I don’t think it hurts that one or two of their cars are rated as high or higher by consumers, than  Toyota and Honda. The Fusion was the last car I saw to top Honda in several categories of customer satisfaction.

You can read the PD report about Ford’s profit announcement here. One quote from the PD synopsis stood out for me:
“….the company made money in its basic business of making and selling cars. In recent years, most of Ford’s financial wins have come from positive results on lending and other activities while its automotive business lagged….”

Here is a blog post from April, written on the Consumer Reports website entitled the best car you don’t know about.  (Ford Fusion)

At least there is some good news from the auto sector!  Peace Out – 3C

The point is, new industries are going to stay green.  However,  all existing industries/retailers/eateries, etc need to go green collar, meaning they start participating in renewable energy. Our Country’s economy depends on it and for sure our local economy does too. 

When has it ever been easy for people to step from one industry to another? Training has always been involved and for some, the cost to do that is not possible.  It sucks. 

I just worry that the PD is on a thread to try to show why Cleveland should not be moving towards a green economy.  Because that train has already left the station here, and everywhere else.   One of the speakers at an event this week is quoted in the article saying predicting hot markets has not worked and they say information technology was one of the ‘jump the shark’ areas predicted to be hot.  Really?  Then why are there so many IT jobs listed every week, on every job board you can imagine?  I agree with them to a point.  If you keep switching areas of focus, then you aren’t focusing, and politicians (our leaders) have commitment issues, yes?  Does anyone see the fossil fuel issue going away?  The fact that our utility company was so scared about losing profits to renewable energy, they tried to charge us for light bulbs!  Peace Out -3C

As an aside, if you go the Green City Blue Lake website, you can get your two cents in about how we can/should proceed on issues like these:

What should we do?

Brewed Fresh Daily  has had a few posts over the past month with comments about fixing our infrastructure as a good foundation instead of signing up to do a new convention center.  And yes, I had to insert my two cents as well at times.  Here is one post by Ed Morrison on BFD  that started out about Pittsburgh’s Convention Ctr. and wound up, in part, discussing where our priorities should be. It’s not too late to add your two cents.

Today I found an article written by Mariia Zimmerman who heads up an organization with a goal I bet a lot of us like: “a coalition which aims to create a world-class transportation system in the U.S. “  Her organization is called Transportation for America.  

Mariia points out that it’s probably even more critical for those in the suburbs to have access to a top notch public transportation system, since they would spend the most (assuming a downtown ‘city’ commute) on car fuel each week.  People really are having to decide on food, paying the mortgage or driving the car. It’s reached the tipping point? Here is part of what she said in her article:

“…. and increasingly America’s suburbs are looking for ways to provide more transit options, develop urban mixed-use centers, and build sidewalks and trails. The reinvention of America’s suburbs may be one of the most stunning evolutions of the 21^st Century…. As a critical first step, we need to make a commitment to building an infrastructure for the future on a scale similar to the one we made to the Interstate Highway system 50 years ago. But this time, we need to focus on completing our transportation system with inter-city trains, world-class public transportation and streets that are safe for walking and biking, as we restore our existing roads and bridges to good repair….”

And this emphasis from her article is mine: “….These investments will help stabilize our economy in the short-term as they lay the groundwork for the future, while helping millions of Americans in our daily lives, reducing our national dependence on oil and making for a cleaner, greener and less energy-intensive future.”   Read the entire article here. It’s from a pbs NOW show on trains and transit.

From Stacie Fallon, Senior Policy Analyst for The Midwest Interstate Passenger Rail Commission:

Last week was an amazing turning point for passenger rail development in our country and the region. Not only did Congress send landmark legislation to the President – finally reauthorizing Amtrak, providing for significant programming and funding to the states, and requiring new rail-safety measures – but the first grant funding to states for intercity passenger rail development and planning was announced. The Midwest won big, receiving almost half of the funding; five of the 11 states to receive funding are Midwestern states. Altogether, the five states (Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin) received funding for seven projects, totaling over $13 million of the $30 million awarded.

And remember the original premise of The Ohio Hub, to connect cities within a four hour drive of Cleveland? Here is an article by Jim Carroll of The Erie Times - he talks about Erie becoming a stop on our high speed rail system and he highlights a sharing of information provided by Andrew Bremer of All Aboard Ohio at a meeting. Among other things this Erie writer liked:

Bremer said such train service would allow Erie riders to get to Cleveland in 1 hour and 10 minutes, Toronto in 2 hours and 20 minutes and Chicago in 5 hours and 10 minutes.

Bremer said the group’s analysis shows that a full build-out of the system could ultimately mean $575 million in new development within a mile and a half of an Erie station.

Once again, in case you missed it in an earlier post, here is  HR 2095, which finally passed.

Peace Out – 3C

City officials in Chicago now estimate that their green roof saves the city about $3,600 a year in cooling and heating costs. If all of Chicago’s roofs were greened, they add, the city’s peak energy demand could be cut by 720 megawatts — enough electricity for 750,000 people. The load on the city’s storm-sewer system, meanwhile, would be slashed by about 70%. (emphasis is mine)

Chicago is offering a quicker permit process and $5000 in grant money to private companies who will green their roofs.  Grass/sod is the easiest green roof.  You can also do plants like Sedum that not only are low maintenance but they hold water in their leaves.  We have similar climates, Chicago and Cleveland, so this makes real sense and cents here. A green roof is not tree hugging, it’s good economics no?  Peace Out – 3C

more links:

Green Roofs

Great Lakes Water Institute Green Roof Project

Roof Meadow

I’ll keep adding to this as we go along.  After many pages I found out that the initial amount of money for Treasury’s use is $250 mbillion.  Here is a summary of some of the other Bailout points from CNN’s website.

9/28/08 Sunday late afternoon updates: supposedly, just about an hour after the draft of an agreed upon Bailout Plan has been released (see above), news conferences are scheduled to talk about a final draft/agreement. 

Im paraphrasing but live blogging here: 

Nancy Pelosi: after much rhetoric on her part, she talked about the changes to the Bill. Oversight, allowing people to stay in their homes instead of losing them to foreclosure, and CEO compensation. Last night came down to 3 issues. How would the money be distributed; Golden parachutes and compensation from CEOs, as well as insistence that the american taxpayer was not going to pay this price. If there was not a payback in a period of time, the financial institutions would pay the bill, not the taxpayers. She says this is ‘not a bailout’ but a ‘buy in.’

Senator Harry Reid: Hearings by Dodd will be held by end of the year discussing how we got where we are. This is a bipartisan approach, plus both Presidential candidates have signed on to say this is a good piece of legislation now. Now we need the votes in the Senate. (At 12:30 Amtrak Train Safety Bill will be voted on call your Senators!) and sometime after that the House and Senate will begin working on the Bailout Bill.

Barney Frank; curtailing excessive CEO compensation is in this Bill, first time ever included in a Congressional Bill. 2009 will be year to deal with this – if there is a shortfall regarding the bailout money given, the President of the United States needs to send an explanation to Congress because the financial institutions who benefit from this bill financially will ultimately be responsible.

Trying to prevent the sub prime crisis from reoccurring. Frank claims they will deal with this issue in 2009

 (my comment, if this is truly a bi-partisan effort, why do they have to have separate Dem and Rep press conferences???)

financialservices.house.gov is the location Nancy Pelosi says houses (pardon the pun) the final version of this Bill. I can’t even get into the main site, let alone the Speaker’s page or the site she references here. I’ll include it, in case it’s just because of the volume of traffic that the bill can’t be accessed or the site for that matter. Peace Out Again.

First bit of good news involves Cleveland’s Parker Hannifin. They just received what was apparently their largest contract ever with an aerospace company. They will be making a different style control system for planes. The contract covers a ten year period and was worth $3.5 billion for the duration of the program. The contract is with Bombardier Aerospace.  Not too shabby. You can read about it here in Crains and here in the Plain Dealer.

While we are talking planes, Crains also reports about new airline service into Hopkins in the form of Gulfstream Airlines. Do you want to take a trip to Greenbrier WV for some R & R? This is one of the places Gulfstream services, as well as the Chautauqua Valley in NY. There will be three round trips a day from Hopkins.

If the State of Ohio is going to help us recruit businesses to NE Ohio, it helps to have stable companies around the State making us money. The Columbus Dispatch shows why Honda in central Ohio is doing a robust business….which all makes sense since gasoline is eating us out of our wallets. They employ 15,000 workers in Marysville and East Liberty plants, for starters. As someone who has been browsing for used Honda’s, I can testify their value is only going up and up.

Looking for a job? I checked out Crain’s Cleveland job page and found that, based on their job listings, you might want to trek to Warren Ohio. The bulk of their listings today under the ‘general job’ category were in Warren. Everything from front desk clerk, sales reps, engineers, and even a chief of police for Warren. Literally over 30 jobs listed just in that category, and all but a few were in Warren. If you want to check out Crain’s job site go here.

I’ll sign out while Chicken Little is still napping. 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

 Ah ha, and I guess I’m allowed to gloat a bit because I posted this twelve hrs. before the PD did

One thing has been very interesting, I have clients who wanted a home in Valley City. Not my normal stomping ground! At first we found a home (well, they did) but it had gas wells, active ones, on the property, and as a matter of fact about 100 feet from the home for sale. While ferreting out info on gas wells I found out that they should be no closer to dwellings than 300 feet (still doesn’t sound far enough away to me!). So we passed on that one and found another really pretty home with a creek and some hills behind it. It was very cool to explore a different kind of home purchase for a change of pace!

So while I am so very busy with clients, there are still articles and tv shows about the foreclosure issue and the state of the housing market. A reporter from Crain’s Cleveland even called me a few times; he’s doing a story about renting in NE Ohio (with an emphasis on Downtown Cleveland I think); haven’t seen it  in print yet. Last night however, Sixty Minutes did a very good piece on foreclosures, with emphasis on Stockton California (apparently they are one of the hardest hit cities — even harder hit  than our area). You can read about the piece on the CBS website, it’s called A House of Cards.  In the past when Sixty Minutes has reported on real estate issues I have been less than pleased but this time, in my opinion, they were right on the money.  Of course we have our own Bill Callahan who has had it right from the start. 

Other news, this past few weeks mortgage rates have been dropping again, Nationally. You can read about it here in Realtor Magazine. The average rate was 5.98% this week. The National Association of Realtors keeps talking about whether or not we are in a recession or not.  Bush says we aren’t….NAR overall says we are not (although it depends on what you read from them).  I say we are. I’m not sure it matters if we put a tag on it.  It is what it is.  All I know is that I’m glad I had a day off today!  Peace Out – 3C