Photo of Cleveland, Ohio by our own John Baumgardner!

For a whole album of photographs of our beautiful city, click on the picture below, or click HERE!

Picture by Kristin Cassidy

A GREAT Interactive site about a GREAT art installation: http://www.themindofcleveland.com/

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A Word Of Hope For Cleveland

Sermon, Sunday, August 26, 2007

"Our Job: Here & Now"

Isaiah 58:9b-14

(click on any part of text)

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Don't abandon or blame the city, reclaim it: Mark Giuliano
Published: Saturday, June 11, 2011, 2:45 PM

By Mark Giuliano

In the aftermath of a recent shooting in downtown Cleveland, I've been thinking about the thoughts of the late Yale scholar, Letty Russell, who once compared the city to a battered woman: The city is beaten and bruised, isolated, abandoned and then blamed as if she somehow did this to herself. How easy it is for us to take what we want from our city -- jobs, resources, entertainment -- while disavowing any responsibility for her.

A shooting in our city shouldn't be cause for retreat or blame. To the contrary, it ought to awaken within us a deeper resolve to reclaim our city as a place of civility, culture, commerce and faith. Those who abandon her for the suburbs or grumble with reproach about her dangers, as did the person who commented online, "War combat zone. Stay out of Cleveland war zone, all of Cleveland" in response to Michael Sangiacomo's June 3 article in The Plain Dealer, are not only out of touch with the strength the core brings to the entire region, or the growing downtown neighborhood -- 10,000 residents strong and representing the city's highest per capita income and level of education -- they are also part of the problem in that they perpetuate a myth that crime is unique to downtown or that you will be safe if you avoid downtown.

Is downtown more dangerous than Beachwood? It was just a year ago that three hostages were held at gunpoint by a rape suspect in Beachwood. Yes, Beachwood. Why is it so hard for us to remember that story? Because crime in the suburbs just doesn't make the news the way it does when it happens in the city. And because we refuse to demonize the suburbs the way we do our downtown, let alone talk honestly about the crime that exists there. It would destroy the illusion of suburban security and possibly pop our bubble of safety.

Instead of blaming our city in times of crisis, we need to get involved. First of all, the Public Square location of Club Allure, which has had shootings before, has to be questioned. We as a people can decide what we want or don't want in our city. Violence of this kind has no place in our new residential/mixed-use downtown neighborhoods. As the senior pastor of the Old Stone Church, Allure's next-door neighbor, I hold the right, officially, to oppose the liquor license for that location. At this point, I see no reason to sign anything but "opposed." The recent Warehouse Bar Owners Memorandum of Understanding and forthcoming nightclub legislation will help bar owners care for their patrons, within and beyond their venues, as well.

But we have to be more than reactive; loving a city means being proactive. When strengthening our bodies, trainers tell us to start with core strength training. The same holds true for our region and our city core. With more than $2 billion worth of development under way in downtown Cleveland, this is the perfect time to re-engage in the life of our city. Gather some friends and take an art or historical tour. Walk our downtown streets and shop in its stores. Eat in its world-class restaurants and worship in its historic sanctuaries, claiming sacred space, peace and civility for our city once again.

One of my favorite things about living and working in downtown Cleveland is the sense of community I share among my neighbors. Rarely am I out for a walk or dinner in a cafe that I don't bump into a friend and visit for a while. I feel a relative sense of safety because I know my neighbors and I spend time with them in my neighborhood.

One of the best ways to help a battered woman heal is through a kind of love which empowers her. Fear and reproach, or perpetuating misguided myths about her dangerous behavior, only keep her down. Truth-telling, love and generosity of spirit are what will lift her up again. It's your city, Cleveland; why not love it enough to call it home again.

Giuliano is the pastor of the Old Stone Church on Public Square and president of the Downtown Cleveland Residents Association.

Cleveland's Group Plan Commission launches debate on a greener, healthier vision for downtown Cleveland
Published: Tuesday, October 19, 2010, 9:51 PM
Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer

To read this story online, go to: http://blog.cleveland.com/architecture/2010/10/clevelands_group_plan_commissi.html

A long-term vision for the downtown Mall is a jumping off point for a larger discussion about the future of public space in downtown Cleveland, led by the city's new Group Plan Commission.

After spending hundreds of millions of dollars to create visitor attractions in downtown Cleveland, the city now needs to make the urban core a livelier, greener, healthier place to live. That was the main message of an occasionally spirited discussion Tuesday night sponsored by the city's new Group Plan commission, which attracted 75 at the Cleveland Public Library.

In June, Mayor Frank Jackson appointed 15 civic, business and foundation leaders to the commission. He wants a report by Valentine's Day on how the city can capitalize on opportunities created by the construction of a $465 million medical mart and convention center, and a $600 million casino.

The impetus behind the commission is the glaring reality that after spending hundreds of millions in recent decades on investments from Gateway to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, the city has done little to connect the new attractions to each other, to the Lake Erie waterfront and the Cuyahoga River.

The commission's job is to come up with ideas about how to weave downtown together with beautiful new public spaces and amenities, and to raise money, preferably from private sources, to pay for the improvements.

Unfortunately, Tuesday's discussion was marred by dim slides and a screen that often went blank, literally.
Architect Mark Hinshaw of LMN Architects in Seattle and landscape architect Shannon Nichol of the landscape firm Gustafson Guthrie Nichol, also of Seattle, wanted to kick off their discussion with provocative images of downtown.

Their slide presentation came up with a succession of blank screens, which Nichol blamed on a technical glitch.
Nevertheless, Hinshaw and Nichol described excellent ideas. If they had a familiar ring, it may have been because other planning consultants have made similar suggestions in recent years, often with too little effect.

The designers suggested reducing the inhuman scale of vast downtown streets, such as Superior Avenue, by lining them with trees and bike lanes.

They suggested carving walkways up the slopes along the Cuyahoga River to the new casino proposed for a site west of Tower City Center.
On the downtown Mall, the designers said the city needed to get serious about programming the grand but often lifeless space with public events and by adding dog parks, splash pools and areas for jogging, ice skating and outdoor performances.

"You've spent most of the recent years creating venues, all free-standing," Hinshaw said. "You need to nurture another side equally, which is making sure there are spaces, places and amenities for local residents. [Downtown] is really not quite like a place where you'd want to live."

Speakers agreed enthusiastically.
On the Mall, Ann Mullin, a senior program officer at the Gund Foundation, wanted to see a playground, public bathrooms, water fountains, bike racks, and "active and robust music and arts planning."

Kathleen Crowther, director of the Cleveland Restoration Society, suggested that large public buildings around the Mall, such as the Cuyahoga County Courthouse and City Hall, should be open for tours led by the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Landscape architect Tom Zarfoss wanted the Mall district to be entirely wireless, so anyone could use a computer, anywhere.
The biggest question was whether this round of planning will give downtown the civilizing, touches it has lacked for decades.
The answer depends not only on the work of Hinshaw and Nichol, but on how hard Clevelanders push them -- and Jackson's Group Plan Commission.

© 2010 cleveland.com. All rights reserved.

Ray Suarez Speaks About Church and Urban Issues at the 2009 General Synod of the UCC

To watch the video, click on the photo above, or go to: http://vimeo.com/6741201

Ray Suarez offers a look at the post-denominational church

Written by Micki Carter
June 27, 2009

To read this story on the UCC website, go to: http://www.ucc.org/news/ray-suarez-offers-a-look-at.html

Can the mainline church survive in the age of the "inch-deep, mile-wide church of the already-made-up mind?"

This is a dilemma that newsman Ray Suarez of public television's News Hour has spent a lot of time thinking about. An Episcopalian, he shared his thoughts on how the sociological changes in "the Old Neighborhoods" have affected how we do church with a large crowd on River City Saturday afternoon.

For General Synod 27 visitors and delegates, he traced the past 150 years of church history that runs from tent revivals to today's satellite TV ministries. In those early years, churches defined the neighborhoods. Ethnic churches were the places where recent immigrants could practice and preserve customs. The graceful steeples and stained glass windows of holy places served to make the struggling spirits soar.

But, Suarez said, as the Old Neighborhoods turned seedy and the children of the next generations moved to the suburbs, the churches that anchored those neighborhoods lost their congregations. Many of them became social service providers where people did church but no one remained to be the church.

In their place, he noted, came the regional Big Box churches like the 12,500-member megachurch in Plano, Texas, that draws people from three counties. These are churches where members can remain as faceless — and even nameless — as they choose or where they can create the community that's missing from the cookie-cutter developments where they live.

He said we may end up becoming very comfortable with this "post-denominational Christianity" in which the mainline churches fail to thrive.
But Suarez found some cause for hope.

When the "church of the already-made-up mind crumbles under the weight of the really hard questions that make modern life so bewildering for so many, a church that says, 'I love you no matter how you got to my front door is a church that going to make it in the 21st Century, majority/minority America.' "
 

New Video About Detroit Shoreway Development

Click on the image below, or go to: http://www.vimeo.com/4980685

http://www.vimeo.com/4980685