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).

An item in the latest Ohio Environmental Council newsletter seeks action to protect Dike 14, the 88-acre urban wildlife area and migratory bird stopover site at Cleveland's shoreline, from the threat of additional dredge disposal. The Dike 14 Committee is asking all of the Friends of Dike 14, individuals and organizations/institutions, to urgently write letters to Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell and also send a copy of their letters to the City's Planning Director Chris Ronayne. The committee is urging people to ask the city to say no to the idea of re-opening Dike 14 to more dredgings, wet or dry.

Curiously, though, the city hasn’t said yes or no to dredging. In fact, the city has remained on the sidelines while the Dike 14 committee has criticized it for not voicing a plan for Dike 14. At the center of the issue is contaminated soil. Advocates would rather see the soil remain than scrape off the existing layer of trees and growth and remediate that way. A number of scientists have looked at the soil, though, and noted that Dike 14 in its current state of not being capped is potentially dangerous to birds, wildlife, and human visitors. The city could offer assurances that any continued dredge would be ‘clean’ dredge and at the same time offer to cap the dike to protect it in the future as a natural area and park. The Dike 14 Committee has been critical of any proposed dredging, primarily because the 88-acre landfill has regenerated with plants.

Environmental advocates are angry at Mayor Campbell for making Dike 14 the cornerstone in her 'Two Parks in Two Years' pledge and then not following through. Apparently, the City and ODNR have not applied for free assistance available from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to evaluate the remediation possibilities of the site. Meanwhile, ODNR has appropriated $1.5 million for planning on other lakefront sites. While the environmental champions don't take kindly to talk about adding more fill to "level off" the dike in anticipation of development as a park, the sooner a remediation plan is in place and a cap put on the contaminated soil, the quicker it will become a safe habitat for migrating birds and visiting Clevelanders.

Arrests following the recent protests to close The School of the America’s, where the CIA purportedly trains its assassins and death squads from around the world, include Father Ben Jiminez, associate pastor at St Augustine Catholic Church in Tremont. Father Jiminez is currently incarcerated in the Muscogee County Jail in Columbus Georgia “due to his nonviolent act of civil disobedience,” writes Tim Musser of the Inter Religious Task Force, who witnessed the arrest.

Last Sunday, Jiminez was taken into custody after scaling a 10 ft. masonry wall and then an 8 ft. cyclone fence topped with barbed wire. Mike Brady, a Jesuit brother from the Cincinnati area, also scaled the wall/fence and was arrested. Musser says that 30 out of the estimated 10,000 nonviolent protesters were arrested at the annual two-day event for trespassing onto the military base property (read more at the School of the Americas Watch Web site).

Fr. Ben is not accepting bail money, preferring to remain in jail until his federal trial date. You can write to him at the following address: Fr. Ben Jiminez—Prisoner of Conscience—Muscogee County Jail, PO Box 1338 Columbus, Ga., 31902-1338. However it may be a while until you get a response. Jail mail rules indicate that letters and cards ONLY in normal sized envelopes. And, NO envelopes nor stamps may be sent to prisoners for their use.

Property rights advocates are counting on the Ohio Assembly to pass into law a bill that will give individuals who own property on the shoreline of Lake Erie the right to control access and to build on what is currently public land. The stretch of public lands that runs hundreds of miles from Cleveland to Sandusky to Ashtabula is up for grabs. The latest House Bill 218 will strip control over the Lake Erie shoreline away from the State of Ohio and deliver it to private property owners. The Ohio House Energy & Environment Committee will meet this week and begin hearing testimony on the bill.

The law will revise rules governing Lake Erie coastal erosion
areas and make other changes to the law governing coastal management and the control of erosion along Lake Erie. In harm's way are hundreds of miles of shoreline and thousands of acres of coastal wetlands and submerged lake lands that the State holds in trust for the people of Ohio (through a doctrine known as Public Trust, all states have the right and obligation to protect the land at and below the high water mark of bodies of water for everyone.).

The Sustainable Ohio Action Partnership (SOAP), a state-wide environmental activist network, is advocating for the defeat of House Bill 218. To join the opposition to the bill, click here and send a letter to state lawmakers.

Not everyone around town thinks Cleveland is Negativeland. “I was dismayed to see the negative thinking reflected in Cool Cleveland's summary of Ohio's economic development climate (‘Ohio Sucks at Development…’ Cool Cleveland, Nov. 19),” Don Iannone writes in the NEO Community Economic Development Connection newsletter.

“I would be the first to say that Ohio, and Northeast Ohio as well, have considerable work to do in strengthening their economic development efforts. I will also say without hesitation that the job ain't easy folks, especially with the economy we have to work with.

The truth is that the CfED state economic climate index is a simplistic and imperfect tool that tries to assess the incredibly complex state economy and economic development system that exist in Ohio and other states (The Corporation for Enterprise Development gave Ohio a "D" ranking, down from a "C" last year). It is also very much a PR tool, and unfortunately the news media gives too much credence to it. States getting good scores promote their achievements, and states with low scores either ignore the scores or challenge their validity.

If I had to cite one shortcoming that Ohioans and Greater Clevelanders need to work on to advance their economic development in the future, it would be our negative self-image and our propensity to criticize ourselves and others. ‘Cool’ to me is doing something with what you have in life. Use the talents and resources you have to create something new and better.
We also need to appreciate what works. A lot is working in Ohio and NE Ohio. I look to David Cooperrider at Case Western Reserve University for some insights about how we can do a better job of appreciating the "art" of economic development.

Cooperrider, a management professor at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case, has an intriguing approach to looking at and promoting change in organizations. He says, ‘focus on what is already working.’ His new model is called Appreciative Inquiry, and I think we could use a big dose of it in NEO economic development. In a nutshell, we are doing some things right!

According to Cooperrider, appreciative inquiry employs the following 4-D cycle to accelerate change within an organization:

Discovery: This is the appreciating stage, in which the inquiry focuses on asking: What gives life? and What creates the best of what is within the organization?

Dream: This stage focuses on envisioning results in the organization and asking, What might be? and What is the world calling for?

Design: In the co-constructing stage, the inquiry deals with What should be? and What is the ideal for the organization's future.

Destiny: This is the sustaining stage, during which questions pertain to how should the organization empower, learn, and adjust/improvise?
I think our future visioning and strategic planning for NEO economic development should give voice to these four vital questions. It certainly beats taking pot shots at our economy and our economic development leaders.