Cleveland Development Discussions (Lakewood, Euclid, Rocky River: tourism, interest, access)

[bjimmy24]

Originally Posted by ferraris

I'm so glad to hear this. One of my biggest complaints with Cleveland is the sprawl, especially the job sprawl. I'm unlikely to ever work at SW, but I hope they are a trendsetter in bringing/keeping jobs downtown.

It's crazy how many jobs there are that I consider outside of my potential commuting range despite living spitting distance from the city limits of Cleveland.

I agree, it can def be difficult to organize a commute on public transit if you're not downtown or university circle. However I'm not totally sure how unique that problem is. But would love to see more jobs downtown.


I will say that the extreme is also no good vice versa. In boston there are way too many companies located downtown or kendall square. The result is crippling traffic, unpleasantly crowded transit, frequent delays, etc. It was really bad and part of the reason I had run out of patience there. Spreading the jobs out is bit out there would be great. This is not Clevelands issue at all, but I guess just know that other places arent totally fantastic to commute in either, even if you love on a train line with no transfers.

[1watertiger]

Progress on the Playhouse Square Lumen apartment tower. ( pic from urban Ohio)
https://forum.urbanohio.com/uploads/...e35b86515.jpeg

[TheProf]

Originally Posted by ferraris

I'm so glad to hear this. One of my biggest complaints with Cleveland is the sprawl, especially the job sprawl. I'm unlikely to ever work at SW, but I hope they are a trendsetter in bringing/keeping jobs downtown.

It's crazy how many jobs there are that I consider outside of my potential commuting range despite living spitting distance from the city limits of Cleveland.

A lot of this can be traced to Albert S. Porter, the infamous county engineer most noted for killing the planned subway loop off the (then) new CTS (today RTA Red Line) rapid transit in the late 1950s. He's also (in)famous for trying to put a freeway through the Shaker Lakes and Shaker Square/Larchmere area. Fortunately he lost on that one.

But Porter went way beyond subway killing, he encouraged killing downtown saying people preferred new shopping centers/malls out in the suburbs while downtown should be given over to cheap 5-and-10 type stores. He felt downtown, going downtown and rail transit were "old fashioned" and that cars, freeways and suburban living, ugly, faceless office "campuses" and strip and mall shopping, was where Cleveland (and America) needed to be heading...

Cleveland, though making a worthy concerted comeback, esp downtown and in certain "hot" urban areas like Ohio City and University Circle, still is suffering Porter's onslaught, esp in terms of downtown retail, which barely exists. Not only does downtown have no major department (or dept-type store like, say Target), there's an absent of even trendy specialty stores like H&M or Old Navy, let alone a trendy/upscale ones like J. Crew. You must go into the suburbs for these and the few big box retailing are in traditional ugly asphalt strip centers like Steelyard or along W. 117th Street adjacent to/north of I-90 West ... of course.

Eaton's move from downtown to Beachwood/Highland Hills in the early 2000s was particularly ugly and, it turns out, very unpopular with workers -- to the extent, some young execs left the company because of it (good for them imho)... Hopefully Sherwin-Williams' decision to buck this horrible trend and consolidate with a new, massive downtown HQ will reverse Porterism for good, hopefully. But perhaps the biggest factor nowadays in reversing it is better regional cooperation from our local leaders ... something that's been seriously lacking for a long time much to Cleveland's peril.

[TheProf]

^I'm really hoping Sherwin-Williams buildings on the Jacobs/Weston Public Square site. There are so many win-wins with this location, not the least of which will be finally, after 3 decades, ridding our downtown core of that ugly "hole" adjacent to the City's living room. Add to this the vibrancy having some 3,000 people in the downtown core as well as having the new HQ being transit friendly right at the hub of RTA's rail/bus network.

[ferraris]

I found this Job Sprawl Study interesting (warning, it's a PDF). It shows the percentage of jobs within X miles of the CBD.

Metro Cleveland
3-mile share 15.34%
10-mile share 56.25%
>10-mile share 43.75%

The use of 3 miles as the cutoff is unfortunate in Cleveland's case as I think it just misses University Circle.

Overall it looks like we are sort of middle of the pack nationally, which isn't saying much since the US is a pretty sprawling auto-centric country on the whole.

Also the data is stale, being from 2001

[Kamms]

Originally Posted by TheProf

^I'm really hoping Sherwin-Williams buildings on the Jacobs/Weston Public Square site. There are so many win-wins with this location, not the least of which will be finally, after 3 decades, ridding our downtown core of that ugly "hole" adjacent to the City's living room. Add to this the vibrancy having some 3,000 people in the downtown core as well as having the new HQ being transit friendly right at the hub of RTA's rail/bus network.

Pretty sure SW already has about 3,300 workers downtown.

Consolidating in a new downtown HQ will bring a total of about 6,000 workers in the CBD. Employees from the area and transfers from MSP are the additional 2,700. This isn't including future workforce expansions.

Hopefully the relocated and new hire SW employees will use RTA.

[1watertiger]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cle...outputType=amp

[TheProf]

Build Something!!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7LkvN332UA

[TheProf]

... meanwhile, over on the Atlanta board: https://www.city-data.com/forum/atlan...l#post56427041

[1watertiger]

Originally Posted by TheProf

... meanwhile, over on the Atlanta board: https://www.city-data.com/forum/atlan...l#post56427041

They are not leaving Cleveland.