Cleveland Development Discussions (Lorain, Ohio City: council, popular, resources)

[TheProf]

Originally Posted by WRnative

I wouldn't want to live on the lakefront due to the relative paucity of mass transit service compared to what is available in the Warehouse District and along the Euclid Ave. corridor. The Waterfront Line has limited hours of service.

Developers IMO would be wise to offer a flat-monthly fee shuttle service, Uber-like, for unlimited travel in just the downtown area. Such a service would enable residents to access the Healthline, Cleveland State, and rail rapid lines easily.

Hopefully this will change in the near term, and the Waterfront Line will return to all-day/7 days service based on a several elements. One major one is the recently announced Flats East Bank Phase 3 development which, if financing and design approvals are granted soon, developer Scott Wolstein hopes will start by this fall and finished by 2020. That would be just in time for RTA GM Joe Calabrese's recently-announced retirement. Calabrese has never been a Waterfront Line fan. Plus, not only would Phase 3 add 307 apartments and many more retail and services, like the planned upscale multi-plex theater attracting more boots to the ground in the area, that large surface parking lot in the middle of FEB will suddenly disappear with Phase 3's development which will limit parking options and force more drivers to consider the rail line as an option to accessing FEB which, even now with only Phases 1 and 2 built, is one of the hottest areas of town.

The renderings of FEB Phase 3 has its large mixed-use complex flush with the Waterfront Line tracks as they elevate over Front Ave. All these factors have me crossing my fingers that the much maligned Waterfront Line will find new life -- and extended service hours in the future, which is good news for the North Coast Harbor development... Btw we stopped by there over the hot Memorial Day weekend on a Sunday afternoon, and the harbor area was alive with tons of people going to the Rock Hall (with a live outdoor concert), catching the Goodtime III, renting paddle boats and jet skis, heading to Nuevo restaurant and just generally enjoying the area. It will only get better as development continues. I'm excited about the new apt/retail building opening in October.

Also there are still plans to develop an inter-modal transit/transportation center featuring the Waterfront Line, Greyhound, commuter buses and Amtrak just off E. 9th Street although talk of this has been quiet lately.

[RobF1129]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/with-ne...ice-1531315388

[reioh]

Originally Posted by RobF1129

https://www.wsj.com/articles/with-ne...ice-1531315388

New York Times' take
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/11/a...orary-art.html

[RobF1129]

https://www.cbre.com/research-and-re...h-America-2018

Tech talent surging in Cleveland per this CBRE report

[WRnative]

<<Accompanying that transition have been gains in the productivity level per Greater Clevelander. The region's real-capita GDP ranked the region 48th out of 382 -- two spots behind Columbus, yet ahead of Pittsburgh (55th) and Cincinnati (56th). This is up from 57th in 2001.

The same pattern is evident when looking at income. Cleveland's aggregate real personal income ranks 29th out of 382, down from 24th in 2008. Yet the region's real per-capita income rankings increased over the same time period from 35th to 29th, ahead of Cincinnati (30th), Pittsburgh (31st), and Columbus (62nd).>>

https://www.cleveland.com/opinion/in..._slipping.html

Also, population growth may not presage wage growth.

<<"Perhaps one of the silliest myths around today," begins the 2014 Forbes piece "Economic Abundance With Shrinking Population: Why Not?" "... is the notion that a shrinking overall population naturally causes or leads to economic decline."

The logic, here, is that you could shrink and grow at the same time, and conversely, you can grow and shrink.

For example, the 10 metro areas with the lowest per-capita incomes in the nation -- I'm looking at you, Sun Belt -- grew in population by more than 30 percent since 2001, double the rate of the nation.>>

Now the bad news -- the above positive statistics mask the massive income equality that has developed in the Cleveland metro.

<<Which bring us to the crux of the matter: the quality of life for Clevelanders. The economic restructuring from goods to services has come with a cost: a hollowing-out of the middle class, with the region's growing prosperity largely captured from up top. This is due to an erosion of living-wage jobs -- the result of automation and globalization -- and the bifurcation of the labor market between high- and low-end service work.

This bifurcation has been particularly painful in manufacturing-intensive regions, like Cleveland. And that pain pulses in the inner city.

The median household income for white Cleveland residents, $41,081, is third last out of the city propers of the nation's largest 40 metros, ahead of only Miami and Detroit, based on 2016 data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey. The median household income for black city residents ($20,910) ranks the city last, affirming that "black workers in the Midwest are as much victims of the postindustrial age as are white Ohio coal miners," as Tamara Winfrey-Harris wrote in a recent op-ed in The New York Times.>>

The last paragraph explains the region's low real estate prices.

Greater Cleveland has paid a huge toll for the destruction of its manufacturing base, with multiple causes but including, as I've described repeatedly, America's pathetically bad industrial policy and the imposition of the Republican Toll Road on northern Ohio and Indiana. An important factor is that U.S. doesn't participate in the global value-added tax regime, which allows our trading partners to legally (under GATT trade rules) subsidize exports with VAT rebates and slap VAT taxes on imports from the U.S.

E.g., with national healthcare, VAT revenues in Canada indirectly pay for health care costs (which are much lower in relation to GDP than in the U.S., partially due to much lower drug costs). When Canadian goods are exported to the U.S., the VAT is rebated so Canadian goods enter the U.S. carrying no expenses for healthcare.

The U.S. doesn't have a VAT, alone among all of our major economic trading partners, so the VAT rebate, the only permitted export subsidy legally permitted under GATT rules, isn't available to U.S. manufacturers.

Additionally, U.S. employers pay for heath care costs. When the VAT is assessed in Canada on imports from the U.S., the cost of U.S. goods include not only the cost of U.S. healthcare paid by employers, but also the cost of Canadian healthcare (due to the imposition of the VAT).

The VAT creates a significant disparity in the cost of goods manufactured in Canada versus goods manufactured in the U.S.

[1watertiger]

Beacon apartment tower progress.

https://static1.squarespace.com/stat...n080118_2.jpg?

[1watertiger]

More construction pictures of the Beacon apartment building under construction.

https://www.urbanohio.com/forum/inde...ach=1147;image

https://www.urbanohio.com/forum/inde...ach=1148;image

[WRnative]

<<It is not yet clear what this future acquisition means for Forest City's headquarters downtown, job loss or its long-term presence in Cleveland.>>

https://www.cleveland.com/business/i...by_brookf.html

[RobF1129]

Originally Posted by WRnative

<<It is not yet clear what this future acquisition means for Forest City's headquarters downtown, job loss or its long-term presence in Cleveland.>>

https://www.cleveland.com/business/i...by_brookf.html

Not an easy pill to swallow, but one I feel we all knew was coming one day.

The conversations being had today about NE Ohio's tech future have made me more bullish that a loss like this won't bring as much doom and gloom as it would have ten years ago.

[TheProf]

Boom, here it is!

Developer unveils a substantial mixed-use TOD proposal for Ohio City at W. 25th & Lorain across from the West Side Market and adjacent to the RTA Red Line Rapid station.

https://www.cleveland.com/business/i...r_has_gra.html