WCPN’s story on downtown Cleveland’s ongoing revival got picked up by NPR’s Morning Edition and blasted all over the nation to ears that probably aren’t as familiar with the uptick in development in the Forest City as those who live and work and play and panhandle in it.
The general gist is one you could guess: with the convention center, casino, hotels, the Flats East Bank project, E. 4th, and more and more places to eat delicious sandwiches (the most important leading economic indicator that we can think of), a flood of companies and new residents are leading the reverse migration and calling downtown home.
Click on over to listen to the report, which centers on Brand Muscle, a company that had called Beachwood its home for 11 years before deciding to relocate its headquarters downtown, and the employees there who were on waitlists for E. 4th apartments.
Cleveland: It’s a pretty good place to live.
This article appears in Jun 6-12, 2012.
It’s nice to hear cool things about our fair city….
Hey, if Detroit can revive their downtown…it can happen anywhere…as long as you open a casino or a ballpark. Build it and they will come…to piss away their moolah.
Recession? What recession? Where do all these people make their money? What kind of work do they do to be able to afford the prices at a ballgame or losing fistfuls of dollars on the slots? And who keeps the artisans going? Eighteen bucks for a piece of colored glass? Fifty bucks for a chromed bike part? WTF?
Went to my second-ever indoor ballgame last week (Miami Marlins) and it’s baseball hell. You wanted a domed stadium? Two chicken tender snacks and two sodas…thirty bucks. Ten-buck beers. Eleven for a personal-sized cheese pizza. Be careful what you wish for.
Seriously…it’s great that downtown is coming back…but the prices are ridiculous for all this newly-found “fun”…no wonder the Tribe plays to a half-empty house. Too many people in this town are still hurting badly.
But somebody must be able to afford all this bread (at the eateries) and all these circuses. Kudos to all you rich suburbanites and edgy kids with full wallets. Or do you just live on credit and say the hell with it? Play now…pay later? Or pay never? Is that your secret?
Chuckles the Clown
Anything positive about the city needs to get out on national airwaves. We can use the good publicity for a change.