Hotel Bruce

Welcome to the Bruce blog—a weekly update on news, events and issues affecting life in Cleveland. Reporting as it happens on transit, development, planning, environment and arts & culture.

Basically, we write about creative ideas forming, talk to the people who have an inside track on the issues, and sometimes offer a commentary of our own. (For disclosure purposes, Bruce blog is a local, independent writer who also works part-time with nonprofit organization EcoCity Cleveland. The opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of EcoCity or any other organization).

In 1969, the city of Cleveland and influential Eastsiders looking to preserve the character of their community, such as attorney James Baker, derailed the Clark and Lee Highway because it threatened to plow through densely populated Kinsman and white and wealthy Shaker Heights. Ever since, the I-490 spur at E. 55th has been idling in the imagination of Ohio Department of Transportation. Now that alternatives for the Innerbelt project are being debated, ODOT is awakening the giant highway project—with a debatably less controversial route.

The Innerbelt Scoping Committee met last week and among the items that it wants to put in play are the redesign of the Central Viaduct Bridge and the University Circle Access Boulevard. The UCAB is a proposed six-lane street divided by a median, similar to Chester, that would start at I-490 and travel northeast along the Norfolk Southern rail right of way, where the RTA Red line runs, and terminate at E. 105th and Carnegie.

The committee will study how much the UCAB eases the way for thousands living in Parma, Strongsville, Avon Lake, etc. to commute to University Circle, ostensibly by taking them off of MLK and the proposed Shoreway/boulevard conversion. Innerbelt project consultants Burgess and Niple are predicting that the UCAB could handle up to 1,800 vehicles heading west and 1,600 heading east during peak hours. It’s enough to convince the committee to study costs and impacts. Already, conservative estimates show that 20-30 apartments and 20 business operations between E. 75th and E. 79th streets will have to be taken out in order to build the boulevard.

The cost to build this new highway connector will surely run in the tens of millions which, some urban planners argue, could be spent more sustainably. For example, an interesting alternative to the boulevard would be increasing downtown living in Cleveland and taking those ten thousand cars and SUVs off the highways every day. ODOT could establish a link deposit program or a revolving loan with that $100 million or similar funding for the UCAB and target it for residential development downtown. It’s the kind of idea that worked in Portland in the late ‘90s when Oregon wanted to build a new freeway and advocates redirected the process to develop land around a new commuter rail (the LUTREC).

Another strong concept to revitalize Cleveland through the billion dollar Innerbelt project is the land cap over the Innerbelt—which is basically filling in the canyon around the bridges with landfill so that it can be developed. Bruce blog recently heard Cleveland Planning Director Chris Ronayne sing the praises of a land cap. Imagine filling in the bridge where Euclid or Chester crosses I-90 at E.30th Street and creating a streetscape that has new townhomes and retail shops serving it and CSU. Better yet, just look to Columbus where they did just that—capping the highway that used to cut off the hip Short North area from downtown.

In order to build the cap over I-670, the neighborhood association directed $1.5 million in special improvement district funds and signed on private developer Continental Real Estate who spent $7 million to build Union Station Place: 26,000 square feet of new retail (see photos above) that will most likely fit in the neighborhood’s boutique mode.

"Think of it like Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy (shops on a bridge. It's cool. You should go.)," Columbus’ Other Paper writes. "Suspended over 10 lanes, a stretch of pavement that could be surrounded by storefronts and converted to a welcome mat to a unique neighborhood."

Cleveland could learn a thing or two from Columbus and maybe start inviting a couple developers, if they haven’t already, to these Innerbelt meetings.

Teachers who get ‘hip’ to their students can, if not speak at least understand their language and might be better equipped to close the achievement gap between performing and non-performing students. A group of teachers at Shaker High School held a conference last week to understand the correlation between how students perform and the connection that teachers make with their students. Underpinning it all is economics and the culture of generational poverty.

A few months ago, Shaker math teacher Allan Slawson, health educator Hubert McIntyre, English teachers Carole Kovach and Yvonne Allen, and Shaker’s head of security, Vic Ferrell, formed an ad-hoc committee, partly inspired by the work of Ruby Payne, author of A Framework for Understanding Poverty. Payne writes that most high schools and teachers in America are rooted in the middle class, and don’t relate well to kids in poverty in their system. In Shaker (and Cleveland and Cleveland Heights, Lakewood, Parma, etc.) this disconnect usually translates into "success at the top and at the middle, but everybody struggles with kids that come out of the poverty mentality," says Slawson.

Slawson teaches in the Bridges program at Shaker, which works with a majority of students who are African-American and who are often struggling academically. Besides maintaining a genuine rapport, Slawson started turning some math lessons into raps— such as 'Algebra Paradise' (a Weird Al-like play on 'Gangsta Paradise'). And his students responded by embracing him and algebra like it was the latest hit from Snoop or 50 Cent. He also tells the story of an English teacher who had his students translate Shakespeare into Hip Hop lyrics and, in the process, understand the meaning of the text.

It is this kind of thinking that attracted the attention of Dawn-Elissa Fischer, a research fellow at Harvard University and education and knowledge coordinator of The Hip Hop Archive, who was in town to interview Slawson on the same day as the conference. The Hip Hop Archive at the WEB Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard, is a clearinghouse on Hip Hop music and culture and, in January, will launch a section of the site that has lesson plans for teachers.

What appears in Shaker to be an issue of race is more a function of economic class, Slawson says, with an academic gap between wealthy white and mostly economically disadvantaged African-American students—and middle-class teachers who don’t relate socially to either group. The conference was an attempt to give teachers more of an understanding of youth culture and the environmental conditions of poverty. When questions arose over the foul language and misogyny in rap music, Fischer answered that rap is reflective of our culture’s obsession with making and spending money. Slawson adds: "I’m watching a beer commercial right now and there are scantily clad women with breasts larger than…and hip hop gets blamed, yet it’s everywhere you look.

I think there needs to be a better balance. I’m not suggesting that teachers accept that language at school, but take a different position other than saying ‘I don’t want any part of it.’ Start a discussion and engage in critical thinking and maybe kids down the road will make different decisions."

He adds that teachers should meet kids half way when they haven’t been given the tools to success. So a poverty environment is more geared to entertainment than education and holding onto relationships than socially advancing. The situation exists in Shaker, Parma, Mentor—anywhere where there are rich and poor together. "It’s important to realize that it’s not about race," Slawson says. "You find this in suburban areas. We’re teaching teachers to get together, discuss these issues and present ways of being more effective."

Reader comments to last week's Bruce blog.

Lee writes:
Nice work as always. I especially liked the bit about the creperie. BTW, I don't think that the Howe mansion is actively being considered as a site for the hostel, because…it's now being used for health services. That doesn't mean that it couldn't be converted in the future. I had the idea because it is currently in disuse and because the master plan calls for it to be a bed and breakfast.

Marlane Weslian at Slavic Village Development writes:
I enjoy reading Hotel Bruce. I just wanted to clarify a point you made in your article "Cleveland healthcare: A blue light special?" The local design review did not sign off on the Kmart conversion project without demanding better landscaping and pedestrian access as you state in your article. The local BRD approved the design with conditions. The conditions of approval listed 8 (eight) conditions that had to be addressed by the time they presented to the City Planning Commission. Since many of the issues were not addressed at the time of the City Planning hearing, the commission members rightly delayed a vote. All the local design review can comment on is the design issues before them, not the politics.

Don’t forget to mark your calendars for the hottest party this Fall—the Hotel Bruce official Web launch party—on Thursday, October 23 from 8 p.m. to Midnight. Check out the beautiful new Grog Shop (at the corner of Coventry Road and Euclid Heights Boulevard) as art jazz quartet Kassaba and local composer Chris Auerbach-Brown join local rock bands Mike Uva + Hook Boy, The Dreadful Yawns and Coffinberry, headlining a night of rockin musical entertainment. Check into the first full issue of Hotel Bruce with laptop and screen projection displays. Munch on gourmet sweets provided by Outrageous Endings and enter a raffle with some great gifts provided by Green Tomato, Renaissance Parlour, Scott Metzger Studios, Cleveland Public Theater and more. And support to a creative cause. Email for more information.