heightsfan

I agree with many of the points the author raises. I do, however, think the piece would have more credibility if it wasn't couched in terms of "you should have hired a local architect." There are obviously some great architecture firms in town, but that doesn't mean everything those firms have done has been great. And of course, the screed loses a lot of its punch when you consider that some Cleveland firms are retained to do work outside of Cleveland. Does that mean those cites are not design focused? That said, I do hope the design review board takes note of his concerns, some of which are valid IMO, especially the Euclid Avenue garage frontage, height of the tower, and facade material.

The top floors are full of equipment for cell network. Floors 1-8 are still the central exchange, filled with switching equipment/fiber optic lines. Would cost tens of millions to move.

Can we kindly limit the rampant speculation. Some of us check these boards for actual information/intel. Also, 811 is getting a makeover and going to reopen as something else in the fall. There's an article in Cleveland Scene about it. The current concept/menu wasn't working apparently.

Williams Sonoma owns Pottery Barn.

Seems hard to believe when this property is still mired in ongoing litigation. Speaking of, the case is scheduled for oral argument tomorrow in the Court of Appeals.

The grant money isn't growing; it was earmarked for and expended on a depreciable asset.

A full-funding grant agreement with the FTA does not have an expiration date. Jackson showed the opposite of leadership by refusing to abide by agreements (federal, for the Superior transitway; local, for the design of Public Square) that his administration signed after extensive public engagement processes, by using false information and bullying the RTA board to get his way, by forcing an already financially distressed RTA to devote significant expenses to reroute buses, by forcing RTA staff to spend much of their time negotiating/fighting with the city when they should be working to address its declining financial situation. He was doing the bidding of Key Corp and other Public Square sponsors who didn't want "those people" messing up their beautiful playground. What mayor Jackson showed was cowardice, by kow-towing to the privileged few and ignoring the working masses who actually make the city run -- secretaries, janitors, restaurant servers, laborers -- who use transit and were greatly inconvenienced by a mayor who showed he has forgotten from where he came. So FTA has an unlimited clawback period? That seems crazy, especially when the value of the grant obviously depreciates over time.

Well, folks are already disregarding the concrete bollards they're installing and walking through the landscaping to cross at no designated crosswalk at all. Good job city with these safety improvements.

To walk around the square to Ontario rather than cut through the lawn is ~ 130 feet or ~30 seconds added to a pedestrian's travel time from the door of Terminal Tower. Now that buses will return to the square the perception of the cut through being faster will diminish, plus with all Those People milling about, maybe more people will go around the perimeter :roll: How bad is the grass, really? How can the following assertions both be true: (1) They removed transit, therefore the square is empty most of the time. (2) So many people are going through the square that the grass is being ruined by people cutting across it. I do sort of agree that some hardscape path through the lawn makes sense. Or maybe we can get Miguel Rosales to design a $2M pedestrian bridge over the lawn. It doesn't take that many people walking across the lawn each day for the lawn to be quickly destroyed. My office overlooks the square. The lawn is a total wreck; mostly mud where folks have been cutting across. I agree that a hardscape path is probably ultimately going to be needed.

I would have much rather seen something more like a Rittenhouse Square, which serves pedestrians moving through a core of a city, than this nonsensical playground they came up with.

Add to this the fact that the lawn portion has just been totally trashed by people cutting across it constantly. When will designers learn that people will always take the shortest route. The more time passes, the more I'm finding the overall design to be flawed in several significant ways.

It's too bad we didn't have the political will and/or foresight to make this decision from the get-go. Instead, in typical Cleveland fashion, we've wasted tons of dollars on a consultant (whose conclusions we now ignore); a design that now needs be re-worked; and costly infrastructure that now proves to have been unnecessary. Also, notwithstanding James Corner's comments, you have to ask yourself how much better the whole design could have been had the decision to close Superior been made at the outset. Now I fear we're going to be left with a lot of hard surface to the exclusion of green space.

No doubt. Classic case of form over function. People will always take the shortest path, even if it means trampling the lawn.

No doubt. Classic case of form over function. People will always take the shortest path, even if it means trampling the lawn.