What are the most stable neighborhoods?

Is the city improving or gentrifying?

What are the best retail/ restaurant neighborhood centers: (Where are they located)?

 

The last time I was in Cleveland I saw many nice neighborhood areas, but many parts of the retail/restaurant strips seemed like they were rundown and partially or half vacant. That concerned me because many cities have very vibrant neighborhood districts. Maybe I missed some of them. I don't know. I mean Little Italy and University Circle were nice and obviously downtown, but I wondered if there were more vibrant neighborhoods. It seems like too much of the vitality and wealth is in the suburbs. Is that true? Thanks for the info. :-)

A lot depends on the time of day you visit these areas. For example, Little Italy will appear dead at 2 p.m. on a weekday, but visit it after 6 p.m. and it's a different place.

 

Check out, in no particular order:

 

Downtown....

Warehouse District;

Lower Euclid-East 4th;

Flats West Bank;

Gateway-Huron/Prospect/East 9th;

Chinatown;

 

East Side Cleveland....

Little Italy;

Shaker Square;

University Circle (Bellflower);

Little Albania (off St. Clair, east of 55th);

Collinwood/Beachland;

"Old World" neighborhood on East 185th Cleveland/Euclid border;

 

West Side Cleveland....

Ohio City;

Tremont;

Detroit-Shoreway (W.65th "emerging" arts district);

Edgewater;

Kamms Corners;

 

Eastern suburbs....

"Coventry Village" Cleveland Heights;

"Cedar-Fairmount" Cleveland Heights;

"Cedar-Lee" Cleveland Heights;

"Lee-Van Aken" Shaker Heights;

"Mayfield-Green" South Euclid;

"Legacy Village" Lyndhurst;

"Downtown" Chagrin Falls;

"Downtown" Bedford;

"Downtown" Willoughby;

 

Western suburbs....

"Downtown" Lakewood;

"Madison Village" Lakewood;

"East End" Lakewood;

"West End" Lakewood;

"Downtown" Rocky River;

"Crocker Park" Westlake;

"Downtown" Berea;

"Ridge-Snow" Parma;

"State Road" Parma;

 

There are some busy, sprawling shopping centers and places like the I-480/Tiedeman area which has lots of restaurants but is hardly pedestrian friendly so I didn't include it.

One thing about Cleveland neighborhoods (and I'm sure it's not unique to Cleveland) is that like the city itself, there tends to be "nodes" of activity but sometimes those nodes aren't well connected.

 

Also, you have to consider that while some areas in certain neighborhoods have gentrified, others have not. For example - in Tremont you have the $500K townhomes going up in the northeasternmost area near University Road, but you have un-renovated homes that list at $50K in the southeastern portion (south of I-490). In Ohio City near West 25th, you can't touch any of the new condos for less than $250K, but once you get past the West 50s, you start seeing properties that are rather blighted. That said - both areas (and plenty of others) are seeing a spike in new construction AND rehab/renovations.

 

I have to ask when you were last in Cleveland - I'm not disputing that there are areas that need a lot of work, it's just that I've seen a lot change over the past year or two.

I'd like to add "Larchmere", "Hough" and an area called "Glendale", which has nice homes.  The later two are strickly residential.

Anything happening in Cuddell?

Cudell is looking pretty good along Detroit.  The Chicle Building has been renovated into condos, townhouses are on the way.  More townhouses have been built further down Detroit (maybe W. 110th or so) right next to some rehabbed apartment buildings.  The senior apartments just west of there are getting renovated.  Can't forget Schilling Square- those are beautiful condos now.  The business strip in that area also seems pretty solid.

 

Mytwosense, where is Glendale?

To KJP's list I would add a few neighborhoods on the city's oft-forgotten South Side: Old Brooklyn and Slavic Village. Yes, Slavic Village has had lots of trouble with crime lately, but it's retained a solid retail base and has seen some new development and renovation (the most interesting being the Hyacinth Lofts). Old Brooklyn has solid old houses and corner pubs galore.

Also, the Clark-Fulton neighborhood (south of Ohio City) isn't gentrifying, but it does have an enormous and vibrant Latino community and is represented by the city's first openly gay councilman, Joe Santiago.

I also hear the Buckeye neighborhood on the city's East Side has a stable mix of Hungarians and African-Americans, though I haven't had a chance yet to explore it much on my own.

Mytwosense, where is Glendale?

 

In Cleveland South of Chagrin/Kinsman going towards Harvard it borders shaker.  I think its a sub-neighborhood of the Lee-Miles or Corlett neighborhoods.  http://planning.city.cleveland.oh.us/gis/cpc/basemap.jsp.

 

I went to a party on Talford and my cousins girlfriends family lives on Milverton and the homes are well maintained.  And from what I've been told is a pretty racially balanced area with long time residents and lots of first time home buyers with school age kids.

To KJP's list I would add a few neighborhoods on the city's oft-forgotten South Side: Old Brooklyn and Slavic Village. Yes, Slavic Village has had lots of trouble with crime lately, but it's retained a solid retail base and has seen some new development and renovation (the most interesting being the Hyacinth Lofts). Old Brooklyn has solid old houses and corner pubs galore.

Also, the Clark-Fulton neighborhood (south of Ohio City) isn't gentrifying, but it does have an enormous and vibrant Latino community and is represented by the city's first openly gay councilman, Joe Santiago.

I also hear the Buckeye neighborhood on the city's East Side has a stable mix of Hungarians and African-Americans, though I haven't had a chance yet to explore it much on my own.

 

I totally forgot Slavic Village.  And most folks roll Larchmere and Buckeye in the "Shaker Square nabe", however when I earlier listed larchmere I forgot to mention Buckeye, as it has one of the cities best bakeries!  Lucy's Sweet Surrender http://www.lucyssweetsurrender.com

 

Also, I do think clark-fulton is gentrify but in a different way.  As more and more upwardly mobile Latino's especially cubans, domincans and mexicans and i've recently met some el salvadorians & venezuelans (seems like they migrating here) move into the area, its important to have a stong base hood.  They really need a Banco Popular.  The couple of times I've been over there I've seen Indians players at different places.

I wouldn't put Old Brooklyn in that mix. It's not bad, but it needs more investment before it can again become an active area. MetroHealth's new "South Campus" in the closed Deaconess Hospital should help bring some life back to that area, but it's been wounded for a number of a years and I felt uncomfortable in putting it on that list.

If we are talking about stable (they have been OK for a while and still looking to be OK for the near future), not gentrifying or decaying neighborhoods, I would say there are only a few:

 

Edgewater

Kamm's Corner

Old Brooklyn

North Collinwood

Little Italy (could be considered to be gentrifying, I suppose)

Shaker Square/Larchmere

 

And to a lesser extent:

Lee-Miles

West Boulevard

Euclid-Green

 

I think all of the others are in significant flux- some getting better, some getting worse, most mixed.  Of course, we could get into a philosophical argument about if stability is illusory or even not desirable.  But I don't care to.

I saw some interesting stats on Little Italy.  Among them were...Overall, the population of the area has gone up 14% in the past decade.  The person per household ratio has gone down. 

I wonder where all of those new households are being housed.  There isn't that much new housing in Little Italy.  Maybe it's subdivision of existing homes for student apartments?

A lot of homes have been subdivided into apartments.  Also, there have been a nice amount of townhomes/condos that have gone up.  I believe the population increase amounts to 500 more residents.

I was in Cleveland and Akron exploring those areas last Sunday (New Years Day).

If we are talking about stable (they have been OK for a while and still looking to be OK for the near future), not gentrifying or decaying neighborhoods, I would say there are only a few:

 

Edgewater

Kamm's Corner

Old Brooklyn

 

 

i don't know what it is about old brooklyn, but every single person whom i've ever known to live there (5 or 6) thinks of it as a white trash ghetto......

It's working to middle-class whites and has a (outdated) reputation as KKK country.  I know some people who live there, and they consider it to be a very nice neighborhood with fairly stable residents and businesses.  It is also getting more diverse, which is why I say the KKK country reputation is probably outdated.

i wasn't aware of its social history, thanks.

 

Still, most complaints i hear of relate to really bad neighbors (poor yard maintenance, visible drug usage, domestic violence, etc.)

I don't know about those things one way or the other.  I'm sure there is some of that, but Old Brooklyn is generally considered a fairly low crime neighborhood.  Maybe I'll try to find some neighborhood crime stats later.

I cover police news for that, as well as Brooklyn Center, Stockyards, Clark-Metro, Tremont and Ohio City. A vast majority of crimes are in the first three neighborhoods, notably Stockyards and Clark-Metro where there is a serious drug epidemic (crack and heroin). Police are targeting those areas with undercover officers but it just keeps on coming. Then again, I've only been covering those areas since October, so I don't have a real good feel for trends/impacts yet.

 

Most of the crimes I see in the other areas I mentioned are stolen cars (lots of them, with people leaving their keys in the car way too often!), shopliftings, assaults (many apparently random involving pedestrians along major thoroughfares in the late night), domestic violence and some burglaries. But I wouldn't consider the numbers of crimes out of hand for the sheer population of Old Brooklyn, Tremont and Ohio City.