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).

Breaking news: Last Friday, a jubilant Slavic Village received word that it was selected to receive a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Active Living by Design grant. The southside Cleveland neighborhood is one of 25 (out of 1000 applicants) to receive $200,000 over the next five years to enhance green space and remove some of the barriers to physical activity caused by an automobile-dominated built environment. RWJF was won over by Slavic Village Development’s (SVD) promise to leverage its investment with more than $14 million in public funds to be plowed into the area, including $8 million for two new schools and a projected $1 million for a green space project at Kingsbury Run.

SVD, a nonprofit community development corporation, hopes to study ways to build a network of safe, pedestrian-friendly streets, multipurpose trails, bike lanes and routes, public transit, green spaces and recreational opportunities. Two of the larger studies include a conversion of Kingsbury Run Valley into a natural area and bike/pedestrian connector to the Cuyahoga Valley Towpath Trail and converting the old Wheeling & Lake Erie Rail line to a bike trail for improving non-motorized access to the center of the village.

Slavic Village will also be the guinea pig in a city-wide effort to create street design guidelines that consider pedestrian safety and comfort as well as car traffic. As it is, the Ohio Department of Transportation applies a one-size-fits-all approach to street design, where state routes such as Broadway or Chagrin Boulevard are a uniform 12 feet wide. It means that streets in urban areas end up looking and treating pedestrians just like the suburbs—as an afterthought. Slavic Village would be the testing ground for ideas on making European-style streets using an approach known as ‘traffic calming’. Imagine a Slavic Village that would begin to look like a village again, with brick-paved sidewalks and crosswalks, narrower streets, bike lanes, street trees, etc. Instead of pedestrians feeling like Frogger, they’ll be able to stroll or bike comfortably to work, school, or a restaurant.

Slavic Village will seek matching funds from the feds through NOACA, which is currently considering a policy that all future transportation projects in the region must routinely accommodate bikes and pedestrians in their design. Other ideas that will get the green light include a study on Fleet Avenue for potential bike lanes, a study for crosswalks and eliminating pedestrian hazards at Broadway and Miles; and programs such as a walk to school campaign.

Last week, Cleveland City Council approved sending a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to the Port Authority that requests that the port vacate Dock 32, the marina and 35-acre property behind the Great Lakes Science Center. The city has verbally committed to retaining the land and slips as open space and park land. This memo has been a couple years in the making and follows along with the city’s lakefront plan. Possible uses could include recreation (i.e. a place to fly kites, etc.) or, as Councilman Joe Cimperman mused when he was inspired by the Gravity Games, a skate park.

At the same time that this MOU was being approved, the port initiated proceedings to have Whiskey Island vacated using eminent domain proceedings. The port wants Dan Moore and his Whiskey Island partners out so that it can have Whiskey Island as it’s central dock for longshore operations such as unloading giant piles of ore pellets. The soap opera continues as a look at those partners reveals that none other than Cleveland Tomorrow, the umbrella group representing the largest corporate interests in the city, is an equity partner with Moore. The city has been after the county to collect some $600,000 in back taxes that Moore owes the latter, but a stunning silence has surrounded the fact that Moore’s corporate partners have been spared the same spotlight. Moore, who refused to deal with the port, insisting that they never made him a fair offer for Whiskey Island, will now have to fight them in court.

Leadership Cleveland and Downtown Cleveland Partnership are working on a feasibility study to bring an international youth hostel to Cleveland—and they have some big guns looking at it. Apparently, a former Deloitte Consulting manager now working at DCP did some traveling in Europe last year, got hooked on hostelling and brought the bug back to Cleveland. When she hooked up with Joe Marinoucci at DCP, she discovered that he was part of an ad-hoc group conducting a preliminary investigation into possible sites for a hostel. The new Leadership Cleveland group, which is Cleveland Tomorrow's way of volunteering the time of high-powered executives (in this case, from the commercial real estate field) plan on spending the year working on a feasibility and market study and identifying funding sources to site the hostel in downtown Cleveland. Among the possible sites being discussed are the Steamship Mather, the B&O terminal in the Flats, and, apparently, the group received a preliminary offer from Mather House on the campus of Trinity Cathedral Commons.

The Chagrin River is the most well-endowed watershed in Northeast Ohio, thanks in part to a partnership between nearly all of the counties in the watershed to collect funds for conservation easements. Sometimes easements don't buffer and protect the watershed, though, and that can affect water quality downstream. Such is the case with Sterling Lakes. Ohio EPA has received application for, and has begun to consider whether to issue or deny, an Isolated Wetland Permit (Level 2) and a Clean Water Act Section 401 certification for a project to construct a 285 unit residential development, ironically, to be named Sterling Lakes. The application was submitted by Forest City Land Development and would impact 1.99 acres of isolated wetlands, 2.3 acres of adjacent wetlands, and 2,735 feet of streams, according to the Ohio Environmental Council. The discharges from the activity would result in degradation to, or lowering of, the water quality of the Chagrin River. Copies of the application for the certification and technical support information may be inspected at Ohio EPA/DSW, Lazarus Government Center, 122 South Front Street, Columbus, OH by first calling 614-644-2001. Applications can be made available at Ohio EPA District Offices by calling the same number. If you wish to: 1) be on Ohio EPA's interested parties mailing list for this project, 2) request a public hearing, or 3) submit written comments for Ohio EPA's consideration in reviewing the application, you should do so in writing to Ohio EPA/DSW, Attention: Permits Processing Unit, P.O. Box 1049, Columbus, OH, 43216-1049 by October 4, 2003.

Was the city of Cleveland, ODOT and their consultants Burgess and Niple serious when they recently unveiled a proposed parkway on the shore? Basically, the proposal would install a double-decker, six lane highway with fewer access points to the lake than the current Shoreway (because there would be no option for tunnels and no intersections). All in all, this parkway proposal seems like a throwback to the days of superhighways and a sop to the suburban commuter. The rumor is that ODOT brought the parkway idea forward because of concerns that traffic will be slowed down along the west Shoreway which is to be 'downgraded' into a boulevard. Critics of the parkway idea say that it doesn’t solve that issue because the speed limit is still 35 mph, and, besides, how much are developers going to like it when you remove 14 intersections and the accompanying foot and car traffic?

Bruce blog has word from a reputable source that Madstone Theaters out of New York City is pulling the plug on the Centrum Theater on Coventry Road. The news comes fast on the heels of an attempt by the three screen operation to show more mainstream, family fare after dumping its local and indie film programming a few months ago. Madstone attempted to pick up where similar small chain operator Landmark Theaters failed a few years back, leaving the Centrum darkened for a year. The source also told Bruce blog that Cleveland Cinemas owner Jon Forman attempted to negotiate a deal with the building's owner to run an art house or second run theater, but was flatly rejected. Apparently, asking patrons to walk two minutes from the Coventry Road garage is too much of a hurdle. Or is it the oversaturation of art house theaters and a poor economy. Either way, Coventry Village residents lose again.