Remember how much worse it could be

[BostonUrbEx]

Originally Posted by czsz

Reviving this thread with a look at a far worse fate for a department store than the still glimmering-with-some-hope Filene's hole:

http://www.cleveland.com/business/in...s_eye_par.html

The comments section gives me hope that sane heads are out there.

[Beton Brut]

The Horseshoe Casino Cleveland is set to open May 14 in the Higbee Building, on Public Square. The casino's developers are building a valet-parking operation off Prospect Avenue, just south of the May Co. building, and bought a nearby garage from the city last year.

Plans for the May Co. project show 734 parking spaces on floors two through five of the building. The windows might be removed to provide ventilation, and steel guardrails would be placed on each floor, behind the white terra-cotta facade.

Casino parking -- brilliant!

If this is historic preservation, give me a box matches and a can of gas.

[czsz]

Threat neutralized, thank god:

http://www.cleveland.com/business/in...ng_commis.html

[itchy]

Ugh, it is sad to see Cleveland jumping on such a miserable idea. I was there a year and a half ago for a few weeks for work, and it has a surprisingly nice set of Beaux-Arts buildings in its small downtown, grandly built in the late 19th century, when Cleveland was the country's fourth-largest, and fastest-growing, city.

Unfortunately, like Boston in the 50s-80s, it jumps on every bad idea that comes its way provided there's a monorail-esque "jobs! jobs! jobs!" pitch behind it. Hence the awkward lakefront jumble of the Browns stadium, the R'n'R Hall of Fame, and the nearby Key Bank building. Now they want to "complete" the Burnham-designed Mall, which is otherwise flanked with Beaux-Arts museums and civic buildings, with a Modernist "Medical Mart" convention center (at least that's what it seems to be). And of course, there's the casino. You can't help but think that if the city would think a bit smaller and try to encourage entrepreneurs to move into the older, historic buildings and build more infill (as opposed to huge-scale jalopies sold as economic nostrums), it would do a better job attracting high-skilled/educated residents, and thus creating viable economic growth.


As for Atlanta (which I realize is an old topic on this thread, but I'm just now seeing it), I was there for the first time this summer and found it -- cringe -- nicer than I expected. The downtown proper is as bad as those pictures suggest, but it is really limited to one street going for about 10 blocks. The immediate surroundings are a mixed bag with some great old buildings and some horrendous Modernist ones, and the interstates cut into it all.

However, the neighborhoods a bit farther afield -- which are the most desirable areas and are also seeing most of the city's present-day commercial development, downtown apparently having been written off as too beastly -- are surprisingly nice. There's a large, Brookline-esque area with parkways designed by Olmstead, and a few other areas that I didn't have time to get to but are apparently densely built and hipsterifying along the lines of Brownstone Brooklyn.

Other than the downtown, the other big disappointment in Atlanta is the area around MLK's neighborhood. What has great potential to be a thriving (if touristy) area with much of its densely built, 100-year-old architecture still in place is instead a downtrodden, inactive dump. The NPS didn't help when they built a bunkeresque "National Historic Site" to King after he died -- across the street from the Ebeneezer Baptist Church and surrounded on all other sides by parking lots. I was shocked that no one seems to have recognized the area's potential to draw tourists or, given its solid urban bones, residents, with most of the local stores either being boarded up, bodegas, check-cashing joints, or wig shops.

[Hutchison]

Having lived in Cleveland from '08-'11 I can attest to the city's terrible grasping at any and every urban renewal idea tossed out there. From the poorly engineered and implemented BRT (no traffic engineer = same transit time as normal bus), to the bungling "Medical mart" with no tenants lined up, Cleveland is in sad shape. If you want to talk about sad megablock development you need only look at some photos of the cleveland clinic.

The worst part of the proposed parking conversion? Downtown Cleveland is absolutely littered with surface parking lots and converted parking buildings. I don't think I ever had to pay more than $12 for a full day of parking anywhere, even near the stadiums. Tough to see how those rates justify such a conversion.