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(upbeat music) (chattering) - Good afternoon and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, January 7th, and I'm Nick Castele senior reporter with Ideastream Public Media and the moderator of today's forum, changing of the guard, a neighborhood plan for the next era of Cleveland leadership.

This is the City Clubs first forum of the new year.

I'm glad to be here hitting the gong for the first gong of 2022.

And this is a forum where we traditionally take a deep dive into the conversations that are happening around town.

This is the end of Mayor Justin Bib's first week in office.

With his election victory two months ago, he joined a sea change in Northeast Ohio, Civic Sphere.

Cleveland now has a new and diverse generation of leaders in City Hall and outside of it.

And they have their own visions for the future of the city and its neighborhoods.

Each of Cleveland's neighborhoods has its own character and pride, but many continue to suffer from disinvestment, which I'm sure everyone in this room knows.

Research shows that persistent inequality in development, amenities and services contributes to and exacerbates racial inequity in our city.

Last year, during the election Cleveland neighborhood progress and community development corporations developed a platform for the new administration and city council.

The plan focuses on municipal modernization, infrastructure, economic development and housing.

And joining us today are some of the folks who helped put that together.

Jamar Doyle is executive director at Greater Collinwood Development Corporation.

Tania Menesse, is CEO and president at Cleveland Neighborhood Progress.

And Rosemary Mudry is executive director at West Park Kamm's Neighborhood development.

Members and friends of the City Club of Cleveland, please join me in welcoming our panelists.

(audience cheering) So I know that we've got a lot of expert practitioners in the room here, but I wanna start with just some basic things so that everyone's on the same page in particular folks who are watching or listening elsewhere.

And I wanna look at a couple of issues.

One, how are Cleveland's neighborhoods doing right now?

And two, what new approach in neighborhood development would you like to see out of this new city council and administration?

Tania, could you get us started here?

I remember we talked last year during the mayoral campaign and something you told me that really stuck with me is that there are a few, black groups in Cleveland that are really hot real estate markets right now.

And there's a lot of the city that's really struggling.

Could you give us a lay of the land?

How is Cleveland doing in January of 2022?

- Well, thanks for that question.

And I think it really is what drove so much of us putting this neighborhood platform together, was to raise the issues that CDCC, that residents and businesses are experiencing.

And one of the main things that we experienced in Cleveland is that as you said there about 3% of the black groups in Cleveland, and we know where they are in Ohio city, in Treemont, some around university circle are thriving and that's wonderful, right?

We wanna see that growth and that development, but the vast majority of our city is either stable, the middle neighborhoods, which have really been the stalwart through the economic crisis and are where so many of us live in and thrive.

And then we have a significant amount of our neighborhoods that are still really struggling.

And it was important to raise the concerns of residents and help to begin to develop a path that council and the administration could look to to address the needs that are different in each one of our neighborhoods.

- So, how did that reality shape then the recommendations that you all put together in this platform.

- Well, I think what was really critical was that, this hasn't happened in 20 years and it was a real call out from our CDCs and we knew this.

They are on the ground, they know what the residents and businesses are experiencing.

And in order to raise that as a community, as a community development system, we needed to pull a platform together that would look at what other common issues, right?

What are the things that we need to do across the board from a housing, economic development, municipal modernization perspective infrastructure, so that we could speak with one voice while not losing the fact that our neighborhoods will need different aspects of the plan to be implemented.

- So let's talk about two of those neighborhoods right here.

Since we've got two representatives.

Rosemary, can you give us a picture of West Park right now?

How is the neighborhood doing?

My impression is that you are really benefiting from this giant Bonanza of home purchases that we've seen in the past like a year or two.

- Yeah, I mean, I think we are lucky in West Park.

West Park is one of those middle neighborhoods that has remained stable and in many ways strong over the last couple of decades.

There are some areas where the housing market is really strong and there was multiple bidding over the last couple of years, but there's also areas that are really struggling.

And we have some of the largest public housing in the city, in our neighborhood and in our ward as well.

And so I think one of the things about West Park is the needs of people are really diverse and different.

And so figuring out how we can support residents, where they are and come up with strategies for where they are is really important.

I think on the other side there's new businesses that wanna invest, but it's also really difficult to invest when some of the commercial corridors and infrastructure is aging and struggling, and so I think we're excited to see how renewed interest in infrastructure and long-term planning can help continue to set West Park on a strong trajectory for the future.

- So when you say infrastructure in the commercial corridors, what are you talking about there?

Can you give me some examples?

- Yeah, so I think it's a few different things, right?

I think it's everything from roads that are too wide to not enough street trees, to commercial properties that have been in some hands for a really long time with owners who are not really interested in the investments that are needed to attract the kind of businesses residents wanna see.

So I think it's a kind of a variety of things that kind of all played together.

- And Jamar, who is Collinwood doing today?

- Well, it's interesting 'cause you talked about the continuum of neighborhood realities throughout the city of Cleveland.

And it's really the same in Collinwood, our service area encompasses sort of north shore Collinwood Collinwood village, which is near the high school, Euclid Green, the Forest Hills neighborhood.

So it depends on where you are.

And I think, when you talk about sort of middle neighborhoods and sort of the stabilization and even some of the housing rush that you talked about earlier, that's happening sort of along lake shore Boulevard in some of the pockets along east (indistinct) maybe fifth street or in the Euclid Heights portion of Euclid Green, but we have a lot of challenges.

It's almost the opposite if you're talking about 150 second in St. Claire.

If you're talking about the three points area at 120 fifth St. Claire.

So it's really, how do you make sure that no matter where you live, if you're a resident of Cleveland, if you're a business owner in Cleveland and a property owner in Cleveland, you can see that your neighborhood is moving forward on the continuum of development.

That looks different in a neighborhood that is thriving versus a neighborhood that may be classified as a middle neighborhood versus a neighborhood that is challenged and has really been struggling with disinvestment for decades, for a number of reasons, lack of investment.

Let's talk about racial disparities.

Let's talk about all of the isms that exist as to why some neighborhoods aren't thriving.

So we really need to get to a point where no matter where you live or where you have invested in Cleveland, you can see that you are moving towards thriving and it's really sort of this I call it a continuum of neighborhood development and we need to make sure everyone is moving forward, whatever that looks like and include those residents to make sure that their authentic voice is a part of defining what thriving looks like for them.

'Cause it may not be the same neighborhood to neighborhood.

- Something I'd like to hear from each of you is, this platform has got a lot of different points in it.

You're hitting a lot of different topics.

Is there one... Are there one or two maybe major things that you think the city could get working on right away that would be good to put in the minds of everyone in this room.

Tania we can start with you.

- I'm happy to start.

We developed this platform clearly to raise these issues during the campaign, both for the mayor and for the city council races, but really just as much to be a blueprint for the next four years.

We were really focused on the idea that these would be tangible goals, they could be measured and that we could be good partners to the administration, that we could hold each other accountable and work through this process.

And so I think the biggest one for us is something that my friends here from the community development department have led, which is a 10 year housing plan with a great deal of input from the community that is so instrumental to addressing what Jamar was talking about and Rosemary of all the different needs in a neighborhood.

This plan really helps us address the appraisal issues that we've talked about before the disparities that we see in neighborhoods and what it really invites is the private market into our neighborhoods.

It begins to demonstrate where we need government and the nonprofit sector to intervene, so we get to a point where our banking partners can begin to really land in our neighborhoods.

- Rosemary.

- Yes, it's a struggle to pick one for me.

But I think for me, it's the areas of the plan and the priorities of the plan that speak to how our city communicates to residents and engages with them.

I think if in the next a hundred days, or if in the next six months, the city can work towards open communication, being out in neighborhoods, having community meetings, meeting with city leaders and community development regularly, I think that sets a tone that allows us to build trust and once there's trust any number of these priorities can happen.

But without that, it's gonna be really hard to get residents and get leaders to buy into whatever plan is advanced because they may not believe that it's in their best interest.

- Okay, and Jamar, I mean, on that point maybe, I mean, 'cause you had mentioned before you wanna have people who live in the neighborhood feel like they've got buy-in.

How do you get people to have buy-in into this sort of a very technical set of recommendations that you've got, that's really for the people who are policy makers?

- Well, I think first, although there's a lot of technical expertise in this room.

I think it's acknowledging that there's a lot of expertise out in the neighborhoods.

It may not be technical but that is valid and real expertise.

And so we have to listen to our residents, we have to listen to our business owners.

We have to hear from them as to what are their pain points, what are the issues that are affecting them the most?

And I think there's an opportunity now for City Hall to begin to do that in conjunction with CDCs and neighborhood progress.

And through that process, I think then to your point, when we're talking about what are those issues that people are facing, when we start to figure out, what are the prescriptions, right?

What are these solutions?

It's again, making sure that we've listened to those voices so that our solutions are authentic to the needs of the people that we're serving.

And I think that's our opportunity right now.

- Tania, you had mentioned the 10 year housing plan.

And I know that the sort of upshot of the plan is protecting preserving and producing 100 000 units of housing.

And it's only gonna cost $2 billion to do it.

- Yeah.

- Where is that money gonna from?

- Yeah, and that's the thing we laugh but that is the kind of investment that comes from true public private partnership.

And you've seen in many communities, right?

It's really important that the initial investments that come into play are from the public sector more often than not, but that is in partnership with the private sector.

It's been really exciting to see banking partners who we've worked with for a long time pouring over this ten-year plan and looking at okay, if the city is gonna put in a loan loss reserve, if they're gonna start doing some down payment assistance.

Okay, that starts to mitigate our risk and we're interested in investing in our communities.

I think that one of the really exciting prospects of this new administration and a lot of the leadership at our foundations today is that we need the national foundations to really be tied into national (indistinct) things into the work that's happening in Cleveland.

With all of the challenges we have here, it's really remarkable that we have very little traction from a national perspective in Cleveland.

And I do think that it's the job of the city and our partners.

I mean, let's talk about the ARPA money, right?

We use these recommendations very much to help ARPA recommendations together.

Sorry, American rescue plan.

I shouldn't use- - I think it's right.

- I'm trying to not use acronyms, I'm sorry- - My boss, Mike MacIntyre would be mad at me if I didn't pause that acronym.

- Yes exactly, I caught it before you even caught me.

(laughing) But I will say that, this is a historic time where I wanna be careful because the dollar is gonna be gone as quickly as you have them.

But these are the dollars that we should be using to lay the groundwork, to invite private investment.

And that's really, our job is to really put ourselves out of business, right?

Is that the markets and our communities get healthy enough at that point then you start having to protect and ensure residents needs are well taken care of.

It's an ambitious plan, but it's a ten-year plan and what's exciting about is it has steps that the administration and our community can take next year.

- On the ARPA money, the first half is here and off the top of my head, I can't remember exactly how much was being dedicated toward community development, because there are other needs like public safety, et cetera.

What do you think about the way the community development dollars have been dedicated so far?

And what do you think the city can do with that money?

- Well, at this point, the community development dollars haven't been allotted out if yet, but I think that there's a lot of alignment between city council, the city administration and the nonprofit community in what needs to be prioritized.

And again, a lot of it is laying that groundwork.

Taking care of residents as Councilman Griffin said in his speech to city council is taking care of people and then laying that groundwork for our neighborhoods to get stronger.

I don't think there's a lot of conflict there in what people are proposing.

- Well, Rosemary, do you have any thoughts on how ARPA money could be spent for the neighborhood where you work?

for West Park Kamm's corners?

- I think in general Tania's words about laying the foundation is really critical.

I think we have a rare opportunity to think in the long-term and address some infrastructure things, address things related to park connections, address things that are laying the groundwork for long-term success in the city that we rarely have large chunks of money to do all at once.

And so I think those are the types of projects I would love to see come to fruition because then we can chip away at some of the other shorter term things.

But we have a rare opportunity to lay the groundwork for the longterm especially on infrastructure and green space and those kinds of connections and climate resiliency.

- Jamar, do you have something to add to that point?

- I jut want to add, I echo everything that Rosemary said in terms of the sort of physical improvements and infrastructure.

And I would also say that the ARPA dollars offer the opportunity to also invest in our people.

And part of what I'm thinking about is really around sort of workforce development.

And the reason I think that's important is just speaking to Collinwood, it's a very...

It's a neighborhood that has a large industrial base and when we meet with industrial businesses all the time, they talk about having a gap in needing to feel spaces, particularly as their workforce is aging out yet at the same time, I have a 30 plus percent unemployment rate in Collinwood.

There is a mismatch in terms of skills, there are jobs out there but our people are not prepared for those jobs.

And so this is not, if we're talking about a rescue plan for people who live on main street, then we need to get serious about really training people for the jobs that are here in Cleveland today, and the jobs that are coming in the future, because then that is gonna improve family health.

It's gonna improve family stability, their wealth.

And then as that improves, now they have more money to put into their houses and to invest in their community and that will raise our communities up.

So I think that's an important point to make as well.

- And I would just mention just to go to that when we looked at the tax abatement policy and the housing policies, the biggest issue in Cleveland was not that it's so expensive to live here.

It's that people's incomes are too low for landlords to be able to make the kind of investments they need to make in their homes, so just really reiterate what you're saying.

- Yeah, I feel like that that point needs to be like double down on Tania.

The point about people's incomes needing to raise up because they think that speaks to a lot of the points in the plan that.

That if you can charge extra rent but it takes Y to renovate a building or renovate a home, then it's a disincentive for the owners of that property to take care of it because they can't then pay their mortgage or pay the loan that they took out in order to rehab it.

And so I think that's a critical issue is how do we close those gaps?

And I think a lot of the sort of smaller priorities in the plan address some of those issues.

- Jamar please.

- One last thing.

(laughing) - I hope you going.

- It gets the wheels going.

I wanna mention a lot of times when we talk about sort of the renters to our landlords and property owners.

There are the sort of big players out there, but really what we miss is that a lot of times it's the mom and pop owners.

They own maybe just one house and rent the other side out because they live in a duplex, or maybe they own just two or three to sort of supplement their income.

And so they're almost in the same boat to their point.

It's not that it's a big nameless faceless corporation that's choosing not to invest in our houses.

There are some of those and we need to go after them hard, but we also need some equity in that field because there are a lot of Cleveland residents that may own one or two additional properties and they're struggling.

It's part of their income stream and to the same point, it's difficult to make those improvements.

And we needs to figure out a way to help those small property owners, because they wanna invest, they just don't have the resources.

- Well, it actually gets to a point that I wanted to bring up, which is... And I think that this kind of came out of conversations that I'd have with you Tania about this plan is that there's just a lot of need for home repair money, right?

Because people in Cleveland probably are living in a hundred year old house, give or take, and it just needs repair.

How much need do you think is really out there that needs to be addressed?

(laughing) - Honestly, it does feel a little overwhelming because we do have housing stock that has not had that ongoing maintenance and investment.

We have an aging population in Cleveland, and it's very difficult at the best of times to get a loan for home repair.

And frankly, most of our residents can't afford a loan for home repair.

And so it is really one of the first recommendations and I think one of the strongest ones in the plan is that we get really serious about...

I mean, we'd love to get to rehab, right?

That's really bringing up the housing stock but we get really serious about repair in the community.

- I'm trying to...

I had the numbers written down in some other notes, but in the ten-year housing plan, there are some examples of how many repairs the city is able to fund each year.

It seems like it might be a couple hundred.

It's not a... We're not talking about huge numbers here.

- Well, here's what I'd say.

There is...

It is very challenging with the current federal money and federal processes to do the kind of repair work that we need to do.

We go back to workforce, right?

We have incredible dearth of contractors in the city of Cleveland, and that's an unbelievable opportunity, but it's a significant gap.

I think we are in a time period now where we need to say, how do we get it done and not look at what we've done in the past as a indication of what we can do in the future.

There are funds to be able to move this forward.

I think if we're talking about people's quality of life, we talk about the social determinants of health.

We sent people home during the pandemic to conditions that were frankly less safe than probably being in an environment where they would get COVID.

And like in this environment in this world, that's really unacceptable.

So I think we need to look at how do we do much more and there are cities that are doing home repair at real scale and that's what we need to look at doing.

- Rosemary, did you have something to add on that point?

- I was just gonna say, I think there's one particular point in the plan that kind of calls out there.

There are existing programs and when people are able to access them, they do work really well.

And so I think that's one of the biggest opportunities is not having to always reinvent the wheel, but figure out how to clean up programs and make them easier for people to access because there is money sitting on the table that's not getting used in programs each year because people give up participating.

And I think that's a big opportunity for us in community development is to really be able to use the programs, talk to the city about some of the challenges of accessing them and working together to think about how to streamline the process to make it easier for people to participate in what's already out there.

- Another point of the plan that I wanted to get to was the platform calls for policies to combat predatory investing.

Jamar, is that something that you think that you're seeing in Cleveland, people who are just investing to suck out rental income or whatever with no intention of putting money into the neighborhood?

- No, absolutely.

I mean, I think we have to figure out how it legislatively and also through the judicial system then to get really cracked down on that.

There are predatory lenders, well, there's predatory lenders out there too and we can talk about that later, but there are predatory investors out there who are purchasing properties, have no intent on improving it.

Either one is (indistinct) rent out as you said, or it was also a lot of patient money in Cleveland which I don't understand.

They will buy property and do absolutely nothing, pay the taxes and do nothing.

And they do just enough that you can't enforce but you're holding the neighborhood back.

And so I think figuring out how legislatively we can deal with that and through our tax policies, through laws and what have you, how do we disincentivize people coming into the neighborhood, buying and holding and saying, even when CDCs come there, like I'm making you a fair offer.

No, I want a million dollars.

And it's just like, okay, you wanna two storefront building on lake shore.

I get it, you're near the lake but this is not...

I can't pay you beyond reality.

And they just wanna sit on the property waiting for a payday, and it's just patient money and they they'll pay the taxes and they'll let the building rot, it's insane.

- And that's where market solution there.

Site control is everything right?

If you own the site, if you own the property, you dictate whether it's gonna be well taken care of or not, and one of the things, while we're looking at those policies and trying to put them in place is to really enable non-profits like our community development corporations to get in front of the predatory buyers and there are really ways that we could be doing that with ARPA funds.

And then again, mitigating the risk for our banking partners so that they could help support us purchasing more of those properties.

- Would you... Oh, Jamar go ahead.

- I was gonna say it to Tania's point because right now I can't compete with those predatory investors.

So I just don't have the resources and so I think figuring out either the city or the CDCs or how that is, we can better resource the different structures that we have in the city now to go against and compete with those predatory investors.

But right now it's extremely challenging.

- Who are the...

I mean, can you give me a sense of, are they people you can actually reach?

Because (indistinct).

(laughing) I know that like I was looking at some recent property transfers and I found there's a French company, that's buying up properties and they're selling them on YouTube, YouTube videos in French or European investors, buy a house in Cleveland.

They're not moving in, they're trying to get rental income to Luxembourg or wherever.

Is that an issue that you deal with where you actually just cannot reach the owners?

- So I think, yes, but I think another layer to this is when we talk about predatory investment, it's not just actually about the ownership.

A lot of that predatory investment is being facilitated by local sort of predatory management companies and this infrastructure that sort of caters to foreign or California buyers or things like that.

And then they also offer maintenance afterwards and they'll resell the property for you.

And so it's sort of a cycle, so it's not just about the property owner in itself and you know that French company, but there's local players who are really facilitating this at a really high level.

And in some ways I think they're the more dangerous players because they are sucking up so many more of the properties and they know the local game really, really well.

And so I think we really need sort of kind of a trio or suite of things to look at that at a lot of different angles from both housing court and the way we do sales in Cleveland and disclosures and things like that to be able to address it.

- I mean, I know Cleveland, I think does not have point of sale inspections, right?

Is that something you think something the city should look at?

- Well, every suburb does.

And listen, it's a complicated issue because it does make it very difficult for low and middle income homeowners to sell their homes.

So it's easy to say that, that's a panacea, but I think that there are... We didn't put it in the actual recommendations because there was a lot of angst around us doing so, but there's probably some middle ground there that would make it more difficult to sell a home with doing nothing.

- I'm trying to remember the wording in the platform.

And it does say, it stopped short of saying point of sale inspection.

- Yeah, correct.

- Yeah, I'm looking at our time here.

Do we wanna start inviting people to think about questions?

If you've got any in mind in probably in a couple of minutes, we'll move over to that side of things.

I see some people already do.

But before we do that, I did have another point that I wanted to get to here following this in my notes.

Oh Tania, it's time to something that you had mentioned about trying to get a workforce for doing home repairs.

I know one of the recommendations in the plan is increase the number of building and housing inspectors by 50% in 36 months.

How do you think that can be done, especially in this kind of labor market where finding work is tough.

Finding workers is tough.

- Yeah, I mean, listen, we are realistic about the fact that this is not a one-year or this is a four year and it's also laying the groundwork to do things more incrementally over time.

But there's no question that one of our major issues is staff at City Hall.

We don't have enough people doing building and housing inspections.

Everything from encouraging development in our city, more broadly, there is a feeling, it's very difficult to do development in Cleveland and a large part of that is having enough people in the building and housing department across the board though the contractor base to do work, whether you're in the city of Cleveland or really anywhere right now.

Unfortunately we have not encouraged the trait in this country as we need to.

And I think there's some acknowledgement of that and a real push for CMSD to do more work within the school systems to encourage this.

But I don't think we're there.

- Rosemary, do you have something to add on that point?

- Yeah, I was nodding a lot.

- You're just nodding.

(laughing) Well Jamar, are there any other really big important needs that you see in Collinwood that you think the city ought to really think about as new administration, new city council are gearing up for the four years?

- I think we covered a lot of it under the housing.

I would sort of move maybe to economic development and one of the proposals that I think could take off really quickly is thinking through the white box initiative.

wWen I think about our retail areas within Collinwood, there's a lot of great buildings, but they need a lot of investment.

And the business owners that are interested again, it's a resource issue.

They may not have the resources to totally bring that building back especially in the state that it's in.

If it's been vacant five 10, 20 years, if we could do something where again, that facility has been white box in some of the maybe sort of major things are taken care of, you can walk in and then kind of envision your restaurant, envision your art studio or whatever it is.

Then I think it gets us closer and it makes us quite frankly, I think more competitive with other communities, in our region where they have the building stock that's already there.

And you come to Collinwood and again, we've got just like our century old houses, we've got century old commercial real estate that really needs that investment.

And I think that that is a key recommendation, right?

- And sorry, could you... For those of us who aren't familiar, what do you mean when you say white box?

- So, and I'm gonna rely on my colleagues to help me with this too.

But essentially versus a lot of times you'll walk into a storefront and it may need everything, right.

It may be ripped out and then pipes missing and all of that, it's sort of really say, can we get it to a point where the walls are back, the systems are in place, and it's just sort of white box, right?

So it's just you go in and imagine if this room just had white paint on the walls, and then you can customize it if you wanna add walls or do what you need to do to make it work for your business.

But the framing is there.

It's not you walking into a building and saying, oh my gosh, I've gotta put it in electrical.

I've got to put in piping, I've gotta rebuild the walls, I've gotta fix the rafters.

I've gotta... And then you just say, I've gotta go somewhere else.

(laughing) And that's what happens, right?

- That's what happens.

- We remove that.

So you walk in and say, oh wow, this is a beautiful space, I could do this and I could do that.

And that's where we want to get to.

- So before we go to questions, I had one thing I wanted to put to all of you.

And that is another part of this plan, talks about municipal modernization and our new mayor campaigned on a modern and responsive city hall, a phrase I heard plenty last year.

Could each of you give me an example of something you think could be modernized at the city?

What would it look like?

Tania can start with you.

- I have a long list, (laughing) but I think mostly, Rosemary kind of touched on it is really making city hall transparent, bringing it online for our communities.

The idea that you can apply for permits, you can do some of that now easily online.

You can see what land buying cloth you wanna purchase.

You can look at all of the neighborhoods and better understand you can apply for your birth certificate, death certificate, all of the things that today in most cities, you can do a lot from your home and you don't need to come down to city hall, I think is a huge part of this work.

- Rosemary.

- Yeah, so I think a lot of for me, the municipal modernization is more about the way that the city engages with the community.

And so Tania talked a little bit about how people don't have to come down to city hall through technology, but I think it's also about having a staff at city hall who's been to every neighborhood people who know what your neighborhood looks like and know what you're talking about when you're engaging with them and having a mayor who's spending time regularly outside of city hall and in neighborhoods.

And I think I feel very optimistic about that.

So far, the mayor shown a lot of interest in doing that.

And I think I feel very positive about that being a really accomplishable goal in the near term future.

- Jamar is something that you think city hall should modernize.

- I echo everything Tania and Rosemary have already said.

I think the only thing I would add is also internal collaboration.

I think both between the departments, but then also in reference to how say permitting process and other processes work, right?

So part of modernization for me is if a business owner goes down to get a permit or to do a construction project, it doesn't become, I need to go to building and housing and then I need you to physically go to the planning department and get something else they have then goes like you've got to physically do all of that running around when in this 21st century how come there's not a way that internally that can happen at city hall and there's just a one-stop shop for someone who wants to invest in the city, or if it's a resident who needs to engage with city services, be it online remote or if they come in person should be a one-stop shop and not that they have to run around to 10 different departments and get lost and it just I just think it's almost ridiculous in the area we're in.

So I think that's a part of modernization to streamline that and it will also I think, foster some collaboration between the departments.

- I think that's a great point Jamar.

Just the sort of unified similarly, how we're trying to unify our voices.

I think city hall also unifying their voices across departments so that the same messages are going out to residents and business owners.

They're getting the same feedback on priorities and things that are important across planning across traffic and engineering and all of those departments.

- Great, well thank you so much.

We're now gonna move to the Q&A section here from our audience both physical and virtual.

We welcome questions from everyone, City club members, guests, those of you joining us via the live stream or radio broadcast on 90.3 ideas stream public media.

If you'd like to tweet a question please tweet it @cityclub.

And you can also text your questions to 3305415794.

That's 3305415794 and our City Club staff will try to work it into the program.

And could we have our first question please?

Thank you.

- Good afternoon.

I think that there is a lot of jubilation in the city right now because we have a new mayor at least on planning Twitter theories.

(laughing) And so I have a thing that keeps me up at night is that we in Cleveland are so good at patting ourselves on the back and talking about how great we are that we're gonna miss something.

And so I see two Gen Xers and two Millennials sitting on a stage, and so my question is what do the (indistinct) what did the Gen Xers and the Millennials need to do that's different than those that have come before us so that we're not so busy patting ourselves on the back 'cause we got a new mayor and then nothing really happens.

- Who wants to take that one?

Jamar.

(laughing) - Go Jamar.

- No, I love this question.

And I'm so glad Chris, that you asked it because the one thing that's kept me up is and I think it's adjacent to what you're asking is that we don't fall back into what's comfortable or what's familiar.

And I think that is what's dangerous for everyone, right?

We're at this moment, I think we're in the honeymoon phase, right?

If we think of a relationship and we don't want to... We wanna stay in that phase, right?

'Cause everything seems possible right now, but it's too easy to fall back on old patterns.

And we can't block new ideas because of tradition.

We can't hold back new leadership because of this is how we always have done things.

And I think a lot of times after the excitement wanes, we go back to well you have to do it this way, or this is how we've always done it.

And then we start to suppress new leadership folks get discouraged and then we're back at those same old patterns.

And I think that's what we have to really guard against because this is week one, the question is what happens in week four, week 12, week 22 when things are hard, when the challenges start popping up and it's easy to default back to this is how we've always done it.

It's comfortable, it's familiar, let's do it this way.

And I think our new mayor and the incoming administration, our new council leadership, CDCs there's a lot of new leadership right now, right?

In town, both in government and even in different institutions, we need to guard against that and say, what's possible.

How do we make sure that we're surfacing new ideas, thinking about things differently and then forging ahead regardless of some of the challenges that may exist because otherwise we'll fall back into the same old patterns and in four years we'll have the same conversation and a few neighborhoods will have moved the needle.

And we'll still be talking about the poorest big city that has the least broadband access and (indistinct) and what really happened.

And we don't wanna be there.

- I think Chris, it's an excellent question and to me what makes me glad that we're here today is that we spent a lot of time last year working on ideas and a platform.

And so now we do have a new administration and it's not part ourselves on the back for putting together a platform it's we have to now keep our voices as an industry we have to keep our voices unified and we have to keep ticking away at all of the items we put in and keep raising those issues every day when we're engaging with our broader community and with the city.

That to me is the work that's ahead of us is continuing to stay unified and stay on point and just keep kind of grinding it out is where we're at now.

- Go to our next question, please.

- Good afternoon.

- Just making sure the microphone is on.

- Okay, Jamar you were wonderful as a high school leader when you were attending John Hay High School.

(audience clapping) And so I know you're quite humble, but I'd like for you to share with the audience, what you were involved in student leadership and how those lessons as a student leader have helped you in the leadership that you experienced today.

- For sure.

Well first thank you one of my mentors (indistinct) Johnson and thank for all of your leadership on the state board of education, but yeah I actually got excited about civic involvement in high school as you mentioned at John Hay sitting on something that was called city-wide student council at the time.

So members from across the city, all of the high schools in town would get together.

And we really were a mini city council and we actually had a civic day where we'd get to go to city council, was in the mid '90s, sit in those council leadership chairs.

And it just...

It did something, like it shows you what was possible, right?

And it started to spark an idea that anything is possible in terms of if you work hard and you put your ideas out there.

And I can't say enough about all of the folks that invested in me through that process.

And I'm excited to hear that CMSD still has a form of it where all of the students get together and are able to come downtown experience city council, experience government.

And I think we need to do more of that 'cause we don't know what leadership is out there in our elementary schools or middle schools in our high schools that are ready to emerge.

And we shouldn't discount the fact that just because someone may be 14 or 16 that their ideas aren't valid and they see the city through a lens that we may...

I may not realize anymore at 42, right?

Somebody who's 14 and 16, they have a different experience of it.

We've got to figure out what that is what makes them successful, but then what are some of their challenges so that we can address that and make sure that they can thrive because they're gonna be sitting here and I wanna find the next person that's gonna be not just Jamar but way beyond anything I've been able to accomplish, right?

And they're out there, they're in our schools.

So I think we just have to invest in that human capital and propel it forward.

- Thank you so much.

And I wasn't just scrolling Twitter while you were talking.

I was just trying to see if we got any other questions to add to the conversation and we have one right in the room.

Thank you so much.

- Hello.

My name is Angela Gaston, I'm currently urban studies student SDSU.

(audience cheering) I just had a question about how do we deal with current and future businesses there like dev element and stuff like regarding the decrease in traffic because of the corridor.

And especially in these main arteries on east side St. Clair superior, I could see it every day, I'm also a police officer.

So I see it every day the decrease in traffic, just as it opened up just a few months ago.

And there aren't many businesses but I hear that their hopes of businesses being there and with the decrease in traffic and this corridor getting longer and bigger, how do we compensate for that?

- And I'm sorry, I just wanna make sure I'm clear were you talking about the opportunity corridor- - Yes.

- In particular.

Gotcha.

Okay, we've got this brand new big road going from I 490 up to a university circle, there's promise of new business, like cold storage for food processors.

What do you guys wanna see in this space?

What should there be in this new space?

- I was just saying.

And the question was also what happens to the main streets that are... Have less traffic because of the corridor, correct?

- Yeah.

- Okay, go ahead.

- I can start.

So I think that the first piece is that planning.

I remember this from school, right?

From grad school is that there's a business cycle, an economic development cycle and a political cycle.

And the economic development cycle is like 20 years.

And that feels very daunting and yet it really needs that much time to see a new place come to maturation and the changes that come.

So you can't really attract businesses they kind of in industrial and warehouse type businesses that are really intended to provide jobs for Cleveland residents.

So it's not really intended to be retail, which is why I'm hoping you won't take way too much from the corridors.

You don't see that until the infrastructure is there, right?

The Euclid corridor, you didn't see the businesses start coming in the investment till the infrastructure was there.

So I think there's a lot of work being done to attract businesses that will provide family-sustaining wages for our residents.

And we need to be a little patient and have some faith that it's coming.

In terms of the current commercial quarters, I think at some of what Rosemary was saying about really investing in infrastructure on those corridors, right?

We take St. Claire that's today and we actually implement the midway plan, which is enormous, right?

To really bring a bike infrastructure to that road.

And then we have to choose, which is really difficult as community and economic development professionals where we focus.

'Cause if you scatter investment everywhere you're really not gonna see improvement anywhere.

And so if there's a section of St Claire, I'm just using that as an example, that we really tried to double down on that section so that business owners and investors really see some traction in where the work was.

- And I just wanted to add, I think you kind of talked a little bit about traffic counts and things like that decreasing.

I think the future of neighborhood businesses and those kinds of corridor businesses are about also building up the residential base around those areas.

And so it's okay if commuters who are on their way to Cleveland clinic, aren't going down St. Claire as long as the side streets around there are populated with people who are looking for a place to eat in the evening, who wanna grab coffee with friends.

That I think is what really will support the retail on those spaces, more than cars that are whipping past at a high speed.

So I think it's kind of a two a two-sided thing, right?

We have to invest in the infrastructure and then we also have to invest in building and bringing back residents that can support the businesses so that there's enough people there to spend the dollars.

- And I know we've got a couple of questions, so I'll be brief.

I think the other part portion of it is getting creative with how we can help those existing business owners.

Because I think what the pandemic has sort of shown is that so much is moving online.

That really there's an opportunity for those corridors to become places where you can have a unique experience.

But I think the other thing is a lot of those businesses have been there for 10, 20, 30.

They may be generational businesses.

They may not know how to engage online or have the infrastructure to engage online.

And when you look at sort of sites like Etsy's, and others folks are looking for unique items that really a lot of times are in our neighborhoods, but they may not be online and offering them.

So I think we also have to rethink what is successful for some of those businesses can we work with them to build up their online presence?

And maybe it's not just people coming in and out but maybe they're selling to people all around the world that's still is successful.

Because I think we may have to begin to realize, depending on how we come out of this.

And if online shopping continues to take off, it may not be as active on our corridors, unless they're experience-based and not just sort of retail based but we can do something to help those retailers engage in a different way and get access to the e-commerce side of things.

And that I think is a big opportunity that maybe through the city and through our CDCs, we can help some of those legacy businesses think about their businesses differently and open up a new market.

- Well, thank you so much.

Next question.

Yes, sir.

- Coming...

I'm an immigrant Migrator to the US.

What I, my question is that we talk about all of these things, but we don't talk about immigrants migrating into the inner city or the refugees, because that is the open 84, some percent of the immigrants open businesses, but none of the emphasis from the city hall or from the county has been on immigrants or migrants or refugees.

What is your game plan to try to encourage not only immigrants, but students who come to schools that tend to stay behind and work and live in the city of Cleveland.

- Thank you for asking that question, because at the end of the day, one of the most important things in this neighborhood platform is to make Cleveland a livable city, a place where people wanna come and invest.

And a really significant part of that is increasing the population, right?

We all talk about it Cleveland was built for 900,000 to a million residents and it's very difficult to sustain with under 400,000.

We have seen the revitalization of communities all over the country by attracting immigrants and refugees.

And I think one of the things in the platform that we didn't talk about is really marketing our neighborhoods marketing Cleveland, unfortunately, and this is just the way it tends to be.

If you turn on the six o'clock news, or you look at media, all you hear about the negatives and without meaning to that's mostly what we focused on today as well, but there is incredible heritage and culture and amenities and walkability and community in the city of Cleveland and in its neighborhoods.

And one of the things that city hall used to do, and we really wanna get back to is partnering on a really robust marketing campaign that will help, especially students who have come and invested time and energy to study in our schools to think about staying in Cleveland.

And there is I mean when you study innovation and you look at what makes for a vibrant economy, it is a diversity of people and backgrounds, and Cleveland's history is all about that.

And I think I'm excited to see the amount.

I think the conversation has changed in the last five years and more beyond, we have to take care of who's here and making it kind of an either or versus an and, right?

We need to take care of who's here.

And we do that by inviting more people in who will help raise up everybody here.

So I'm sorry, as you can tell, I'm really passionate about this one.

(chuckles) I'm sorry about that one.

- Well and one thing I've heard from talking with people in the resettlement world is that particularly for refugee resettlement housing costs are an issue.

- Is huge, yeah.

And we are partnering with the refugee resettlement agencies, and clearly one of the things we're concerned about is the cost to resettle refugees, where typically you do on the near west side is higher.

And now that's an opportunity to bring refugees more into the St Clair neighborhood and other east side neighborhoods, but that's...

It's a lift and really important that we do that.

- Great, another question please.

- Thank you.

Good afternoon, Jeannie Smith from the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, you spoke about investment and infrastructure and resiliency, climate resiliency.

Can you talk about how clean water works specifically sewer and storm water management investment fit into the plan?

- I don't know if we specifically call out those things, but I think in the plan, we talk a lot about green infrastructure and tree canopy and those things in particular.

And so for me, I think when Nick was asking, what are our top priorities for me one of the things that rises to the top is the goal of reducing the number of neighborhoods whose tree canopy is below 30%.

To me, that's a huge goal and kind of incredibly critical to both climate resiliency and the livability of our neighborhoods, but also kind of critical for the sewer district and clean water.

in West Park, we've been working with some residents who street is regularly flooding and things like that and needing to spend time on education and talking about the role trees and other types of green infrastructure can play in reducing those things and preventing flooding that just building a bigger sewer pipe is not always going to be the answer for them.

And so I think I think indirectly is really to me how we speak to those issues.

- Jamar do you have anything that?

- I was just gonna say, and actually Rosemary hit on it at the end so I was gonna be quiet, but I think part of it too, making sure that we're doing those things that can reduce the inflows into the sewers, but also when the plan talks about infrastructure sort of what's under the streets.

And I think a lot of it is already happening through the sewer districts projects to reduce the combined sewer overflows, right?

And that's important to me, the column with being a lakefront community we want to reduce those days that people get swim in the lake because of strong runoff.

So I think when we talk about infrastructure and what's under the street, it also goes to how do we update and improve our infrastructure so that we are investing in clean water through a number of different vehicles.

- And Dan, I think has a question here for us from the worldwide web.

- Pretty exactly, exactly.

The interwebs for this count comes from a listener on Twitter.

What can the CDCs and housing court be doing to inform/leverage relationships to support effective code enforcement in this new administration?

- Can you read that one more time it was a long question.

I'm sorry, I hope it didn't disappear.

I'm putting you on the spot- - It didn't disappear.

- I'm sorry.

- It didn't disappear.

What can CDCs and housing court be doing to inform and Reverage relationships to support effective code enforcement?

- Oh, you wanna go first?

- No, go ahead.

- Okay, well an initiative that the city did start under a former Councilman Brancatelli and the committee development department with something called the healthy homes initiative, which really put in every CDC, an engagement person who their work was really to engage with residents and landlords to help them better understand how to maintain their properties and connect them to resources.

Because one of the things we found and Jamar talked about this before is that code enforcement, when people don't have the resources to improve their homes really it's just exacerbating the problem, right?

And so one of the things mayor Jackson had really pushed is we don't wanna just send more people to housing court.

We really wanna try to keep people out of housing court, do more that's preventative.

And so that partnership between the code enforcement division at building and housing community development and the CDC so arere in the neighborhoods.

And I think we keep saying that because they're closest to residents really able to help build that trust that we'll get a resident to take the time and energy to engage in programs that are again often very difficult to access, but could help them greatly.

- And so really I just was gonna...

I echo what Tania said in terms of the partnership between housing court, CDCs and the city and the building and housing department specifically, I think is key, right?

And that's really what healthy homes initiative is in part about it is enforcement where enforcement is appropriate, but it is also making sure that we have and we talked about the resources for home repair earlier that if it really is a homeowner, that it just is struggling.

We don't want to smack them in the face, right?

We want to be able to say, here is a resource that can help you maintain your home.

And we really wanna get to the point that we're talking about preventative measures before it reaches that point that we're talking about the point of no return, right?

So how much of that can we prevent through programming and through coordination between CDCs, housing court and the building and housing department?

That's gonna be the key.

- Well, thank you so much.

It's with great regret that I have to wrap 'cause there's other great questions coming in.

But I'm today at the City Club, we've been listening to a conversation, outlining a neighborhood plan for the next era of Cleveland leadership.

We've been joined by Jamar Doyle executive director at greater Collinwood Development Corporation, Tania Menesse CEO, and president at Cleveland Neighborhood Progress and Rosemary Mudry executive director at Westpark Cams Neighborhood development.

And that brings us to the end of today's forum.

Thank you so much to our panelists and to our guests, friends and members of the City Club.

I'm Nick Castele.

This forum is now adjourned.

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