League movie soon! If the lesser known Avengers can gross $1 billion, can you imagine Superman and Batman in the same movie...whoa!!)

Great minds think alike! :wink2:

^ +1

I don't make those statements as excuses for Cleveland, just to say this is where we are, particularly relative to Pittsburgh for the purpose of this discussion. I flat out said city proper to city proper their is more happening today than in Pittsburgh. And you're right we need to be very innovative and strategic if we're going to move forward. We have to deal with a central level of poverty that's among the highest in the nation, a foreclosure crisis that's emptied streets and left homes and business districts rotting, particularly on the east side. But new policies can turn vacant lands into productive farms that employ low skilled workers, skilled trades can make a comeback as people learn skills to reuse abandoned houses. The revived energies at Case and CSU can attract and retain college students... convincing them there's a future if they stay here with all of the spin-off development and health / tech start-ups I make no excuses for the past...they make each city what it is today. We have to leverage our assets to move us forward, that's all I'm saying. And I'll end with this: In 1997 when I graduated high school and went to Pitt the paper there was praising Cleveland and asking what can Pitt do to catch up. When I returned home in 2004 the Cleveland PD was pondering the same thing...roles had reversed. City fortunes are cyclical, especially for midsize cities. The one thing that did happen in the late '90's was Pitt removed corruption when they went from 3 County Commissioners to 1 County Exec. They also had laid a great eds/meds and tech foundation. I see Cleveland in the same space they were at in the late '90's. We face some different challenges than they did at the time, but I see great momentum building here as they have there.

I think this discussion is misleading on both Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Both regions are in fact equal when you look at them regionally. Pittsburgh the city certainly is better along than Cleveland the city, but that's because of how industry was laid out decades ago...take them regionally however and it's a wash. I've studied this both at Pitt as an undergrad and at CSU at Levin, and here's how I see it: Cleveland's industry was all concentrated in the city proper, largely along the river or lakefront. Pittsburgh's industry was also along it's riverfront, mostly the Mon or the Ohio, but not exclusively in the city. In fact more of their industries were in a dozen or so of mill towns that exist OUTSIDE the city proper. This means that when each city experienced industrial collapse, the impact was different. As jobs left, regional poverty was concentrated in Cleveland proper, while in Pittsburgh a great number of their regional poverty largely exists outside of the city. Example...look at the steel towns of Aliquippa, McKees Rocks, McKeesport, Duquesne (where I use to work with youth before moving home to Cleveland...a town WAY worse than East Cleveland), Homestead...need I go on. These cities and other suburbs of Pittsburgh are hit with great economic challenges and disinvestment and poverty...not unlike you'd find on Cleveland's east side. Conversely, besides East Cleveland you'd be hard pressed to find a suburb of Cleveland in such bad shape. Cleveland has some working class suburbs (Parma, Euclid, etc...but only E.C. approaches the level of despair of a Wilkinsburg or Braddock or a half dozen or so former steel towns that make up the Pittsburgh Metro. In my view this skews the economic realities of Pittsburgh, as much of their economic challenges are isolated outside of the city. I say this to take nothing away from Pittsburgh...it's a great city that has done AMAZING things in the past decade. I say that so that everyone can keep this discussion in context...Pitt is doing well but it's not floating on a cloud...and Cleveland has challenges but it's not falling off a cliff. Our economic spatial history impacts our cities differently today.

^ Opening November 26th.