Dazzling images captured by Fresh Water managing photographer Bob Perkoski from "Day of the Dead" celebrations in Gordon Square.

As Cleveland’s eastern suburbs were just beginning to establish themselves in the 1920s, Cleveland’s Lee-Harvard neighborhood, bordering Shaker Heights, Warrensville Heights and Maple Heights on the the city’s south east side, was thriving in its own right.
 
The Lee-Harvard neighborhood, once known as Miles Heights Village and the Lee-Seville neighborhoods, was historically an integrated community of notable firsts. Ohio’s first African-American mayor, Arthur Johnston was elected in 1929 when the neighborhood was mostly white. His house on East 147^th Street still stands today.
 
The neighborhood established many of the first citizen's councils and neighborhood associations in the region and had an interracial police force.
 
On Thursday, October 6, the Cleveland Restoration Society (CRS), along with Cleveland Ward 1 councilman Terrell Pruitt, the Harvard Community Services Center and CSU’s Maxine Levin Goodman College of Urban Affairs, will present “Cleveland’s Suburb in the City: The Development and Growth of Lee-Harvard.”
 
The free discussion will be led by Todd Michney, assistant professor at the University of Toledo and author of Changing Neighborhoods: Black Upward Mobility in Cleveland, 1900-1980.
 
“We at CRS have been so impressed with the neighborhoods of Ward 1, Lee-Harvard and Lee-Seville,” says Michael Fleenor, CRS director of preservation services, "because they reflect our recent history – Cleveland’s last expansion, progress in Civil Rights, and the growth of neighborhood associations and community development corporations in the late 20^th Century."

Click here for photos and to continue reading about the fascinating history of this stalwart Cleveland neighborthood.


 

Years in the making, plans for La Villa Hispana – a center celebrating Latino heritage and commerce in the Clark Fulton neighborhood – will be unveiled next month at a City Planning Commission meeting.

"If you don't try anything, you never know what will happen."
 
Such is the mindset of Lyz Otero, owner of Half Moon Bakery, a soon-to-be-opened seller of traditional Latin pastries and empanadas. Otero took the leap with a little help from the Economic and Community Development Institute (ECDI), an organization that in August announced more than $530,000 in loans to 21 Cleveland-area businesses.
 
Nineteen of those loans were to new minority- or women-owned ventures, with Puerto Rico native Otero receiving $50,000 for equipment and improvements to her 1,200 square-foot space at 3800 Pearl Rd. Otero and husband Gerson Velasquez are using the funding to pay contractors and architects, as well as buy stove hoods and other gear. ECDI also provided the couple with financial management and computer classes.
 
Otero is aiming for an early November launch for a bakery offering a dozen types of empanadas. The new entrepreneur looks forward to stuffing the half-moon shaped pastry turnovers with endless combinations of meat, vegetables and fruit.
 
"It will almost be like a pizzeria, but with empanadas," says Otero. "Everything you put on a pizza can go on an empanada."
 
Vegan and gluten-free empanadas will be on the menu, joining Latin cuisine like rice and tamales. Fresh bread, cupcakes and other delectable confections round out the selection. Otero will create the bakery's pastry products, with her husband serving as chef. During the next month, she expects to hire on two cashiers and an additional cook.
 
While the smaller space will focus on take-out orders, patrons can eat inside on stools along the window. Outdoor seating, meanwhile, is a possibility for warm-weather months.
 
Opening the business has been both exciting and nerve-wracking. Though no stranger to the restaurant industry - past employers include Zack Bruell and Michael Symon - there's nothing for Otero like working for herself. Friend Wendy Thompson, owner of A Cookie and a Cupcake, encouraged her to start a bakery with a unique Latin flair.
 
"We're focusing on gourmet empanadas, which nobody else around here is doing," says Otero. "You never see a place like this where there's so many different kinds of empanadas."
 
Ultimately, Otero wants to leave a delicious, profitable legacy for her three children, ages 4, 6 and 7.
 
"I've always dreamed to do this," she says. "I had to step up and follow my dreams, because nobody was going to do it for me." 

From fascinating historical details to today's green shoots, this delightful short from Neighborhood Connections and the Famicos Foundation trains the spotlight on a classic Cleveland neighborhood – Glenville.

Fresh Water contributor Kaylyn Hlavaty offers up a perfect slice of Cleveland with an insider's tour of Slavic Village.

Hiram College student Nathaniel Eaton is aiming to make a big splash in the summertime toy market with an invention that enhances the old-fashioned water fight.
 
Eaton's "Water Dodger" is a simple plastic shield embossed with the slogan, "Can you stay dry?" In back is a net pouch that carries a half dozen or more water balloons. The idea is to offer an alternative to suggestively violent squirt guns while creating an active, competitive environment limited only by a user's imagination.
 
"It's like Laser Tag or paintball, but in the form of water," says Eaton, 24. "Plus it gets kids moving around outside."
 
Eaton, graduating from Hiram this fall with a bachelor's degree in business management and a minor in entrepreneurship, began with a drawing that evolved into a cardboard cutout and then a foam shield. He built the original foam model in his dorm room, and is now preparing to send to market a final plastic version of his product.
 
Using $1,500 in prize money from Hiram's 2016 Ideabuild competition, Eaton applied for a provisional patent and trademark. The South Euclid resident also devised four games to play using his water-centric brainchild: Solo Madness, Team Fusion, Captain Protection and Intruders.
 
“It's like a water balloon fight in reverse, whether it’s between two players or 20-plus," says Eaton. "The driest person or team wins."
 
Launching his invention is the next step for the company founder and CEO. To that end, Eaton partnered with a Case Western Reserve University industrial design student, who will help the budding entrepreneur build 10 plastic Water Dodger prototypes. He also connected with nonprofit startup accelerator JumpStart for assistance with funding and formulating a business plan.
 
"I'm starting off targeting independent toy stores with a good customer base," says Eaton. "This is my full-time job. I go everywhere with the Water Dodger in hand. When something's new, you have to inform people about it."
 
Eaton has been conceptualizing inventions and business ideas in a sketchbook since his freshman year of college. The Water Dodger was originally a wristwatch water squirter, which Eaton transformed into an entirely new product that sends a message of hot-weather fun without water guns.
 
"This is something you can promote to summer camps, because it's not a gun," says Eaton. "I show kids the shield with water balloons in a pouch, and they get excited."

Chess is a game that crosses racial, language and socioeconomic barriers, say its players and proponents. South Euclid resident Mike Joelson is doing his part to teach the millennia-old tradition to thousands of Northeast Ohio students.
 
Joelson is founder of Progress With Chess (PWC), an organization that offers after-school programs and camp-based instruction to 50 regional K-12 schools, reaching about 2,500 students annually. In harnessing a mission to improve the lives of area children and teenagers, PWC works with private schools as well as students from Cleveland's inner-ring suburbs and inner-city.
 
"We serve the entire spectrum of the community," says Joelson, a card-carrying national chess master who founded PWC as a nonprofit in 2000.
 
After-school sessions are held one hour per week. Though hourly instruction costs $9 per class, PWC also offers free programming to the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD), paid through foundational and corporate grants.
 
"We have more demand than we can fill," says Joelson. "We're always looking for additional funding to help us serve more schools."
 
Chess skill level doesn't matter, as PWC takes on everyone from newbies to more seasoned players. 

"Students are divided into groups based on their age and skills," Joelson says. "We start off showing what the pieces do and how to play a legal game. More advanced students are taught advanced strategies and checkmate patterns."
 
Young chess charges are taught by two dozen independent contractors, some of them tournament veterans themselves. PWC instructors will be out in force this summer at chess camps in Beachwood, Parma, Westlake, CMSD's Patrick Henry School and elsewhere.
 
Joelson, who continues to play chess competitively on a local, state and national level, says the grand game embraces higher-level thinking abilities like pattern recognition and strategic planning, along with the critical life lessons of sportsmanship and perseverance.
 
"Every move you make has consequences, similar to life," says Joelson. "If you lose you're cool early, you'll keep that habit for the rest of the game."
 
Chess - and by extension PWC - is also a wonderful vehicle for exposing young people to those of different backgrounds.
 
"Multicultural and multiracial players are sitting in the same tournament and having a dialogue," says Joelson. "It's a win for everyone." 

Last week in Cleveland, some 200 Forward Cities attendees from across the nation explored strategies that foster entrepreneurship and social innovation in minority communities.