Both days (Tuesday 2/3 and Wednesday 2/4) the meetings are held at City Hall in The Council’s Committee room 217

agenda info can be read here on Cleve City Council website

Peace Out – 3C

But I do like the ‘village’ idea. And no, I’m not saying take the exact model and adopt it here. But it fits in with some good planning ideas set forth by the Connecting Cleveland master plan revisions that were devised about a year ago. I wrote about it here.

Here is an excerpt on the vision/concept planners have in Maryland:

They see the pike, Montgomery’s commercial spine, redesigned as a tree-lined, walkable, bikeable, lovable and magnificent road connecting a network of urban villages strung along each side. There would be neighborhood stores, restaurants, housing and offices — allowing residents to work, dine and shop within blocks of their high-rise apartments in an urban setting.

What they already have is several transit stops and a boat load of population. But, our Master Plan calls for roads like Lorain Avenue to abandon the old plan of trying to support businesses for the entire stretch of the road because our population just won’t support it. They have pockets of mixed use development they would like to see develop along the road and they are hoping this vision and zoning change can appeal to the private sector so the development can actually happen.

One thing I think we miss with our current transit system is the availability to tie these village pockets into several transit stops.  There is the W. 65th RTA station but there are no more stops as you progress west. I think the Euclid Avenue Corridor was a responses to this issue (since there are no transit stops on Euclid either). So maybe we could have a Lorain Avenue version of the Euclid Avenue Corridor? And for the time being, we do have the #22 bus. It’s better than a sharp stick in the eye!

This is an eight page pdf that shows some of the long-range hopes of the RTA and it’s place in the Connecting Cleveland plan.  Of course everything is fluid, especially in planning – but it gives you an idea of what they are looking for. An excerpt:

 

E. ALTERNATIVES ANALYSIS PROJECTS / Planning Studies 2010 – 2025

These projects have each advanced from the System Planning phase into the Alternatives

Analysis study phase. They are being further developed in coordination with major land use,

transportation, and economic development studies led by the City of Cleveland and the Ohio

Department of Transportation.

1. Southwest Corridor/Red Line I-X Extension

2. Waterfront Line Extension

3. Highland Hills Corridor/Blue Line Extension

4. Canton-Akron-Cleveland Interregional Corridor Study*** (really an Akron RTA effort)

Peace Out – 3C

1. Was Robert Brown or someone from his office there to answer questions like, how many of us regular people commented on the Planning Commission website pages that showed potential sites for the Convention Ctr?  What did the people say who DID participate interactively?

2. Was their an explanation as to why the other sites were rejected?

3. The PD says part of the visual presentation went south because the technology failed. What was the basic premise in the dog and pony show?

Did anyone who blogs (or who reads this) attend the meeting? I’d love more information.

Interesting that several hundred people attended each of the RTA public hearings but it seems quite a few less attended this first meeting.

Next meeting is 5 to 7pm this Thursday at the Middleburg Heights Rec Center on Bagley Road just south of I-71.  Peace Out -  3C

UPDATE: thankfully I twitter (@clevecarole), because the PD twitted the times had changed for Thursday’s meeting. Now when I look on the PD site, it’s not on the front page!!!

EDITORIAL
Not so fast

4:30 am, August 25, 2008

Excuse us if we don’t automatically buy into the argument that a riverfront site at Tower City Center is the best, or for that matter the least expensive, option for the creation of a convention center and medical merchandise mart in downtown Cleveland.

It’s not that we flunked math in high school. The numbers presented by the committee charged with selecting the site for the long-discussed convention center and sidekick medical mart project are quite clear: It would cost an estimated $536 million to develop the duo at Tower City, while the price of replacing the antiquated convention center on Cleveland’s Mall with a new one accompanied by a medical mart would total $583 million.

That’s a $47 million difference in favor of the Tower City location.

But what becomes of the current convention center and the attached Public Hall if Tower City is the home of the new convention center?

Unless the old structures are used each Halloween as “The Biggest Haunted House in the World,” there likely will be a substantial cost to redevelop the properties for new uses. And it isn’t unthinkable that the cost — which probably would be assumed in whole or in part by taxpayers under the guise of state grants and tax breaks — could exceed by far the $47 million “savings” of choosing the Tower City site.

We’re also not convinced that a convention center at Tower City would be better for downtown as a whole than a meeting hall at the Mall.

We can foresee too many convention-goers flying into Hopkins airport, jumping on the Red Line rapid transit train that connects to Tower City, holing up in the Tower City complex for much of their stay and jumping back on the train to catch a flight home.

Thanks for visiting Cleveland, folks.

Conventions are supposed to put out-of-towners on the streets so that they spend their money at the restaurants, nightclubs, theaters and attractions that populate downtown. We believe the central location afforded by the Mall would generate a greater volume of such street traffic than Tower City (and don’t talk to us about creating above-ground covered walkways to get people from Tower City to other parts of downtown — how absurd).

If the taxpayers of Cuyahoga County are going to foot most of a half-billion dollar bill — without their direct approval, mind you — for creating the convention center/medical mart complex, then they darn well better get their money’s worth.

It isn’t as though they haven’t seen mass quantities of public money wasted before for projects that civic leaders thought were swell. Look no further than the $60 million Waterfront Line, the transit train running through the Flats that was a Cleveland Bicentennial project. It runs most days essentially riderless, and occupies prime riverfront property that could have been put to much better use.

Now comes a project 10 times the cost of the Waterfront Line. It must yield the maximum bang for those bucks. Otherwise, it will go down as the biggest waste of public money in the history of Northeast Ohio.

8.27.08 update: Two public meetings have been scheduled so if you have opinions and want them heard, yeay or nay, here are the details:

Tuesday, September 2, 2008 from 5 to 7 pm at the Cleveland Heights Community Center at One Monticello Blvd. near Mayfield Road.

Thursday, September 4, 2008 from 5 to 7pm at the Middleburg Heights Recreation Center on Bagley Road.

Peace Out – 3C

First an overview from yesterday’s PD : St. Paul had it’s own section of the city cut off from easy access and when you tied this in to a declining business economy, they found themselves with 6000 fewer jobs.

“In a black decade that began in the mid-1980s, plant shutdowns swept through the blue-collar neighborhoods of St. Paul’s East Side: Whirlpool Corp., 3M, Globe Manufacturing Co., Cannon Conveyor Co., American Hoist Works and Stroh’s Brewing Co., to name just a few that closed or downsized drastically. ”

St. Paul tried to figure out a way to bring that neighborhood back to life and decided improving transportation access to it was key.

The second point is that the State of Minnesota was critical to this project, not just in terms of money, but in terms of luring prospective businesses to the area. Their Port Authority was also key.

The next point is that this idea surfaced in 1993. By one decade later, 2003, Phase One was put into place. By 2007, Phase Two. They still don’t have 6000 jobs back to the area but, they do have 2100 along that Phalen Corridor.

Some of us are used to being beaten down and become almost knee jerk naysayers. And some have legitimate points. But I definitely see a parallel here. I noticed yesterday one of the commenters said we couldn’t expect to do what St. Paul did because their city is doing better economically than ours.  I disagree. With State help why not? I mean, we have German and Chinese companies locating headquarters here soon, we have the fourth best rated hospital in the Country (The Clinic), we have The Port, we have the start of a high tech community and we still do darn good in the manufacturing area. If Governor Strickland worked really hard, he could convince a few large and sound companies to locate here, just as the Governor did for St. Paul.

Bonnie is sending me some great reading about the Phalen Corridor, I can’t wait to get it. But in the meantime, let me put in her comments to me, in total, for a St. Paul resident’s perspective of The Phalen Project:

“ I’m not an urbanist, so can’t give you good stats, etc., about the corridors, but I can tell you this is one of the things that makes St. Paul unique to me.  The cities I have lived in do not have good connecting roads between highways and major throughways.  They have “parkways” but they are designed to slow traffic down, not move it along.  My typical experience in other cities has been exiting the highway and getting on a 4 lane city street which stops at every second or third intersection for a light.  The St. Paul corridors (the newest is Phalen) have very limited lights because they follow the railroad tracks which naturally divide two parts of our city and as a result have limited intersections (major city street roads are already overpasses because of the railroad tracks but there are limited side street interruptions).  (all bold emphasis is mine, not Bonnie’s.)

“The Phalen Corridor (as we call it) came to St. Paul just as I was moving into St. Paul.  It is a great connector of different segments of the city and has attracted business because of the ease of access and space afforded the new campuses.  There are plans to extend the corridor to connect with another east/west ”corridor”, Pierce Butler Drive.  That will give access from the east side of St. Paul to the west with excellent traffic flow.  The area just 3 blocks north of my house is the missing connection so our neighborhood block club has been consulted several times about our wishes for connecting the Phalen Corridor with the Pierce Butler route.  This missing segment also has the potential for adding a great deal of “green” space and moving the extension of the Gateway Trail (biking trail which snakes through St. Paul and connects with Stillwater [14 miles I think] but feels like you’re not in the city at all because of how it is configured) from neighborhood city streets to a more green location.  The north side of the railroad track has another “corridor” called Energy Park Drive.  So far it does not extend as far east as the southern side of the tracks has.  The Phalen Corridor is actually on the north side of the tracks for most of its route but the connecting stump on the west end is on the south side of the tracks.”

What I like about the Phalen story, is it seemed to be an idea and then an implemented plan in a decade. We could do that here if we rolled up our sleeves! Okay, what do you think?

Peace Out – 3C

“….A source familiar with GammaStar’s plans said the company chose the Cleveland area for two primary reasons: its expertise in medical imaging and radiosurgery, and the availability of venture capital for future infusions….”

The last piece of the puzzle that has to fall into place is how much tax credit they will get. Apparently there is an Ohio Tax Credit Authority meeting coming up to decide this issue. Once again (like the German solar energy company IBC Solar locating here), an international company has said ‘no’ to the West Coast and ‘yes’ to us! Sounds good to me!

Now, if there will be 35 jobs….hmmm. I have a client with just over 20 jobs trying to buy a place to settle in and grow the company while providing a good work environment for their employees. We’ve not heard anything about tax credits, and I guess they must only offer those to companies not already in the area. But I think they should change their tune and try to keep long term companies, like my client, here as well.  But no one asked me!

Also, the tax abatement issue and Cleveland’s continued expansion into the movie industry is still unresolved yes? That would also be a great boon for Ohio, especially our area. The Greater Cleveland Film Commission and it’s Executive Director, Ivan Schwarz are trying hard to get the tax incentive issue passed in Ohio since there is real interest by big hollywood types to have movies made here. I say call your legislators! Or better yet, call the Film Commission to see how they think you can help move things along. My cousin Jeff is a budding producer and this is a project near and dear to his heart.

You know how they say things like ‘gray is the new black?’  Well maybe Cleveland is gonna be the new LA, based on German, Chinese and movie honcho interest in our area.  It could almost make me giddy!  Peace Out – 3C