The Missing Meeting

I hate going to meetings that do not exist.
Today I went to meeting in the Archwood Denison neighborhood to hear what was in the works for the I71/Fulton/West 25th Street segment of the Innerbelt project. I grew up in and around this area, so I wanted to be part of the discussion. I am also on the ward study committee for the Old Brooklyn Neighborhood and feel this project will have an impact on the two wards that make up the area.
I know for sure the meeting was supposed to happen today. I was very careful when I put this date in my calendar. There could only be one of three things that happened.
The meeting was cancelled (although there were no notes on any of the doors at the United Church of Christ), the Sun News gave the wrong information in the article they wrote about this or there is a different United Church of Christ on Archwood that I do not know about. I suppose there are other possibilities. Maybe there was a change in the date because nobody else was there. I will have to give Bob Andrew (I think he is the president of the Concerned Citizens of Archwood) a call and ask him about it or at least Ward 15 Councilwoman Emily Lipovan Holan. I will stick with Bob; I have known him since I was in high school. His son and I went to the same school together - The Kings Academy. That was twenty years ago.
I digress.
I came home to look at the ODOT/Innerbelt site to see if there was any mention of this meeting there. (By the way, if you have not been to the site lately, check it out. They cleaned it up. It looks much more professional then it has since its inception over three years ago. However, they really need to update the meetings. There are still reminders of the meeting in June at Myers University.) There was none.
It's too bad. I brought my camera and notebook to take notes so that I could blog everything that happened in this medium. Heaven knows there would be no mention of it anywhere else.

New Power Sources - A Step in the Right Direction

It is good to see that Green Energy Ohio has put up the wind turbine at the top of the water crib. Too bad - the PD missed another news opportunity. (Maybe they were sitting on the story so not to have any reporter get in trouble. They were beat again, this time by Crain's. There will probably be a picture of it in the paper tomorrow.... tomorrow... tomorrow.)
I have not actually seen the tower yet, though I will be looking for it on off the Main Avenue Bridge on my way to pick up my son from band practice.
There is a web site from Green Energy Ohio that will provide real-time data and live web cam, or Crib Cam, aimed at downtown Cleveland.
This is a great opportunity for the region as everyone knows, or should know, this area of the country is much windier then other so-called windy cities.
Some time before fall, 2005, the Great Lakes Science Center will start installing their 145-foot wind turbine right at their front door.
Unfortunately, the city of North Royalton, which was having serious discussions of setting one or more wind turbines, has decided to not pursue it for now. That's ok, more and more people are becoming aware of the potential our region has for wind-generated electricity. At least the PD got that story in on Sunday.

(picture found on google - still learning the flickr and picassa thing)

UPDATE:
As predicted, the PD had a very nice picture of the operation on its cover on Tuesday. As well as a decent, but brief article on how the turbine will work. Unfortunantly, they were not able to get as much installed as desired due to the haze.
I wonder how the part that was installed fared against the 75+ mph winds we had on the Lakefront Tuesday night.

More Whiskey Island - The Grasshopper Learns

I ran into Ed Hauser today at A.J.Rocco's on Huron. I was actually going there to meet with John McGovern about a project we are trying to implement with the MGLCUA. I was not part of the whole conversation, but I was invited to sit with the two of them and listened as Ed give his spiel on WI.

Ed knows that I interned with CPC for a big portion of the Waterfront Plans (almost) public process, so he and I were comfortable talking about things. Something had been on my mind for a while, so I asked him why, in light of the Port's recent move, was nobody talking about the consequences this may have on said Waterfront Plan - particularly the area north and west of Municipal Stadium, otherwise known as the Harborfront District?

He then explained to me that that was the problem. Except for an interview with Port Director, Gary Failor in Crain's (published before the Port's withdrawal); nobody has really talked about what may happen with the Harborfront area. If they have, I have missed it; however, that is doubtful - even Ed said there has been little, if any mainstream information provided to the public. What he did tell me, and showed with his six-inch binder full of everything W.I. related, was that the Port's consolidation has nothing to do with the park. It does, however, have much to do with the proposed landform that will be built 1/4 mile north of the Island.

In the Crain's article, I did see Failor's comments where he talks about the same idea. He states:

We have to build additional land in the lake in order to accommodate the port, but more importantly we have to build additional land to accommodate the disposal of dredge materials from the river and lake bottom to allow ships to navigate. So instead of just building the space and never utilizing it, our concept, in concert with the city is to build the space, and then utilize it as the location we’d move the Port operations to. It would open up space on the lakefront for better public access.

Previously, I had questioned the reasoning behind Whiskey-head’s denunciation against anybody suggesting Cleveland follow through with its plan for filling in the marina and building new dock space to the north of Wendy Park. I have now seen the error of my ways. Perhaps I was biased in my opinions because of the work I did in City Hall. I don’t know; but I would like to publicly thank Ed Hauser for clearing this up for me.

See mass media, that wasn’t so hard.

Cleveland.com is alive

It took them long enough, but you can now get RSS feeds from Cleveland.com. I use Bloglines for my reader and it did not recognize, let alone distinguish any of the feeds, though. That's ok; I am only interested in a few of them anyway.

You know, I wrote PD an email about this very thing a couple of months back. They never sent a response – not even a form letter. The only way I found out about it was through George Nemeth's blog (Thank you very much). Be sure to head his words and read the fine print; and a fine jog they did with those terms, too.

Whiskey Island Correction and Mr Ed Hauser

Hmm, it seems I missed this little blurb in Saturday's PD (July 16, 2005) in the Community News Brief section. They spent a whole 124 words on the subject. No wonder I missed it.

The Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority Board of Directors Friday officially ended its efforts to buy Whiskey Island from the county for $6.4 million. A potential deal soured when neither the port authority nor the city could agree on who should build a new bridge to the island for $2 million. Authority President Gary L. Failor said that while the authority would welcome a new effort to reach a deal on the land, it would have to be initiated by the county. In the same vote, the board also retracted its standing eminent domain lawsuit. The authority had been keeping the suit alive so it could acquire "dockuminiums" held by individual boat owners on Whiskey Island, in case the deal with the county went through.

In addition, one the City Planning Commission’s favorite advocates, Ed Hauser, received a very nice plug in this article from RealNeo's Norm Roulet.
Good for Ed, I hope he had a good response at the luncheon.

Is anybody going to bring up what is going to happen with the city's Harborfront portion of the Waterfront Plan if the Port cannot move?
Just wondering.

Oh, I forgot to add this...

A couple of additional comments about some of the previous posts.
From my July 16th post, I wanted to add that I cannot beleive the PD has not mentioned anything about WI and the Port.
And from my previous post, at least the PD did have this to say about how some things are better here on the North Coast.

What's with the negativity, Spenc?

Maybe the Mayor did something to this person in another life; I do not know.
Spencer, if that is who he/she is, defidently has a problem with Campbell.
I also do not kow if any of the acusations made by spencer have any merit. You would think that there would be some sort of investigation by the police, or someone. I have not seen any special reports from any of the media... not that it saying much. I just feel that if half of the things spencer is accusing the current administration of were true, there would be some sort of action going on besides the trying to have her voted out of office in the next election.

According to the hit counter here, there have been over 1 million page views (most likely not from unique visitors). Now, let's do the math; there are, depending on what biased federal government body you ask, around 500,000 people live in Cleveland proper. Now then... nah, I'm not going to do the math. It does not make sence. Granted, I do not know all of the behind the scenes details, and I do not read every single article, email, Cleveland based blog around. There just seems to be something not right about what this person is posting.

First read this post, then this. Well, if anybody was to read those, as well as most of the articles about Cleveland these days, then they would have no reason for living here. Why is there no mention of this informtion provided to me by Ken Prendergast.

Some interesting market data for Greater Cleveland -- interesting to note that the metro area's unemployment rate fell from being above the statewide average, to below it, even though the statewide unemployment rate also fell!

KJP

_______________________

From CB Richard Ellis:

Local unemployment rates dropped sharply during the quarter from 7.1 % to 5.4%. Ohio had a slight drop from 6.4% to 6.1% and the national rate declined as well to 5.1%. In the Cleveland MSA, more employment was seen in service-providing industries, with a boost of 6,100 jobs. There was also growth in the goods-producing sector with an additional 3,700 jobs since May 2004. Manufacturing and Educational and Health Services sustained slight losses in employment. The effect of these declines is unknown, as it is questionable how these changes will affect real estate markets.

Cleveland’s Central Business District (CBD) appeared to stabilize in the second quarter after 170,000 square feet was vacated by ICI Paints in the first quarter of 2005. A handful of sizeable occupancies contributed to the second quarter rebound, while a number of signings and rumored deals, combined with renewed interest in the improvement of the downtown area have poised the market for a solid performance in the next 12 to 18 months. Overall, the CBD had a slight decrease in vacancy dropping from 22.04% in the first quarter to 21.07% in the second quarter. Class “A” vacancy fell a half percent to 17.38%, which was mainly driven by the US Department of Health and Human Services leasing 35,000 square feet and Wells Fargo leasing 9,200 square feet in 200 Public Square. Likewise, class “B” vacancy rates declined as blocks of space in the 2,000 to 15,000 square foot range were occupied. Realty One’s relocation from the South Suburban submarket to 31,000 square feet in the CBD occurred in the second quarter, which helped to improve class “B” vacancy and absorption."

You can see the full PDF report here:
http://gkc2.cbrichardellis.com/GlobalMarketReports/us/cleveland2q05ofcdt.pdf

Nor has there been any mention of the information reported by the Fund for Our Economic Future, which a portion of it states, "In terms of entrepreneurship – In 2002, Entrepreneur.com ranked Cleveland/Lorain/ Elyria#61 out of 61 cities for entrepreneurship (based on entrepreneurial activity, small businessgrowth, job growth and risk). In 2005, the area ranked #31!
In terms of the bioscience industry – Three years ago, Northeast Ohio was written off as
“not having a chance” in building a bioscience industry. Now, industry experts from around the
country are asking, “What’s happening in Northeast Ohio?”

• The region now boasts over 350 bioscience firms spread across Northeast Ohio.
• In the last quarter, there was more venture capital investment in Ohio bioscience companies than in any other Midwest state except Minnesota. This means we bested Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Indiana and Missouri.
• "According to BioEnterprise, $61 million was invested in bioscience companies here last year. That is a 200 percent increase from 2002, while the national level for venturecapital investments in bioscience was flat. BioEnterprise expects to hit its goal of having the region’s bioscience companies raise $100 million this year. Getting to that $100 million mark would put Northeast Ohio among the upper echelons of bioscience clusters in the country, according to BioEnterprise." – Crain’s e-blast, May 19, 2005
  

That whole report can be viewed here.
Thanks to John McGovern for forwarding this information to me.

What really kills me though, is the slanderous statements made in this post on July 14. Holy shmoly, that is some pretty visious stuff. Come on now, "slut"? Is this even legal? (I do not know all of the rules for the blog-o-sphere yet.) Why isn't the almighty, can-do-no-wrong Jacksonputting a stop to this.

I admit, Campbell has not been the greatest leader in Cleveland's mayoral history. I do not even know for sure who I will vote for. I do know who I will not vote for though. That would be, not in any particular order, Jackson and Draper.

Port Authority ends its quest for Whiskey Island

According to this article from Crain's, the Port is no longer interested in acquiring Whiskey Island through purchase or eminent domain. I do not know what to think about this. This may put the development of the area on the NE side of the Cuyahoga on hold. You do not here much about this, but I am under the impression that the whole land swap thing was about freeing up land north of the stadium in order to extend downtown to the lakefront. So what will happen now? I will have to make a couple of calls.

People kill me when they complain about losing Whiskey Island. It is not going anywhere. The plan was to turn it clockwise 90 Degrees. Everything that makes WI the place it is will still be there. I go there with my kids and if I thought there was some risk in losing it, I would be there right next to Ed fighting.
At the same time, there would be consolidation of industrial areas to surrounding the ore terminal. I feel this is better then having a hodge podge of it the entire waterfront (lake and river). Again, I will have to find out ore about this.

Jump in, the Water is Fine

I have to admit, trying to start two of these at once is not as simple as I imagined. Although, if I were a better writer… maybe.

There is so much happening in the region; I really do not know where to start. With so many people in the B-Sphere commenting on this development or that policy, why would my opinions matter? Well, if I am going to just jump in…

I really get a kick out of all of the anti-Wal-Mart sites out there, (especially this new one) but I don’t want to pull a Cimperman by putting down the company and then being exposed going there for my treats. The fact is I go there on occasion. Well, my wife does more then I would care to admit. She likes it; she does the shopping; she handles the cash flow. I prefer Martha-Mart more then the other and besides, I am still an underemployed student with four kids and two cats to take care of. We will go where the goods are the cheapest. Noelle diligently goes through the sales papers every week to find out who has the lowest prices on grapes, milk, etc. usually it will be Marc’s and sometimes Giant Eagle.

We try to avoid Topps these days, which is sad because it is right down the street. They do not take care of there customers or employees and when you try to speak to the mis-managers, they blow you off or send you a form letter. I have a feeling once the new Giant Eagle comes to West 117^th Street they will fix up things a little.

Therefore, to put things straight on where I stand on wall-to-wall-mart, I will shop there if they have the lowest prices. I will do it more once they are in the city – I do try to keep my spending in the city as much as possible. I do not agree with most of their practices and I wish they would change some of there policies companywide regarding sustainability and more so on imports and labor law violations. The concerned citizens of Cleveland should be bringing these things to the table, not whether or not Mr. Smiley should have groceries in the store.

The argument that they are going to take away jobs and business from the small stores does not fly with me, especially since Topps just closed the Clark Avenue store. You’re going to tell me that people are going to be equally upset when a new restaurant opens in the Warehouse District? WHAT!?! But the other establishments might loose business. What are we going to do? If you can’t take the heat…