Oldmanladyluck

^725 W. St Clair...

Looks like one of the proposed Westin development lots is for sale. Scratch that plan and start again... http://www.loopnet.com/for-sale/2/?bb=so5zq_qp0Ijhym5F

^Found the Little Italy Masterplan from 2005. Funny how throwback the photos look now. http://planning.city.cleveland.oh.us/maps/pdf/LittleItaly.pdf

Great picture- and wouldn't that be something if University Circle becomes the city's next downtown. Vehicular access via freeways would be limited which would force even greater density around transit lines in the area (minus the OC).

^Maybe that's why I didn't see them when I went by the sign :-D

Found this while driving down Chester at about E. 72 St... The website for the project is pretty nice. https://onemidtowncle.com/

^^Yeah Mayday- you and your fancy camera! ^Nice pic :-)

Steel. As of today:

^Yes. Projects of this scope can take time. This project includes retail, apartments (maybe condos?), new Class A office space...at a cost of half-a-billion dollars. Rents downtown still don't justify the price, and downtown renters are beginning to be price conscious which doesn't help with financing new build construction. Added to that, i believe the cost of building new has gone up. Correct me if I'm wrong, but not too long ago rents at $2.00 per sqft could justify a new tower, no? I believe we're either there or have passed that point already. If rents were higher downtown I'm sure we'd be seeing a lot more new construction. Hopefully those days are coming soon, as Class C office space continues to disappear.

^I have to agree- at this point this bridge just seems unnecessary.

It took 20 years for the original Great Wall (which can be viewed from space, constructed over 2,000 years ago), to be built. This thread was created in 2011, and here we are seven years later. At my job, I bet one of my coworkers that the glass wouldn't be finished on the building by a certain date. She owes me a six pack to this day, and the bet was from before the Hilton was built.

It's beyond frustrating. So we have decades worth of ideas with pretty pictures and not much else. Definitely one of the frustrations with urban planning... you can have the best plan in the world, but money and politics make the plans reality.

Yes. There's two basic ways the city can get their hands on a property in order to transfer it to someone who would be considered a beneficial owner, one of the two being something the city would never consider. The first would be through tax foreclosure, which is done by the County. If anyone knows the County, delinquent taxes can take years to even get on the County's radar. The second would be spot eminent domain, which the city will NOT use. Through the city's codified ordinances, the city has the ability to tear down a property if the property presents an eminent danger to public health, safety and welfare. In this instance, all it takes is money for the city to tear down a property. Many times, however, larger buildings are left to sit and rot away due to the cost of demolition, along with oftentimes needed asbestos abatement. Most of the city's demolition funds are put towards homes and not commercial buildings, unless of course the councilperson pushes Building and Housing to tear down the property over time. Edit- it an individual wanted to take control of a building, one would have to look at the amount of liens against the building, and against the person (any judgment liens which may be against the person could be attached to the property, which that person could inherit when they purchase the building). You'll be hard pressed to find an individual who is willing to take on someone else's financial liabilities when purchasing property. There's other avenues which could be taken if liens are against the property.... which could include receivorship.

^Cleveland made steel? Still waiting for those steel jobs to come back ;-) ^^Thanks for posting that pic. I walked past today and saw the elevator core is visible from Euclid.

Stark could always try to build in phases since he supposedly has tenants lined up. As someone who always wants to see this town move forward in a positive direction, it's frustrating to see all this potential just stagnate.

^Thanks, and coming from different data sources would make sense for some of the disparity. However, the overall trends in the past before the Great Recession pretty much matched. Post 2010 is where the large divergence starts, which made me wonder as to why. That much of a difference, to me at first glance, just doesn't make sense when the trends in the past were so simiilar.

Something I've wondered about, and maybe someone here can explain the discrepency... There's a large gap between the stats for the total Nonfarm Wage and Salary Employment data in Cleveland (which shows a rebound to pre Great Recession numbers, but showing the region has yet to regain the jobs lost during the 2002 recession), and the Local Labor Force data (which shows a drop-off and complete stagnation since the Great Recession). Total Nonfarm Jobs from 1990 through 2017: Total Employment (Local Labor Force Data) 1990 through 2017: Does anyone know why the numbers are so different? Source: https://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.oh_cleveland_msa.htm

The remarkable thing is it was probably only 20 years ago when NYC was at a similar rate. They used data and planning to address their crime. Wonder if our leadership is that smart Maybe planning using statistics regarding where to demolish housing and where to best concentrate the city's finite dollars would have worked better than just demolishing vacant structures across the city... but I doubt that would help in Cleveland's case. From an urban planning standpoint, I personally feel it's much easier to plan in a growing city/economy than it is to plan in one which is in continual decline. There is no amount of urban planning or streetscaping which will lower crime rates in an area where the built environment consists of a large amount of public housing (E. 55th/Kinsman, for example), when coupled with bringing jobs back to areas where the manufacturing industry once thrived (Five Points, for example). The economy and population go hand-in-hand; as Cleveland's economy declined and regional population growth became at best stagnate, poverty spread across large parts of the city as there was no incoming population to replace those who left. Large areas of the city that were once stable are now almost completely vacant, and there's no amount of planning that can change that without jobs coming in. Just IMO.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has the preliminary State and Area Employment, Hours, and Earnings figures out for November. Looks as though Cleveland's numbers are almost back to where they were before the Great Recession, but still roughly 80,000 off from where they were in 2000-2002.

That's interesting- what are the changes which are taking place in Brooklyn?

^I believe after a certain amount of time they can be converted, after 5 or so years if memory serves.

^I didn't see NuCLEus mentioned in the agenda- maybe it shows up when they show the minutes. They're available for public view- https://www.boarddocs.com/oh/cmsd/Board.nsf/Public

Looks great!