urb-a-saurus

In USA Today, "Today In the Sky" blogger Ben Mutzabaugh interviewed Jim Compton, Continental Airline's executive vice president and chief marketing officer, asking questions submitted by readers. Of course the question on the feared de-hubbing of Cleveland came up. Mr. Compton indicated that CLE was a solid hub based on it local demand, and that it was more stable than Pittsburgh or St. Louis that recently lost their hubs. Of course, one must allow for "executive speak," before giving full credence (he he). There were a few other Cleveland related items for anyone interested in reading it. The link appears to be: http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/blog.aspx

Apparently, the new TRAC project list has appeared on the ODOT web site. It is dated 3/18/2010. There has been a bit of a hiatus, while ODOT was retooling their criteria. Opportunity Corridor is listed under "Tier 2: Existing Projects Advancing with Existing Funding." The total funding is listed as $360M. The project ID is 77333, and it has a score of 49. $10M is committed in 2010 for preliminary engineering.

Had a nice peppercorn filet at the Waterstreet Grill on W9th St last night after "Xanadu." Why is there no 24 hour diner/coffee shop in all of downtown, or is there? I love the 24 hr diners in NY/NJ with the extensive menus.

What would happen to the County Airport Land? Industrial Park? World's longest shuffle board court (former runway)?

^ Be still my heart! LOL

^ Well, they basically told us we were transatlantic "toast," when they announced that there would be no London nonstop in 2010 from CLE and really nothing else for the foreseeable future, except possibly FRA one day, if Jupiter aligns with Mars and pigs fly etc. I noticed a rather gloomy article about the CLE-CAL relationship on Wikipedia, and I noticed more doom and gloom on another web forum related to civil aviation. Anyway, it seems like they are just tweaking and are in a holding pattern right now, so I will take your advice and wait until summer. They must get better bang for the buck at EWR. I really need to understand the economics better. (I kind of remember reading that they closed a flight attendant base here or something. Is that true?)

MD: What makes you say that?

I am straining to visualize. Are we thinking "tent"?

Did Mangini and Holmgren swap Favre stories?

I am very glad that Mike Holmgren elected to adopt the Lowes Home Improvement Company theme with Eric Mangini: "Let's build something together!"

I found the contrast between the 1980's picture and the desolate picture immediately following, chilling! Only 20 years too! The latter picture looks almost post-apocalyptic, as though some sort of virus that only affected revelers and late night party goers swept through.

^ Agree! Removing the Dollar Bank building just made the ugliness of the 668 Western Wall stand out all that much more. It really needs rehab, even the area where they punched out windows. Think of all those poor people eating croissants on the new plaza below, lol. I don't find that new plaza to be very aesthetically pleasing.

I drove by today on I-480 and could have sworn I saw a 747 at the end of concourse A. I could not see what airline

What a far cry from two years ago when we were anticipating a large ramp up in CO flights, a new flight to Paris, and an expanded customs area. The flight expansion has been completely reversed and plans for the customs expansion put on ice. I am hoping that the cancellation of the LHR flight addresses a specific issue, and that there are not more flight cut shoes to drop. I do not understand this "hour away" issue. When Continental was in SkyTeam, Detroit was much closer to Cleveland than either Chicago or Newark, and they still did the London Gatwick service. Is it the cost of Heathrow slots specifically? Are they more pally with United than they were with Northwest/Delta and more likely to switch passengers to them? Was the CLE - LHR flight performing marginally, such that it made more sense to fly a larger plane from a denser origin on the route? I am waiting to see how this United - Continental relationship settles out. I would hate to see our connectivity gutted to benefit Chicago. By the way, I wanted to give a kudo to the Cleveland CO staff who I have found superior to the people I have dealt with at EWR. Keep up the good work and I hope you are here for a long time!

I like the new finish. That material would look awesome on the western wall.

^ WOW. Mayor Jackson, how much of that 20 million from the county went for the infrastructurally challenged PA? I am not sure who should be indignant here! At any rate. where are the county commissioners anyway, lately, at a retirement seminar? Come on people, lets get this going! I was wondering if the MM building, if built on Mall C, would have to be larger than the original St Clair building in order to house what would have been on St Clair, plus the meetng rooms that would have been in the PA. I always thought it would have been cool to have a long, mid rise building between Ontario and Franz Pastorius, with a wavy window wall overlooking Mall B. I haven't seen anything as to where the space allocated to the PA would now go. Anyway the plot thickens.

Actually, if the ground level view were so important (and I don't think it is, especially the farther south you view from), maybe they could design the building with a "hole" on the first few levels. I stayed at a Westin in Hollywood Florida that had such a gap, although it was higher up. Pardon the tinker toy rendering, lol, although it may be more than we have from the pro's at this point :-D If you wanted a wider MM, you could do two gaps like a letter "M" __ |__| <Flag | [][][][][][][][]MM [][][][][][][][][][] [][][][][][][][][][] [][][][][][][][][][] [][][][][][][][][][] [][][][][][][][][][] [][][][][][][][][][] [][][][][][][][][][] [][][][][][][][][][] [][][][][][][][][][] [][][] [][][] [][][] [][][] [][][] [][][] ------------------ <mall C level [][][][][][][][][][] [][][][][][][][][][] [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]NCTC_____________ Bridge to E9th Waterfront [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] _/_/_/_/_/_/_/ RR Track

Where would you site the MM in the more expansive transportation center? Back on the convention center, does it seem to anyone that the PA repair costs "surprise" and the issues with the St Clair property owners are pretty big misses, given the amount of time this project has been dragging on? The ducks have definitely been resistant to lining up in the proverbial row. I hope they don't later find that half the bathtub is missing, lol.

Quote: "Um, hills do not force tighter, denser "cities". Human beings pick and choose whether to sprawl or not. The choose their density." I agree that hills do not force density. When Las Vegas fills its valley, it will spill over into adjacent vallues as did Los Angeles. What I notice about US cites that are dense is that they have high core land values, (which means if you put out the money for the land, you better build something substantial on it), which means that there is high demand to be in the core. Also, heavy industry is not/was not a stones throw from downtown. In fact, these cities do not not to such a degree depend on heavy industry. If C-Dawg's assertion that people "choose" to sprawl is correct, then one should ask what are the people fleeing from. Perhaps originally it was to escape the heavy industry and later, it was demographic changes. For example, in what I have seen of Chicago the heavy industry is away from downtown, largely south and southwest. The downtown has a wealth of non-industrial uses, and has retained amenities that make people want to live there. Pittsburgh and Cleveland were impacted by the pollution and later decline of these heavy industries leaving a big hole that has had to be filled back in. During the period of decline 60s-80s, many young people that wanted a fulfilling urban experience, left Cleveland and Pittsburgh for cities that had it, eg NYC, DC, Chicago further removing people that might have wanted to live downtown. As for the notion that freeways kill the center cities, I would point out that the urban "darlings" SF, NYC, Chicago, Boston, etc are all surrounded by extensive sprawl with miles and miles of freeways. They have the same sprawling suburbs that we do. Its just that they still have intact, lively downtowns that were not decimated earlier and a supply of people who want to live in them. Cleveland and Pittsburgh are trying to entice some of these people back. One other thing to consider is the cooperation (or lack of cooperation) between the city, the crazy quilt of suburbs, and the county and state in Pittsburgh vs Cleveland.

Well, I have heard of selecting a manager that matches up well to your (player) talent, but I never thought it meant hiring a losing manager to manage a losing team. The curse lives on.

I'd rather they have bad practices and good games than the reverse.

Hmm: I suffered with this team from 1960 to the mid nineties (when they supernova'd), and now with the resulting dwarf star. If I could, I would do a stochastic mathematical model given the tribe budget, percentages of prospects that become good, how long the team could keep them, the percentage of free agents that work out and how long the team could keep THEM, with periodic team personnel turnovers (resets) every few years, and see what the model predicted in terms of what would be the average frequency of the Indians doing well: 8 years, 22 years etc. It probably could be done, but I do not have enough anti-depressants to see the results.

What I find a bit scary is that every week I see coaches and/or players stating that they had great practices and that things they did worked, setting up expectations that they would do well on Sunday. Then we watch the games and.....yeow! Where is the disconnect from reality?

HI MD88. I was trying to understand what you meant when you said that connecting flights do not add revenue, especially since the hub and spoke system that has arisen in the post-CAB era, depends on them. How would a flight from Cleveland to London differ in the airline's accounting from a two segment ticket say Grand Rapids to Cleveland to London. I had thought that Continental's chop of their 2008 expansion, and more, and the loss of connecting traffic it represented would hurt the potential for international flights here, but maybe that is not correct. By the way, I am not trying to be critical, I just want to understand how this works. Thanks Also, didn't Continental shut down the CLE-LHR flight "early?" Is Cleveland not perceived as a good place to transfer to Europe? There would seem to be enough city pairs contributing feed to make the CLE-LHR flight work, but maybe travellers prefer Newark? After all, you can schedule all the the connecting flights in the world, but if no one books them, it fails. Do you know the percentage of O-D vs connecting traffic at CLE and how it compares with other hubs?

^ Right now it's like "Juno the transparent woman building" Imagine it as a museum with the buiilding's innards, hvac, electrical, plumbing, and structural elements exposed and explained to visitors :wink: .