Cleveland has finally figured out what is going to turn the fate of their city around: it’s time to revitalize Public Square! You know, with more public art. And a farmer’s market, even though there’s no farms within 25 miles. Sure, it’ll cost $40 million, but it’s sure to fix all of their problems. Three fatal flaws:
(1) No one is ever downtown except between 8 and 5 weekdays and for sporting events. Ever. Most of the workers are unionized bureaucrats that live off the teat of the welfare state and, most likely, are not particularly concerned with public art.
(2) No one ever goes to Public Square unless they work there (or are walking from the trains to somewhere else). Ever. I might be going out on a limb here, but I’m guessing that this is likely not because of a lack of public art. This is the case with pretty much every open space in the city, all of which have plenty of public art … like the Free Stamp.
(3) The reason Public Square is dead stems from the fact that Tower City Center — the shopping mall above the train station — has countless empty storefronts and the skyscraper that used to hold the American headquarters for BP Oil is almost completely empty. (Indeed, more than five years after the fact, it’s still called the “Former BP Building.”) So unless they can bring industry back to Cleveland and give suburbanites a reason to shop downtown in old shabby buildings instead of glistening shopping centers in their backyard like Legacy Village, this is really pretty meaningless.
The sad thing is that might actually be one of the better ideas Cleveland has come up with to fix its problems … Does anyone wonder why the place is a disaster?
As the old joke goes … What’s the difference between Cleveland and the Titanic? Cleveland has a better orchestra.
