I was pleased to read in the Plain Dealer that Cottage Living has declared my neighborhood, Ohio City, one of their 10 best communities in America, for "charming cottages, a sense of community, and an eye on the future." No doubt they made a great choice with Ohio City, as my family well knows and celebrates each day we live here. Tonight we dined a few blocks from our house, among historic victorians and mature trees and gardens on the patio at Momocho (still as great as when I reviewed it last year)... the best NEOMEX restaurant in the world. Within a few other blocks of there are over a dozen more of the region's best restaurants and hot spots - core, local establishments - not to mention the "best in the world" West Side Market... With the W. 25th RTA and many bus lines criss crossing this area, it is a public transit dream, and is probably the most bike and walk friendly place in Ohio.

Why are we so behind in Northeast Ohio when it comes to preservation?

Two articles converged onto my conciousness this week in the midst of an attempt to save the Breuer from destruction.

Brooklyn Waterfront Called Endangered Site

here's a quote: “The buildings really represent an important part of Brooklyn’s heritage, and it would be a tragedy to lose it,” Richard Moe, president of the trust, said in an interview. “We’re very concerned that there’s such a rush on to demolish everything.”

and

Great Architecture Finds a Home in Indiana

here's a quote: "Columbus (Indiana) is a small town (population 39,000) that just happens to have the most incredible collection of modern architecture in the Midwest (outside Chicago, of course). Everyone from Eliel Saarinen and his son, Eero, to Deborah Berke and Richard Meier has worked there, designing so many schools, churches and libraries that, at least in theory, you can’t walk a single block without stumbling on an elegant glass-and-concrete building or a house of worship soaring like a Euclidean fantasy.

“You actually have to see it to believe it,” wrote Christopher Porter, a reader."

With this June 15, 2007, Inner Circle Open House, it is safe to say the NEO Excellence Roundtables are back, as this week we will feature a very unique discussion and performance by Cleveland Orchestra violist Eliesha Nelson, who is in the middle of a sophisticated recording project at George Lucas' Skywalker Sound, in Marin, California. Eliesha will discuss with us how she decided to get into the "recording business" and how the community can help her project succeed - and the purpose of this roundtable is to help Eliesha's project succeed.

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Ted Kennedy, Rachel “Bunny” Mellon, Robert Kennedy Jr., Senator John Warner, Mitt Romney, Christy Mihos, and Walter Cronkite all have direct personal and family connections to Cape Cod.  They or their family or relatives have vacation houses on the Cape, they have money, and they don’t want Global Warming to be fought in their own back yard.   And you can’t see carbon dioxide. 

Host: Cleveland Design Competition and Idea Box Cleveland

Location: SPACES Gallery, 3rd Floor

2220 Superior Viaduct, Cleveland, OH

Ever wonder what Cleveland could be doing with the endless urban opportunities that exist in our great city?

Please join us for a fun and stimulating evening at SPACES Gallery to view ideas submitted by local, national, and international design teams for an area of Ohio City/The Flats known as Irishtown Bend. These solutions in Architecture, Urban Design, Art, and Landscape Architecture will be on display at SPACES Gallery the evening of June 7th. 

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Can't contain the excitement on this emerging evolution.  Why not celebrate a bit as we finally gain real traction after years of socially-conscious and sometimes stigmatizing suffering we starving artist-technologists know well. I feel we are ready for a RealNEO Rennaissance!

Located in the heart of the historic Hough Bakeries Complex is the Inner Circle, a weekend club and reception facility operated for the past 7 years by the Hot Sauce Williams family. Starting shortly, operation of the Inner Circle will expand to extended hours every day, featuring a cybercafe, meeting space, computer terminals, free wifi, independent film, the Linux Cafe, art, culture, and great food, coffee, and even wine tastings, via a broader partnership of friends. This pan is from the deck and patio area, and features Guyanese chef and reggae performer and DJ Edwin, who will help operate the Inner Circle, shown with Hot Sauce Williams founder LeMaud Williams, as well.

As a contrast to yesterday's Header of the Day, of Beechwood Place Mall, here's a new pan from a shoot at new Cleveland Big Box Mall Steelyard Commons, still in development, on April 20, 2007.

I had the annoyance of going to Beechwod Place Mall today for a meeting. What an astounding celebration of sweatshop labor and wasted resources. This pan is the first floor corner by some silly place called Nordstom, where not only does the coffee shop not provide wifi but the barista doesn't know what wifi means.

Bill Callahan and I are pleased to offer a last moment opportunity to join an important conversation just beginning on making NEO a global leader in the use of Free Open Source Software, with the man who wrote the Open Source Definition, Bruce Perens. Bruce is Vice President of Developer Relations and Policy for FOSS-related SourceLabs, of Seattle. NEO is fortunate to have a local connection with Bruce, as the Director of Marketing for SourceLabs, Athena Diamantis, lives in this region. Digital Vision Director Bill Callahan and East Cleveland CIO Abu Alli met with Bruce and Athena last week to discuss how to make NEO a world FOSS leader, and we decided that is a topic deserving much broader and more open attention. So tomorrow we continue growing the dialog.

Join us, if you may... 8 AM breakfast tomorrow at the Juniper Grill.

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Whiskey Island – RiverDay Event – Saturday, May 19 from 2 - 4pm:

Sponsored by the Friends of Whiskey Island and the Northeast Ohio Sierra Club

2:00 - 3:00 PM: Take a self-guided walking tour of Wendy Park to the River Boardwalk. Come and celebrate the beginning of Cleveland's waterfront renaissance! This year the county commissioners and the mayor confirmed that Whiskey Island will remain open to the public for recreational, cultural and boating purposes. There is no longer a threat of port authority development on the county's public property. Explore and experience where our American Heritage River greets our Great Lake. Bring picnics, kayaks, volleyballs, cameras, binoculars and feel free to stay for the sunset.

3:00 – 4:00 PM:Gather at the River Boardwalk to hear Paul Alsenas, Director of the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission, and other speakers. Discussion topics include the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie, the restoration of the Whiskey Island parkland and beach, the future of the historic Coast Guard Station and Hulett Ore Unloaders, and extending the 110-mile Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail to Whiskey Island…

Meet at Wendy Park- West Shoreway (Rt. 2) to the Edgewater Park/Whiskey Island exit, take a right turn at the first road and follow signs.

Contact Ed Hauser at ejhauser [at] ameritech [dot] net or (216) 651-3476. Visitwww.citizensvision.organd www.ohio.sierraclub.org/northeast

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CLEVELAND, OH—Bruce Katz, vice president and director of Metropolitan Policy at The Brookings Institution, will present Restoring Prosperity: The State Role in Revitalizing America’s Older Industrial Cities, a comprehensive economic study of the 65 U.S. cities lagging behind their peers (scheduled for national release on May 20), at noon on Tuesday, May 29, 2007, at The City Club of Cleveland. He will be joined by Ohio Lt. Governor Lee Fisher, who will give a local response to the report.

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It is good to see just released the latest research report from Policy Bridge, which explores: "How Anti-Education Messages in Media, at Home, & on the Street Hold Back African-American Youth". They contend "that institutional policy changes cannot succeed without addressing lifestyle factors that derail far too many black youth – boys in particular – from the surest path toward economic well-being: education." Policy Bridge is a think tank directed by Timothy Goler, who I got to know when he was acting economic development director in East Cleveland. This report is found at their website, here. It seems to do a good job of surfacing many issues and proposing solutions not now part of our dialog. There are other similar issues that make education more complex than it seems.

One of the writers at CoolCleveland contacted me about using some of my photos of the Breuer for an article they just posted here - another interesting proposal for the property, broadening awareness of the issues with the current plan and alternatives... read more

US National Archives & Records Administration Facility,
Waltham, MA. Photo courtesy of Sika Sarnafil Roofing Systems, Inc.

Martin Varsavsky, founder of FON, and author of his "Blog of an Entrepreneur", posted there an interesting letter he sent to all his employees: "FON is Dropping Microsoft, Adopting Ubuntu". I had seen, on some of his earlier blog entries, that Martin had a major Windows crash and lost his whole hard drive (been there) and so after 20 years with Microsoft he switched to Ubuntu (done that) and also Apple - after a month he settled on Ubuntu. It has been fascinating reading Martin's celebration of discovering FOSS - I remember having the same awakening. It is very exciting to now see Martin move his company FOSS, and to highlight how he is doing this and why - read his personal account here... and think about how this could be happening all over NEO...

I recently posted on realneo about a report I saw on CNN profiling Lucien Gambarota, an inventor in Hong Kong who has developed and begun manufacturing micro wind turbines - see http://realneo.org/Micro-Wind-Turbines. He is also working on technologies to capture energy from waves, and hybrids of wind and wave.

$millions spent - outside advertising firm brought in - focus groups of kneeling cheerleaders and deer in headlights conducted - press conference in airplane - check, check, check and check. "NEO" leadership did it again. Another Case of mistaken identities, being those who hired those using outdated formulas to decide how to market our city to us and the world. Every identity mistaken, as plusers ask us to believe in them, and Case re-begets CWRU.

 It is very nice to see my favorite real urban planner Joe Stanley featured on Lee Batdorff's very informative University Circle Blog - and thanks to Joe for mentioning us here at realneo! We set up and host his http://neomainstreet.com site, which is one of the best uses of Drupal in this region, and presents excellent work by a talented planner and designer. Joe is working on all the community development projects I'm involved with, including overall East Cleveland planning and the Star Intergenerational Neighborhood planning and The Intergenerational School, along with other work Joe does independently.

Interesting perspectives on economic and community development from Coral's Peter Rubin, from the Villager Newspaper Online. I think Rubin makes some good points, and the reality is that we are overbuilding the Cleveland housing market, and other amenities, and that will make Cleveland a more powerful residential draw. As more of Cleveland becomes more "livable", more people will chose to live here. Add good schools and free city wide wifi and watch out. Clevelaqnd first will draw people from other parts of the region - empty nesters from the xburbs, students and young professionals from the inner heights - it will be cool and good to live in Cleveland again. That will attract people from other regions and parts of the world, and they will grow the economy - you need a critical mass of urban housing and culture to be a player and we aren't even near that yet - time to keep building and innovating in Cleveland housing! Now for the chair half there, with Rubin:

What is ArtWorks?

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While not currently a powerhouse in Free Open Source Software (FOSS), Northeast Ohio is positioned to begin excelling with FOSS in some very strategic ways that may add great value to the regional economy. 

Because of FOSS, we may now bridge the digital divide more quickly and completely here than has any other large urban center in America, we may soon have the highest percentage of workforce properly educated for the new economy, and we may lead the world in some fields of application development and technology innovation with global, open standards, all if the region now embraces FOSS..

The Foundation Center-Cleveland is hosting a free brown bag lunch with
OhioVotes on how nonprofit organizations can participate in the voter
registration process. I think this is an important program for anyone

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Asterisk Gallery

Opening Reception: Friday, May 11, 6-11 p.m.

(during Tremont Art Walk)

May 11 - June 2, 2007

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