The only thing that surprises me on these maps is the showing of Ohio City.

yeah I am scratching my head on some of these based on my experiences in many of these neighborhoods. On the eastside, I would think Corlette (which I found to have mostly quiet streets and tidy homes) and Buckeye Shaker would be better crimewise than Union Miles and Mt Pleasant both of which tended to be wild wild east when I was out there (boarded up homes, open dealing, people approaching my car). I am not terribly surprised at OC's high ranking, but think Stockyards, Detroit Shoreway and Clark Fulton should look similar on the west side. I have to say there are some suprises here. I am still going to throw out there, that some people in very high crime areas do even bother to report many crimes. Sad but true.  Just wondering if this comes into play.

Note that Ohio City includes the West Bank of the Flats. When I get the police brevity reports each Monday for 1st and 2nd districts, I'm amazed at the number of crimes reported on the West Bank. The reports often don't list business names unless the business itself was targeted in the crime (B&E, theft, vandalism, etc). Brevity reports on crimes including assaults, robberies, rapes, car thefts only list the address where they occurred. Too often, I see addresses on Washington, Center, Main, Sycamore etc. Those are typically outside nightclubs, and one of the worst has been Mirage.

 

So even if the area considered the heart of Ohio City, along and west of West 25th is relatively peaceful, the West Bank (and the Lakeview public housing north of the Shoreway) may be what's causing the crime numbers to seem high.

KJP-how might someone get these reports? I do get some from district 2, but not 1.

 

on another note about neighborhoods, I was looking at the "Positively Cleveland" website, under emerging neighborhoods section, and we appear to have a part of town called "westown" and  "northeast shores" . Did they  just make this up? I have never heard of these terms, and I feel bad for the tourist pulling up to someone and asking "can you point me to Westown?" Who decides these things, a PR firm somewhere?

http://www.positivelycleveland.com/visiting/neighborhoods/emerging_neighborhoods/

 

 

Northeast shores is the name the CDC in N Collinwood goes by:

http://www.northeastshores.org/

 

I've heard of Westown.  Per this website, it seems to be along Lorain between W 130th and W 100th

http://www.retailspacescleveland.com/westtownneighborhood.htm

Here is Ohio City's violent crime stats for 2006 by block.

Excellent job on those maps Matches.

I've lived in Ohio City (W28th & Bridge) for 3 years and never had more than a homeless guy ask me for change on the street.  I'm surprised Downtown's rate is so high as well.

That block by block map explains it alot.  Most of the crime is in Lakeview, or in what most people would consider to be Clark-Fulton, south of 90.  What's going on at the hospital, though?

 

w.28th- Downtown's rate is high, but of course, residents make up only a small percentage of the people there.  The number isn't adjusted for the 140,000 workers or the millions of people that come down to drink, watch shows, or go to sporting events.

^ Are you sure about that? Between Detroit, W25th, and Lorain; two 8's, two 9's, and one 7. That seems the highest of the three (Lakeview, OC, Clark-Fulton).

Interesting stuff. this explains why I thought the area right around me was OK despite the larger map showing it as problematic. block by block break down helps.  A couple things- the high crime blocks may have the explanation that there are high concentrations of people experiencing duress or other issues-or just large numbers of people congregating. Lutheran: people get combative and it may result assult charges. On W25th and Clark- Children and Family Service offices are located- high stress interactions there, I assure you. W. 25th and Detroit: Mental health services and Social Security office-again-lots of agitated people. These 2 are also large transportation corridors, so lots of room for people to congreatgate and get into trouble. Just my thoughts.

What's going on at the hospital, though?

 

 

 

I think the number is high by the hospital because that would be the block where Moda used to operate.

Going back and looking at the other page, most of the crimes are robberies & assaults 231, 15 rapes and 4 homicides. That means robberies & assaults = 92% of the violent crime in OC.

Moda was further south of there.

 

The crime between Detroit, W. 25th, and Lorain seems to be concentrated on a couple of things- the stretch of Detroit by Linda's Superette where people loiter and sell drugs, the corner of W. 25th and Detroit (Lakeview might play a role in these crime rates), Lutheran Hospital, and St. Ignatius.  Most of the rest of that portion of the neighborhood is low to 0 reported crimes. 

 

Interestingly, the "dicey" area south of Lorain to the tracks looks to be the safest part of OC. 

 

The area south of the tracks (usually considered part of Clark-Fulton) has a pretty steady moderate crime rate across it's whole area.

It looks as though crime is actually higher across the street and next door (@ Bounce) than in the block where Linda's Superette is ... not disputing that that place is horrible; it is. Also, I'd note that the area around Dave's looks to have a relatively high incidence of crime (with 7).

 

 

My memory is fuzzy but wasn't the Jay Hotel operating in 2005? That would account for a lot of the crimes near Dave's.

KJP-how might someone get these reports? I do get some from district 2, but not 1.

 

Not sure. We at Sun were receiving these long before I started covering Cleveland two years ago. Probably the best thing would be to stop by the crime reports window on the 3rd floor of the Justice Center and ask for brevity reports for various districts. They should even be able to pull them up based on zones. Cost is 5 cents per page.

 

Also, Westown is the name of the shopping district at Lorain Avenue and West 110th Street. It was the site of a huge Sears department store which was closed, demolished and replaced with a strip shopping center.

 

What's going on at the hospital, though?

 

I've found that when sifting through the brevity reports, a lot of crimes that happen elsewhere get reported at MetroHealth. Like the guys that get stabbed/shot/clubbed by "someone I've never met before at a place I can't remember."

OK that makes sense about the hosp and crime reporting, I know there had to be some explanation for the high numbers. I am guessing many injuries  are mandatory to report by medical professionals.  So now that I know what "westown" is, how on earth could this strip mall make a list of destinations over about 100 other cool little areas missing?

I was surprised at how low the rates were for the West Bank/Stonebridge area - would have thought with the bars and nightclubs on the West Bank there would be more assaults, etc. 

 

I wonder if the high rates at Lutheran are due to rapes being treated at the ER? 

 

The Ignatius block confuses me; it seems pretty secure and it's not like those kids in blue blazers are running around assaulting teachers and each other (no priest jokes, please...)

 

Why is Duck Island split between Ohio City and Tremont?  Either way, the Ohio City part (along with Grove Court) is pretty safe as well.

So now that I know what "westown" is, how on earth could this strip mall make a list of destinations over about 100 other cool little areas missing?

 

Westown is actually the surrounding neighborhood, not just the strip mall. It includes a pretty intact historic commercial strip between around W. 105th. The CDC is doing some interesting things there, including trying to restore the Variety Theater. And they do have a pretty wide selection of ethnic restaurants.

 

That being said, I'm not sure that they're necessarily the first place I think of when I think of directing tourists around the city, at least not when Detroit Shoreway isn't even making the list (but residents, yeah, go check them out ... it's an interesting enough neighborhood, definitely with some good food options). Not sure how the neighborhoods on the list were selected, but Detroit Shoreway definitely seems more "tourist-ready" than many of the listed emerging neighborhoods.

What's going on at the hospital, though?

 

I've found that when sifting through the brevity reports, a lot of crimes that happen elsewhere get reported at MetroHealth. Like the guys that get stabbed/shot/clubbed by "someone I've never before at a place I can't remember."

 

Ok, then that's why Lutheran shows so many crimes.

The Ignatius block confuses me; it seems pretty secure and it's not like those kids in blue blazers are running around assaulting teachers and each other (no priest jokes, please...)

 

It confuses me as well. Ignatius has their own security that is always present.  When I went to Ignatius, you never heard about anything other than the occassional car getting broken into. I think that the area of Lorain to the immediate west of Ignatius can get sketchy at times.

It also occurred to me that we are looking at only one year.  So a few random occurances on a given block can make that block look really bad, when it may usually be quite safe.

^^ When I was at Ignatius I heard of 1 violent crime against a student, there was an armed robbery on lorain. Other than that I always thought the area was fairly safe.  However I know they had a problem with theft for a while, people taking DVD players out of classrooms etc. Maybe that was a factor.

That would not be counted being the numbers are based on violent crime.

There aren't many altercations between students at St. Ignatius or maybe at the games?  That could account for some of it.

They don't get big crowds there except for maybe basketball games?  Their football games aren't played in OC. 

Heck of a good series being run by the Plain Dealer.  Regardless of what you think of the paper itself, this is a very thought-provoking set of stories.  Here's today's installment:

 

Bustling and full of life, Mount Pleasant once was a family-oriented, friendly place to live

Sunday, December 09, 2007

Sandra Livingston, Sam Fulwood III and Bob Paynter

Plain Dealer Reporters

 

Just one human lifetime ago, Mount Pleasant was an inviting refuge on Cleveland's East Side for thousands of Russians, Italians, Czechs and other immigrants eager to escape the city's crowded center.

 

Kinsman Road - the neighborhood's main street - was a commercial smorgasbord in the 1920s and '30s, where sweet, spicy aromas wafted from delis and bakeries. Shoppers could buy a fresh-killed kosher chicken, visit a doctor or spend an evening at the movies.

 

The bustling block between East 121st and East 123rd streets reflected the neighborhood's sizable Jewish settlement, then one of the largest in Cleveland.

 

At East 121st and Kinsman, Israel and Fannie Levitt sliced hot corned beef and made chocolate phosphates at their corner deli while Fannie's homemade chicken soup cooled near an open window in their apartment upstairs.

 

Across the street, children played hide-and-seek outside Hyman Rapaport's poultry shop. Charlie Sugerman's hardware store catered to the growing ranks of maintenance-minded homeowners.

 

Mount Pleasant back then also was home to a sizable enclave of black homeowners - an outgrowth, according to lore, of a cash-strapped contractor in the 1890s who had paid his workers in real estate. Black newspapers advertised the growing pastoral community as a "suburban paradise."

 

Today, the Levitt-Rapaport-Sugerman block on Kinsman looks desolate, the commercial strip mostly abandoned. And the neighborhood around it has been reeling for decades.

 

Economic, social and political forces far beyond its control have steadily drained the neighborhood of human, economic and moral resources.

 

Mount Pleasant is not the poorest neighborhood in Cleveland. Nor is it the most crime-ridden or economically devastated.

 

In fact, a determined but dwindling middle class - stronger in some parts of the neighborhood than others - struggles to preserve what's left of a once-prosperous, congenial past.

 

But Mount Pleasant has been ravaged by more than 60 years of middle-class flight - first white, then black. Its human capital diminished, the neighborhood's social values have eroded. Its schools have declined. Poverty and crime have escalated. And absentee parents have abandoned their children to the streets.

 

Its rapid rise and steady fall - reflected in the fate of the block on Kinsman where Hyman Rapaport once sold his kosher chickens - is a lesson in the slow death of a community.

 

In that, the story of Mount Pleasant is also the story of Cleveland - and of the region around it.

 

Decay has spread like ripples on a pond, traveling outward from the city through once vigorous places such as East Cleveland, into Cleveland Heights, Shaker Heights, Euclid, Lakewood and beyond.

 

As the more prosperous residents leave - abandoning the old in search of the new - the less prosperous fill in behind. As wealth declines, social ills rise, driving still more residents to the fringes.

 

Those who could occupy the inner suburbs in Cuyahoga County now are in Mentor, Medina and Twinsburg, said Tom Bier, a Cleveland State University housing expert who has been warning about the unchecked trend for years.

 

"They want out," he said. And eventually people from Mount Pleasant and other city neighborhoods will occupy the inner-ring homes those residents leave behind.

 

"In another 60 years, another major hunk of this county will be decimated. I'll guarantee that. Places like University Heights and . . . Parma and Parma Heights and Fairview Park."

 

Those inner-ring suburbs now are fighting the same battle Mount Pleasant started waging 70 years ago.

 

They weren't always places to get away from. And neither was Mount Pleasant.

 

It was once a destination.

 

""""""""""""""""""""""""

 

The good life in a good neighborhood

 

Mount Pleasant boomed from 1910 to 1930 - just like Cleveland. The neighborhood's population grew from just over 1,600 to just under 43,000. Today, it's roughly half that. About 80 percent of the houses still standing in the neighborhood were built during those two decades.

 

By the start of World War II, Mount Pleasant homes were better outfitted than the typical Clevelander's, more likely to feature such creature comforts as private baths, flush toilets, mechanical refrigeration and central heat. And the neighborhood's residents were more likely to be homeowners.

 

Its growing black population was solidly middle class as well. Blacks in Mount Pleasant had higher home ownership rates than the city as a whole, according to U.S. Census data, and a level of education that easily exceeded that of the average Clevelander.

 

Still, integration was a mixed bag.

 

When Christine Branche was elected student council president at Alexander Hamilton Junior High School in the early 1940s, she beat out two boys - one Italian, the other Jewish. The big deal wasn't that she was black, Branche recalled recently, but that she was a girl. While growing up on East 132nd Street, Branche said, she learned to speak Yiddish and a bit of Italian.

 

"Back then," she said, "we were a village."

 

At Ben's Meat Market, across the street from Rapaport Poultry Co. on Kinsman, black and white employees worked with Ben Cangemi in the 1950s and 1960s making Italian sausage.

 

"Everybody respected everybody," said Ben's son Frank Cangemi, founder and president of Miles Farmers Market in Solon. "If you worked, you got respect, and if you didn't work, there was no respect, whether you were white or you were black."

 

But Harvey Pekar, famed author of the "American Splendor" comic books, has written that by the mid-1940s, his once working-class Jewish-Italian neighborhood in Mount Pleasant had changed so much that black kids belittled him as a "white cracker." Racial fights on the way home from school were common, he wrote.

 

Todd Michney, a Tulane University visiting professor who has studied the area, noted that blacks faced discrimination and violent attacks from the late 1920s through the early '50s when they tried to swim at what is now Luke Easter Park, near the neighborhood's western edge.

 

""""""""""""""""""""""""

 

Flight of middle class has devastating effect

 

Mount Pleasant's population peaked in 1930 and has declined steadily ever since. More accurately, its black population skyrocketed, like Cleveland's, and its white residents left. In droves.

 

From the end of World War I through the 1960s, millions of rural, largely uneducated Southern blacks streamed northward in search of jobs, producing what has been described as the single largest movement of people in the nation's history.

 

As blacks continued to pour into Cleveland, whites poured out. No single reason fully explains the exodus. To what extent whites were fleeing blacks or, flush with war-induced prosperity, lured away by suburbia - or both - is a matter for historians.

 

But from 1930 to 1970, Cleveland lost 370,000 of its white, middle-class residents - roughly 45 percent of its pre-Depression total.

 

Mount Pleasant lost 96 percent of its whites during that period. That left the neighborhood, like many others on Cleveland's East Side, more than 95 percent black.

 

As the middle class residents departed - whites first, followed by blacks later on - they took their resources with them, with devastating effect.

 

From 1970 to 2000, total personal income in the United States grew 118 percent, after adjusting for inflation, according to federal data.

 

But in Mount Pleasant - and in Cleveland as a whole - personal income fell 30 percent during that period.

 

In Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights, total personal income dropped 1 percent and 10 percent, respectively. Income in the Cuyahoga County suburbs grew a collective 24 percent, just one-fifth the national rate; in regional suburbs farther out, it grew 166 percent - much faster than the nation.

 

Had its total income simply stayed even, Mount Pleasant residents would have had about $2.3 billion more in 2006 dollars to spend from 1970 to 2000. That's enough to buy every one-, two- and three-family home in the neighborhood - six times.

 

""""""""""""""""""""

 

Businesses begin to move out

 

The block on Kinsman between East 121st and East 123rd streets illustrates both the demographic shifts and the economic implications.

 

Frieda Levitt, daughter of deli owners Israel and Fannie Levitt, married Meyer Ferstman - who lived on the same block. They initially settled into his family's home on Kinsman, then moved east to Shaker Heights in 1944, after they felt the neighborhood started to decline.

 

"That's why we moved away instead of living next door to my mother," Frieda Ferstman said recently. In Shaker, she said, "I could send my children to a better school." The same quest - for a better neighborhood - is what brought her parents to Mount Pleasant a generation earlier.

 

One year after Frieda and Meyer Ferstman moved, Hyman and Esther Rapaport packed up their home across the street and moved to Shaker Heights, too.

 

"My mother didn't want to be in front of a chicken store," son Leonard Rapaport recalled recently. "Nobody's mother wants to be in front of a chicken store."

 

The family business - a neighborhood institution - remained at the same spot on Kinsman for another 30 years, but the block's dynamic shifted with the population.

 

As more people headed to suburbs, Ben's Meat Market began offering home delivery of groceries to customers who left the neighborhood. Then it closed its retail meat operation altogether, concentrating on making and selling Italian sausage - wholesale only. In the 1960s, it closed its Kinsman site and expanded in Cleveland's Corlett neighborhood.

 

Meanwhile, the number of black-owned businesses grew.

 

By the late 1950s, what once was the Levitts' corner deli had become the Sportsman Grill, owned by Horace and Robert Williams - black bus drivers for the Cleveland Transit System and former college athletes.

 

The bar was a gathering place for the brothers' co-workers and old sports buddies, Robert Williams recalled recently. "We both lost our shirts, but it was a lot of fun."

 

The brothers grilled hot dogs and hamburgers in a storefront window. Robert Williams said he danced with customers in the little hall behind the bar to keep business lively.

 

When the midnight closing time arrived, people didn't worry about getting home, he said. Mount Pleasant "was just a very fine neighborhood. The problems we have today were nonexistent back then."

 

Warning signs were forming, though.

 

The Mount Pleasant Community Council, launched in 1946, helped form neighborhood block clubs and tackled deteriorated housing and crime.

 

More poor blacks were moving into Mount Pleasant and nearby neighborhoods from Cleveland's overcrowded core. Some were drawn in by the vacuum of departing whites. Others were pushed there by urban renewal programs that leveled slum housing in the city's center.

 

When Catherine Powell's parents moved to Mount Pleasant in the mid-1950s, she said, it was like coming into "high cotton." But the middle-class exodus was accelerating and would proceed through the rest of the century.

 

Jobs continued to leave the city. Unemployment and poverty rose. Drugs flowed in. Crime and chaos became everyday issues. Rental housing - increasingly subsidized by the government - multiplied.

 

Former deli owners Israel and Fannie Levitt sold their Mount Pleasant home and moved to South Euclid in 1957, after their daughter Bertha was held up on her way home from work.

 

A few years later, Cleveland's eastern neighbors renamed Kinsman Road, to Chagrin Boulevard, where it crosses into Shaker Heights - an effort to distance themselves from Cleveland and the troubling developments unfolding there.

 

Hyman Rapaport closed his shop after robbers put a gun to his head during the mid-1970s. "My mother said you're selling out," son Leonard Rapaport recalled. "And he did."

 

""""""""""""""""""

Some still believe in the community

 

Today, Mount Pleasant is a complicated, confounding mix of hope and despair, determination and frustration.

 

Some who stayed say the community is a better place now than in the 1990s, when drug activity was more open, crime was more rampant and commercial investment more sparse.

 

Police have continued to dog the dealers and prostitutes, moving them from their favorite street corners, if not driving them off completely.

 

And more than $50 million has been spent during the past five years on a Kinsman Road revitalization plan, according to Zack Reed, the area's city councilman. Those public dollars have repaved parts of Kinsman, added landscaping, renovated storefronts, rebuilt A.J. Rickoff School from scratch, hired off-duty police officers and installed security cameras.

 

Mt. Pleasant NOW, the local community development corporation, has targeted Kinsman from East 130th to East 154th streets as a revitalization district and is using such incentives as aid for storefront renovation to attract retailers and other businesses to the neighborhood.

 

At East 145th and Kinsman, a company formed by Mount Pleasant native Sandy Wright and his father has bought the north side of the block for a multimillion-dollar shopping center called Heritage Towne Center.

 

"People need to see that people who have been brought up in the community . . . want to give back and believe in that community," Wright said. His family has had a laundromat on the block for 40-plus years.

 

Market studies vouch for the center's potential, he said. And he's confident he'll draw retailers despite the difficulties others in Mount Pleasant have faced.

 

But less than a mile away, west of East 130th Street, decay and economic flight have left a spreading poverty in their wake. Father Dan Begin, pastor of two Catholic churches in the neighborhood, likens the conditions to what might be found in Haiti.

 

"That area has been dying longer," he said.

 

The once-thriving commercial strip on Kinsman between East 121st and East 123rd looks mostly desolate and abandoned today. The stores' big display windows were largely bricked over long ago.

 

A handful of two-family homes stand silent sentry on both sides of the block.

 

Travis Sanders, a 31-year-old Mount Pleasant native, has made a stand here. He has operated the small Platinum Cuts barbershop on the block for nearly a decade. He's also committed to expanding across the street.

 

Sanders and his partner are renovating the site of the old Sugerman hardware store, building a bigger barber shop complete with a snazzy facade and small game room.

 

He may well prosper in the new location.

 

But on either side of his current shop, faded signs announce the presence of storefront churches where businesses once were. The churches may provide sustenance to their tiny congregations, but their proliferation speaks to the neighborhood's lack of economic vitality.

 

A generation ago, Progressive Memorial Baptist Church moved into the Levitts' old storefront, offering Sunday services, Wednesday Bible classes and a three-day-a-week food pantry.

 

But in October, when the church moved out following a dispute with its landlord, it typically was open only for Sunday services.

 

Its membership had dwindled to fewer than 20. Its leaders worried that dilapidated building conditions were contributing to runny noses and waves of nausea for worshippers. And they wondered whether the tattered red industrial rug, held together with tape, was a breeding ground for mold.

 

But even more than the church's appearance, what happened there about a year ago symbolizes how far Mount Pleasant has fallen.

 

Pastor James Roary said that while he was preaching one Sunday, an overflow from an upstairs bathroom - which Roary described as "all-inclusive" - rained directly down upon him. The landlord disputes his description of what fell, although Roary said his robes and pulpit drapes were ruined.

 

But like many longtime residents in this once-proud neighborhood who persevere in the face of decline, Roary was steadfast.

 

The pastor said he simply stepped away from his sodden pulpit and continued to preach.

 

http://www.cleveland.com/mountpleasant/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1197134107208520.xml&coll=2

 

AT LAST! An article dealing with urban issues on an historical, statistical and contextual basis, rather than opinionated rantings of a scorned old man.

 

An excellent article.

I'm hoping the editorial changes at the PD bring some new life and better reporting to the paper.

Indeed there are some facts in here, however I always see the tired PD agenda shining though...that Cleveland is in some sort of death spiral-it sells more papers than showing the many positive things happening. Spiral or not, when the media continues to show only one side for its dreary brethren to lap up (even if for once fact ladden) is hurts you, me, and the city as a whole.  Even though our time in Cleveland has been filled with much happiness and comfort, the future seems unknown given the continuous assaults on this city I invested in financially and emotionally: the media, our lack luster politicans and the self hating citizens are burning me out. Maybe its the cold December rain, but days like these make you wish it was easier to be mobile when you may need to be. Anyone wanna buy a condo? I didn't think so.

the media, our lack luster politicans and the self hating citizens are burning me out. Maybe its the cold December rain, but days like these make you wish it was easier to be mobile when you may need to be. 

 

I totally feel where you're coming from. Last week I was looking at a map of Cleveland I have on my wall in Columbus and was thinking almost everything is stacked against that city, and I want to move back there when I graduate. I though it would be so easy to just move to some southern boom town where everthing appears to be so great.

 

But then I think about what this place once was, what it has going for it and the positive things that will occur in the next five years. It is hard defending this place against the constant negativity, but I tend to think about New York City between 1960 and 1990. It was a horrible and decaying city and now it has bounced back. Sure that's New York and this is Cleveland, but its probably harder to turn a city X number of times bigger than Cleveland (NYC) around than it is to turn Cleveland itself around.

Some interesting ethnography and demographic change info and historical context, but also some pretty sloppy stats in that article.  Drops in total personal income, for instance, are caused not just by population replacement, but also by life cycle (e.g., retirements).  Average household income for households with working age wage-earners, for instance, would have been a much more honest stat, but wouldn't have produced the same eye-popping inner ring-outer ring dichotomy (a.k.a. doom and gloom). 

Being this series is called Can we save our neighborhoods?, I'm disappointed that this 4 part series will only focus on Mt. Pleasant. As we all know there are neighborhoods that are being saved but it doesn’t look like they will be part of the series.

 

 

Longtime residents refuse to give up on Cleveland's Mount Pleasant neighborhood

Monday, December 10, 2007

 

Sam Fulwood III, Sandra Livingston, April McClellan-Copeland and Bob Paynter

Plain Dealer Reporters

 

http://www.cleveland.com/mountpleasant/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1197134127208520.xml&coll=2

 

 

Why do they stay? In much of Cleveland, the old neighborhood still looks great https://t.co/s2kbulWzFj

Not sure where else to post this (mods please relocate if needed)...but this is serious damage for years to come for Tremont streetscapes.  The Forest City just cannot have nice trees...

Tree trimming causing outrage in Tremont neighborhood

Posted 10:20 pm, August 1, 2018, by Melissa Reid

 

CLEVELAND -- Residents in Cleveland's Tremont neighborhood are up in arms after recent tree trimming along West 14th Street, Scranton Road, University Road, and many other side streets.

 

“I think that’s a shame because if you could see how they trimmed them, those trees are probably going to die in a few years,” said Tremont resident, Wally Skoropos.

 

“I was furious. It’s gonna take years for those trees to grow back. Our neighborhood has to look at them,” Ward 3 Councilman Kerry McCormack told Fox 8.

 

https://fox8.com/2018/08/01/tree-trimming-causing-outrage-in-tremont-neighborhood/

Oh man, as a lapsed member of the National Arbor Day Foundation, that was hard to watch.

So many trees are getting mangled. Worse still, a statement from First Energy says the directional pruning is good for the tree by making them less susceptible to pests and decay. Utter bullcrap.

So many trees are getting mangled. Worse still, a statement from First Energy says the directional pruning is good for the tree by making them less susceptible to pests and decay. Utter bullcrap.

 

That "pruning is great!" mantra was common many years ago when I worked for a landscaper. I suppose if you have fruit trees a different standard applies, because if you've been to an apple orchard those trees are truly mangled.

 

Any UO tree experts want to weigh in on this?

The is a brutal assault upon one of our city's most beautiful neighborhoods.  The entire community is rightly up in arms.  First Energy agreed this morning to a meeting, TONIGHT, about the tree trimming.  Anyone who cares about Tremont or the tree canopy in their own neighborhood should be there and make their voices heard.  In the meantime, they are still butchering, reports around the neighorhood are that they have 5 crews out today ahead of this meeting.

 

From Councilman McCormack:

 

"Good afternoon,

 

After meeting with First Energy this morning regarding the severe tree trimming in the neighborhood, at my request they have agreed to come and speak with residents and to hear community concerns TONIGHT from 5:30pm – 7:00pm at Rose-Mary Center 2346 W. 14th St. (formerly OLA-St. Joseph Center). Please attend this very important meeting.

 

Thank you,

 

Kerry"

The is a brutal assault upon one of our city's most beautiful neighborhoods.  The entire community is rightly up in arms.  First Energy agreed this morning to a meeting, TONIGHT, about the tree trimming.  Anyone who cares about Tremont or the tree canopy in their own neighborhood should be there and make their voices heard.  In the meantime, they are still butchering, reports around the neighorhood are that they have 5 crews out today ahead of this meeting.

 

From Councilman McCormack:

 

"Good afternoon,

 

After meeting with First Energy this morning regarding the severe tree trimming in the neighborhood, at my request they have agreed to come and speak with residents and to hear community concerns TONIGHT from 5:30pm – 7:00pm at Rose-Mary Center 2346 W. 14th St. (formerly OLA-St. Joseph Center). Please attend this very important meeting.

 

Thank you,

 

Kerry"

 

Jesus could you be any more of a drama queen? God forbid they look out for their infrastructure investment

The is a brutal assault upon one of our city's most beautiful neighborhoods.  The entire community is rightly up in arms.  First Energy agreed this morning to a meeting, TONIGHT, about the tree trimming.  Anyone who cares about Tremont or the tree canopy in their own neighborhood should be there and make their voices heard.  In the meantime, they are still butchering, reports around the neighorhood are that they have 5 crews out today ahead of this meeting.

 

From Councilman McCormack:

 

"Good afternoon,

 

After meeting with First Energy this morning regarding the severe tree trimming in the neighborhood, at my request they have agreed to come and speak with residents and to hear community concerns TONIGHT from 5:30pm – 7:00pm at Rose-Mary Center 2346 W. 14th St. (formerly OLA-St. Joseph Center). Please attend this very important meeting.

 

Thank you,

 

Kerry"

 

Jesus could you be any more of a drama queen? God forbid they look out for their infrastructure investment

 

WOW....that's a false dichotomy if I've ever seen one.

Jesus could you be any more of a drama queen? God forbid they look out for their infrastructure investment

 

There are way to do that without destroying the aesthetic value of the trees. God forbid somebody tries to fix First Energy's lazy, unprofessional process.

The is a brutal assault upon one of our city's most beautiful neighborhoods.  The entire community is rightly up in arms.  First Energy agreed this morning to a meeting, TONIGHT, about the tree trimming.  Anyone who cares about Tremont or the tree canopy in their own neighborhood should be there and make their voices heard.  In the meantime, they are still butchering, reports around the neighorhood are that they have 5 crews out today ahead of this meeting.

 

From Councilman McCormack:

 

"Good afternoon,

 

After meeting with First Energy this morning regarding the severe tree trimming in the neighborhood, at my request they have agreed to come and speak with residents and to hear community concerns TONIGHT from 5:30pm – 7:00pm at Rose-Mary Center 2346 W. 14th St. (formerly OLA-St. Joseph Center). Please attend this very important meeting.

 

Thank you,

 

Kerry"

 

Jesus could you be any more of a drama queen? God forbid they look out for their infrastructure investment

 

They can look out for their infrastructure investment without destroying one of the things that the people of Tremont love the most about their neighborhood.  If you haven't seen the results of this "trimming" you might not understand.  They are cutting trees in half, cutting the middles out of treese leaving a giant "V".  They cut off almost every living branch from a tree in front of my business, yet left dead branches above power lines.  I don't doubt that many of these trees will be dead soon.  Many of these trees are decades old, some may be over a century old.  Yet somehow, all of a sudden there's some emergency?  They never informed the neighborhood that this was happening, and they have only accelerated their pace of operations when they realized they were getting blowback.

 

 

 

Jesus could you be any more of a drama queen? God forbid they look out for their infrastructure investment

 

Isn't it great when a new forumer with 4 posts thinks it's ok to make silly comments?  Way to start off.

The is a brutal assault upon one of our city's most beautiful neighborhoods.  The entire community is rightly up in arms.  First Energy agreed this morning to a meeting, TONIGHT, about the tree trimming.  Anyone who cares about Tremont or the tree canopy in their own neighborhood should be there and make their voices heard.  In the meantime, they are still butchering, reports around the neighorhood are that they have 5 crews out today ahead of this meeting.

 

From Councilman McCormack:

 

"Good afternoon,

 

After meeting with First Energy this morning regarding the severe tree trimming in the neighborhood, at my request they have agreed to come and speak with residents and to hear community concerns TONIGHT from 5:30pm – 7:00pm at Rose-Mary Center 2346 W. 14th St. (formerly OLA-St. Joseph Center). Please attend this very important meeting.

 

Thank you,

 

Kerry"

 

Jesus could you be any more of a drama queen? God forbid they look out for their infrastructure investment

 

Spoken like a true hypocritical suburbanite who think 10 lanes of highways and interchanges fall from the sky with no cost, but maintaining a transit system is a leech on the taxpayers wallet.  Remember when the City of Cleveland division of water wanted to raise fees to maintain their infrastructure investment in Westlake and the mayor took them to court? 

Put the power lines underground when a street improvement project happens.

The is a brutal assault upon one of our city's most beautiful neighborhoods.  The entire community is rightly up in arms.  First Energy agreed this morning to a meeting, TONIGHT, about the tree trimming.  Anyone who cares about Tremont or the tree canopy in their own neighborhood should be there and make their voices heard.  In the meantime, they are still butchering, reports around the neighorhood are that they have 5 crews out today ahead of this meeting.

 

From Councilman McCormack:

 

"Good afternoon,

 

After meeting with First Energy this morning regarding the severe tree trimming in the neighborhood, at my request they have agreed to come and speak with residents and to hear community concerns TONIGHT from 5:30pm – 7:00pm at Rose-Mary Center 2346 W. 14th St. (formerly OLA-St. Joseph Center). Please attend this very important meeting.

 

Thank you,

 

Kerry"

 

Jesus could you be any more of a drama queen? God forbid they look out for their infrastructure investment

 

God forbid residents look out for their property values  ::)

The is a brutal assault upon one of our city's most beautiful neighborhoods.  The entire community is rightly up in arms.  First Energy agreed this morning to a meeting, TONIGHT, about the tree trimming.  Anyone who cares about Tremont or the tree canopy in their own neighborhood should be there and make their voices heard.  In the meantime, they are still butchering, reports around the neighorhood are that they have 5 crews out today ahead of this meeting.

 

From Councilman McCormack:

 

"Good afternoon,

 

After meeting with First Energy this morning regarding the severe tree trimming in the neighborhood, at my request they have agreed to come and speak with residents and to hear community concerns TONIGHT from 5:30pm – 7:00pm at Rose-Mary Center 2346 W. 14th St. (formerly OLA-St. Joseph Center). Please attend this very important meeting.

 

Thank you,

 

Kerry"

 

Jesus could you be any more of a drama queen? God forbid they look out for their infrastructure investment

 

They can look out for their infrastructure investment without destroying one of the things that the people of Tremont love the most about their neighborhood.  If you haven't seen the results of this "trimming" you might not understand.  They are cutting trees in half, cutting the middles out of treese leaving a giant "V".  They cut off almost every living branch from a tree in front of my business, yet left dead branches above power lines.  I don't doubt that many of these trees will be dead soon.  Many of these trees are decades old, some may be over a century old.  Yet somehow, all of a sudden there's some emergency?  They never informed the neighborhood that this was happening, and they have only accelerated their pace of operations when they realized they were getting blowback.

 

 

 

Just playing Devil's advocate, but in a lot of cases the power lines were there before the trees were planted as street ornamentation. In  a lot of cases the species of trees planted, that grow power line high or high should not have been planted under power lines that themselves are over 100 years old.

The age and condition of the trees makes it obvious that the two have coexisted for decades.  What has changed, even according to FirstEnergy, is their preferred method of pruning.  They have settled on a method known as "directional pruning", which in practice is very draconian.  They try to put a nice spin on it for us, but through the nice words their message to the community at last night's meeting was essentially, "we don't care what this does to your neighborhood, this is what's most expedient for us, and you can't stop us".