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).

The atmosphere was charged last Friday as the seven-member Cleveland Planning Commission played referee between an upset Cleveland City Councilman Ed Rybka and an anxious developer at its bi-weekly meeting. At issue was St. Michael Hospital’s closing and a troubled proposal for a MetroHealth primary care clinic. Rybka’s ward includes Slavic Village where the drama of St. Michael is running its course, and where the MetroHealth clinic promises to be a riveting second act.

For different reasons, Marty Gelphand, senior council for Rep. Dennis Kucinich, and Rybka requested that the commission delay the vote on MetroHealth moving its primary care facility from St. Michael to an abandoned Kmart on Broadway Avenue. Gelphand was hoping for another James Brown-like comeback for the doomed St. Michael. Rybka asked to table the vote for 60 days in order to take a hard look at the final design for the site, which includes a giant 500-space parking lot and a Tops supermarket next door.

"Nothing in this plan does a thing to enhance pedestrian accessibility at that site," Rybka complained. "It’s still a sea of asphalt."

Rybka was already teed off because the developer from South Carolina managed to get the Division of Building and Housing to issue a permit two weeks ago, and was starting the project (before he put a stop to it). And Tops, which has a 15-year option to lease and expand its operations on the property, hasn't returned his calls about its plans.

Rybka and Slavic Village Development (SVD) are in the unenviable position of securing a health care facility for Slavic Village, doing it within the master plan which calls for keeping Broadway a pedestrian friendly corridor, and working with a developer and tenants who could care less about the latter. Nonetheless, SVD did not put the brakes on the local design review committee, which recently signed off on the Kmart conversion without demanding better landscaping and pedestrian access, and Rybka was the final buck. At stake is what Rybka called "a healthcare crisis"—with St. Michael closing and MetroHealth’s $6.7 million commitment to the new clinic hanging in the balance.

On top of that, Rybka revealed MetroHealth’s plans to close the nearby Clement Center at E. 79th and Woodland Avenue, and downsize its clinic at Miles and Broadway, a situation about which he and city council president Frank Jackson (whose ward will absorb the changes) have grave concerns. "The MetroHealth project is extremely important" Rybka said. "But this has made a mockery of the Business Revitalization District and the (design review) process."

In the end, the commission tabled its vote for a month and told all parties to work out the details, including getting Tops in the room. Ultimately, the commission appears poised to pass the plan (after the developer makes its concessions to improve the landscaping as best it can) since the community design review approved it and no rezoning was requested—the two major hurdles for the commission to grant approval, said chairman Anthony Coyne, have been passed.

Market 25, a retail space split into a multi-tenant micro mall on W. 25th Street (across from the West side Market) is closing its doors next month. Plagued by high vacancy and some inexplicably unappealing vendors, Market 25 failed to capture its market. "After struggling for several months with greater than expected vacancies, we have decided to close the doors and seek an exciting new tenant for the space," Ohio City Near West Development Corp., manager for the market, said in a statement. Rumor has it that OCNW was courting the Gap, but the national retailer wasn’t interested (not surprising looking at its track record for urban neighborhood shopping centers – see Shaker Square). Fingers are crossed for something cooler such as Urban Outfitters or H&M...

If you subscribe to the theory that Market 25 was a business incubator, then at least you could argue some successful spin off occurred. Denajua, who started the Creperie at Market 25, opened le Oui Oui café on Fulton Rd (near Bridge Ave.) last week. It’s all cozy dark greens inside with replica arc lamps and a painted wall mural with some very funny French animals (some of ill repute— check out the French prostitute dog and the layabout). A resident of Ohio City, Denajua returned from Paris after a stint as a performance artist with husband Didier and the desire for a café serving baguette sandwiches, crudites (mixed veggies), fondue, sweet and savory crepes including a chevre with goat cheese—and plenty of attitude, she says. Bruce blog had the pleasure over the weekend of trying the apricot crepe with chocolate sauce and some fresh brewed coffee—ooh la la! Also, check for Kimo’s Sushi restaurant, once housed in Market 25, to open right next door to the café this Fall.

The Gund Foundation continued its commitment to reversing the largest environmental issue of our times—urban sprawl—by granting EcoCity Cleveland $240,000 over two years in order to launch a statewide smart growth campaign called Greater Ohio.

The largest grant in the history of the organization will be used to hire a statewide director to run the campaign and to lobby the Ohio Assembly, such as the Subcommittee on Growth and Land Use (which is studying the effects of state spending on urban sprawl and will make recommendations later this year for policy changes).

Greater Ohio will be both a lobby and grassroots campaign to deliver support and votes to state representatives who support smart growth legislation and reform of the state budget to reflect a balance of needs. For instance, transportation spending and the issue of highway widenings in rural counties where urbanites subsidize faster commutes to the ‘burbs without equal dollars being spent on urban infrastructure (for more, read CSU Urban Studies professor Ned Hill’s report titled "Slanted Pavement"). The campaign could examine the feasibility of a county tax revenue sharing system; growth and conservation zones based on watershed asset mapping; and urban revitalization through brownfield clean up funds or historic tax credit programs.

The funding is the first step in establishing a state level advocacy campaign with satellite offices in the major metro areas that will lobby for smart growth programs. EcoCity has started laying the groundwork by convening meetings with a broad range of interest groups from around the state such as the various Home Builders Associations, Downtown Ohio, Inc., county commissioners, the catholic diocese, AFL-CIO, first suburbs consortiums, chambers of commerce and the like.

The study to establish a youth hostel in Cleveland now has a more worldy outlook. Deloitte Consulting has tasked new recruit Siddharth Lal, a recent arrival to Cleveland with an MBA from University of Indiana, to conduct basic research on factors that go into making a successful hostel (i.e., a market feasibility study) for Cleveland. A native of Calcutta, Lal and his boss are part of the Leadership Cleveland effort to conduct a year-long study on establishing a youth hostel in Cleveland. Now that the group has formed, a number of potential contenders for locating the hostel have risen to the surface. Apparently, CSU has put out feelers to see if the group might be interested in the Howe Mansion, one of the last ‘Millionaire’s Row" mansions still standing (it’s at E. 24th and Euclid Avenue next door to the CSU Bookstore). The local board of the International Youth Hostel and the Leadership Cleveland group are interested in spots like Howe or Mather House at Trinity Commons because of the potential of a hybrid student housing and seasonal hostel similar to the J. Ira and Nicki Harris Hostel, a seven-story building located on Columbia College’s campus in Chicago. The Harris hostel uses the entire structure as a hostel in the summer and two floors for hostel and the remainder for student housing in the winter. The Howe looks even more attractive when examining the CSU master plan, which calls for potentially converting it to a bed/breakfast/eatery.