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Cleveland needs to hope they can regain ANY sense of dignity before they can even think about city 'pride'. When I first saw that video, I truly felt embarrassed for that city--it was hard for me to watch. I literally cringed when I heard a Cleveland city councilman sing "just tell us king, what changes we must make...we will name every street 'Lebron' if that's what it takes".
This was a joke man, set up by a local Cleveland comedian.
C'mon, you really think a song that has most recently been used to aid the recovery of an earthquake in Haiti killing 230,000 people would be used to seriously ask an athlete to stay???
Location: Cleveland bound with MPLS in the rear-view
5,509 posts, read 11,819,643 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JR_C
I do live in Youngstown, (really, in Youngstown, not just a suburb) and I wasn't born here. I'm really excited about the general direction the city is taking. Sure, we aren't seeing nearly as much development as Cleveland yet, but Cleveland is about 6x larger, and has been working on their renaissance since the early 90's. We've only been working on ours since 2004 or so.
If you don't believe me, I can start posting pictures to paint Youngstown in a different light.
I heard something about tearing down not houses, not blocks, but neighborhoods and starting new. Is it this "big" a scale, respectively?
Also, isn't there somebody called like "Youngstown John", or something like that who walks around the city with a huge rock on his back as some symbol for the struggle to keep Youngstown going? He's like Youngstown's #1 fan!
Cleveland metro has a $100 billion dollar economy.
Lebron's departure will effect, at most, $10-$20 million of that.
If you can't do the math, that's a 0.01%-0.02% decrease to the region economy.
Anything 10x that still wouldn't make a dent.
Huge underestimate.
LeBron made 20k+ people go downtown on 50+ nights a year. Sure, he's a self-absorbed douchebag with no handle on reality, but he brought paying people to Cleveland night in and night out year after year. Few Cleveland attractions can say that. He also caused a revenue boost for local sports bars, sports-based apparel stores, etc.
If he had stayed and better yet convinced another star to join him (cough Bosh cough) there's no doubt that it would have been significantly better for the city. Now the Cavs are going to go back into irrelevancy, much like the Indians, and unfortunately it will be reflected in the attendance. 20k+ people aren't going to be going downtown for games anymore. Cavs merchandise isn't going to be flying off the racks anymore. Gilbert won't be able to charge tons of money for tickets anymore. And so on.
That being said, LeBron leaving will not prevent Cleveland from making a comeback. Yes, it would've been easier with him. But it's still do-able without him.
Anyway, I think out of the poll, Cleveland is the easy choice simply because it has far more attractions than the other cities listed. Detroit comes fairly close as far as attractions, but it's also at a disadvantage already considering it's the worst big city. Cleveland, Detroit, Dayton, and even Buffalo all have pretty good chances of rebounding though. Not so sure about the other cities listed.
I heard something about tearing down not houses, not blocks, but neighborhoods and starting new. Is it this "big" a scale, respectively?
Also, isn't there somebody called like "Youngstown John", or something like that who walks around the city with a huge rock on his back as some symbol for the struggle to keep Youngstown going? He's like Youngstown's #1 fan!
You're thinking of Paul Dunleavy. Here is a good article (long!) about Youngstown that has been published recently. (and it has a picture of Mr. Dunleavy doing his thing on the first page)
OK, but even if it's $200M a year loss, that's still only 1/5 of a percent of the entire economy. That number will slowly deminish...that was just the initial blow for the first year.
But Cleveland will go on, it always does.
Investment wise, Cleveland has put in almost $1Billion in Healthcare expansion within the past year, and and almost the same amount currently under construction/breaking ground soon.
Jobs wise, Cleveland city led the NATION is manufacturing job growth from Feb-Jun 2010:
Great to see the changes in Youngstown. It seems to me that a lot of these cities have hit bottom and have really accelerated their improvements in the past few years (Cleveland as an example), even with the recession. I think the terrible double-digit percentage population losses each decade are over for most of these places (I don't know about Detroit and the rest of MI). They may continue to lose, but I doubt on the scale we've seen. Milwaukee's population grew between 2000-2009, after 4 decades of decline. Cincinnati has also, although a small amount. Cincy has a lot going for it and never was that "bad." Pittsburgh is still losing, but the city continues to have an extreme turnaround nonetheless which should help with the growth.
Another thing Cleveland may have going for it is the fact that it is halfway between NYC and Chicago. Cvd. seems like it would attract more tourists, as well, which would be vital for its recovery.
Buffalo added some jobs recently I believe with Yahoo. That's a great step in getting more high-tech jobs in the area. Also its proximity to Canada/Toronto is probably a plus too.
I don't know if it is really considered rust belt (though it relied heavily on manufacturing), but I should add that it looks like Syracuse, NY is trying to turn themselves around and it looks like they are doing a decent job.
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