I remember once, in Toastmasters, I won some sort of speech contest by merely taking the last year's headlines and reading them aloud, with feeling and facial expressions.

How would it look to run a chronology of PD headlines since they became cheerleaders for anybody who proclaimed himself or herself to be a developer? When was it they actually started doing this sort of promotion pro bono?

We passed through the Terminal Tower this Sunday on our way to the Rapid; Gloria picked out Ruth Ratner Miller (1925-1996) from among Herb and the REIT guys all decked out in '70s sartorial splendor and asked me to write down Ruth's prescription/proscription for real-estate development: "You start with people, not buildings."

I was amused to see one of the prospective tenants as Forth and Towne, a Gap spinoff that they pulled the plug on way back in August of 2007. 

Norm is correct. There were workable buildings on that site.

Jacobs, of course, had them emptied and knocked down. He bore the cost.

If you'll remember, Jacobs got city approval for a tax abated building, similar to Key Center,  and a Hyatt Hotel, also tax abated, similar to the Marriott. There were also attempts to get UDAG money at no interest rate, similar to the Key and Marriott, which to this day do no pay property taxes.

I think it is probably obvious that these developers are trying to outdo each other and get buildings up because there is some market now since some older businesses want glossy new addresses.

Jacobs never built on the West Public Square site,though he cleared it, because the market wasn't there for our economy. The tax abatements obviously didn't make up the difference of lack of market.

Now it should be clear that none of these buildings now proposed - Jacobs, Wolstein, Stark - should get any public money and they should pay their FULL property taxes.

This should be a major public issue. However, the PD is too busy with crying about downtown clean-up crews from the city getting paid instead of the Alliance taking over those chores.

We need a political leader with some foresight to raise these issues. I don't see any other way for them to  be raised since there are no unbought organizations in Cleveland that are doing the public's work.

Back when we were fighting to save the Breuer Tower, there was a great blog called Improvised Schema. At some point I went to find it, and it was gone - lost its domain name.

Now it's back in the present tense with its characteristic biting criticism interspersed with lyricism.

Who is Improvising Schema? Probably some CAD Monkey (monkeys?) in some large architectural firm like WRL, Fleischman, maybe even CUDC or Dick Bowen's office. Who knows. What we do know is that s/he/they have their finger(s) on the pulse of the architectural reality of the city. I cruise to Cleveland Design City daily to see what's up with the young designers.

Here's their post on the new glass box for the west side of the square: why are we being stuck with another impersonal glass box in Cleveland?

I agree, Tim, that something needed to fill the void of what Jacobs did not build there when Ameritrust was bought by Society (now Key Bank). Would the original Kohn Pederesen Fox design have been suitable? (I have an image somewhere but cannot publish it - it's copyrighted - email me if you're curious).

Despite discussion of the "Mall site" as the best location for the MedMartConCenter, I prefer David Ellison and Mark Jackson's idea of how to complete the Burnham Mall - The Municipal Casino at Cleveland; Monte Carlo of Lake Erie; Vegas of the Great Lakes. Gamble this way, gamble that way - as long as Cleveland gets the money and the buildings are beautiful, jobs are created, people are trained and working - cottage industries, baby, cottage industries - that's the future - let's get this intergenerational learning before our ancestors are gone.

Tim,

The details are here. I mentioned it and linked to it a few months back here at realneo. Be sure to scroll down to read the text.

My point is similar to this text which you will find in the proposal, " IV. Constructed using only locally owned contracting companies and employing only qualified local tradespeople, so as to give our region's talented and experienced builders and trade unions a challenge to which they may rise and surpass their own expectations and ours; and so that the value of the funding mechanism goes directly to benefit the residents and businesses of the region through wages, taxation and the resulting expenditures in our locality."

A while back, Mary Beth Matthews suggested that we figure out how to do traditional arts centers where grandmothers and grandfathers can teach the old world crafts like lace making, crochet, culinary arts, etc. This is a worthwhile intergenerational investment. The trades are what we need in addition to innovation along fiberoptic cables - they are part of Cleveland's authenticity. When Anthony Bourdain comes to Cleveland and drools over a little sausage shop on the west side, that's part of the realneo - one we can preserve, support and bolster. I bet they pay taxes, too.

Ya ever been to a Céilidh in Cleveland or another ethnic folkdancing get together in Cleveland? Ever savor a pierogi? Have you had the pignolis from Corbos in Little Italy or Mitchell's chocolates? These are traditions that make Cleveland unique - like local geography, a distinctive built environment, local food and old world tradition from many immigrant communities. So why not teach the construction trades like stonemasonry and wood carving and ironworking so they are not forgotten?

What is it that kids are learning in schools about their region? Are they growing up in TVland where they are taught to crave the homogenized marketed crap like WalMart and The Gap, Nike, ipod or are they getting a balance of local history and learning the lessons of Cleveland, its history, its geography, its tradition. Do they know where the Cuyahoga begins? Do they know Cleveland had some amazingly talented stonemasons, woodcarvers, inventors? Do they learn about the legacies we share that are unique in the world? Maybe not. As my brother used to say, "Everything you did up to this moment got you to where you are now." It’s been an interesting journey for Cleveland so far.

What does this look like Norm? Does it in any way shape or form resemble the District of Design concept? Of all the plans for returning the region's vitality, I prefer the District of Design and the Urban Tree Farm to the Port move, Flats Eastbank, Med Con. How about you? What do you propose as an intelligent marketplace here?

It is true that artists have chutzpah and something beyond creativity that our leaders could learn from - discipline and tenacity. Here's a story - well two actually of a house fixed up by a writer and his wife in Akron. Giffels renovation in Ohio.com

Love, hard work transform home Beacon Journal's David Giffels shares family's journey of restoring Akron mansion in his new book (Giffels' story is also featured in this month's Northen Ohio Live, but not online). He'll be on WCPN 90.3 Sound of Ideas next week. He has written a book about it: All the Way Home: Building a Family in a Falling-Down House

Sound familiar, Norm and Evelyn? Sounds familiar to me. Our house was a steal when we bought it, but with a steal came the caved in ceilings, cracked foundation, chimney that housed critters and had not been swept in forever, etc. ad nauseum. How many doors and drawers visited the outside to be refinished? How many summers did we move into another room so floors could be refinished? Still, I love my house. Even if it is decorated in what my sister calls "early salvation army" and I add "early Cleveland Heights treelawn". My house is down the street from another artist writer's house - Michael Ruhlman (who will FINALLY win a Cleveland Arts Prize this year!). He too loved his house so much he wrote about it like a sort of Howard's End addition to the family.

He says, "It's also an answer to all the people who ask me why I still live in Cleveland. I never doubted the urge but I'd never explored the reason or understood the importance of living out my adult life in the place where I spent my childhood and adolescence, an increasing rarity in our vagabond culture. House: A Memoir is a love song to home, to the controversial notion of the suburb in America, to living where you grew up, to the history of this country and to the most contentious story of all, how we're using place in America."

I love the idea you presented and I hope that someone from the city is reading this exchange. I know that Bill and Harriet Gould worked long and hard to get live work space zoned in the city. I know that there are numerous homes that can be saved from demolition in the neighborhoods you mention. Sometimes in a moment of reverie, I imagine some old CMHA properties lovingly restored as artist's livework space. I love Lakeview Terrace for example and Woodhill Homes. "Lakeview, Outhwaite Homes and Woodhill Homes quickly followed the construction of Olde Cedar; all four of those properties are eligible for designation on the National Historic Register." Full of federal assistance to artists, these properties already have the art built in - it just needs to be lovingly restored.

There are others - James and Jill Levin were early pioneers in Ohio City - I remember being on their roof at many parties in the 80s. David Ellison has purchased 5 buildings in Ohio City so that he can walk to work. Cleveland could become a case study in how to gentrify a dying beast. But you're right about something else, too. All these folks should be paid big bucks to teach, talk, demo their considerable skills to our leaders. People who think the arts don't take tenacity and discipline and perseverance and knowing how to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear should visit a studio sometime or attend a rehearsal. They could look at something as simple (but discipline requiring as Liza Lou's Bead Kitchen and know that it takes discipline.

I am not sure that the district is any worse of an idea than scattering these things in a geography that is slightly less scattered than it already is. I don't know if Dana Patterson should move to Glenville for example, but there could be clusters and the district is a good place to begin a cluster if the spaces are available for folks who are not already settled where they are. We do have a district of antiques (along Lorain Avenue) which is not to say that that is the only place to find them because it is not, but it is a good cluster. Park and walk. Bike lanes and pocket parks, gardens and orchards, Lily Yeh and Grace Lee Boggs. Sounds like a sort of artist, crafts person version of mycoremedation to me. So unlike the  PD, here we can dream small (and big at the same time).  In the arts and crafts realneo, we can start where we are.