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).

Last week’s election dealt a blow to incumbent mayors in inner-ring suburbs, the West End development in Lakewood, Cleveland Heights-University Heights schools and Governor Taft’s quixotic search for an end to Ohio’s economic woes.

Bruce blog attended a post-election event where a well-respected professor of Urban Studies mused openly about the future of the First Suburbs Consortium with Lakewood’s Madeline Cain and Euclid’s Paul Oyaski—two champions of the smart growth movement—being ousted.

Lakewood voters made the West End project one of the closest ballot initiatives in the city’s history (early reports of its defeat by 39 votes were followed by reports that 1000 ballots have yet to be counted). The outcome left some to wonder what sort of signal, if any, this sends to both developers and housing advocates. The local Freekly was quick to pass judgment on inner-ring suburbs such as Lakewood and Cleveland Heights offering subsidies to developers. But, isn’t that the tool they have, at least until the state levels the playing field with the far suburbs by offering an equal amount of tax revenues going into rebuilding older communities as highway building.

As CSU’s Levin College of Urban Affairs Professor Tom Bier told an audience at the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes last week, “The state enabled the freeways to be built and promoted as personal freedom. When Ohio opened Route 422 (Extension), nobody was talking about making it easier for people to leave Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights and still commute to Cleveland. They didn’t talk about how this was practically going to destroy your community. In fact, the opposite happened. The extra funds required to fix your aging home-rule communities are paid for locally.”

Meanwhile, voters sent the CH-UH school system a mixed message by failing to pass a desperately needed school levy, but ushering in Mark Phillips and Wendy Leatherberry, a reformist slate for school board. Reports came out Thursday that the levy supporters were preparing to place the issue on the ballot again in March.

The well-run, grassroots campaign for the levy couldn’t step out of the long shadow of the buyouts of former superintendents, as voters took their ire out on the schools and the 187 staff positions and programs that will now be cut. Almost 100 much-needed teachers will likely be fired as a result. Cuts will be deep, eliminating programs such as art and foreign language classes. The levy’s fate and the continuing erosion of the schools was decided in University Heights, where many residents send their children to private religious schools (a look at the racial makeup of Wiley, in University Heights, reveals that the student body is more than 70 percent African-American, most bused in from other districts).

On a positive note, the campaign to get a domestic partner registry in Cleveland Heights absolutely rocked the vote. Bruce blog spoke to campaign workers on election day and learned that the campaign received a $5000 cash infusion from an anonymous source in the final week, bringing the fundraising for the campaign to $60,000. The campaign’s leaders, Cleveland Heights couple David Caldwell and his wife and a group of organizers from the gay and lesbian community were helped out by hundreds of volunteers from Oberlin College and staff from the national Gay and Lesbian Coalition providing technical support. The campaign beat back a smear campaign, which relied on homosexual bashing, by getting the message out that the registry is revenue neutral (registrants pay a fee). Campaign organizer and Los Angeles resident Bob Blackmon said that the registry is a source of data on domestic partners, data that employers looking to confer shared health benefits can rely on. Take that, Karl Rove.

H2Ohio, a group of business and political leaders volunteering time to work on regional issues (as part of a effort known as Leadership Cleveland promulgated by Cleveland Foundation), responded last week to the growing interest in wind power. The group includes attorney Dave Nash; Green Energy Ohio board member Lisa Hong; Ken Silliman, former chief of staff under Mike White’s administration; and Ronn Richard, director of the Cleveland Foundation.

Observers believe that Silliman has the pull and knows the ins and outs of city government well enough to bring some momentum to the wind effort. With the help of sympathetic city planners, the group could tackle a land-based turbine first (such as the two 1.8 Megawatt wind turbines that went up recently at a landfill in Bowling Green). Insiders note that there would be less technical and environmental issues with land-based turbines compared to offshore. But offshore wind could be at a much higher grade, and that makes it the ultimate prize. Adding considerable fuel to the efforts: Richards has expressed interest in finding funding at Cleveland Foundation for wind power projects.

The next step could be an RFP from Cleveland Public Power to lure national and international wind power developers here; an RFP similar to what Long Island Power created. Long Island Power guaranteed that it would buy wind power and Arcadia Wind, the company that eventually won the contract, conducted a phase one study monitoring wind capacity and the ability to distribute into the grid up to 100 Megawatts of power generated from 25 to 50 turbines. That was followed by a phase two study, or site assessment, to find a potential location and study the impacts on natural ecosystems and wildlife (birds and fish populations, which wind can have a negative impact upon). Promising to be the first offshore wind farm in the country, Arcadia will own, develop, build, and maintain a bank of wind turbines six miles south of Long Island’s Jones Beach.

Locally, wind turbines have become a hot topic, particularly at the city, after the massive power failure last summer knocked out the city’s water pumping stations. Meanwhile, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which verifies the mapping for wind sites nationwide, plans to release a study next month that reportedly pinpoints an area five miles offshore of Lake Erie (heading northeast from Cleveland) that has enormous wind potential. Interested parties have met to discuss next steps including identifying a leader to usher the process through the political waters and to manage the project. The project leader will sow in Green Energy Ohio’s technical expertise, write a grant and provide hands-on management.

Right now, the lack of at least one full-time staff person devoted to making a wind power development deal is an impediment to the Northeast Ohio region having wind power. When the head of Cleveland Foundation says he’s very interested, there’s really little excuse to not get funded. The challenge is finding someone who has the stomach to make wind power a ‘transactional’ deal.

Last week, RTA submitted the documents to procure the next bunch of bike racks to be installed on buses, which will finally bring racks to RTA’s full fleet of buses. The request for competitive bids went out, and, best case scenario, the racks should be purchased and installed within four to five months. Now, bicyclists can be assured that they’ll be able to hop the bus anywhere. RTA can use this as a marketing tool, appealing to thousands of people living farther than is convenient to walk to a bus stop…speaking of opportunities for RTA, the article in the Free Times last week about the customers of Legacy Village complaining about a lack of parking raised Bruce blog’s eyebrows. RTA’s new Commuter Advantage program, where businesses offer employees an option to purchase transit passes with pre-payroll dollars (saving them a bundle on a monthly pass) might be one way to reduce the number of cars in the lot. Apparently, there are some 2,000 employees working at Beachwood mall squared.

Need more evidence that the sustainability and green building movement is coming of age in Cleveland? Green building and sustainability, or making decisions today that don’t sacrifice the quality of life of our future generations, will be front and center on December 16 at 9:30 a.m. as Cleveland City Council will hold a special hearing on how each represents a serious economic development idea and the implications for public policy.

Invited speakers include EcoCity Cleveland director David Beach; Environmental Health Watch director Stuart Greenberg; Earthday Coalition director Scott Sanders; local green building practitioner Jim LaRue; and city of Cleveland Community Development (and former EcoVillage) officer David Rowe.

Insiders are eyeing the meeting as an opportunity to ask council to take some tangible steps, such as creating a cabinet level sustainability director (similar to what Mayor Daley did in Chicago before luring away Cleveland Green Building Coalition director Sadhu Johnston to fill the spot). Beyond translating the benefits to council, the group hopes to get commitments such as making all city buildings ‘green’ and to developing city power from renewable resources such as wind and solar. Bruce blog says, spread the word and show up to the meeting, which is open to the public, and send a message to city council that green building and sustainability are a future to be embraced.