Milan of the Midwest vs. Millions for land; no new jobs for city

I don't honestly know where to begin. Last Tuesday I was at the Stark lecture/forum at CSU and got all excited about the city and what direction it was wanting to take. I didn't want to disseminate Stark's forum yet because I was mulling it over like a fine wine. I love the idea of his vision for the warehouse district, however, this is the person that brought up Crocker Park which I find one of the most vile places on the face of the planet outside of Wal/K mart. Anyways, Mr. Stark got me all riled up in a good way.

Fast forward to Sunday when I opened the Plain Dealer and first read an article about how it appears that the city was hoodwinked (HOODWINKED I say) and that neighborhood around E 80th and Kinsman was getting the short end once again. You can read all about it here, I fear my attempt at a proper summation would do little justice to the amount of disgust and betrayal that I felt.

I know, it is all politics. Whatever. When I hear or read stuff like this all I can think in is four letter words. I feel bad for Mayor Jackson for going along with this mess. I feel bad for Belinda Pesti for the most awful quote I have ever read:

"Pesti was the city's point person tracking the use of public dollars on the Kinbess project. But the economic development veteran said she was not told that CMHA and Kinbess had signed a purchase agreement, and was not included in crafting Jackson's legislation facilitating the sale to CMHA.

Pesti gasped when told during the interview that Kinbess sold the land for $150,000 an acre. "I didn't know how much they asked for that," she said. When asked how it was in the public interest for Kinbess to sell the land to CMHA, she responded: "I don't have an answer for you."

I mostly feel bad for the people of Cleveland who's tax money went toward remediating a brownfield site in the hopes of creating a developed retail/office park to create local jobs and instead paid a grossly exaggerated price for a no-bid development that will relocate existing jobs instead of creating new ones.

I may not be a smart man, but I know that isn't what people signed up for. Hemisphere Development must still believe they are on the right track, it seems they are promoting their Forgotten Triangle Development as an example of what THEY can do FOR YOU.

Oh, and then to add an air of disbelief to the whole event, whilst I was still angry about the above debacle I flip to the Metro section (I usually read this second right after the comics but I was overdosed on caffeine and my morning routine was torn asunder) and read that Experts [are] designing a plan for downtown Cleveland. Yay, experts! No, seriously, I am excited. See, when people sit down and start planning out an area, especially an area that is so central to the arts and design and then people start getting the word out early enough so that the community knows then good things can happen. Good, glorious, well thought out, clever things.

And the area is primed for it. The addition of the Euclid Corridor Transportation Project (which I have not dwelt on enough) will create easy, non personal automobile access which would allow the district to redesign itself for pedestrians. Imagine, people walking about in downtown, window shopping and just enjoying a stroll instead of the heads down bustle-have-to-get-my-lunch-and-back-to-the-office-quickly sort of muss we have going on now.

At least an important lesson is to be learned here. Dissemination of information can lead to halting bad projects before they go south while community involvement may be the root to revitalizing urban areas that felt once forgotten. Was that too dense? How about this then? "Utter lack of design makes crappy stuff".