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 Heights Arts Collaborative, a nonprofit group promoting Cleveland Heights as a community that’s chock-a-block with artists, continues to push art out from the confines of its gallery on Lee Road into the community at large. In the past, the group spearheaded public art projects including the peace arch at Coventry Road and a giant mural behind the Cedar-Lee movie theater.

But, this past summer, the group added real scale to its public art focus. It hosted an exhibit, “Considering Lee Road,” which examined creative visions and redevelopment projects proposed for the Cedar-Lee district. And before that well-attended event, it sponsored a design competition that aims to spruce up the sleepy commercial district at Cedar-Fairmount. The two finalists, teams led by Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative’s Steve Manka and local artist (and public art star) Don Harvey, respectively, presented their designs at the Cleveland Heights Main Library on June 13.

According to Heights Arts’ gallery director, William Busta, the competition grew out of the Cleveland Heights community visioning process, which identified arts as the glue to all other aspects of improving the community. More specifically, the competition grew out of a desire by the merchants association to improve the pedestrian environment in the Cedar-Fairmount area (indeed, Sal Russo was present as was Gus Kious, a leader of the visioning process).

The artist teams were asked to focus on the pocket park at the far southeast corner (in front of Hershey’s Ice Cream) as an important gathering space. Common elements between the two teams included treatments for light effects, improved landscaping, and new seating. Manka and local architect Michael Manne took a less-is-more approach with an open piazza, perimeter seating, dramatic lighting of building facades and trees, and a central sculptural element. The plan included an elegant, striated-rock pedestrian crosswalk and a sculpture park across the street from the pocket park, at the corner lot occupied by townhomes.

Harvey and Carol Hummel focused on lighting as well, but offered a landscaped park with undulating stone benches with colored, translucent resins between thin layers that allow light from within to shine through. The stone bench design is proposed to continue in the Fairmount Boulevard median, which Heights Arts convinced the county to extend 80 feet further into the Cedar-Fairmount intersection when they repave the street in 2005-06.The Harvey/Hummel plan centers on lighting, sidewalk treatments and landscaping, and the imaginative benches.

In the end, Heights Arts selected Harvey’s design. The team has been asked to present a budget and timeline for design development and implementation of the minipark and pedestrian island, according to Peggy Spaeth, director of Heights Arts Collaborative.

“What we like about the design is how it combines the natural environment with the formal buildings. The sandstone, a material found up along the hill, is the unifying element,” Speath said in an interview in September. Spaeth had just presented and received positive response from Cleveland Heights city council, she said.

The idea to improve Cedar-Fairmount dates to 2001 when the Fairmount Business Association commissioned Jim McKnight to draw up a district-wide plan, she added. A design charrette followed, but the drawings were shelved when the district created a special improvement district (SID).

This time, efforts should focus on design as well as implementation, Spaeth said. “After we get permission from the city, we’ll have to raise a little money for design development.” That would include public participation, but also a plan that includes a construction budget. “We’re small, but we have an active planning program.”

Bike riding never seemed so cool or cultured as with this incarnation: The Underground Railroad Bicycle Route under development in Pittsburgh. Through the efforts of University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Minority Health and a local chapter of the Adventure Cycling Association the route used by many slaves during the Civil War era to escape from the South to the North will be an interpretive ride, according to a recent story in the Pittsburgh City Paper. It will serve double duty, particularly for the African-American community, in “linking physical activity with a historic or cultural event.” Heritage rides including the Lewis and Clark Bicycle Route and the Tidewater Potomac Heritage Bicycle Route are a hot item, according to the article. It makes one wonder about the possibilities for a similar route in Cleveland, also a ‘stop’ on the Underground Railroad.

The creative class holds great appeal to Greater Cleveland’s urban planners, early adopters, and arts community. They all agree that “creatives” will administer socio-economic CPR to a drowning city...A century ago, Cleveland’s leaders didn’t think much about being cool. They thought about becoming rich and powerful...

Click to read the full article...

October 1 & 2
The 5th Annual 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE INDUSTRY FILM FESTIVAL at The Beachland Ballroom, 15711 Waterloo Rd in Cleveland. A lollapalooza of indie films, rock 'n roll music and a celebration of all things underground. Each program is a mere $7, and festivalgoers can also take advantage of a $20 festival pass.

October 1
“Spillway,” an exhibition by Zygote Press’ 2004 artist in residence (and Angle editor) Douglas Max Utter. An opening reception (free and open to all) from 6-9 p.m. at Zygote Press, 7209 St. Clair Avenue.

October 2
2nd annual Jazz at Rockefeller Greenhouse, 1-3:30 p.m. Dig the sounds of the Ernie Krivda Quintet surrounded by the lovely greenhouse and gardens (the mums are in). Lolly the Trolley tours of the Cleveland Cultural Gardens and refreshments for sale benefiting neighborhood kids. Concert is free.

October 9
Harvest gathering in Harmony Park Community Garden, 3 p.m. to dusk. Enjoy an autumn day in the garden with the Hessler community and friends. Music, performance, poetry, readings, and pondering the fate of Harmony Park, an unofficial community garden that Case recently announced plans to plow under for a new building (On the corner of Bellflower Road and Hessler Court. Performers and musicians are welcome).

Demonstrate your curatorial acumen and propose the next MOCA/Sky Lounge Exhibition! Submission deadline is October 1, 2004. Artists, curators, writers and creative individuals from Northeast Ohio are invited to submit proposals for the next Sky Lounge group exhibition opening April 15 and on view through August 14, 2005.