So someone has been listening to my prayers at night because in the last few months some major players have stepped up with some game changing projects in Downtown Cleveland. Not just rehabbing an old bank into apartments with a Subway or Domino's on the 1st floor... OH NO!... Like when you're driving into town from Stark county for the 3rd freaking night in a row on your vacation at 11:30 pm and noticing that the skyline is different from Independence--game changing.
So we in Cleveland, like most mid-range cities in the Midwest, have a handful of buildings that you can throw on a skyline silhouette t-shirt that make up our architectural identity as a city. Our skyscrapers are the go to icons for the longest wiener contest that cities have when it comes to who's better. I'm not saying it isn't a good measuring stick for our status in this here U.S. of A. but in the whole scheme of things... well sometimes you want a Space Needle or Gateway Arch to distinguish you from the rest of the similar sized towns who are all doing the exact same thing to try to "revitalize" their downtown areas...THE. EXACT. SAME. THINGS. Sure we have the Rock Hall's pyramid and record player overhead view but in all reality... you can't see it from 77 or 480 or 71 or any of the other highways that carve this city up. I mean Clevelanders know the best spots to get a great skyline view but most travelers get the highway view of the city while driving by and it's kinda... well... ehh at best. Sure we have 3 of the top 4 tallest buildings in a state where the suburbs crush downtowns so it's like being the smartest 17 year old in 3rd grade...but it's something! Truthfully we have a bunch of buildings that used to be impressive before corruption, racism, highways, NAFTA, and poor state planning halted any progress taller than 3 stories in this state for about 40 years. Now we have a drug store on every corner of our sprawling suburban utopias while places like New York and Chicago have torn down Key Towers to build even bigger buildings without thinking twice about it. Well finally we're starting to see progress down the long road towards correcting that...
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Let's start with Nucleus... or nuCLEus! (I know I've written about it already but I tie it all up at the end with a nice little bow.) Either way you spell it, it's set to become the 5th tallest building in the state when it's completed. It's going to have it all -- condos, apartments, parking, a hotel, commercial, and the "uh duh" award for continuing the East 4th street retail and restaurants all the way to the Q. Yup, take that 1 block that everyone goes to and continue it another block. Freaking genius! Anyways, it has everything built right in and is mixed use so it's flexible for changing times. Plus it looks like you were bored playing Jenga and added some Legos! Not only is it's height a much welcomed skyline addition but it's unique look is exactly what this city needs... new and different!
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We have a sh!t load of history. Hell we've covered up and demolished more history than most cities had in their heyday. Let's get some "new" in here. You can only charge big bucks to live in a concrete coffin for so long before people get tired of blindfolding their friends until the get to their apartment door so they don't actually see how ugly the 9 is from the outside. I'd live in the stairwell of this building just to be able to point to it and say "I live right there!... but we should go to your place to do this because mine is being fumigated and definitely not a stairwell." I only need to tell most people that once for a myriad of reasons. Anywho, it's in a high visibility area with a ton of foot traffic so even past being a new part of the skyline, it'll be right there between dinner at E 4th and the Cavs or Indians game for everyone including out-of-towner's to gawk at.
The other big project that I'd like to point out isn't necessarily going to add to our skyline (maybe in some places) but is going to fix another issue that this city has had for decades... that pile of sh!t that's to the northwest of Public Square!!! The sea of surface parking lots that sits as a scar from when life beat the hell out of us is finally going away! This really needed to happen before any other project that's going on in this city as it is a terrible eyesore that goes on for blocks and is clearly visible from the ceremonial center of our city. It's like having a whole sections of stands removed from our baseball field because we can't sell out games anymore... oh wait. Either/or I say hallelujah to the fact that someone has finally stepped up to take on this project!
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I'll call it the God-send project for now but this little beauty could be a freaking Mega-Walmart for all I care as long as it isn't surface parking. That being said it's way more beautiful than a Walmart and goes from sidewalk to sidewalk like a good urban project should. There's lots of glass and street front commercial spaces. There are weird shaped towers but nothing as tall or Jenga-like as nuCLEus. I can only imagine that if you're building something on a city's "Public Square" you can't get too crazy in the old architectural department. It's again mixed use so it's looking to provide different types of amenities to it's future residents and the current downtown residents and is flexible depending on what the demand calls for. Sure you can bring some restaurants and laundry to the table but usually these large mixed use projects fill a big need like a grocery store or a public relaxation area or a headquarters full of jobs. We'll see what comes along with the apartments and restaurants when we're given more details but in my eyes there's no need to oversell what is already a blessing.
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| It's shiny, new, and isn't a surface parking lot on our public square. |
The Cleveland Browns fan in me says that something's going to happen and one or both of these are never going to get built. It's too much and there are too many forces (financial, regulatory, governmental, fate, whatever) working against it. I have to think that, if it was easy to do, it would have been done already. Can we really keep this momentum moving forward? I guess to get the answer to that you have to not only look at these big projects but at the small ones as well. Downgrading highways to pedestrian friendly boulevards that don't act as walls between us and the Lake Erie shore. Adding bike lanes to once dangerously busy streets. Seeing small businesses open up. Watching new apartment conversions fill up before they open. Seeing people on the streets. There's something different this time around. It's not just a few stadiums and a business tower. It's grass roots and it has some good people leading the way. This just might...just might happen.
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