Save Our Land: Breuer Tower Debate at CPC

The drama continues:
Thanks to Tim for keeping us updated. For even more info, follow the link to read the comments.

Friday, June 08, 2007

interesting dialogue brewing over Breuer Tower

We spent four hours this morning in a meeting of the City/Cleveland Planning Commission (CPC) going over the county's request to demolish the Breuer Tower. It was interesting. All the public non-insider commentary was against granting the demolition permit.

We got the start of a great community dialogue, hitherto suppressed except for a few forays by the PD's Steve Litt, Peter Lawson Jones, tons of NEO blogs, and a MeetTheBloggers podcast. The public commentary was delivered by Jennifer Coleman (lots of good insights and citings of what the standards really are), Hunter Morrison (super delivery, wish we had it on tape), Steve McQuillin, Paul Volpe, David Ellison, Daryl Davis, Peter Lawson Jones, Susan Miller, Bob Miller (a former Cleveland Trust employee, there at the beginning, with some fantastic background materials) of the Generation Foundation, Anthony Hiti for the local AIA chapter, Tom Yablonski, Todd deGarmo (who has worked on the Pentagon and describes the Breuer Tower as the "jewel" among all such buildings), Gloria, and myself--and I've missed a few others whom I don't know so well. All in all, it's a great collation of new thought on what the two dark commissioners consider a done deal. It was all done out of the dark and the shadows, in the full light of day.

Then, the CPC took a poll of who was for denying the permit, and 4 would deny it and 3 were against denying it. Then, the downtown councilman mentioned that to deny the demolition would show a lack of cooperation with the county commissioners, and he had to make nice with them so he could continue to work with them--yes, it was that meretricious, and silly. So, over Norm Krumholz' objections, they dragged the issue out of the light of day and back into the shadows, to meet again next Friday, when Norm won't be there, to see if they can keep wearing away at the issue until they get the vote where they need it, in favor of granting the permit for demolition.

Folks, the downtown councilman Cimperman and county commissioners DiMora and Hagan are trying to give this short shrift and a quick burial, despite what all the rest of the public say and do. They are not serving the public interest. They are ignoring the numbers. They are not working for you. They have other, more special interests in mind, because they certainly ignore the public interest. Hunter Morrison specifically and in great detail delineated the absence of a suitable process at the city level, like what they had with the Society Tower and Gateway.

More on this later. I'm beginning to think the three of them--Cimperman, DiMore, and Hagan--are unfit for public office.

I'm hoping a transcript or a recording of this session will surface somehow, someplace.

Posted by Tim Ferris at 3:18 PM