Columnists

The clouds in Cleveland

The view from Cleveland’s Ninth Street Pier on Sept. 11, 2016.
The view from Cleveland’s Ninth Street Pier on Sept. 11, 2016.

CLEVELAND--The man in the hoodie has pegged me for a tourist, probably because I'm snapping a photo with my iPhone of the view looking back at the city from the East Ninth Street pier.

It's a postcard view of one of the new would-be iconic "Cleveland" signs that the Convention and Visitors Bureau of Greater Cleveland--the legal appellation of "Destination Cleveland," which until a couple of years ago was "Positively Cleveland"--has positioned around the city in selfie-worthy locations.

My shot encompasses the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (they used to insist on styling it precisely that way, with "rock and roll" spelled out, but now some of their promotional material permits an ampersand), the Great Lakes Science Center and a few signature skyline features like the Key Tower and the shiny new Hilton, and, way in back, the venerable Terminal Tower, which was the second tallest building in the world when it opened in 1928 and where, as a boy, my father-in-law Yanko often sold copies of the Plain Dealer to John D. Rockefeller. (The newspaper cost a nickel; Rockefeller always gave Yanko a dime and told him to keep the change.)

But what really caught my interest is the murderous morning sky, roiling black and gray with a few faint veins of silver. I checked the Internet before I left the hotel; there was zero percent chance of rain. Karen grew up here, and she says the skies do that sometimes. I've only brought one pair of shoes. It wouldn't help to get them soaked. But hoodie man doesn't look worried, even as the wind whips and he has to semi-shout.

"Powell's Books?" he says, noticing my logoed baseball cap. "We could use one of those. There's no bookstore downtown."

There aren't a lot of things in downtown Cleveland, though you probably wouldn't notice that at first. There are a lot of trendy restaurants and brew pubs, and in the wake of July's Republican National Convention, it's tidy as Disneyland.

"I was born in the '50s, and I've never seen the city so clean," Hoodie says. "Maybe it was this clean in the '40s, but I doubt it."

But he worries that the superficial spruceness of downtown camouflages some deep problems. While there are plenty of restaurants and bars and lots of apartments and condominiums downtown, there are few quotidian retailers. There are only three dry cleaners in downtown Cleveland, and only one real grocery store--a high-end Heinen's that opened in 2015, occupying a gorgeous old bank building highlighted by a rotunda with a Tiffany-style ceiling. It's a beautiful store and the prices aren't too bad, but it still seems more like an Instagram destination than a place to buy bananas and raisin bran.

If you're willing to walk a few blocks there's the handsome and decidedly upscale Constantino's Market in the Warehouse District. (Everything in Cleveland is in a "district." The map we picked up in our hotel even designates an area just north and east of downtown which--according to the map--is completely devoid of any points of interest as the "avenue district.") But unlike New York or Chicago, there are no bodegas tucked in amid the T-shirt shops. The CVS drug store around the corner might be the best place to buy socks.

"What we need is another 7,000 people living downtown," Hoodie says. There's around 13,000 now, and they're projecting there will be 18,000 residents by 2018. But it would help, he allows, if someone could convince Target to move into one of the old buildings that now stand vacant.

And it's disturbing that Tower Center, the mall attached to the Terminal Tower that a decade ago seemed like one of the top high-end shopping destinations in the country, has only managed to hold on to a Brooks Brothers and a Victoria's Secret. While there's still a Morton's Steakhouse on one level, most of the space is leased to what seem to be highly provisional tenants. There's a dollar store on one level. The grand anchor Higbee's--the department store featured in The Christmas Story--was a Dillard's when I last visited. Now it's part of the sprawling Jack Casino (which has at least preserved its elegant interior). The nearby May Company building is vacant.

And it's probably telling that there are few franchise restaurants downtown--here and there a Starbucks, a few Subway sandwich shops, and a Dunkin Donuts in Tower Center, but you have to get away from downtown before you'll find a McDonald's or Burger King. That adds to downtown's ambience, but it means something that there are so few signifiers of regular everydayness. Tourists don't eat at Mickey D's, but working people do.

"A lot of the storefronts that are boarded up have businesses moving into them," Hoodie tells me. "But not all of them. And they're still building apartments. Somebody is optimistic about this so-called 'renaissance' but, ask me, I'm worried. It seems fragile. I don't know that we can make it as a tourist town."

The thing is, Cleveland is a pretty great tourist town. It's a highly walkable downtown. It might take you half an hour to get from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to Progressive Field where the first-place Indians play, but it's a comfortable amble. You can actually get tickets to Indian games. (Browns' tickets too, if you're willing to pay more than face value. Maybe you have to know someone to see the Cavs.)

For cheapskates like us, it's fairly easy to figure out the buses and trains--you can get to downtown from the airport in a half hour on the Rapid Transit and it will only cost you $2.50.

And if you want to drive, I don't know of an American city that's easier to navigate. While there are rough neighborhoods, a lot of the city feels like an overgrown small Southern town. Ohio City, across the Cuyahoga from downtown, feels like Argenta.

I admit, I'm a skeptic. You can't replace a steel mill with a Gap store. And now those Gap stores seem to have gone away. But they're still building taller builders, they're still offering condos. And those black clouds in the photo never amounted to anything at all.

pmartin@arkansasonline.com

www.blooddirtangels.com

Editorial on 09/18/2016

Upcoming Events