Posted January 10, 200817 yr So you want to be a reporter?? One of the benefits of being a reporter is getting access to some things that you otherwise wouldn't be able to see. And to those who say there isn't anything going on in Greater Cleveland, this small glimpse of out-take photos I shot for Sun in 2007 says otherwise. Most of these pictures didn't appear in Sun, and are my picks of the best pics that didn't make the paper in 2007. Some did make the paper and a few of you might recognize them. Anyway, here goes.... This was the only picture I didn't take because, well, it's not a photograph! It's a rendering of the Avenue District Streetscape proposed in early 2007, now well underway.... Battery Park construction progress in Fall 2007 in the Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood... Sitting on my balcony in Lakewood on a very warm September evening, I looked up from reading a book and saw this beautiful scene. I ran to my car (six floors below me!), got the camera, and ran back up to take this shot. It ended on the front page of the Lakewood Sun Post and West Side Sun. It was my favorite picture of 2007... In April of 2007, tourism and business organizations in Northeast Ohio rolled out the Cleveland+ promotional program. Here's some pics from that event that included a flyover of Northeast Ohio in a Continental 737.... A month earlier, I participated in a guided tour of downtown by a National Park guide. Since I'm a regular here on UrbanOhio, he didn't tell me much I hadn't already read here (let that be a lesson to you boys and girls -- be sure to read your UrbanOhio every night before you go to bed)... OK, I had to throw in this pic of the competition I shot during the Sparx 2007 art tour. Given their constant negative coverage of our beloved city, you have my permission to use this picture for your own purposes... Fairview Park's Gemini Center (recreation and community center) was nearly finished with construction in late November 2007.... Also in Fairview Park, the school district opened the new Gilles-Sweet Elementary School to consolidate several older facilities into one... The guy in the foreground is the Fairview Park school board president, Dennis Rehor. Before he was elected to the board, he got an idea for a bond issue that would consolidate school facilities, build new recreation facilities and allow for the redevelopment of the former school sites. Voters approved and the rest is history... Renovations began in 2007 on the massive Gospel Press complex in Tremont. It will be apartments... The Grandstand Grill and adjacent batting cages, all on Berea Road near West 117th Street, closed to make way for a street extension that will allow a local industry to expand and to take trucks off sidestreets. The sign doesn't quite tell the upside to their closure... In January 2007, the Blue Moon shop on Detroit Avenue in Lakewood (near West 117th) caught fire and brought out the guys who are good with their hoses... An interesting new business opened in Tremont in April 2007; the P.D. White Furniture shop where (yep, you guessed it) P.D. White custom builds furniture for customers. Check out his shop on Starkweather sometime... Former Newsweek reporter Peter Annin came to town to plug his new book on securing the future of water in the Great Lakes. So I brought him up to Huntington Beach in Bay Village to get a photo of him next to one of the subjects of his book. I then Photoshopped out all the surroundings I didn't like (before and after)... In the fall of 2007, MetroHealth and several partners opened the new Senior Wellness Center in the old Deaconess Hospital in Cleveland's Old Brooklyn neighborhood. Here's a few photos from that gala event... Some pictures of the Sparx art tour -- east side, west side and all around downtown... While on an unrelated assigned, I snapped these pics of Our Lady of the Onion Domes, AKA St. Theodosius in Tremont (including a color-altered version)... Why I was really next to St. Theodosius was to take pictures of the Starkweather Market (AKA Browns Market, seen in the 1978 movie The Deer Hunter) and to interview Keith Sutton of Sutton Homes. He's renovating the 19th century building into a chocolate factory, an as yet unleased commercial space, with an apartment above for the owners of the chocolate factory. Here's the building inside and out, with work still under way in October 2007... These windows and their stenciled words were hidden behind a layer wall added many decades ago. Workers discovered these windows when they removed the wall layer and will seek to reuse these windows and the stenciled words of products once sold at the Starkweather Market. I reversed this image so you can more easily read it... I didn't reverse this image, so this is what workers discovered when they ripped out the wall layer... Note the gas lines in the newly exposed walls in the apartment above the market. The gas lines weren't for heating; they're for lighting... That's Keith Sutton... Across the street (Starkweather) is the site of the latest in a series of new housing construction for Sutton... In the summer (note the crunchy yellow grass), the same site was used for the first-ever Tremont Farmers Market... Staying in Tremont, 2007 saw the opening of Tremont Pointe, a mixed-income housing development.... This is opening day for Tremont Pointe... Back at West 117th at the Lakewood-Cleveland border, Norfolk Southern was about to replace a piece of track at the W. 117th crossing, requiring the busy street and rail line to close for a week. This is the same railroad proposed for commuter rail service linking cities and suburbs in Erie, Lorain and Cuyahoga counties.... OK, I know we're not all a fan of this one. But 2007 was a pretty historic year for Cleveland when it got its first Wal-Mart. The nation's largest retailer opening the Supercenter at Steelyard Commons. Here's some pictures I got a few days prior to its grand opening... How low are the prices?? They're at least practicing diversity at Wal-Mart... RTA opened its new Highland Square rapid transit station in 2007. A few people showed up for this occasion too, including his honor Mayor Frank Jackson.... I took a lot more pics in 2007 of a lot more subjects than this. I don't have access to all of them anymore, but I thought I'd share some of what I do have. Hope you enjoyed this glimpse back at 2007. "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
January 10, 200817 yr Wow, excellent! What's up with that Tremont "Chocolate Factory" project- I didn't quite follow: is there a specific chocolate maker moving in with the rest of the building still available for lease?
January 10, 200817 yr Thanks! My boss must've been listening.... "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
January 10, 200817 yr What!? Cleveland never had a Wal*Mart until this past year!? How do you do that?
January 10, 200817 yr Cleveland city limits never had a Wal-Mart. There are Wal-Marts in the area, but not having one in Clevland for so long is not as impressive a feat as having none in a ... city laid out like Columbus. Wal-marts ring Columbus' 270 belt, in particular. (Google has not yet added the SYC Wal-Mart to it's datanet.)
January 11, 200817 yr Wow, great job and a great year KJP! I hadn't seen that chocolate factory post yet. Is it in the Tremont thread?
January 17, 200817 yr Wow, great job and a great year KJP! I hadn't seen that chocolate factory post yet. Is it in the Tremont thread? I'm not sure if it got posted there or not. But, dammit it should be!! "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
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