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Jane Jacobs, Urban Activist, Is Dead at 89

Heard abnout this this afternoon. It was sad to hear.

From the New York Times:

The New York Times

April 25, 2006
Jane Jacobs, Urban Activist, Is Dead at 89
By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Jane Jacobs, the writer and thinker who brought penetrating eyes and ingenious insight to the sidewalk ballet of her own Greenwich Village street and came up with a book that challenged and changed the way people view cities, died today in Toronto, where she lived. She was 89.

She died at a Toronto hospital, said a distant cousin, Lucia Jacobs, who gave no specific cause of death.

In her book "Death and Life of Great American Cities," written in 1961, Ms. Jacobs's enormous achievement was to transcend her own withering critique of 20th-century urban planning and propose radically new principles for rebuilding cities. At a time when both common and inspired wisdom called for bulldozing slums and opening up city space, Ms. Jacobs's prescription was ever more diversity, density and dynamism — in effect, to crowd people and activities together in a jumping, joyous urban jumble.

Ms. Jacobs's thesis was supported and enlarged by her deep, eclectic reading. But most compelling was her description of the everyday life she witnessed from her home above a candy store at 555 Hudson Street.

She puts out her garbage, children go to school, the drycleaner and barber open their shops, housewives come out to chat, longshoremen visit the local bar, teenagers return from school and change to go out on dates, and another day is played out. Sometimes odd things happen: a bagpiper shows up on a February night, and delighted listeners gather around. Whether neighbors or strangers, people are safer because they are almost never alone.

"People who know well such animated city streets will know how it is," Ms. Jacobs wrote. "I am afraid people who do not will always have it a little wrong in their heads, like the old prints of rhinoceroses made from travelers descriptions of rhinoceroses."

Some critics used adjectives like "triumphant" and "seminal" to describe the book. Wolf Von Eckardt, writing in The Washington Post, observed that it had " proved more important than all the statistical studies of all our myriad urban centers."

Others, not a few of whom had an ax to grind, were less kind. Lewis Mumford, the eminent critic and social historian whom Ms. Jacobs eviscerated in the book, suggested in a review in The New Yorker that she had displayed "esthetic philistinism with a vengeance."

Lloyd Rodwin, a professor at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, writing in The New York Times Book Review in 1961, praised the book as "a brashly impressive tour de force" but saw "transparent gaps and blind spots, such as her blasé misunderstandings of theory."

The battles she ignited are still being fought, and the criticism was perhaps inevitable, given that such an ambitious work was produced by somebody who had not finished college, much less become an established professional in the field. Indisputably, the book was as radically challenging to conventional thinking as Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring," which helped engender the environmental movement, would be the next year, and Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique," which deeply affected perceptions of relations between the sexes, would be in 1963.

Like these two writers, Ms. Jacobs was able to summon a freshness of perspective. Some dismissed it as amateurism, but to many others it was a point of view that made new ideas not only thinkable but suddenly and eminently reasonable.

"When an entire field is headed in the wrong direction, when the routine application of mainstream thinking has produced disastrous results as I think was true of planning and urban policy in the 1950's, then it probably took someone from outside to point out the obvious," Alan Ehrenhalt wrote in 2001 in Planning, the magazine of the American Planning Association .

"That is what Jane Jacobs did 40 years ago" he said.

Ms. Jacob's critique of the nation's cities is often grouped with the work of other writers who in the 1960's shook the foundations of American society: Paul Goodman's attack on schooling; Ralph Nader's barrage against the auto industry, and Malcolm X's grim tour of America's racial divide, among others.

Ms. Jacobs did not limit her impact to words. In 1961, she and other screaming protesters were removed by the police from a City Planning Commission hearing after they had leapt from their seats and rushed the podium. In 1968, she was arrested on charges of second-degree riot and criminal mischief in disrupting a public meeting on the construction of an expressway, which would have sliced across Lower Manhattan and displaced hundreds of families and businesses. The police said she had tried to tear up the stenographer's transcript tape.

Ms. Jacobs moved to Toronto in 1968 out of opposition to the Vietnam War and to shield her two draft-age sons from military duty. But she quickly enlisted in Toronto's urban battles. No sooner had she arrived than she led a battle to stop a freeway there.

Ms. Jacobs became a beloved intellectual pioneer characterized by a dumpling face, sneakers, an impish smile, bangs and owlish glasses. But Roger Starr, a former New York City housing administrator and sometime opponent of Ms. Jacobs, keenly noted the steel just beneath her folksiness.

"What a dear, sweet character she isn't," he said.

After she was removed from the city council hearing in 1961, her own words underlined her feistiness. "We had been ladies and gentlemen and only got pushed around."

But fighting with government, even being arrested with Susan Sontag and Allen Ginsberg in an anti-draft protest, was something she said she had repeatedly been forced into by "outrageous" governmental actions.

"I hate the government for making my life absurd," she said in an interview with the journal Government Technology in 1998.

What she most hated was taking time away from her writing, which she said was her way of thinking. And in at least five distinct fields of inquiry, she thought deeply and innovatively: urban design, urban history, regional economics, the morality of the economy and the nature of economic growth.

Her major books followed a logical progression, each leading naturally to the next. From writing about how people functioned within cities, she analyzed how cities function within nations, how nations function with one another, how everyone functions in a world of conflicting moral principles, and, finally, how economies grow like biological organisms.

A small book in 1980 arguing for Quebec separatism created a stir in Canada, while a memoir, which she edited, of her great-aunt's experience as a school teacher in rural Alaska impressed reviewers with its homespun wisdom in 1996.

But it is "Death and Life," published by Random House, that rocked the planning and architectural establishment and continues to influence a third generation of students who can still find the book in college bookstores.

On one level, it represented the first liberal attack on the liberal idea of urban renewal. At the same time, The New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson saw an old-fashioned vision of community that he compared to Thornton Wilder's fictional Grover's Corners. Ms. Jacobs herself thought the book's continuing appeal was that it plumbed the depths of human nature like a good novel.

Herbert Muschamp, The Times's chief architecture critic at the time, wrote in 2003 that Ms. Jacobs's book was "one of 20th-century architecture's most traumatic events," in part because Ms. Jacobs was dismissive about the importance of design. In recent years, she had become an inspiration to architects and planners who espouse what they call the "New Urbanism," an effort to promote social interaction by incorporating such Jacobean features as ground-floor retail in suburban developments.

Patrick Pinnell, an architect associated with this school, said "Death and Life" represented almost the last expression of optimism about American cities. As early as 1974, John E. Zuccotti, then chairman of the New York City Planning Commission, called Ms. Jacobs a prophet and himself a "neo-Jacobean" when he announced a smaller-scale, more sensitive urban planning approach.

Ms. Jacobs, whose father was a family physician and mother a schoolteacher, was born Jane Butzner on May 4, 1916, in Scranton, Pa., in what she described as a stagnant anthracite-coal-mining region. She remembered being something of a troublemaker in school, engaging in pranks like blowing air into paper bags in the lunchroom and loudly popping them. She preferred to read books surreptitiously to listening to the teacher.

In an interview in Azure magazine in 1997, Ms. Jacobs recounted her habit of carrying on imaginary conversations with Thomas Jefferson while running errands. When she could think of nothing more to tell Jefferson, she replaced him with Benjamin Franklin.

"Like Jefferson, he was interested in lofty things, but also in nitty-gritty, down-to-earth details," she said, "such as why the alley we were walking through wasn't paved, and who would pave it if it were paved. He was interested in everything, so he was a very satisfying companion."

Years later, she realized that she had developed her talent of working through difficult ideas in simple terms by practicing them on her imaginary Franklin. She also acquired another inner companion through Alfred Duggan, an English historical novelist. He was Cerdic, a Saxon chieftain. Years later, she continued to chat with him while doing housework.

"There were only two things in the entire house that were familiar to him," she wrote, "the fire (although he didn't understand the chimney), and the sword," a Civil War souvenir. "Everything else had to be explained to him."

She did not want to go to college, and took an unpaid position as assistant to the women's editor at The Scranton Tribune. In 1934, she moved to New York to join her sister who was six years older and had a job in the home furnishings department at the Abraham and Strauss department store in Brooklyn. The sisters lived on the top floor of a six-story walkup in Brooklyn Heights.

Each day, Ms. Jacobs got on the subway and arbitrarily chose a stop to look for a job. Because she liked the sound of Christopher Street, she got off there and found an apartment in Greenwich Village and soon after a job, as a secretary in a candy manufacturing company.

She worked as a secretary for five years. The sisters did not have much money and sometimes lived on pablum, the baby formula, and bananas, Ms. Jacobs said in an interview with Metropolis Magazine in 2001.

She began writing articles right away, first for a metals trade paper. She sold a series of articles to Vogue about different areas of the city, like the fur district, earning $40 for each at a time when she was making $12 a week as a secretary. She wrote Sunday feature stories for The New York Herald Tribune and articles for Q Magazine on manhole covers, among other things.

While working fulltime, Ms. Jacobs attended Columbia University's School of General Studies for two years and took courses in geology, zoology, law, political science and economics. In 1944, Ms. Jacobs, who was working for the Office of War Information, and her two roommates had a party in their apartment. One of the guests was Robert Hyde Jacobs Jr., an architect who specialized in hospital design. They met in April and married in May.

Ms. Jacobs told Azure that she would have written no books without her husband's encouragement. It was he who decided that the family should move to Toronto in 1968 after both their sons said they would go to jail rather than serve in Vietnam. Mr. Jacobs died in 1996. Ms. Jacobs is survived by her sons James, of Toronto, and Ned, of Vancouver; her daughter, Burgin Jacobs, of New Denver, British Columbia; and one granddaughter. In 1952, Ms. Jacobs got a job as an editor at Architectural Forum, where she stayed 10 years. This gave her a perch from which to observe urban renewal projects. In a visit to Philadelphia, she noticed that the streets of a project were deserted while an older, nearby street was crowded.

"So, I got very suspicious of this whole thing," she said in an interview with The Toronto Star in 1997. "I pointed that out to the designer, but it was absolutely uninteresting to him. How things worked didn't interest him.

"He wasn't concerned about its attractiveness to people. His notion was totally esthetic, divorced from everything else."

Her doubts increased after William Kirk, the head worker of Union Settlement in East Harlem, taught her new ways of seeing neighborhoods. She came to see prevalent planning notions, which involved bulldozing low-rise housing in poor neighborhoods and building tall apartment buildings surrounded by open space to replace them, as a superstition akin to early 19th-century physicians' belief in bloodletting.

"There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder," she wrote in "Death and Life," "and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served."

William H. Whyte, editor of Fortune and author of books about urban life as well as his celebrated "The Organization Man" in 1956, asked Ms. Jacobs to write an article for Fortune on urban downtowns in 1958. Her essay, which was reprinted in "The Exploding Metropolis" (Doubleday, 1958), turned out to be a trial run for her book.

"Designing a dream city is easy," she concluded. "Rebuilding a living one takes imagination."

The Fortune article caught the attention of the Rockefeller Foundation, which offered a grant in 1958 to write about cities. Two grants and three years later, she produced her manuscript on the Remington typewriter that she used until her death.

"Death and Life" made four recommendations for creating municipal diversity: 1. A street or district must serve several primary functions. 2. Blocks must be short. 3. Buildings must vary in age, condition, use and rentals. 4. Population must be dense.

These seemingly simple notions represented a major rethinking of modern planning. They were coupled with fierce condemnations of the writings of the planners Sir Patrick Geddes and Ebenezer Howard, as well as those of the architect Le Corbusier and Lewis Mumford, who championed their ideal of graceful towers rising over exquisite open spaces.

Mr. Mumford held his fire for a year before replying in a New Yorker article that he later considered too mild. Either he or his editors gave the article the sardonic title, "Home Remedies for Urban Cancer."

Mr. Mumford wrote, "Like a construction gang bulldozing a site clean of all habitations, good or bad, she bulldozes out of existence every desirable innovation in urban planning during the last century, and every competing idea, without even a pretense of critical evaluation."

Her complete dismissal of zoning in cities caused Robert Fulford, a columnist for The Financial Times of Canada, to observe in The New York Times Book Review that single-use zoning was the principal activity of city planners.

"It was as if she had somehow tried to persuade dentists that filling teeth did more harm than good," he wrote.

Even the architecture critic Paul Goldberger, while expressing profound admiration for Ms. Jacobs in a Times article in 1996, suggested that she may have overstated the importance of the physical form of cities.

"Sometimes big, ugly high-rise towers work just fine," he wrote.

Ms. Jacobs's next book, "The Economy of Cities" (Random House, 1969) challenged the ideas that cities were established on a rural economic base; rather, she suggested, rural economies have been built directly through city economies. The New Yorker called the book "radiant with ideas," while National Review praised it for formulating "a badly needed urban myth."

Her next work was a small book, "The Question of Separatism: Quebec and the Struggle for Sovereignty" (Random House, 1980). It argued that Canada and Quebec would be better off without each other, on the general grounds that small is better.

In 1984, she delved more deeply into economics and cities with "Cities and the Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Life" (Random House, 1984). She contended that national governments undermine the economy of cities, which she sees as the natural engines of economic growth.

Her "Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics" (Vintage, 1994), looks at the moral underpinnings of work by examining different value systems. "The Nature of Economies" (Modern Library, 2000) likens economic activity to an ecosystem. Her last book, "Dark Age Ahead" (Random House, 2004), argues that North American culture is collapsing, then suggests ways to avert that result.

In her last years, Canadians held conferences to honor Ms. Jacobs, and Maclean's magazine, the Canadian newsweekly, hailed her as "a lioness in winter." For New Yorkers, she lived on in the famous photo of her with a beer and cigarette in the White Horse tavern in Greenwich Village, as well as memories of her plotting municipal mischief at the Red Lion, another Village hangout. To generations of planners, architects and students of cities, Ms. Jacobs remains a seminal influence.

She perhaps perceived of herself as an intellectual adventurer ready and able to follow her quixotic, often brilliant instincts into ever more fascinating terrain. In "Systems of Survival," one of her characters worries that he is not qualified.

"Why not us?" replies the man who has invited the group together. "If more qualified people are up to the same thing, more power to them. But we don't know that, do we?"

Jane Jacobs, Urban Activist, Is Dead at 89

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Cleveland Planning Commission Draft Agenda - 21 April 2006

I am out of town and did not go to this last meeting.
The following is a draft agenda from the meeting. These are pretty acurate. Occasionally there is an add-on or a withdrawal.

LEGISLATION

1. Ordinance No. 567-06: Amends an Ordinance previously passed relating to the improvements to Willard Park garage.
2. Ordinance No. 568-06: Amends an Ordinance relating to the reconstruction of East 93 rd Street between Union Avenue and Miles Road.
3. Ordinance No. 606-06: Authorizing the Mayor to accept a grant from the Ohio Public Works Commission for Denison Avenue Resurfacing from West 73 rd St. to Lorain Avenue.
   
4. Ordinance No. 608-06: Authorizing the Mayor to accept a grant from the Ohio Public Works Commission for Bellaire road Rehabilitation from West 117 th Street.
   
5. Ordinance No. 609-06: Authorizing the Mayor to accept a grant from the Ohio Public Works Commission for Quincy Road Rehabilitation from East 40 th St. to Woodhill Road.
6. Ordinance No. 615-06: Authorizing the sale of real property as part of the land Reutilization Program and located on East 49 th St. to Lake Erie Barber College.
7. Ordinance No. 616-06: Authorizing the sale of real property as part of the Land Reutilization Program and located on Clover Avenue to JDS Development LLC.
8. Ordinance No. 653-06: Authorizing the Director of City Planning to enter into one or more contracts with Cleveland Public Art for professional Services necessary to administer the City’s public art program.

DESIGN REVIEW

1. DRC 05-113-A: 3447 West 150 th Street, Single-family House (in tandem w/ 3451 West 150 th Street) (Ward 21)
2. DRC 06-023: West 54 th Street near Herman Avenue, Three Single-Family Houses, aka Residences of King’s Terrace, Project Revisions (ref. DRC 02-207) (Single-family Houses/ Ward 17) (Fr April 7, 2006)

That's it.

Cleveland is getting a spot on Monopoly

I am still in warm San Antonio, Texas. I'll be back by the weekend
In the meantime, found this in the Akron Beacon Journal.

Help pick a Cleveland property for Monopoly

Cleveland's Euclid Avenue -- or Jacobs Field or North Coast Harbor -- will have a spot on a new Monopoly game board.

Starting today, fans can vote at www.monopoly.com for one of the three landmarks to be included on a Hear & Now edition of the game. Cleveland is one of the 22 "America's greatest destination cities'' that will be represented.

The online polls will be open until May 12 and final results will be unveiled in late summer, when the game arrives in stores. Fans can vote as often as once a day.

The updated game will also include inflated rents, contemporary game tokens and airports instead of railroads.

Planning Commision Report, 7 April 2004

Planning Commission Report, 7 April 2004

Call to Order - 9:05 AM

Roll Call –

Present:
Tony Coyne
Lillian Kuri
Gloria Jean Pinkney
David Bowen
Rev. S. Small

Absent:
Bob Brown
Joe Cimperman
Larry Lumpkin

Previous Minutes Approved

ZONING

Ordinance No. 199-06: (approved)
Will change the use of the property on the southwest corner of St. Clair Avenue and Old River Road (West 11th Street) from a General Industry Use District to a General Retail Use District.
The building currently on the property is the former Calabria Restaurant. The current owner was contacted, but did not show. This will make it consistent with the actual use in the area. Mike Samsel form Samsel Supply was present and was for the change in zoning stating “it is time for a change.”

Ordinance No. 200-06:(approved)
Will changing the use of properties located on the southeast corner of Fulton Road and Meyer Avenue from a Two Family Residential District to an RA2 Townhouse District.
These parcels are located in the Clark Metro Neighborhood, south of Saint Rocco’s Church. The site is currently vacant except for one house that is to be demolished. There are eleven townhouses proposed for the site by developer Craft Homes. Councilman Santiago was present and is in favor of the rezoning.

Ordinance No. 318-03:(approved)
This is an amendment to an ordinance previously passed for the St. Luke’s North Pointe Planned Unit Development for CitiRAMA in 2005. The site plan is being revised

MANDATORY REFERRALS

Ordinance No. 1069-00: (approved)
Designated the Cozad-Bates House as a Cleveland Landmark.
Landmarks Commission Chair, Bob Kaiser presented to the Planning Commission. He told everyone the building designation has been tabled since 1975. The original portion of the building was built in 1853, the rest of the building in 1872. It is of Italianate Style – probably the best in the county
Chairman Coyne opened the floor to the public.
Kathleen Crowther, Executive Director of the Cleveland Restoration Society: Expressed her gratitude to the University Hospital system for donating the property
Joan Southgate, 73 year old grandmother who walked around 350 miles retracing the route of former slaves on their route to freedom: Introduced friends associated with Restore Cleveland Hope, which includes decedents of the original land owners of the area around the house. She mentioned the name “Hope” was chosen because it is believed the word was a secret code name for the Underground Railroad.
Among others that spoke:
Chris Ronayne, Executive Director of University Circle, Inc.
Hunter Morrison, Former City of Cleveland Planning Director
Councilman Kevin Conwell – He stated that there was to be legislation to change the name of East 115th Street back to its original name, Harriet Tutman Lane

Ordinance No. 114-06:
Ordinance authorizing the sale of property as part of the Land Reutilization Program and located on East 79th Street and Hough Avenue to Eric D. Payne. [Disapprove as obsolete and no longer needed]

Ordinance No. 572-06:(approved)
Authorizes the Director of Economic Development to enter into contract with Playhouse Square Foundation to provide economic development assistance to partially finance the IdeaCenter Building located 1375 Euclid Avenue to redevelop the property.
This will further assist finding companies to move into the remaining, empty third and part of the fourth floor.

Ordinance No. 566-06: (approved)
Approved the reports of assessment equalization boards on objections concerning assessments to relay and repair sidewalks, driveway aprons and curbs.

Ordinance No. XXX1-06:(approved)
Authorized the entering into contract with Cleveland Public Art for professional services necessary to administer the City’s public art program

ADMINISTRATIVE APPROVALS

Ordinance No. 367-06:(approved)
Authorized an agreement with Norfolk Southern railway necessary for the City to install and maintain its sewer located within the railway’s property between West 41st Street and West 86th Street and to pay the railway a fee.

Ordinance No. 579-06:(approved)
Authorized an agreement with the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority and Flats East Development LLC, for construction and financing of residential units and related commercial improvements.

SUMMARY CALENDAR

Ordinance No. 447-06: (approved)
Authorized the execution of deeds of easement granting to the Board of Commissioners of Cuyahoga County certain highway and aerial easement rights in property needed to reconstruct, repair, and maintain the Fulton Road Bridge; and declaring the easement rights not needed for public use.

Ordinance No. 448-06: (approved)
Authorized the Director of Public Service to execute deeds of easement granting to the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority certain easement rights in various locations along Euclid Avenue needed in connection with the Euclid Corridor Transportation Project; and declaring the easement rights not needed for public use.

Resolution No. 463-06: (approved)
Declaring the intention to vacate portion of Bates Avenue.

Resolution No. 464-06: (approved)
Declaring the intent to vacate a portion of East 59th Street.

Ordinance No. 1992-06: (approved)
An emergency ordinance authorizing the sale of property to Lula Blevins as part of the Land Reutilization Program located on Harlem Court.

LOT SPLITS AND PLATS

833 Starkweather Avenue, owner Dave Mikolajdzyk: Proposed split of a 30’ x 140’ lot in Tremont, to create (2) 30’x 70’ parcels. (APPROVED)

Riverside Park Estates Subdivision Plat (APPROVED)

East Woodland Estates, E. 75th for Hill Place Plat (also DRC No. 06-017) (TABLED)

3600 East 59th Street - Lot Split (From 3/17/07 CPC Meeting) (DISSAPPROVED)

CLARCK-METRO BRD

CM 2006-001:
3002 Clark Avenue (north side of Clark Avenue). New Construction. 6,840 sf Autozone Store, seeking full approval

CM2006-002:
3024(a) Clark Avenue (north side of Clark Avenue). renovation of west portion of existing 35,685 sf, Retail Building. 18,947 sf. Save-A-Lot Grocery Store. Seeking Final Approval

CM2006-003:
3024 (B) Clark Avenue (north side of Clark Avenue). Renovation of east portion of existing 35,685 sf Retail Building. 16,738 sf

All three of these were combined for one presentation. The property is the former Topps (nee Pick-n-Pay) on Clark Avenue and West30th Street. The developers are going to divide the current building into two units, one will be a Save-a-Lot and the other will be a Dollar Mart. The third portion of this is the construction of a new building that will house an Autozone store.
The only issue presented to the Commission had to deal with signage. Most of the presenters agreed, including the CDC representative, the signage on Cark Avenue is overwhelming and lacks visual appeal. The current plan calls for two signs: one would hold two signs for the discount stores and the other would be a standalone for the auto parts supplier. Autozone does not want to share sign space with the other two stores. Besides, that would make the sign to high.
The commission gave approval for everything except for the pole-mounted sign, which is to be resubmitted for approval.

DESIGN REVIEW

DRC 06-019:(approved)
East 75th Street & Woodland Avenue, East Woodland Estates (aka Hill Place), Exterior Remodeling, Phase 1
This was approved and it was noted on the record that the developer had already begun the remodeling before any approval had been given. They apologized.

DRC 06-022:(approved)
2070 Circle Drive, Cleveland Clinic, Glickman Tower
This will be new construction located behind the new Heart Center. The ten-story internal glass and granite tower will house the Glickman Urology Institute on the op four floors (not including two for mechanical). The rest of the building will be designated flex space.

DRC 06-023:(approved)
West 54th Street near Herman Avenue, Three Single-Family Houses, (aka Residences of King’s Hill), Project Revisions (ref. DRC 02-207)
City Architecture designed the remodeling work.

DRC 06-014-A:(approved)
East 111th Street, between Woodland Avenue & MLK Boulevard, CitiRAMA 2006, 10 Single-family Houses (Fr 2/16/06, Design Guidelines)
Location – Developer
1. 2657 East 111th Street – Evergreen Homes
2. 2663 East 111th Street – Urban Investments
3. 2667 East 111th Street – G E Construction
4. 2671 East 111th Street – HBA/GBC Homes
5. 2675 East 111th Street – Horizon Construction
6. 2688 East 111th Street – Liberty Construction
7. 2684 East 111th Street – B.R. Knez Construction
8. 2678 East 111th Street – Lighthouse Properties
9. 2674 East 111th Street – Upscale Properties
10. 2668 East 111th Street – A.L.L.S., Inc.
11. 2664 East 111th Street – Blossom Homes
12. 2658 East 111th Street – Civic Builders
May 1st is groundbreaking with the event planned for September 9th – 18th
All houses were approved with staff recommendations.

DRC 06-024:(approved)
1800 East 105th Street, CWRU West Quad Site, Temporary Parking Lot by Cleveland Clinic.
600+ parking spaces will be landscaped, fenced in and include a run-off basin. The lot will most likely be gone by 2008

News from Cleveland Colectivo - Inaugural Grants Announced

CLEVELAND-BASED GIVING CIRCLE ANNOUNCES FUNDING FOR

INNOVATIVE PROJECTS IN CLEVELAND NEIGHBORHOODS

The Cleveland Colectivo, a new Cleveland-based “giving circle” whose members make collective contributions to innovative projects in Cleveland, announces the four projects selected for inaugural grants: The Building Bridges Mural Project, The Westside Refugee Family Center, City Wheels, and The Tremont Urban Learning Garden. Reflecting the group’s determination to transform Cleveland, these projects, selected from more than forty applications, focus on creativity, social justice, economic development and environmental sustainability.

“The Cleveland Colectivo is a group of people committed to effecting positive change in Cleveland,” said Walter Wright, one of the founding members of the group. “We believe that philanthropy is something that anyone can participate in – not just Peter Lewis or Bill Gates. We want to celebrate the grassroots projects happening in Cleveland and help them to grow. These grants are meant to be catalytic in nature; and in some cases, they’re given to groups that might not qualify for traditional funding.”

The four groups selected for funding are:

* The Building Bridges Mural Program: awarded $3,000 for artist Katherine Chilcote’s effort to create a youth internship program in partnership with Doug Horner at St. Paul’s Community Church that will result in a mural installation at the intersection of West 25th and Detroit Avenue;

* The Westside Refugee Family Center: awarded $2,500 to implement a six-month pilot “Mommy and Me” program, enhancing offerings already available to a growing number of refugee families on Cleveland’s near west side;

* City Wheels: awarded $1,000 for grant-writing assistance to support this innovative Northeast Ohio car sharing service designed to provide a creative cooperative transportation alternative to car ownership;

* The Tremont Urban Learning Garden: awarded $750 for materials to this project in which Lucky's Coffee Shop/Sweet Mosaic Bakery will work with neighborhood youth to build a garden in a vacant lot adjacent to the coffee shop and use the locally-grown produce in food and baked goods sold at the bakery.

The Cleveland Colectivo was formed in January of 2005 and has spent the past year recruiting members, creating an organization, and soliciting proposals. Unlike traditional foundations, The Cleveland Colectivo has created a giving circle model with no formal executive director, board of trustees or overhead – except for occasional purchases of pizza and drinks. Decisions are made by consensus at monthly meetings and membership is open. Voting members contribute at least $100 per quarter and non-voting “associate” members contribute by attending meetings and volunteering. For more information about The Cleveland Colectivo, visit www.clevelandcolectivo.org.

The Cleveland Colectivo mission statement is: “Clevelanders coming together to strengthen our community through collective investments that identify and nurture innovative projects.”

Cleveland State University Project Update

CSU is moving right along with their capital improvements. The Recreation Center, Fenn Tower Student Housing, Parker Hannafin Administration Center and East Parking Garage will all open before the end of the year - The Recreation Center should be open for the new semester.

Projects Update

The latest update on currnet projects can be found here http://www.csuohio.edu/architect/status_reports/current.pdf

Current Status Notes

Recreation Center
o Interior painting of finished drywall is continuing.
o Sports Floors in multi purpose rooms are being installed.
o Mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and technology systems are being installed.
o Site improvement contractor has begun work.

Fenn Tower
o Exterior restoration at 92% complete.
o Windows are being installed, 93% complete.
o Drywall 100% complete on floors 8-19; 50% on floors basement – 7.
o Site work on east side 55% complete.
o Painting, VCT flooring, cabinetry, and door installation in the tower is 80% complete.
o Punch list items have started for some of the tower floors.

Parker Hannafin Administration Center / Hall
o Structural steel in the Administration Building is near completion.
o Roof on Administration Center to begin mid April.
o Floors and decks in the Administration Building will be complete in April.
o Excavation for Parker Hannifin Annex to begin soon.

East Parking Garage
o Elevated decks on east bay are 50% complete and are expected to be complete by April 24th.
o Slab for the west bay is scheduled to begin in two weeks.
o Structural steel for stairs and elevators will start in two weeks.
o Brick and Masonry schedule to start by end of April.

Main Classroom Stair Tower Phase 1A
o Bids received for construction. Successful combined bid by Fiorelli Construction. Currently at Board of Regents for state funding approval.

Main Classroom Plaza Build Out Phase 1B
o Completed program validation, proceeding with Schematic Design.

Student Center Phase II
o Both A/E Consultant and Construction Management have been approved. Currently entering into contract negotiation.

Faking Places - April Fools

Blatently stolen from Project for Public Spaces
Sorry, it was too funny.

Please check out the more serious matter on a regular basis. Lots of good information.

News and Ideas from Project for Public Spaces

Feature Story:

Congressmen enjoy a test run of the proposed Thursday potlucks on the National Mall.

National Mall to Become Lunchtime Hangout for Congress

With partisan tensions running high on Capitol Hill, it appears that both sides of the aisle can still manage to agree on one thing: Hanging out together on the National Mall for good food and friendly conversation.

[read the full article]

Also In This Issue:

New Self-Help Movement Transforms the Streets of America

Auto Addicts Anonymous credited with reviving community life. [read more...]

O Canada!

Placemaking sweeps the north country. [read more...]

Let 10,000 Plazas Bloom

Texas looks south for ideas to enliven its communities. [read more...]

PPS Names Best and Worst Public Spaces in the Galaxy

From universe-spanning wormholes to neighborhood asteroid belts, here are the best places we've come across. Plus, don't miss our Cosmic Hall of Shame. [read more...]

Torino Converts Olympic Spaces into Summertime La Dolce Vita

"Sure, it was easy to get people to come out in public in the dead of winter, but once the snow melts - what is there for them to do?" [read more...]

PPS Staffers Branch Out as Fashion Models for J. Crew

"It's sort of weird. I never envisioned myself as a fashion model." [read more...]

New York Round-up

Forest City Ratner drops arena proposal for Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards. Plus, New York's first Bike and Walk to Work Week, a surprising announcement from IKEA, and a change of plans for the Bronx Terminal Market. [read more...]

Introducing Sodpavers...

...the green alternative to wide swaths of asphalt. [read more...]

Past Issues of Faking Places:

April 1, 2005

Fearful of losing their long dominance of the streets, millions of autos staged massive park-ins in public spaces around the nation to protest pedestrians and alternative modes of transportation. [read more...]

April 1, 2004

Under the influence of PPS, Wal-Mart abandoned mega-stores in favor of locally-owned, downtown shops. [read more...]