Many architecture lovers (includes most of us no?) lament the fact that so many Art Deco era buildings were torn down in Downtown Cleveland.  Losing the history and beauty of Public Hall instead of restoring it never made any sense to me.  I attended the Sustainable Cleveland 2019 conference in Public Hall a few months ago.  If we were selling it (yeah I’m thinking like a Realtor® now), we’d say it’s in need of some TLC but oh what history and character.

Thanks to the Plain Dealer  for staying on top of the issue. You can read the Medical Mart news here  in an article written by Laura Johnston.  The plan is now back to the original site location and has terms (contract) you can read in the PD.  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