Lost Cleveland
The above link is a slideshow from cleveland.com. It's been making its rounds through Cleveland social media over the last 24 hours. If you're looking for something striking, beautiful, and thought-provoking, take a look through it.
I didn't live in Cleveland when basically any of the places presented were operational. I wasn't even alive for the majority of them. But Cleveland is my home, and looking at what was: Euclid Beach, Bond's, Luna Park, Central Market, still invokes a longing and sentimental mood in me.
I know where all of these places were. I walk by many of them at least weekly. Most of them are parking lots now.
People always complain about big cities lacking parking. That's never going to be a real problem in Cleveland, at least anytime soon. We have more parking spaces per capita than any city of our population probably. I feel like I might have read that statistic somewhere, but even if I made it up, it's got to be close.
And why do we have so many spaces? So people can drive downtown. Enough people work down here that most lots are moderately full during the day. If you don't mind a bus or trolley ride though, it's never challenging to find a spot- it's just a question of how much you're willing to walk or pay.
That's something that makes living outside of Cleveland a little too simple. In my opinion, far too many people can drive downtown far too easily. It lets people stay in the suburbs and cherry pick their downtown experience. When you absolutely can drive right up to your destination, that destitnation is all you'll experience. I drive to work now, so I'm part of the problem, I know. But it's a triangular problem and something has got to give.
1. We need less parking. It would get people walking downtown instead, which would bolster business across the area.
2. We need more non-personal car transportation. The RTA is solid, but if you're going off the healthline or rapid corridors, it's dicey, at best. It also has a bad reputation among many suburbanites, but so does the city itself. They're both wrong and the very reason they're at all right about both downtown and public transportation. Everyone in New York takes the subway. Sure, it's got issues (more than RTA, trust me), but everyone still does it because they don't have a choice.
3. We need the parking lots/garages that exist right now to be replaced by destinations, housing, and places to work. Shopping, restaurants, theaters, you name it. Things that will draw people downtown and simultaneously replace the parking lots. That's a win win to me.
We're currently experiencing a rapid increase in downtown living. Hopefully inevitably, this means businesses will continue to move downtown too. Right now, we have a ton of space occupied by nothing more than asphalt for 16 hours a day. That's a waste of our best space. A huge waste.
By having so much parking, we're just catering to people who want to take their money out of town at the end of the day. But something has to give. If we bolster the RTA but keep the parking, will it prove untenable? If businesses move downtown at the expense of parking, does that mean no one can come to give them business?
It's a tough question, but I'd rather take a bet on Cleveland. Give them something they can't get in the suburbs, and they'll come to get it. That's what Chicago and New York do. We're neither, sure, but that's a good thing. We're Cleveland. Let's be more than a parking lot. Even if people still live in the suburbs, by being forced to park elsewhere and take a train downtown, etc., they'll also be forced to walk past businesses, be forced to walk through tower city, be forced to stay downtown before the Indians game and meet their spouse, instead of running home first. All of those are revenue generating. Having so many places to park might make people come to Cleveland that wouldn't, but right now, there are so many it encourages people to spend the minimal amount of time and money here. That's the opposite of what we want.
In 50 years, I'd prefer if Cleveland.com didn't post a slideshow of all the places I love to go now, reminiscing about how great they were or how beautiful the buildings had been.
-Zack
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