Avoiding certain areas when going from West Side to University Circle or Shaker Heights?

[TheProf]

Originally Posted by ferraris

I don't have any safety concerns riding any of the rail lines.

Shaker Square and Larchmere are definitely worth exploring.

I would probably drive to the Maltz Museum, but you could take the Green line to its terminus and then walk the Shaker Median Trail over to Richmond where the museum is.

As for walking Shaker Heights, I have no safety concerns, but what is your goal? I do recommend it if you are interested in exploring the parks and looking at the architecture around the city, but the business options in Shaker Heights itself are currently a bit lacking. The Van Aken District is still mostly a construction site. Shaker Towne Center is big, but it's just an uninspired strip mall...it's useful, but not really interesting. There's a handful of other small business districts, but nothing particularly noteworthy.

The Nature Center and Shaker Historical Museum might be worth a visit if that interests you.

--
All good points, ferraris.

Both the Nature Center and the Shaker Museum are worthwhile ventures. And even though its a bit of a hump, John Carol University is accessible from Green Line stops at Warrensville and Belvoir -- plenty of JCU students ride the Rapid downtown when school is in session.

Yes Shaker Town Center is far from glamorous (Shaker really blew it with its strip-mall reboot of Chagrin-Lee-Avalon's shopping district in the late 1980s where they really should have learned the lessons of Cleveland Heights some 70-80 years prior in building its highly successful Main Street walkable mixed-use districts that are still going strong today). However, as you note, Shaker Town Center does have many useful retail outlets that are easily accessible from the Lee Road or Avalon stations, like Heinen's, both the Shaker Library and Stephanie Tubbs-Jones Community Center, Shaker Hts. City Hall, Shaker Hardware (one of the nation's best imho), Al Nola shoes, Baskin-Robbins, Sherwin-Williams, the Ohio DMV, Gimmie Java coffee (I love the old Tudor-style Kingsbury mixed-use building catty-corner from the Lee-Van Aken Rapid station), a bunch of fast-foodish eateries, cleaners, a CVS, a plethora of beauty salons, a wine/liquor store, a couple bank branches... and a bunch of other worthwhile stuff... Even if not sexy, folks should be able to hop the Rapid to STC to get stuff done ... and they do.

In addition to the developing, sexy-looking Van Aken District, which only partially opened last month, south of there, at Farnsleigh-Chagrin, a number of interesting shops, many women-oriented, like Zuma, have opened in a pleasant little corner there. And the 15-year-old Sussex Court townhouses fill out the area nicely.

I think it's a shame RTA didn't extend the Green Line just 1.5 miles to I-271 and a "Mode Mixer" parking lot for distant freeway commuters as they had planned in the late 1980s. This also would have provided a connection to Richmond Rd (and the Maltz) as well as an easy connection to Beachwood's corporate office parks, the hotel area south of Chagrin and retail east along Chagrin (including Eton); all could have been within easy reach of a short shuttle bus ride ... Unfortunately, RTA early on in its tenure showed how cowardly and disorganized they were when the let urban populist Norm Krumholz, among others, say "boo" causing RTA to quickly shelve the project. And given the recent RTA incompetence of fraudulent pension pays and other various scandals leading to Joe Calabrese's ouster as GM (which in itself is a blessing in disguise), things haven't changed much at RTA in nearly 40 years!

[TheProf]

^... Sorry, I meant Juma, not Zuma.