The New York Times looks at the redevelopment of Cleveland

From a New York Times story on the rebirth of the University Circle district of Cleveland, part of a concentrated effort by civic leaders to build a new Cleveland for the future:

[In] recent years Cleveland’s municipal government and its Regional Transit Authority have rallied major employers, banks, foundations and developers around a central goal of rebuilding the city’s core according to the new urban market trends of the 21st century — health care, higher education, entertainment, good food, new housing and expanded mass transportation.

A point of focus has been the emerging Uptown arts and entertainment district along Euclid Avenue, near where John D. Rockefeller and other industrialists and financiers built opulent mansions.

When it is finished next year, the new $27 million Museum of Contemporary Art, designed by Farshid Moussavi, will perch, like a lustrous black gem, at the entrance to the district, at Euclid and Mayfield Road. A pedestrian plaza designed by James Corner Field Operations, a designer of the High Line elevated park in New York City, separates the new museum from two four-story, mixed-use residential buildings under construction on the north and south sides of Euclid.

[...]

One of the first major projects for Uptown, completed in 2008, was the $200 million reconstruction of Euclid Avenue, which included installing a dedicated lane for an unusual bus rapid transit line. The three-year-old line has attracted 12 million riders and connects the city’s central Public Square to University Circle.

The bus service, known as the HealthLine, and the reconstructed boulevard are credited with contributing to a boom in development that The Plain Dealer reported in July had reached a total of $5 billion. Along with Uptown, where the investment so far totals $162 million, other big projects include a $560 redevelopment of University Hospitals Case Medical Center, a $350 million casino on Public Square and a $465 million, 555,000-square-foot convention center and medical mart downtown.

“There were skeptics about the HealthLine,” said David Beach, an urban design expert with the Museum of Natural History. “It’s proving that an investment in transit and improvements in streetscape do start to change real estate investment patterns over time. In a slow economy it takes a few years. But we are seeing new development up and down the Euclid corridor now.”

Read in full HERE.