tedolph

We need a business friendly administration. Taxes, land use, labor laws, etc. this would be a sea change for this city and state.

I almost hate to ask this. As an ignorant Clevelander, can someone explain in five sentences or less why the city simply doesn't lay down some track and put some old Shaker Rapid cars in the tunnel? Almost all the work is done! Why is this apparently undoable? Please, I don't want to have to read the whole thread. Thanks in advance.

There's no need to mark your words. You say the same thing in every post. Consistent-that's me!

Is that a professional assessment? "waists"? Hey, I used spell check. What more do you want? How do you know this isn't a lure to make GE bring their entire lightening HQ here? GE is a enormous company which in the past, had a much larger presence here and downsized. It's time for them to reinvest in Cleveland. Good point, I thought about that and dismissed it. If you are write (Ha Ha!) I owe the Mayor an appology. We're not at the table, but speculation runs rampant. Seperate question. The thread title is "Sun Opto relocating headquarters to Cleveland?" but every article i've read says they would establish a US HQ here. Which is it?

"Also yet to be determined is the city’s future plans for Public Auditorium. The county will provide a schedule to the city stating when MMPI’s architects need to know precisely how the new convention center will be attached to Public Auditorium." So is Public Auditorium still going to be attached or not? Mods: Do I need to attach a link to a quote this small?

Mark my words. Jackson is being played for a fool. GE is very advanced in lighting research. If they can't make it work now, I doubt anyone can. There are problems with current state of the art LED lighting. Most LEDs used for lighting are being overdriven to produce more lumens, this shortens life span and waists a lot of heat. Florecents can actually be more cost effective although they introduce other problems.

That is a thoughtful response and I won't be able to prove my point as it becomes somewhat of an estatological (sp?) argument but here goes. While I agree that manufacturing has been in decline probably since the early 1960's things really accelerated with NAFTA, especially for this region. Pre NFTA, growth in service and new manufacturing (e.g. Mr. Coffee, etc. ) more or less kept up with the loss. Post NAFT, other than a few very specialized, very high tech industries (e.g. picker, GE imaging) could not afford high priced labor without having to move to Mexico or abroad. The problem was union wages. A less than high school educated woman making car seats in Colinwood simply wasn't worth $12.00 an hour. This happened overnight. The Unions basically said, "we would rather ride this plane into the ground at $12.00/hr. than adjust to the economic reality that at best this is a minimum wage job". This happend at the Steel Mills too although legacy costs played a role but there too Unions refused to recognize that all those legacy costs were not sustainable in an international economy. So, cities like Cleveland rode the economy down, with a bright spot in the 90's due to the dot com boom. When that went bust things picked up where the downward slide left off. After 2001 what we needed was a Mayor that said, "Screw living wages. This is a cheap town to buy a house in and we are going to put every uneducated slob to work in minimum wage sweat shops and collect all the income and property taxes and the unions can go to hell". Lots of these kinds of factories existed in southern cal, particularly south LA. Nobody would have gotten rich but people at work 8 hours/day can't be committing crimes at the same time. A little bit of this attitude existed in Solon in the 70's and that is one reason all those factories got built out there. I know I worked in one where a union vote failed. People wanted job security more than a living wage. That company is still in business. Mike White got to pass on that issue because of the short term good economy. The local economy didn't give Jane or Frank that luxury and they both lacked the vision to make the tough (suicidal?) political decision to forgo union suport and donations.

In a way you prove my point. You note a correlation, old ethnic groups moving out when new ones move in, but that does not address the question. None of these specific ethnically changing neighborhoods colapsed during economic boom times. The highest correlation is to massive unemployment and neighborhood colapse. It is easy to blame racism (for everything). If is sobering to look in the mirror and say we are failing as a region to address the joblessness problem of specific ethnic groups. That is indeed racism and I lay it at the feet of the current and immediately previous Mayor.

Actually in the 1990's Cleveland was getting some phenominal press. The PBS show hosted by the economist Adam Smith showcased Cleveland. Magazine articles from across the spectrum trumpeted the re-birth and renaissance. Other cities such Oakland, CA came to ask Clevelands advice as to how to jump-start their own cities. City planners beleived that the city's popluation had stabilized around 505,000. There was the flats, new sports venues, etc, etc... What happend? Jane Campbell, Frank Jackson

I had a similar experience in Honolulu getting on the bus at the airport. The driver (nicely) went a little overboard about us having to put our small roller carry ons under the seats and that if they didn't fit we couldn't ride the bus. Because of the way the seats were supported, only one bag could go under two seats so we had to split up. Luggage racks were not available. Now that I think about it I believe that they are worried about luggage becomming an interior missile in the event of a sudden stop or crash. So the policy probably doesn't have anything to do with how many seats are empty, etc. is has to do with the vector of the luggage if it becomes a projectile. Also, the old CTS airporters did have luggage racks

Why do you think GE hasn't offered to do this? Maybe becuase it isn't economically realistic? Maybe because it is a scam? Wouldn't we be better off offering incentives to GE? Look at what Akron did with Goodyear, etc. I didn't see Polinsek or whatever the mayor's name is trying to woo Pirelli!

He is out of his league.

"what else is the cause of Buckeye seeing little to no reinvestment?" Lack. of. jobs.

I'm not saying that there can't be successful black neighborhoods or that successful neighborhoods don't have black people living in them (hence the Warrensville Heights example being a moot point as it was an established suburb that saw an increasing percentage of African Americans, although it didn't hit 75% minority until 1980), but it's very difficult to garner investment into an area in disrepair in an economically challenged area of an economically challenged city when nearly 100% of the residents are of a race collectively not holding very much capital. It's a shame this is how investment works (often along racial lines), and it's the reason you see people like Magic Johnson purposely trying to invest in African American areas to offset the fact that this so often is the case amongst white investors. I'm not justifying it or saying it's fair or right. I wish it wasn't the way it is. But it's the reality until peoples' mindsets, prejudices, and preconceptions change. It's not going to do any good to ignore it. But it's time to move on. Hopefully, I'm wrong and the east side of Cleveland can see a turnaround that's good for all, both in neighborhood revitalization and number of jobs. Not quite time to move on. The proof is right under our noses. Cleveland Heights v. Euclid. Both have large minority populations. However, vastly different correlations between minority population and prosperity. The difference is that C.H. is a bedroom community and did not suffer disproportionate job loss. Euclid was heavily dependent on local factories for jobs and all that was lost. This points out the dangers of drawing any conclusions from correlations. Simply put correlation points to cause and effect but is not the same. Again, we need low skill, walk to bus to jobs for these neighborhoods. If we don't do something soon they will be irredeemable and all the housing stock, infrastructure, etc. will be permanently lost.

Now the GE/LED fiasco. He just doesn't get it.

You keep contradicting yourself. You just talked about people investing in and paying a premium for houses in a high-crime area of Seattle. Even in Cleveland, people are investing in and moving into areas with crime rates not all that different from these areas. A lot of it comes down to perception, and I still maintain that race plays a large part in that. Fair enough, let me explain. Columbia city has crime problems relative to other Seattle neighborhoods but it is not unlivable. The financial dynamics here are also different. Although employment rates are far better here than in Cleveland, average pay is not that much higher. As a result, normal wage earners of any race are financially forced into neighborhoods like Columbia City because they can't afford to buy anywhere else, even with the crime issues. If crime was really bad, they would live 20 mi outside of the city and deal with the dreadful commute. Again, full employment is really the key. Race is a tertiary issue. Also, successful Cleveland black neighborhood- Warrensville Heights, 1950's-1070's

I don't have any inside information but an observation. When University Circle Research centers I and II were built off of E105 in the middle of all those streets in the 60 's and 70's with CWRU $ the area was considered to be a war zone. Rumor had it that is why the buildings were built on pedestals with tapering sidewalls so the Barbarians could not penetrate the edifices. Also, they were failures financially. CWRU filled them with Chi corporation employees (essentially the University's data processing center) and the Ohio Lottery commission until the State Office building was built downtown. It took a long time for incubator companies to move in. Only recently did they become commercially viable. Maybe this experience left a bad smell in the air for private developers.

I would hate to disagree with KJP when it comes to anything to do with trains but I will do so here. I think China is different than the US when it comes to commandering right of way. As I understand it, true bullet style HSR would need new grade separated right of way. Of course the cost as I said above is astronomical. But, beside the cost here, the government has to negotiate with private land owners, etc. In Chicom Land, the Secretariat draws a line on a map a la Stalin and it is done. Every nation that has HSR now is or was at one time either a command and control economy or had a King! Obtaining right of was was/is no big deal.

I am confused. Who owns Public Auditorium right now and who will own it after this deal goes down?

Nobody with options is going to move into a neighborhood with serious crime problems. Any neighborhood that has serious, chronic unemployment is going to have serious crime problems. It takes jobs to break that cycle.

This was really the point I was trying to make. The only difference between Seattle's Columbia city neighborhood and Buckeye is the local economy. I don't get that impression. You said it was a mixed race neighborhood. There is nothing mixed race about Buckeye (it's over 95% African American). And even though that alone SHOULDN'T matter, it does to enough people that it lowers demand, which further hampers home value and redevelopment opportunities. You can't talk about the decline of Cleveland's east side without talking about race and white flight. If 95% of the neighborhood's residents were employed in full time jobs it wouldn't be in decline. It doesn't matter that they are black. I know you didn't mean it that way but there are such things as a prosperous black neighborhoods in this country. Also, if it was prosperous it would be mixed race like Columbia City is here in Seattle. I just don't buy into the "well there is racism and the neighborhood is black so it must inevitably fail" theory. there are just too many examples around this country and in Cleveland's past to prove that is wrong.

I think all this talk about "bullet trains" etc. is crazy. Look at the China numbers. A TRILLION dollars for rail? Even if we had the $ which we don't as a nation (China has all our $, that is why they can afford high speed rail) we would never do it. How about just 1950 rail? 85 mph average speed would be fine and we could do it with Talgo trains and existing, upgraded right of way. People would fall over themselves to get on a 85 mph average speed train that ran on time. Where is Mussolini when you need him? Why are we tying to sell people something that is never going to happen (eastern corridor maybe but eve there I doubt it).

This was really the point I was trying to make. The only difference between Seattle's Columbia city neighborhood and Buckeye is the local economy. It is a crime not to try to bring in the types of jobs that residents of these neighborhoods can do. I know I used to work in a factory in Solon with a people from this hood. Fancy Clinic jobs ain't going to do it. We need light manufacturing jobs for people with high school educations or less.

Correct. See that fellas, not only good looking but smart too!

The problem is that Mayfield Heights (and most suburbs) don't have the public transportation to support poor individuals who have no cars. They need to be able to walk to Dave's and other social services. The suburbs don't provide that. It's a tough nut to crack. But with all this talk of litter, what about the chicken bones. Every time I walk my dog over the Veterans Bridge, down West 25th and back over the Lorain Bridge, it's like a contest between me and her of who can find the chicken bone faster. Thanks, Linda's Superette. Lots of busses on Mayfield road.