In a spirit reminiscent of progressive outposts like Seattle, Cleveland is becoming a national leader in deconstruction, a movement that treats vacant homes across the region not as an eyesore but a post-natural resource.

It's not a sports championship, but in some ways it's just as big. Last week a consortium of some of the wealthiest banks and foundations in the world announced that Cleveland would receive major support for innovative developments that will create hundreds of new jobs where they're needed most.

The Integration Initiative, by the New York-based Living Cities philanthropic collaborative, will pump almost $15 million in grants, loans and targeted investments into Cleveland. One of five cities chosen, Cleveland impressed the evaluators with plans to leverage the buying power of institutions in and around University Circle -- which spend some $3 billion annually on goods and services -- into new businesses and jobs. And not just any businesses, but innovative, green operations that provide their workers with more than just paychecks.

Some of the funding will be used to start or relocate businesses in the growing Heath-Tech Corridor between University Circle and Cleveland State. Other funds will expand the Evergreen Cooperatives network of employee-owned businesses, all of which meet the institutions' procurement needs in new ways, and satisfy Living Cities' demand for "game-changing" new strategies.

Evergreen Cooperative Laundry, for example, uses far less water than competitors, allowing the institutions to reduce their carbon footprints. The laundry currently employs 28, and will expand to 50. Ohio Solar Cooperative employs 25 -- already exceeding expectations -- and will hire another 50 over the next three years. The Green City Growers hydroponic greenhouse will employ 45 when it opens on East 55th Street later this year.

All Evergreen businesses allow workers to build equity in the company and share in profits. "An 8-, 9- 10-dollar-an-hour job is not really enough to change someone's life," says Lillian Kuri of the Cleveland Foundation, which coordinated the applications to Living Cities. "The ability for wealth creation is absolutely essential to changing neighborhoods."

Five more co-ops are in the pipeline, Kuri says. Two will launch "soon," the other three over the next one to two years.

Many of the foundations that make up Living Cities will be familiar to NPR listeners: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, to name a few. Member banks include Bank of America, Deutche Bank and J.P. Morgan Chase. Cleveland Foundation is an affiliate member.



Source: Cleveland Foundation
Writer: Frank W. Lewis

When it comes to real estate, Howard Grandon believes in second chances. That's why he's transforming a former illicit nightclub in Detroit Shoreway into market-rate apartments and storefronts, which he hopes will continue to breathe new life into an old neighborhood.

How is it possible that hip Tremont has gone all this time without a vintage shop? Whatever the explanation, the oversight has been remedied with the opening of Deering Vintage at 2678 W. 14th St. (formerly Kelly Randall Gallery).

"It just seems like an exciting place to be right now," says owner Cynthia Deering, who owned Suite Lorain, at West 69th and Lorain, for 20 years before selling in March. Development in Detroit Shoreway to the north had resulted in Lorain becoming a little too rough for Deering's comfort.

Open just a few weeks, Deering says she already has repeat customers, especially among young neighborhood residents who appreciate having a green shopping option nearby.

"Business has never been better in my industry," due largely to the recession, Deering notes. "People really want to save money."

Deering Vintage carries men's and women's clothes and accessories, and some home items and furniture.



Source: Cythia Deering
Writer: Frank W. Lewis

Some things do get better with age. GrafTech International has been a part of Cleveland's manufacturing scene for 130 years. The producer of advanced carbon and graphite materials has stayed current with the times and technology to stay viable and profitable.

GrafTech, which among other things produces a micro-thin, flexible graphite used to dissipate heat on everything from laptops to flat-screen TVs, saw its nets sales increase 55 percent year-over-year in the third quarter of 2010. GrafTech's net income more than doubled to $40 million, and its gross profit increased from $28 million in third quarter 2009 to $75 million a year later.

With these numbers, it is no wonder that GrafTech is adding to its workforce. The company hired 60 people over the summer, and will likely add up to 40 more. The average annual salary for new hires is $80,000. The new jobs are located at GrafTech's Parma headquarters and laboratories and its Lakewood factory.

Craig Shular, chairman and CEO of GrafTech, says that the company's continuous improvement efforts have kept it on the cutting edge while focusing on changing customer needs. GrafTech, for example, has embraced Lean Manufacturing in recent years. "Lean is very much a part of our corporate culture, the culture we are trying to build," he says.


SOURCE: GrafTech
WRITER: Diane DiPiero

Bike-riding in the Cleveland area is up 50 percent since 2006, according to a recent survey by the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA). Cleveland Heights is hoping to push the figure even higher in next year's survey with the addition of "sharrows" on city roads.

"Sharrow" is short for "share-the-road arrows," which are painted onto road surfaces. "You use them when you don't have enough room for a bike lane," explains Richard Wong, the city's director of planning and development. Sharrows are intended to remind bicyclists where they should ride -- with the flow of vehicular traffic, not against -- and to encourage drivers to share the road.

"They'll help reduce tension between bicyclists and motorists," says Nick Matthew of the Cleveland Heights Bicycle Coalition, which gathered more than 500 signatures on a petition urging the city to become one of the first in Northeast Ohio to adopt sharrows. Cleveland was the first, on Franklin Avenue.

Last week, just two months after the petition was presented to the city, sharrows were painted last week on Euclid Heights Boulevard, between Taylor and Coventry. (West of Coventry, where on-street parking is legal some hours, the city will install yellow "Share the Road" signs.) By next year, Wong says, the city plans to paint sharrows on Coventry, Lee and Fairmount.

Cleveland Heights ranks in the top 10 percent nationally for bicycle commuting by residents, according to data from the 2000 Census.



Source: Cleveland Heights Bicycle Coalition
Writer: Frank W. Lewis

Thomas Paine would be proud. At a time when it seems like every new idea is first floated online, Plain Dealer architecture critic Steven Litt has chosen good old-fashioned paper as the primary vehicle for his impassioned paean to beautiful surroundings, Designing a Better Cleveland.

"To the extent that Cleveland fails to make the most of public and private investments in buildings, highways, bridges, streets, parks and waterfronts, it will waste opportunities, fail to compete effectively with its peers and damage its economy," Litt writes in the introduction. "Everyone, in other words, has a stake in good design."

Litt calls the slim, gorgeously designed booklet "a mini-primer on the ways in which citizens, developers, planners and designers can raise standards of civic design in Cleveland." But it's clearly also meant to inspire.

"Economists may disagree over whether excellent architecture and urban amenities such as streetscapes, bike trails and waterfront parks are a cause or consequence of economic vitality," he writes. "Regardless, it never makes sense to spend a dollar on mediocrity when the same dollar can buy excellence. The reality is that great design demands greater effort -- on the part of clients, designers, government agencies and citizens. Cleveland continues to be plagued by a chronic sense of low self-esteem and by the notion that trying to improve the city through better design isn't worth the effort.

"THIS VOLUME REJECTS THAT VIEW."

The book grew out of Spectrum: the Lockwood Thompson Dialogues at the Cleveland Public Library, and was facilitated by Cleveland Public Art.

Since the book's inroduction in the PD, Cleveland Public Art has received nearly 200 calls requesting copies, according to executive director Gregory Peckham. "That seems like a good benchmark when it comes to the interest of the public about the subject of civic design," Peckham notes.

Designing a Better Cleveland is also available online as a PDF.



Source: Plain Dealer
Writer: Frank W. Lewis

Studying "the ways businesses incorporate sustainable practices into product design and manufacturing, supply-chain relationships, marketing, customer relationships and operational efficiencies" is how Baldwin-Wallace professor David Krueger defines the new MBA in Sustainability program at Baldwin-Wallace (B-W).

The two-year sustainability program is the first of its kind in Ohio. B-W was also the first higher-education institution in the state to offer an undergraduate major in sustainability, which began in 2008.

Krueger, professor of business and director of the Institute for Sustainable Business Practice, says that the MBA in Sustainability program is designed so that students learn by doing and by observing how sustainable practices are applied in the workplace.

For its part, B-W has been putting sustainable practices to work on campus for the past few years. These have included installing geothermal heating and cooling systems in buildings, instituting an industrial-scale waste composting program and campus-wide recycling and constructing a wind turbine.

B-W's Institute for Sustainable Business Practice, which serves as a resource to businesses, recently received $100,000 from the Cleveland Foundation for its Sustainability Plan Clinic.


SOURCE: Baldwin-Wallace
WRITER: Diane DiPiero

Last summer, planners in the Cleveland, Akron and Youngstown areas spent two intense months assembling a consortium of 21 public- and private-sector entities and applying for a new type of grant available from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Now the real work begins.

Last week HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan visited the Cleveland-based offices of the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA) to announce that the consortium had been awarded $4.25 million dollars available through the Sustainable Communities Initiative. The initiative is part of the Obama administration's Partnership for Sustainable Communities, which seeks to coordinate the efforts of HUD, the EPA and the U.S. Department of Transportation in helping cities rebuild. The Northeast Ohio Consortium for a Regional Plan for Sustainable Development, as the 21-member group is called, was one of 45 chosen for a grant.

The money will allow the consortium to set up and oversee a private nonprofit that will explore ways in which the 12 counties — and nearly 500 municipalities — of the Cleveland, Akron and Youngstown regions can work together, according to Sara Maier, senior planner for NOACA. The three-year study "will give us a tool box of what we can do as a region moving forward," Maier explains. Issues like housing, sustainability, transportation and economic competitiveness, she adds, "don't stop at county lines."

As for the longterm goal, the application stated it thusly: "We envision a "Green City on a Blue Lake.' Over the last decade many factors have converged to make now the optimal time for the 12 counties, four [metropolitan planning organizations] and more than 480 governments in Northeast Ohio to unite for the purpose of planning for sustainable development. It is over the last decade that we have come to accept the reality that our economy is truly regional."

Participants hailing from Cleveland include officials from NOACA, Cuyahoga County, the City of Cleveland, Cleveland State University's Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs, the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority and the Fund for Our Economic Future (which organized the application effort).

Consortium members have also pledged more than $2 million in matching grants, exceeding the HUD requirement.




Source: NOACA
Writer: Frank W. Lewis

Someday the Medical Mart may make Cleveland an essential destination for healthcare professions. But the city has already achieved such status among those who study blight, which is why Cleveland is hosting the third national Reclaiming Vacant Properties Conference, which continues through Friday at the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel on Public Square.

"This is by far the biggest," says Jennifer Leonard of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Community Progress, which organized the conference with Cleveland's own Neighborhood Progress, Inc. "Today, there are more places that are being challenged by vacant properties."

Cleveland, of course, would be at or near the top of any such list. But that's not the only reason CCP selected the city for this gathering, which occurs every 18 months. Cleveland also boasts an impressive array of dedicated advocates and innovative approaches to the problem, such as the Cuyahoga Land Bank and Judge Raymond Pianka's Housing Court.

Various parts of the city will serve as backdrops for discussions. "Mobile Workshops" will take participants to Euclid Avenue, as an example of using transit to spur development; a vineyard in Hough and other sites that have been reclaimed for farming or greenspace; Slavic Village, where the foreclosure crisis is combated with a "resident-driven approach to finding a new identity," and the hip and booming Detroit Shoreway community.

"It's actually kind of hard," notes Leonard, "to make sure the conference isn't too focused on Cleveland."

The conference is sold out, but more information is available at the web site.



Source: Center for Community Progress
Writer: Frank W. Lewis

So how deeply has the sustainability movement taken hold in Northeast Ohio? Three organizations that already have a lot on their plates recently collaborated to save some grass.

Mind you, this wasn't just any grass. This was native prairie grass that until recently was part of an art installation on Mall B. But the installation must make way for the Medical Mart, for which ground will be broken later this month. So last spring, Cleveland Public Art contacted Slavic Village Development to see if it could find a new home for the Big-Blue Stem, Side-Oats Grama, Awlsledge and other oddly named varieties of grass that might otherwise now be decaying in a mulch heap.

"I said sure, we'd find a place to replant them," says Marlane Weslian, development officer at Slavic Village. She rented a Toro Dingo and rounded up volunteers to dig 500 holes along the Morgana Run Trail, between Aetna Road and Marble Avenue.

Meanwhile, contractors removed and transported the grass, thanks to a grant from ParkWorks. "It's a lot of work," Weslian says, but the transplant was a success. The grass has already gone dormant, she notes, but should grow strong and green again come spring.

Next week, another contractor -- again paid with grant money obtained through ParkWorks -- will relocate oak trees, already six inches around, from Mall C to a planned "savannah" behind a new Slavic Village housing development adjacent to the trail. Some of these trees are already 25 feet tall, Weslian says, and she's excited to see them make the kind of impact that usually takes decades to achieve.

"And talk about sustainable reuse!" says adds.



Source: Slavic Village Development
Writer: Frank W. Lewis

Among the many services provided by the Cuyahoga County Board of Developmental Disabilities (CCBDD) is job training and placement for adults. As local manufacturing jobs have dwindled, the board has had to look elsewhere. One solution that seems promising is local farming.

"We're trying to be more entrepreneurial," says spokeswoman Lula Holt Robertson.

The effort began last year with a single farm at East 55th and Stanard. The site, formerly a school, was donated by the city in 2009. Work began in June, with assistance from The Ohio State University Extension. Today 10 CCBDD clients are employed there, plus a manager and employment specialist.

The program has been so successful that the board hopes to establish nine more gardens over the next five years, and develop relationships with local restaurants, as well as farmers' markets.

The next site will be downtown. Cleveland City Council recently approved gardening on City Hall property, near the Free Stamp, thanks to legislation introduced by Councilman Joe Cimperman. Holt Robertson says that to her knowledge the CCBDD is the first entity of its type in the nation to launch an urban farming program.



Source: Cuyahoga County Board of Developmental Disabilities
Writer: Frank W. Lewis