I tutored in that building - it was so lovely! 

it was situated above the park and facing streets of homes, a perfect little school.

there was so much that could have been done with it.

Rozelle school, CMSD schools, family homes within the route of the Clinic's "Opportunity Corridor" and along other designated commercial corridors slated for state and federal $$$ cash grabbing...our local heritage destroyed.

ASK--Who controls the wrecking ball?

This is not community salvation.  This is pure greed camouflaged as a "solution."  And you are paying for it.

Heed the words of the former mayor and remember...

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/02/new_mayor_gary_norton_hopes_to.html

posted by ericjbrewer

Gus Frangoes never called me. I do, however, understand Jim Rokakis' oft-handed comments.
 
I wrote him a letter in 2006 asking that he not sell anymore properties through third-party tax lien sales to GLS Capital and Plymouth Park Investments out of East Cleveland. Mayor Frank Jackson had also asked him not to sell tax liens from Cleveland.
 
I was critical of Rokakis pushing this blight-causing deal in 1999 when I hosted a radio show on WERE. I think it's absolutely horrible how he, as an elected official, pushed for a tax lien sale state law that created blight in East Cleveland by letting third party investors sit on vacant properties without cutting the grass, boarding them up, maintaining or rehabilitating them. If Steve Litt wants to write a real story, investigate Rokakis' third party tax lien sales and the impact they've had on school district budgets. He claimed it helps the schools but empty houses don't generate property taxes. Rokakis' policies have done much to decimate the East Cleveland school district's budget and that of every other community in Cuyahoga County where he's been selling tax liens to third party investors.
 
I had some blocks with 37 properties and 25 delapidated vacancies. Every year we had to divert general fund and HUD dollars from other purposes just to take care of abandoned properties. Go to Rokakis' website. He won't update the "tax lien certificate sales" information past 2006 because it will show just how his policies have devasted the county. Through 2006 it shows he sold the tax liens to 22912 properties from East Cleveland, Cleveland and other cities throughout the county. How many tax liens has Rokakis sold over the past four years? That's the number he's hiding from the public. He has refused to allow the individual tax delinquent homeowner to buy their own tax lien at up to a 30 percent discount, but he sells their tax lien to a third-party for that amount. Steve Litt. This is the real story.
 
I did not automatically buy into Rokakis' countywide landbank program because by his own rules, it doesn't help East Cleveland. Additionally, he told me in 2006 during a meeting coordinated by Jimmy Dimora, Tim Hagan and Peter Lawson Jones, that he had $250,000 in demolition funds for East Cleveland that was to be funded through monies controlled by him and Bill Mason. Mason, however, had the final authority to say yes or no. When I followed-up with Rokakis, after I shared "his" promise with council and the residents, he said Mason decided to use the funds for another purpose and I ended up with egg on my face. From then on I viewed everything he told me with skepticism.
 
It's positions llike those described above that made some view me as abrasive. Anyone who fights for poor people or a predominantly Black city that has been disrespected, used and abused by everyone is always viewed as abrasive, and so is anyone who stands up to the Plain Dealer.

 didn't we do this in the 50s under the moniker "urban renewal"?

isn't it highly criticized now?

how is what we are doing now any different?