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Why is GCP hooked on gambling?Submitted by Ed Morrison on Sat, 06/03/2006 - 10:50.
At a time when our business leaders in Cleveland are pursuing gambling, business leaders in Milwaukee, St. Louis and Indianapolis have their priorities straight: They are focused on innovation. Read more about Milwaukee here and here. Read more about St. Louis here. Read more about Indianapolis here and here. (Next week, Leadership Indiana, an initiative that I guide, will be holding its statewide summit on The Urgency of Innovation. Jack Ricchiuto and June Holley will be conducting workshops on how open networks accelerate innovation. Cummins' CEO Tim Solso will share the impressive story about how his company is adjusting to the pressures of globalization. We will also have workshops that explore innovation in health care, finance, and K-12 education.) To understand more about why innovation matters, visit this web site. Urban casinos are not the answer to the challenges we face with globalization. Within a five years or so, the Chinese will be exporting high quality, low cost cars to the U.S. in volume. Read more. This trend places Lordstown in the cross-hairs and raises some powerful new challenges to Ford's Ohio facilities. Read more. At the same time, new opportunities are starting to slip by...We are slow to move on alternative fuels. See, for example, the new clean energy cluster that formed last week in Northern Colorado. Read more. In Michigan, the state recently landed two prize $15 million grants to experiment with workforce innovation and regional economic development. (Pennsylvania got one, and so did Indiana, but Ohio did not.) These grants are closely tied to the importance of accelerating innovation. Read more. Or, consider the fact that over a year ago Pennsylvania landed Europe's largest wind turbine producer. Read more. Or, that by the end of this year, Indiana will have constructed close to fifteen biofuels plants in two years. Learn more about their innovative BioTown initiative. Read more. As I look over our landscape of opportunities in Northeast Ohio, it's sad to see that gambling -- a twenty year old economic development strategy that doesn't work very well and carries serious social costs -- has made it to the top of the GCP agenda. But that’s what happens when real estate interests dominate a chamber of commerce. Thinking becomes deal driven, short term, and focused on “build it and they will come" projects, like casinos and convention centers.
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when real estate interests dominate a chamber of commerce
You are right as usual. We've had such a loss of large businesses and powerful leaders in NEO that a few suburban real estate developers have become the richest and most powerful folk around, and they have taken over many powerul positions and organizations, like the Port Authority and GCP. So they come up with lame economic development strategies lke casinos and WalMarts, with law class architecture like Wolstein and Stark use... which is better than the demolished Coast Guard Station, sprawling Flats parking lots and Gambling tent we have to thank next generation of Jacobs.
What's "law class architecture"?
Norm, fill me in on "law class"...
Casinos in downtown Cleveland (and in other Ohio cities) will help accelerate total civic collapse - let's get it over with!
That's "LOW CLASS", and "It's a Crock(er)
Cheap brick facades and plastic trim - like a cheap American car - that's the best we have to hope for from cheap American strip mall developers - worse, your community becomes the disgrace of right thinking intellectuals around the world, like here at Land+Living:
Category: Commentary
Posted by: James on 12/20/2004 4:25:00 PM
Crocker Park, another faux town is born outside of Cleveland, Ohio
Because the "lifestyle center" continues to spawn and spread across the country... and the more that open, the more alarmed the we are by the trend. The Plain Dealer features a critical look at the good and the bad of Crocker Park in the Cleveland suburb of Westlake. The article touches on many of the same issues that we have been stewing over in recent commentary posts.
Article: The Plain Dealer, Cleveland.com - Westlake's new center, half-done, feels hollow
Link: Crocker Park
Firm: Bialosky + Partners Architects
Via: Archinect
Reference: Reality bites (Land+Living)
Reference: Downtown Mauled - Part I (Land+Living)
Reference: Downtown Mauled - Part I (Land+Living)
Posted by some guy on 1/4/2005 9:39:00 PM
the enormous "Streets of Southpoint" Mall is another great example of this awful idea - no place to live, but fake cobblestone "streets" to walk down as you spend all your money. to add insult to injury, the "architects" decided that they would make a half-assed attempt to make a section of the superstructure look like an old tobacco factory/warehouse, right down to the faux murals on the walls, carefully painted to look aged. i could hardly believe my NC-native friend when she said the whole place was a pine forest five years ago. it's brought to us by the same people who made the godawful "Providence Place" monstrosity in Providence, RI.
Posted by Aaron Donovan on 1/7/2005 3:11:00 PM
This is an interesting phenomenon that is not too familiar to me. What use is assigned to the second and third stories of those buildings? Hopefully it is for apartments, which would make for a great mixed-use, relatively more lively development. Even if it's not, I don't this land use pattern is all that terrible. It hides the parking and seems to be making an attempt to veer away from the strip-mall/big box thinking that has pervaded American development for decades. I take this as a sign that at least *some* people are starting to attempt to make more pedestrian-friendly environments. There is a long way to go before we start building real communities again, but at least it is a step in the right direction. -Aaron @ www.startsandfits.com
Posted by James on 1/7/2005 10:31:00 PM
This is a phenomenon that we have been watching for a while, and that we began to cover after our visit to Victoria Gardens. We are all for mixed-use and quality pedestrian spaces. In this instance, the upper floors are apartments and offices, which is nice to see.
Without rehashing all of the commentary posts we have made on the subject, the issue for us is partly about faux-historicism, but it is even more about private developments using the "look and feel" of traditionally public spaces (real town sidewalks, parks, squares), while denying the inherent freedom implied in such an environment.
For more on what we are thinking, check out the "reference" links above.
Posted by Cheng-Jih Chen on 1/9/2005 2:40:00 PM
There are a number of posters touting the imagined lifestyle at Crocker Park. Interestingly, as far as I can tell, the photos were taken somewhere on Lexington Avenue in New York City, perhaps somewhere in the 60s. The high-rises in that area are Photoshopped away, but the New York City street signs are blurred but still recognizeable.
Posted by Aaron Donovan on 1/13/2005 1:56:00 PM
James, well, I admit to being peeved at faux-historicism as well. I remember visiting brand-spanking new "townhousese" in Oakton, Va., and thinking that the place gave me the heebie-jeebies. The problem is not the design, which we agree is better than strip malls and suburban subdivisions. The problem is the way that it is financed. Jane Jacobs has an excellent chapter on piecemeal investment versus cataclysmic investment. She criticizes environments created by cataclysmic investment on a number of levels. She was thinking of urban tower-in-the-park housing projects, but the principle applies to places like Crocker Park as well: Attempt to build a place all at once and it will be lacking in character. This seems to apply even to pedestrian-friendly streetscapes that mean well if are poorly executed. The best place for developers to invest in my view is urban infill projects. A new building on a vacant lot in an old town center is preferable by far to trying to create a whole new town center. Before the current era, cities and towns were never built at one time, and that is one reason they retain their appeal for so many people. The problem is that now, developers want to do huge projects. I guess my overall reaction to this is that of the huge projects I've seen, this one is among the least worst.
Posted by Aaron Donovan on 1/13/2005 1:59:00 PM
I forgot to mention that you have to give the developers high marks for effort (if not outcome). The post-modern "rowhouse" here at least attempt to look like multiple buildings of different styles. It may not work as well as it should, but at least it's better than the slab-block monolithic barracks that would have dominated when Modernism was ascendant.
Posted by Tilei Timberlake on 3/18/2005 5:01:00 AM
What I find abhorent about what has become Crocker Park, is what residents were told this would be. It is truly another strip mall just rearranged buildings, not environmentally friendly, etc. It isn't doing the 'value added' benefits it was touted to do 4 years ago, before they cut down 75 acres of woodland to build this. As far as I know they have not been able to rent the office space and no one is talking about the apartments?
Posted by Tim Daniel on 6/9/2005 6:58:00 AM
Let's face it, without over intellectualizing it, if these projects are done well, or even o.k., they are certainly leaps and bounds better than the Seas of Asphalt/Strip Malls that have blighted our urban countryside since the 60's. So they are a little hokie at times, big deal. If anyone has any better idea that could actually stand up to a realistic business model I'm sure there is a bright career in planning for you.
Posted by anon on 10/20/2005 8:14:00 PM
As a resident of Westlake, heres some insight. I dislike some of the people that it brings into our refined community. On the other hand, so long as nicer shops are renting space, that should stay at a minimum. Now, this development provides a European feel to relaxing, walking, sitting outside and drinking coffee, or havign a meal. These things are lost to a society pre-occupied with owning, and working, and too stressed to appreciate. Just walking around, relaxing with your friends, taking in a movie, in a safe community, thats what it is about. How is a mall enclosed where you walk aroudn in filtered air, passing through a "food court" better?