Oldmanladyluck

This just keeps getting worse by the day. I agree. Completely.

Up to eight now. I've went from anger to sadness for the families who have been affected by this, along with the community. Eight women.

WTF This angers me to no end!! The police didn't even bother to interview someone who SAW what was going on?!! How does this happen? Why is this allowed to happen?!! Six women were missing in the neighborhood. I could only assume that the police were notified of most, if not all of these persons who were missing in the neighborhood. No investigations. No database searches. NOTHING. Bullsh!t.

^Oh, I don't know. Their track record of comments regarding the City of Cleveland, possibly. I won't write anything else, because I don't want to turn this into a Forest City bash.

^Mitchell Schneider (the developer of Steelyard Commons) just did a presentation in one of my classes at CSU regarding the project. Love it or hate it, he really capitalized on the City of Cleveland being under served by national retailers. The numbers were crazy- since retailers usually go by household income, many never looked at the inner city because of the lower incomes. But the DENSITY of individuals living around Steelyard Commons was what made the difference, along with some other facts which are not usually publicized. Example- more households with $50,000 incomes live within a 3 to 5 mile radius of Steelyards than live in places like Westlake, Avon, etc. However, there were no national retailers serving this population, while the metro is over-saturated with retail. What surprised me was that he's had other developers such as Scott Wolstein and even FOREST CITY say that this is a great project. It surprised me that the execs from Forest City could even say anything great about a project in the city. Schneider is now beginning to put together marketing for the remaining 20 acres of the site which has yet to be developed.

It doesn't get much stronger than that intersection...

$600 million is a lot of dough. I'm a supporter of this issue, as with a casino connected to Tower City will only bolster the entertainment options available in the center of the city.

^Yep, that's probably what's going to happen seeing that Slavic Village had over 1900 foreclosures between 2006 and 2008. This neighborhood will be a great urban experiment in the reuse of land within a true urban area.

Sad. How do we let this happen to our cities?

^True. The area could go with the Tremont/Ohio City/North Collinwood route and transform downtown Broadway into an arts district... however we all know that the change takes years. That may help change the "perception" of the neighborhood in the short term, however, which could help the most. I remember a gang in the neighborhood which was taken down early in Jackson's administration. Has the crime in the neighborhood declined? Perception can only go so far... if reinvestment actually occurs, crime is obviously a deterrent.

Thanks for the pics! Yes, Broadway and E. 55th is an area which would look GREAT with some reinvestment into the area. It is the one example which I can think of on the east side which is an INTACT satellite downtown, as the ones located at E. 55th and Euclid, and E. 105th and Euclid were demolished long ago. There's some great building stock still standing in that neighborhood, and who knows: as Slavic Village was at the center of the foreclosure crisis, maybe the neighborhood will become the testing grounds for a new type of sustainable urban living in the city. Once again, thanks for the pics!

^KJP- you wrote about using recycled tires in one of your articles regarding the Stark WHD plan. This could definitely be a way to fill the port... I would hope that the Port considers it if needed. It would also be a much faster way to fill the needed space, but it has been mentioned before that the the Port will be unable to mix anything with the dredgings as long as the Corps is involved. I don't want to be posting what could end up as false information, so anyone in the know (McCleveland!!!!) feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about the Mittal Steel situation. If it costs $500 million to move the Port, I wonder how much of that cost is associated with the dredgings, if any. If recycled tires could cost less and get done faster... recycled tires should be considered.

^This is true, and it would make sense that the river mouth would need to continue to be dredged. However, he stressed that the Corps dredging is based on the need of the steel plant. If the steel plant closes, the river no longer needs to be dredged to the depth which is currently needed. This (if it doesn't stop dredging altogether), in the very least pushes back the timeline for the port's relocation by God knows how long. I would be guessing since he didn't mention any details about a contract, if one exists, which is set up between the City and the Corps regarding dredging; if it does exist, it might hinge on Mittal being open. I have a real problem basing the future development of our lakefront on one business, which just so happens to be in the steel industry, whose owner is overseas. It's just not strong enough of a guarantee for me personally.

^It looks like it... I don't see how this building merits demolition. Lets hope that the new building actually has a stage...

^Yes, it is owned by the Port. I think that the idea of "regionalizing" the Port actually merits discussion. Hopefully, this idea doesn't just get thrown to the wayside. The 27 year timeline is troubling- though the Corps will be dredging the river, and the sediment NEEDS to be put somewhere... the reason why the river needs to be dredged is because of the Mittal Steel plant located on the river. This is according to Eric Johnson, Real Estate Director at the Port who recenlty did a presentation at the Levin College of Urban Affairs on what the Port is planning for the lakefront. The plans for the lakefront include things that we all want to see, including housing, retail, office uses, a boardwalk, and even things which we don't normmally discuss such as riparian vegetation. The size of the plan was emphasized, in that our lakefront has the potential to be world class- one that would draw residents into the city from throughout the region and outside of the region as well. However, one point was made which hasn't been discussed much (if at all) before by Dr. Johnson: that the Corps continual dredging of the river depends entirely on the Mittal Steel plant located upstream. If the plant closes for good within the next 27 years, and the Corps finds that the river dredging is no longer needed- guess what? Game Over. No dredgings, an incomplete Port located at E. 55th, and an incomplete downtown lakefront is what Cleveland could be potentially stuck with. Do we want to take this chance? The one chance we have for our city and region to have a lakefront which is world class? If there are alternatives to this plan, I'm all for having a discussion about them. However, if politics will keep a true discussion about the Port's relocation from occuring- we could be gambling on the future of the lakefront, and potentially, the future of the city. Not that the lakefront's development would be a silver bullet, but we know how important having a great lakefront is to the future of the city.

Looking at these pics, does anyone else notice that they're missing one thing which we have in abundance in all of Ohio's large cities? SURFACE PARKING. Great photos of a great city!

More discussion about regionalizing the Port. Seeing that this is the second story on this, I wonder if its the larger businesses left in the region who are trying to speed things up. I don't have faith in this newspaper anymore to believe that the PD is trying to start a true dialogue about the port move... Cleveland's port plan requires greater urgency and a lot better leadership -- Brent Larkin By Brent Larkin October 25, 2009, 5:00AM In 2036, Mayor Frank Jackson will be 90, Sen. George Voinovich will turn 100 and dozens of children born today will have already graduated from medical school. And if all goes flawlessly for the next 27 years -- which hasn't happened here once -- in 2036, the port of Cleveland will have moved from downtown to a 200-acre man-made site north of East 55th Street. http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/10/clevelands_port_plan_requires.html

I'll be taking more soon. Fairfax, for example, has two completely different sides to it. There's Euclid Ave., then there's the rest of Fairfax, which has been all but destroyed by the foreclosure crisis. It's the actual residents of the neighborhoods who suffer the most.

^A zoning variance is somewhat easy to get, as long as the councilman of the ward is on board with the changes. If the councilman wants it (reelection purposes), the CDC will more than likely follow suit. Noticing that this will bring construction to this section of Euclid which has been ignored for so long, I would assume that the councilman won't care about the surface parking lot (UNLESS, of course, the councilman is mindful of the history of the street, but again, politics...). If the city wants to spend tax dollars to clean up this section of Euclid, I'm all for that. Since we don't have a choice, and the hospital will be here, I guess I can be ok with that. But DAMMIT... do we have to put in ANOTHER surface parking lot on this street? Can't we have one project which is catered towards the pedestrian first, and the automobile second? Argh...

Let's not forget, I doubt we'll see home prices this low for long. This could turn out to be a great program to bring back some of Ohio's own.

I agree. The south side of Superior remains somewhat gritty but BEAUTIFUL at the same time. The city wall on that side of the street remains, while the north side of Superior was demolished long ago. I could only imagine what the north side of the street looked like before urban renewal.

^I would say so. The city has definitely stepped up its demolition efforts.

Hey all, On October 17th, ESOP teamed up with Cleveland Councilman Ken Johnson for a clean up of Mt. Auburn in the Buckeye neighborhood. Unfortunately, these pictures could be representative of the destruction caused by the foreclosure crisis affecting the whole city, but primarily the inner east-side neighborhoods. This is reality for many residents in the city.

Oh well... hope they can afford the next oil spike.

What can the city/ region do to increase the level of immigration to Northeast Ohio? In what ways is the region successful in immigration? What could we do better? I am a firm believer in immigration, as this city's neighborhoods were defined by the different ethnic groups and races which chose to call Cleveland home. However, we can say that this level of immigration has been in decline for the last 50 years- which, in my opinion, is part of the reason why many neighborhoods seem somewhat abandoned. Without the new faces immigration can bring, along with an ever expanding region with stagnate growth, we will continue to see neighborhoods empty. The trend is even affecting the inner-ring suburbs, many of which for the first time are experiencing a faster rate of population decline than the inner city. Here's a study I found on the topic worth reading. Kind of lengthy, but it's from the Levin College of Urban Affairs, and deals directly with Greater Cleveland. http://urban.csuohio.edu/~sanda/papers/immigration.pdf