Thursday, March 16, 2006

Cleveland's Future

A couple of years ago, I met with a Medina developer, who had some interest in Tremont. An older guy, he was giving me his history and casually mentioned that he was originally from Cleveland, but then made his mark developing Parma. "Had to move my family from there," he said with no sense of irony; "Parma was just getting way overbuilt."

The weekend before, I had visited Medina's historic town square. While I marvelled at the intact architecture and the strong merchant base, I was dismayed by the tract homes and strip malls that were sprawling over the formerly pristine meadows and farms surrounding the town. How long before this developer leaves Medina for greener pastures, I wondered.

And so it is with American cities. They spring up, grow up and out, and sometime in late middle age, they get flabby, tired and undesirable. And home builders and buyers move out to the edges, until the center begins to show signs of collapse.

Someone recently noted, that as Americans, we tend to view this cycle of development and decline as inevitable. The urban core is expected to fall apart, as growth migrates to the edges. I remember the statement, "Americans like to build things, but, once built, they have little interest in maintaining them."

American visitors to Europe will see that the old, central cities are generally where the action is. The recent 'cartoon' riots in France happened not in the center, but in the suburbs of Paris.

Of course, there is a counter force - renovators, investors, historic preservationists. In Cleveland, there is much vitality in Tremont, which is thriving, along with such downtown areas as the Warehouse District, and pockets throughout the city and the inner ring suburbs. But is it enough?

Sometimes I have this vision of a perfect apple sitting in a bowl by the sun - then one day you notice a small dark spot. That apple's still good, you think. But a day or two later, there's a big rotten spot on the apple, and you pitch it.

But a city can regenerate itself, unlike an apple.

I can't tell what Cleveland's fate is. I feel an increasing pessimism in our town. The feeling abated briefly in the late '90s, but with 9/11, three years of war, and the steady loss of jobs and population from Cuyahoga County, optimism takes effort.

Since returning to Cleveland in 1986, I have: watched the rise and fall of the Flats and the emergence of the Warehouse District; the renovation, grand opening and then steady decline of the Terminal Tower/Tower City complex, and a related scenario for the Galleria; I have seen the rise of the Cleveland Indians and the fall of the stock of Gateway and Jacobs Field; I have witnessed the triumph of Tremont, one of the best little urban neighborhoods in the country (but one that is always threatened by the loss of community unity, security, or 'trendiness'); I have seen people come and go, enter optimistic and leave with bitterness for jobs and lives in other cities; I have seen kids on my street go from bright, charming 7 year olds to hardened drug addicts and criminals.

One day last summer, with a weeks-old baby at home (our first), I flipped out over the sound of a booming bass line reverbrating through our walls. From our porch I could see that it came from an old red Toyota - souped up but still rusty. I approached the owner, a young kid, and said: look, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to ask you to turn that down - I've got a baby in the house (and yes I did feel like a middle-aged white guy). He turned to me a second, eyes hard, and then he held out his hand, and said: that's cool, no problem, I appreciate you talking to me man to man. I saw him in that second, decide who he was. One of many times he will do that in a lifetime.

One thing I was but am trying to overcome: being an idealist. And this is in the sense that I think that everyone should think like me, that people ought to behave how I want them to be, that there is a just God and that the good will prevail and the evil perish.

No - I know that "no good deed goes unpunished;" that justice is weak and not always blind, and that religion and patriotism are the tools of many ambitious scoundrels.

But still -

The other day, I stopped into a chain drug store to pick up some cold medicine. In the midst of Near West Side south of Clark dreariness, the chain exudes a sense of order and cleanliness. I walked to the counter, which was empty. The clerk, who was stocking shelves, said, I'm so sorry, I will be right with you. As he approached, I saw - it's the boom box kid. He recognized me too - we both smiled. "How you doing?" We shook hands. "How's the job, how's the family?" He looked good, with his tie on and hair cut, even the dorky store uniform with his name on it. I told him so.

Who knows if this kid will last on this job. Who knows if he will work hard, get promoted, and go to school. I imagined him rising to manager, then going on to college - maybe law school. Maybe not.

But whatever the outcome, this kid has transformed himself. Maybe for a while, maybe forever. Who knows. And perhaps Cleveland can, too.

But it won't be easy.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

On Blogging

It feels funny, to say “I have a blog” or “I’m blogging.” I’m not sure why. Is it because it’s such an ugly word? It sounds a bit more downscale than “I’m writing” or “I’m journaling.” On the other hand, it carries much less cultural baggage than either of those terms. It has kind of a macho, dumb swagger to it.

I first heard the term in regards to Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton. Their rendezvous was first revealed in the aptly named Drudge Report, an online blog. At the time, commentators carefully informed their listeners that a blog was a combination of “web” and “log” and was a type of online journal. I didn’t pay much attention; my computer skills at the time were sparse.

Much later, and somewhat more computer literate (or at least able to Google), I came across Callahan’s Cleveland, Brewed Fresh Daily, and our own Tremonter. Curious, I eventually decided to try a blog myself.

Fascinatingly, and perhaps, appallingly, people find it. “Hey, I read your blog!” someone will yell to me across a bar or a counter. At times it’s someone I don’t know. On one occasion, a posting about what I perceived as city inaction got a call from a department head. “There’s this ‘blog,’” he said, as if he was saying something useful but slightly disreputable, like ‘underwear.’ Which I suppose blogging is.

People have lost jobs over blogs - famously, a Washington intern who posted online accounts of her sexual exploits. I won’t do that here.

Mostly, I am writing about issues of community development, but this also secretly lets me be something I have always secretly wanted to be – a writer.

I come from a family of writers. My mother, an English major, wrote her own children’s poems. My favorite is:

“There once was a wise old wizard,
Who raised his wand for a blizzard.
It galed and it blowed, it hailed and it snowed;
And he froze – nose, toes and gizzard.”

Later, in the midst of the stresses of raising three kids in a somewhat dysfunctional family (whose isn’t), my mother would cover reams of yellow legal pads with confessional discourse – mostly diatribes about car-pooling and other drudgeries of family life (I peeked). Eventually she channeled this energy into divorce and then law school. My sister responded by locking herself in her room and writing poetry. She currenlty teaches creative writing, and is a published poet. My brother, the youngest, also became a writer, publishing a book of war reportage to much acclaim (“Generation Kill”). My father will write an essay about George Bernard Shaw at the drop of a hat, and send it on to everyone who might possibly read it.

Alone among my family, I was the non-writer.

Oh, I mean, I wrote, but not for an audience. Or even, much, for myself. My only contribution to a journal had been a sentence fragment that my mother forced me to write when caught in the act of egging a rival’s house (I was twelve, and it was my friend’s idea, I swear). “Last night, Robbie and me…” was as far as I got.

I have always felt self-conscious about writing – it felt pompous to try to write anything beyond a letter or text for a newsletter. I mean, who cares what I think?

But using email loosened me up. I started to use it for work and for personal communication, and writing began to feel more natural.

But a blog is something else. It is public.

With all the concerns about privacy today, perhaps someday I will have reason to regret something I have written. I hope not. What I am writing about is my personal reaction to events in my community, in which I live and work. My main concerns are local, my street and neighborhood, my family and the city we live in.

There are people who think the online communities that arise from blogging and sites like My Space will transform society. Perhaps the social networks that arise will make us better citizens, but who knows. At any rate, it's certainly different from when I was a kid and everyone was fretting that "no one writes anymore." Plenty of people are writing now.

My only fear is this: somewhere deep in a bunker in an undisclosed location, Dick Cheney will come across my blog, and with a shotgun atop his jittering knees, the word “Li-Ber-Al” will form on lips. And like the hapless, wingless quail placed in his path for the thrill of destruction, I fear I will make an easy target. But at least I've had my say.

Friday, March 03, 2006

Walter's Work Day

Over the past couple of months, I have taken a bit of time from my schedule to act as a 'volunteer' at local restaurants, retail and services. That's the plan anyway. In fact, due to a family bout of seasonal illness, I have only been to three so far - Take A Bite, Studio 11, and Sweet Mosaic at Lucky's Cafe.

The idea is to spend some time with our merchants, elbow to elbow so to speak - and literally. Washing dishes, mixing ingredients, and serving custormers, all part of the daily work of Tremont.

It's been fun. The merchants are proud of what they do, and are pleased to share it with me, an outsider of sorts. Although I have organized merchant meetings, assisted with events like Taste of Tremont, and gone to bat for merchants when it comes to a zoning or design review, I am still on the other side of the counter. Like walking out of the audience and onto the stage mid-performance, it's a bit of a weird experience. By exchanging my typical role of either consumer or quasi-bureaucrat for that of merchant, I gain an entirely new understanding of their process and experience.

By and large, they have fun. These are entrepreneurial folk who are not afraid of hard work, but after all, they are in it because it's not like working for a large corporation. Clothing, attitudes and humor may be casual, but there is a strict sense of professionalism and a pride in doing things right.

What worries me is that the experience of being a small-scale entrepreneur is challenged in our country - due to big forces like globalism, corporate consolidation and the rise of the automobile as the almost exclusive mode of travel for shopping, local retail has lost pharmacy, hardware and even bookstores. So what remains is specialty retail in Tremont, like boutique shopping, unique dining, and art galleries.

These are all high-risk enterprises. Only recently have banks, lenders and the government come to understand their value.

We'd better hope they do, otherwise, 'Welcome to Walmart' may be the only chance we have to express our individuality - not.

Big box retail has it's place, I suppose, although I still believe we have lost more than we have gained. But that's debatable. Even Andrew Young, champion of the poor, has come to sing the praises of big box. I can't dismiss his claims.

In the meanwhile, you can read about my experiences with local retailers here, in 'Take a Bite of Tremont,' 'Yoga Happy Hour,' and 'Sweet & Lucky.'

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Odds & Ends

On the street where I live, there had been some effort to fix up a couple of properties that had fallen into disrepair - one a foreclosure, the other a vacant property whose previous tenants had trashed it, and a third rental unit that had changed hands recently.

Unfortunately, whoever was doing the work on these properties neglected to remove construction debris - they just left them on the treelawn. At first, scavengers took the best of the lot - wooden planks, a set of porch steps, and other useable items soon disappeared. But what was left behind - tree branches, pressboard scraps, rotten wood, toilet tank fragments, garbage - sat there, sloughing off into the street, with loose stuff blowing around. Unbagged, unbundled and unheeded, these piles of trash sat in front of three properties for four months.

At first, I assumed that the sanitation workers had removed what scavengers had left behind. And soon, snow covered them up - for a while. A January thaw revealed that the issue was unresolved. So, I did the following:

Called the City of Cleveland's Building and Housing Department, code division.
Called the City of Cleveland Health Department, complaints division.
Called the new councilman.

The next day, the councilman called me back and confirmed that the complaint had been made with Building and Housing. So far so good.

Then - nothing. The trash was covered with snow and then revealed with the thaw. I sort of stewed about it. My wife and I talked about moving (again). My mother-in-law suggested that we hold my daughter's first birthday in another neighborhood - somewhere nice.

Finally, I decided to just get rid of it. I asked a coworker if I could borrow his truck, and another coworker if she could pitch in. We would haul it to the dump - something a Cleveland resident can do four times a year.

Before the designated day, I called the code inspector. Had she done anything?

Well, she said, she had put a notice on the door, asking them to call her back. And had they called her back? No. Of course, it's a vacant house. Well, she said, I might send them a warning. Great. You could clean it up yourself and put a Mechanic's Lien on it, she suggested. Even the city can do that.

Uh...great.

So - Michelle and I loaded up the truck and took it all to the dump. Between the three properties, it was quite a load.

I know there are more pressing items in the city. I know I should have followed up with the inspector, instead of just trusting that the process would work. Whatever that process is. I could have done more.

Driving to the dump, up Denison from W. 25th Street, I had time to think about the so-called 'Broken Windows' theory. Basically, it states that you fix the little things, like broken windows, then the bigger things, like crime and disinvestment, will take care of themselves. It had been a highly cited theory when I first got into community development and was credited with many improvements in urban policy and even community policing. In fact, newly-elected Mayor Jackson had just referred to it in his recent speech. But Denison from W. 25th St. to Ridge is a jumble of trash-strewn vacant lots, empty storefronts, and deteriorating Cleveland Doubles and once-grand Victorians. There are a lot of broken windows to fix.

On my street today are several homes with broken windows. Some vacant, some occupied, some boarded up. Trash tends to collect around them. Kids loiter. They smash stuff that's left behind, and garbage is their plaything.

It's not like we lack for resources. Grand houses remain. Young people have moved into the neighborhood and are working on rehabs, gardens, community events. The new councilman grew up near here, a community development board member lives next door, there's a church at the end of the street, one a block away, and another on the corner. The police station is a half mile away, fire station up the street, a major hospital anchors the neighborhood, the block club meets regularly.

I'm a booster for the city and I've worked hard on it, and I've put my money where my mouth is by buying property in the city and living in it - no tax abatement for me. I'm not alone in this. But if all our work comes to nothing it will be because we neglected the small things.