i'm no carl monday

^Another Forest City development.  Tower City needs serious help and these guys continue to ignore us. Thanks for checking in fellas.

http://www.forestcity.net/PROPERTIES/westfield-san-francisco-centre.asp

I work for a firm that worked on this project and it is a marvel of retail development.  There is a BART (Bay Area Regional Transit Authority) stop in the lower level of the building, department store connected, and located in the middle of the city.  Sounds familiar...

I was in San Francisco Center a couple of summers ago while the expansion was still underconstruction (I did note it was a Forest City project).  I was not shopping, I was actually just looking for a bathroom.  While the old portion was generally a nice "mall", I remembered thinking to myself that here I was in the middle of one of America's great and unique urban centers and if you had kidnapped and blindfolded me, put me in the center of the place not knowing where I was, I could not tell you what city I was in.  All the stores were the same you would find in any city (including suburb) in America.  Nothing local to identify the place or make for a unique shopping experience.  Maybe the new addition is more unique. I cannot see how it will be "a retail destination, a place for shoppers tired of the same old suburban mall experience" unless they have added some local flavor including shops (unlike Gap, J Crew, Banana Republic, Chicos etc.) where you can find something different.

 

By the way, I have no problem with vertical shopping.  Really like Water Tower Place in Chicago which is vertical

I wonder how TC would be today if the proposed Neiman Marcus opened back then?

^Or the Bloomingdale's they were trying to pull. Hopefully those department stores would still be down there and not in Beachwood. I don't see it being much different if only NM was there, due to the lack of population to sustain it.

Who all is planning to attend the forum tomorrow? I'll be there with camera, of course :)

Myself and some coworkers will be getting out early to check out the forum.  Should be interesting.

I've RSVP'd, but may not be able to make it.  I'm glad to hear that others will be there to cover for UO, though!

Is Macy's looking at Tower City?  Not in the Higbee's building, but maybe new construction on the other side of the food court?

I doubt it. First of all, Macy's would serve the growing affluent downtown and near west population, but there are Macy's now all over the suburbs. Second of all, since  Tower City has lost some of their anchor tenants and it has been difficult to recoup. Even though I think retail is due to rebound downtown, I don't know if retailers really trust Tower City as a good investment. Consumers have already become too disenchanted. I think Tower City will rebound eventuallly, but right now I think there is a better chance for retailers signing on to new projects downtown like Stark's.

 

If all retailers new to the region open up downtown up right now, I think downtown retail will be successful. People seem to like to point fingers at Crocker Park, but I think the demise of retail downtown is really due to Beachwood Place. Saks openned in the 1980s? coinciding with the loss of Halles. Nordstroms openned in 1996? and Tower City really seemed to decline then. Beachwood and Legacy Village also really set the stage for an east/west polarization that made Crocker Park inevitable.

 

I think Stark is providing a really good opportunity to bring retail back downtown. It is something new to market to retailers and consumers, building off a number of successful developments already in place, and including residential. Tower City isn't offering any of these things.

I doubt it. First of all, Macy's would serve the growing affluent downtown and near west population, but there are Macy's now all over the suburbs. Second of all, since  Tower City has lost some of their anchor tenants and it has been difficult to recoup. Even though I think retail is due to rebound downtown, I don't know if retailers really trust Tower City as a good investment. Consumers have already become too disenchanted. I think Tower City will rebound eventuallly, but right now I think there is a better chance for retailers signing on to new projects downtown like Stark's.

 

If all retailers new to the region open up downtown up right now, I think downtown retail will be successful. People seem to like to point fingers at Crocker Park, but I think the demise of retail downtown is really due to Beachwood Place. Saks openned in the 1980s? coinciding with the loss of Halles. Nordstroms openned in 1996? and Tower City really seemed to decline then. Beachwood and Legacy Village also really set the stage for an east/west polarization that made Crocker Park inevitable.

 

I think Stark is providing a really good opportunity to bring retail back downtown. It is something new to market to retailers and consumers, building off a number of successful developments already in place, and including residential. Tower City isn't offering any of these things.

 

I'm not sure how old you are Vulp...so I agree, to a point.  Severance started the process and Beachwood came online and took the AFFLUENT shopper away from Downtown Cleveland.  Beachwood didn't kill downtown shopping....I believe Randall Park Mall did.  You could find ANYTHING in RPM.  So eastsiders didn't need to go downtown to shop.  In addition, there was no downtown population.

 

Trust in TowerCity is gone...and I blame Forest City.  No matter where you're located if you have a quality product, folks will come.  When Halle's and Higbee's were both downtown, you could products that the suburban stored DID NOT CARRY, until Severance opened.  The Halle's open up Severance and flipped the script allowing suburban shoppers to get the upscale products that could only be found downtown, as the mall was spectacular!  We stopped shopping at Halle's on Shaker Square and started going to Severance.

 

I agree, FC has not helped downtown as it sucked shoppers of the street and Pesht will be a better investment for retailers.  Id also like to point out, that its not enough to have a "macy's" or a "bloomingdales" but we must have a first class FLAGSHIP store in downtown.  FC/TC has tried to blame the economy for its lack of retaining a broad range of customers, but its lack of maintaining unique brands shows it doesn care about moving the mall to the NEXT level.

 

Is Macy's looking at Tower City?  Not in the Higbee's building, but maybe new construction on the other side of the food court?

 

Does anyone know or can anyone find out the owner/owners of The May Co. Building.  I would think owner ship transfered to Federated/Macy's.  As the upper floors are rented out to banks.

 

^Or the Bloomingdale's they were trying to pull. Hopefully those department stores would still be down there and not in Beachwood. I don't see it being much different if only NM was there, due to the lack of population to sustain it.

 

When were they trying to get Bloomingdales?

Does anyone know or can anyone find out the owner/owners of The May Co. Building.  I would think owner ship transfered to Federated/Macy's.  As the upper floors are rented out to banks.

 

i believe that ownership transferred to a group from NYC last year, I don't know who all the players are, but i'll see if i can find out.  There were problems with the Euclid Corridor project and obtaining temporary easements to use the front/vault portions during construction.  the new owners wanted significantly more than RTA had valued the temporary easement at. 

 

but, seeing as how that section by public square has taken a LONG time to complete (anyone remember original 60 day timeline, which would have been end of August?  or the "new" deadline of end of Sept?). Apparently it now won't be open until Nov 10.

 

on a bit of an unrelated note, why didn't they do both sides of ontario first to restore traffic?  as it is now, they are going to start on the NE quadrant in the spring and close the northern stretch of ontario (which is now open, but not heavily used as it is cut off). 

 

  the new owners wanted significantly more than RTA had valued the temporary easement at. 

 

 

Um, as if the current use demands such a high value!?  Put something on the first floor and then you can start arguing that the easement is worth more. 

I was a little concerned when Schipper said at a recent meeting that they'd be doing the other three quadrants next year.  I really hope they can pull it off, but I have a right to be skeptical!

 

Oh, right, Pesht...

 

Ummm...well, a West Side Transit Center could affect the project.  Anyone hearing any murmurs about this lately?  Someone mentioned the southeast corner of Prospect & Superior (on top of FC's garage) as an option, but this was just speculation.  I really doubt Stark wants the transit center located in his project...

"Does anyone know or can anyone find out the owner/owners of The May Co. Building.  I would think owner ship transfered to Federated/Macy's.  As the upper floors are rented out to banks."

 

The owners of the May Company building are a NYC-based group called Argent Ventures. For quite some time they tried to market the building as the "Public Square Tech Center" in hopes of companies storing their back-office tech stuff. Obviously that hasn't panned out as well as they had hoped. To the best of my knowledge, Federated/Macy's has never owned the building and as of now KeyBank occupies four of the upper floors for their operations center.

"Does anyone know or can anyone find out the owner/owners of The May Co. Building.  I would think owner ship transfered to Federated/Macy's.  As the upper floors are rented out to banks."

 

The owners of the May Company building are a NYC-based group called Argent Ventures. For quite some time they tried to market the building as the "Public Square Tech Center" in hopes of companies storing their back-office tech stuff. Obviously that hasn't panned out as well as they had hoped. To the best of my knowledge, Federated/Macy's has never owned the building and as of now KeyBank occupies four of the upper floors for their operations center.

 

thanks MayDay.  Then The May Company (prior to their merger with Macy's) must have sold it shortly after operations ended.

I guess my life wasn't hard enough because I'm now trying to quit smoking.

 

Good luck on kicking the habit!

 

no body likes a quiter KJP

 

Who is going to fund the arts and culture in Cleveland if you quit?

^you'll have to mail order your cigs from some corner deli in Ohio City. We're counting on you!

 

 

I'll be going over to see the presentation tonight. Its nice to work across the street from Levin.

Ooh, there's gonna be a urbanohio contingent! :)

Saks opened Beachwood mall along with Higbees in 1978.

Nordstrom was part of the 40 store addition completed in fall '96.

 

They were trying to get Bloomingdale's at the same time they got Neiman Marcus to sign a pact for a new store, but the Bloomingdales negotiations didn't get too far. It was to go behind Tower City next to the Neiman Marcus and Rock & Roll hall of fame. I think there is even a generic rendering of it on this drawing called "Cleveland 1996 skyline." That rendering showed The current skyline, The Progressive tower, some other tower in the Civic district, The Ameritrust tower, and another tall tower in the Gateway area as well as a new convention center, The Rock Hall and those two department stores.

I've never bought the argument that Tower City killed downtown by sucking everybody inside.  Fact is, as the aforementioned FCM-backed project in San Fran shows, a great mall should enhance, not kill, a strong downtown retail district.

 

I will say that Tower City probably ended up killing Higbees/Dillards b/c shoppers began seeing they could get a larger variety of stuff, often at discounts, in the many stores of TC than they could in the many departments of Dillards.  Add to that the fact the Dillards, through their somewhat shoddy way they ran the downtown store, never won the revered place in the hearts of Clevelanders the place that Higbees did – it was flat out a higher quality store… There is not question that Ratner/FCM has lowered the ball on quality in Tower City since the place opened.  Part of it was their doing, but part of the reason was the decline in downtown as a retail market that really began with the great business exodus that started in the 1980s (which I still pin some blame on Kucinich’s anti-business ranting when he was mayor; and I’m a staunch Democrat).  Neiman-Marcus would have been crazy to go into downtown Cleveland when corp after corp was pulling up anchor, and we attached so much of our 90s excitement to Jacobs Field, the Flats and the Rock Hall (and how are those 3 institutions faring about now?)...  But I think people here exaggerate how awful and ‘downtown killing’ Tower City really is.  It’s a downtown mall, much more attractive than most and considerably more accessible than most attached to hotels and several office buildings.  It could be better, for sure, but it’s not the source of all downtown’s problems as many here want to make it out to be… and, besides, that’s not really the issue anyway…

 

What killed downtown retail is the sudden loss of office workers, to the burbs and the sunbelt, period.  Add to that a weak residential downtown and, boom, you've got downtown Cleveland retail.  Yes, downtown now, with upwards of 10K residents is the best in the Midwest outside Chicago, but it still has a ways to go before it can support the level of retail we'd all like to see.  What you're really demanding is that people in the outer regions of Cleveland and the burbs to come in, en masse, to prop up downtown retail -- they won't do it; not with oodles of nearby malls with free parking... Right now, that group does come down for entertainment and restaurants, largely after business hours, and this is growing.  Still, as much as I'd like to wish it was better, downtown streets like Euclid, 9th and Superior are relative ghost towns by weekday with trickles of foot traffic.  This is why, as encouraging as it is to see the flashy new housing going in -- at Ave Dist, Stonebridge, WHD and elsewhere -- Frank, the Partnership (see, the powers that be) really need to be putting a full court press on getting business back downtown... I hope they're talking 24/7 to our superman Cavs owner, Dan Gilbert, to REALLY make Cleveland his home by moving 3,500K Quicken/Rock Financial jobs into downtown.  That would be a huge boost.

 

... Also, we need to put down our differences about where the cc should go and support the FCM/Medical Merchandise Mart proposal that could really kick start business activity, esp in and around  Public Sq.  Jobs, jobs, jobs, is what downtown needs more than anything, right now.

 

It's pretty hard for office workers to go shopping when they are, um, working.  It is important, but it isn't the most important factor.  It's a mix between getting enough residents and a well conceived retail development together and support it with the said residential base.

Pretty sure why we are all excited about Stark's plan; it is the mixure of the two that will make this development work (hopefully).

^Clvlndr, not sure I agree that it was the loss of office workers to the burbs that killed downtown retail.  Anyone have historical numbers on downtown employment to see where things stand today relative to the last 50 years?  I would guess that the rapid erosion of middle class households in the city proper (and some of the inner ring 'burbs) and the increasing suburban competition have been much more significant factors.

 

I'm pinning my hopes for downtown retail revival on the steady growth of the yuppie population and the development of a critical mass of attractions that can pull in the more affluent suburban shopper for a day trip.  Increased convention and other tourist business will help too.  But I'm not convinced that adding to the ranks of downtown office workers will do much to improve downtown in any real way (retail or otherwise).

 

StrapHanger, I'm with you 100%.

"downtown streets like Euclid, 9th and Superior are relative ghost towns by weekday with trickles of foot traffic."

 

Let's see, on the stretch of Superior between East 12th and Public Square, you have the following:

Charter One Building

Diamond Building

1717 East 9th (East Ohio)

St. Johns Cathedral

McDonald Investment Center

Hampton Inn*

Superior Building

McDonald Investment Center

Fifth Third Center

Federal Reserve Bank

Cleveland Public Library

Leader Building

Arcade/Hyatt*

Federal Courthouse

200 Public Square

 

*The only structures that are occupied or used outside of typical business hours.

 

Sooo, even though most of the buildings aren't used at night or on weekends, we should have hordes of pedestrians on that stretch? That area is no different than other financial districts in any other city. They're used and quite busy during working hours but otherwise they're empty as are their surrounding streets.

 

Lack of foot traffic there has nothing to do with your perceived "catastrophic job losses" downtown. It has everything to do with the fact that certain areas of ANY city are going to be less active at certain times depending on their purpose. Btw, we've seen nothing beyond anecdotal evidence to back that up - I'm not saying jobs haven't been lost, but you make it sound like downtown workers are a veritable skeleton crew which hasn't been my experience day in and day out for the past ten years.

 

Euclid's not much different at the moment - however I'm positive that will change once the missing residential links fall into place, especially between the Squares.

 

 

From personal observation, there are many downtown workers. In fact, during the weekday downtown at lunch time is probably the most vibrant you ever see downtown. The problem is that they all leave as soon as possible for home when they get out of work.

Agreed and agreed.  I think there is a general presumption that downtown should be the "it place", but what does this mean?  As MayDay points out, the financial/office districts of even the healthiest cities are often boring as hell and deserted outside of business hours (e.g., Boston, SF, lower Manhattan and even much of Midtown Manhattan).  All to say, I am 100000000 times more excited about Stark's plans than I would be about any more office towers Downtown, no matter how tall.

 

Addendum: this is also why, barring some extraordinary architectural marvel,  I'm not so excited about the new county offices.  As far as I can tell we are trading a nice, conversion-ready historic building on Euclid and likely the Breuer tower for a bunch of smoking county workers and double-parking title closers.  Not sure how this helps Euclid (other than bringing the rotunda back to life which is no small feat).

There is a webcast of the forum right now, if you can get it.

I had it for a moment and then it was gone

http://urban.csuohio.edu/forum/media/2006/warehouse/webcast/index.html

frickin awesome...thanks Musky!

I cant get the webcast to work!!

Agreed and agreed.  I think there is a general presumption that downtown should be the "it place", but what does this mean?  As MayDay points out, the financial/office districts of even the healthiest cities are often boring as hell and deserted outside of business hours (e.g., Boston, SF, lower Manhattan and even much of Midtown Manhattan).

 

Except when there is an event such as a Heat game or concert, you can add Miami to the never ending list of cities that meet this criteria.

A comment that Steven Fong made this evening that made an impression upon me was his statement about coordinating large public improvement projects to attract large private investments (like Stark's Warehouse District Plan). He asserted his feeling that re-structured zoning/planning codes and infrastructure improvements need to happen FIRST before big-time construction (such as those attracted to Toronto's lakefront) rise around Downtown Cleveland.

 

I believe that Cleveland has made solid commitments to rebuilding and reinvesting in core infrastructure (Euclid Corridor, West Shoreway, OneCleveland, Water Dept.), and I would like to see the City (and region) continue with MAJOR investments along other multi-municipality corridors (Detroit-Superior, Lorain-Carnegie, regional rails, waterways) to reverse the direction of the NEO "conveyor belts". As it pertains to Stark's "Pesht"... start building this landbridge, bury the rails, pave streets, launch a wireless cloud, and generate a ton of excitement for this NEW downtown grid.

 

One question posed to Stark was (paraphrasing) "When are we going to SEE something?"... If the City dives into the major improvements needed to bring the city grid to the lake (regardless who eventually develops along the streets), we WILL see progress. Lets see shovels in the ground tomorrow!

Interesting forum discussion today by Stark. He was his usual dramatic self.

 

The most interesting part for me is when he said he had approached Bloomingdale's about becoming part of Pesht. He noted that downtown department stores aren't getting involved in "mall" concepts, as the idea of malls downtown is a dumb idea, Stark said. Bloomingdale's officials reportedly said they would come into Pesht if it had the right mix of other retailers. Stark said he hasn't gotten an outright "no" from any retailer he's approached. I took several pages of notes, so there's a lot more stuff he discussed -- though not much that hasn't already been said here. There was a woman sitting behind who may have been a reporter, too, because she took a ton of notes as well. But she couldn't have been a reporter since she was nice looking!

did you at least get her phone number?

some basic thoughts on yesterday's presentation:

 

Stark should give pregame speeches for football teams. He's one hell of a speaker.

 

He really bristled at the port relocation question. 

 

The airport terminal thing really seemed out of place.

 

He didn't hint at all about any start date.  I still feel that this is a long way away.

 

Cimperman is a great speaker.

 

Sure makes you hopeful that something will happen, though.

Yeah, the two things I took away from the forum were:

 

1. Stark seems to want the city to make infrastructure improvements before he'll begin. He nodded approvingly when Fong reported that Toronto's waterfront development got off the ground only after $1.5 billion in public money (city, province, national) was committed. That was a bit surprising to me, as I don't see the area around Stark's Phase I, in particular, to be in particularly bad shape, and I expect the Port Authority to take care of most infrastructure improvements on their land.

 

2. The mention of Federated department stores saying they would get involved with the right tenant mix, which was exciting.

 

I came away with the same impression as Wimwar that even Phase I is farther off than we had hoped. Maybe I'm wrong and Stark was just being cautious.

 

The questions were, overall, horrendous. Some real loonies came out of the woodwork, including a woman who claimed to have "known the Stark family for 30 years" and launched into an nonsensical monologue about Crocker Park as Stark shook his head in confusion.

^we need some basic psychiatric screening to be done before anyone can ask a question. They should go to some sort of written question format and have the urban students pick out the best questions.

"The questions were, overall, horrendous. Some real loonies came out of the woodwork, including a woman who claimed to have "known the Stark family for 30 years" and launched into an nonsensical monologue about Crocker Park as Stark shook his head in confusion."

 

Thank you! I mean, maybe she's a nice wonderful person, and good for her to come out to encourage Stark but girlfriend needed to forgo the cosmo with valium chaser before she arrived! 

 

When the guy asked the question about the port relocation, I overheard someone behind me saying "it's a simple question". I don't think so, and if they were expecting Stark to say "Why yes, we'll be moving ABC to exactly XYZ on precisely such-and-such date" - they're really out of touch with how massive the port relocation is. I'm not saying their concerns aren't valid, and I'm not thrilled with the prospect of losing Whiskey Island, but that question won't be answered for quite some time and Stark won't be the one making that declaration. As far as "when" - well as we know all too well - there may be things already going on but for reasons, mainly legal - they can't release plans to the public just yet.

 

I thought overall the presentation itself was decent. As others have said, Stark definitely has charisma and I liked his presentation. He's over the top at times but I think that's true of most developers who get things done. I also thought Valerie J. McCall did a good job of speaking on the city's behalf, as did Cimperman. I really liked how Fong gave examples of the potential for the project and for the CUDC to get a rapport with Stark at this stage bodes well for the design aspects. I'll have some photos soon :)

 

When the guy asked the question about the port relocation, I overheard someone behind me saying "it's a simple question".

 

 

...I'm not thrilled with the prospect of losing Whiskey Island, but that question won't be answered for quite some time...

 

 

Was the guy Ed Hauser?

 

The questions regarding Port Relocation and Whiskey Island are expected to be answered very early next year. The current study is about finished. The powers that be are mainly waiting for... wait for it, wait for it... yes you guessed it, the elections to be finished before they start making absolutue statements regarding the port.

No, it wasn't Hauser. He was too busy peeing himself silly from the inner belt news.

It was brought to my attention a couple days ago that the port relocation has a rather large tie-in to the Lakefront West plans and investment.  No one's really talking about this...how will the massive shift in port & industrial traffic be acommodated west of the river?  This may be a different thread.

 

I'm sorry to have missed most of the forum (I got to listen to some of it online), but I knew I could count on you lot to keep me up-to-date!

MGD,

 

I know what you're talking about. I think that the lady was operating under the influence of some close-minded emotion.  The vast majority of shipping already takes place on the west bank.  I don't think that the additional truck traffic would be that bad. (the lady had the old whiskey island blinders on).

Ha!  You may be right, but come on, no impact whatsoever?

Oh, Stark also mentioned the reason he pulled out of the University Circle project is because it wasn't ambitious enough in scale.

well, we already knew that, now didn't we?

I thought it beared repeating.

^Stark wanted to knock down all this stuff in UC. From what I heard, he was way off base.

I'm not saying office workers, alone would prop up retail.  But the heavy losses erroded the retail base.  First little stores started closing, then the big dept stores -- Halles in the early 80s, Mays, early 90s, Higbees/Dillards in 2000.  It's a different downtown.  Anyone who walked the downtown lunch crowds  would know who much it has changed.

 

The positive, of course, is that with residents, there's more after hours stuff going on whereas downtown, in the 70s and 80s, rolled up the sidewalks after 6p.

 

As to Mayday's comment: tell me which big dept stores stay open, daily, more than 3 hours after 5p?  ... quitting time.  It's not just the workers; but having workers and energy add to the Wow! factor; synergy, retailers want to see when investing downtown -- and btw, it's not just Cleveland; aside from the 'hot' cities: NYC, Chicago, Boston, DC, SF and a few others, dept stores are pulling up stakes in downtowns at a rapid rate... I'm not saying it's impossible; I'm just saying, be realistic and look around at what's going on elsewhere.

I'm not saying office workers, alone would prop up retail.  But the heavy losses erroded the retail base.  First little stores started closing, then the big dept stores -- Halles in the early 80s, Mays, early 90s, Higbees/Dillards in 2000.  It's a different downtown.  Anyone who walked the downtown lunch crowds  would know who much it has changed.

 

The positive, of course, is that with residents, there's more after hours stuff going on whereas downtown, in the 70s and 80s, rolled up the sidewalks after 6p.

 

As to Mayday's comment: tell me which big dept stores stay open, daily, more than 3 hours after 5p?   ... quitting time.  It's not just the workers; but having workers and energy add to the Wow! factor; synergy, retailers want to see when investing downtown -- and btw, it's not just Cleveland; aside from the 'hot' cities: NYC, Chicago, Boston, DC, SF and a few others, dept stores are pulling up stakes in downtowns at a rapid rate... I'm not saying it's impossible; I'm just saying, be realistic and look around at what's going on elsewhere.

 

I'm sorry.  Halle's closing had nothing to do with erroding worker base......The family wanted out!

 

And as i stated in an earlier thread, more people from Cleveland shop at high end stores OUT OF STATE more than any other city.  There is definite interest in having more uniqure retail in downtown, but the kucinich era screwed us bigtime, and the Dillards mentality scared other retailers away, because we lost a "high end" full service Higbees.  and Tower city's issues were more with the Retailers financial situations (Barney's entered bankrupcty; Gucci had new ownership and admited they over exposed the brand by opening too many boutiques to quickly; LV was a franchise and didn't mange the store properly; Adrienne Vittadini was bought right before going it would have gone bankrupt...etc...) then with TowerCity.

 

Now, downtown Cleveland is much different downtown today from a residential stand point.  TowerCity could be smart and lure a grocer like TimeWarner Center and develop some housing over their parking garage.  That would link the Warehouse and Gateway districts.  They could also do an expansion of retailers or help bring in retailers to the adjoining street scene.  Its not rocket science.