Architectural Reports for Phase 3

[sharon kinsella]

Hmmm isn't that a Mainstreet area? Just asking?

[Mike Zannoni]

Hmmm isn't that a Mainstreet area? Just asking?

Explain some, and direct me to info, please. Many of us are learning.

Thanks.

[sharon kinsella]

Go to the LakewoodAlive website and look at the plans for economic development. You can also read the MainStreet project there. I'm pretty sure they have a link on their site.

[Jim O'Bryan]

Hmmm isn't that a Mainstreet area? Just asking?

Explain some, and direct me to info, please. Many of us are learning.

Thanks.

Mike

The very short story, as friend, member, supporter, and foe.

Some of the pro-WestEnd supporters, at the Riveria election night
spoke of the need to educate Lakewood residents, err, no, voters,
for the need of economic development.

Months later LakewoodAlive is announced, a group that will hold
three public meetings about the NEED for economic development.
The first is on housing, and the need for new housing.

During this time I had many lunches with Jay Foran and Mary
Anne Crampton. They had assured me that LakewoodAlive is
about education the masses. As such I support their work, as
the Lakewood Observer was all about discussion/education.
NEVER about implantation, and certainly NEVER by LakewoodAlive.

Meanwhile, the city "wins*" a Mainstreet franchise, easily one of
the worse ideas ever bought by the city, and higher Jennifer Hooper
to run it. One of the many ideas out of "Mainstreet version 1" was a pocket
park in front of the Board of Education, tthe Lakewood Observer had pledge
$5,000 to help build. That was until we heard the plan, and
saw it as a complete waste of money,mostly because I was told they
would be tearing down the Board of Education in the next 5 years.

Mainstreet pays a salary, and immediately it becomes the goal of about
three groups to make it part of their program. Jennifer Hooper a good person
who is not a leader, but a good lieutenant, gets fired, and Mary Anne Crampton
is hired to run the Mainstreet Project. I am on record of being very supportive
of this move. While Mary Anne seems more obsessed with power and shopping
than the norm, she was certainly a step up, in theory to Jennifer Hooper.

Now it gets complicated real fast. Within months, LakewoodAlive merges, with LCPI.
Some within LCPI have called it more of a takeover, instead of merging. This
now makes LakewoodAlive, a powerhouse that feels it never needs to answer to anyone
but once a year. However the problem is, with interest waining in LakewoodAlive,
and Mainstreet a dismal failure. How do you build critical mass for their select ideas
of commerce instead of residents. Ahhhh Haaaa return to their old friend "Spral
Dynamics," small coffee clatches where peer pressure can be best applied. Just do
not enter a public conversation that cannot be controlled.


Best quick explanation I have found.
Parts could be offensive to some.

How can you PROVE to other memes you care about more than everything south of Lake Road
being a shopping/commerical district. Hey that is easy co-opt, biking, arts, music,
pets, green movement, education, security, who cares as long as it can be controlled
on the highest level, and generates income for the Cheesecake Machine.

Today they receive money of over $1 million to help residents stay in their homes.
They also qualify to purchase foreclosed homes for $1. Which to say the least is an
interesting dilemma, for a person that wanted to see a section of Lakewood blighted,
and residents put out of their homes, for Cheesecake.

LakewoodAlive is joined at the hip with City Hall, the School Board, and many
other programs. Did LakewoodAlive back the closing of McKinley, a school at
the edge of the WestEnd development? No, it did not exist. Did they back the closing
of Grant? A school at the edge of their "DowntowN"development. No, they would not do
that in public, might alienate many of the volunteers, not their style.But behind the
scene, it would seem they had a pretty good prescence and prescience in the very
changing,morphing, discussion of what the schools need to be and who to serve.

As I know you just moved to Lakewood after years of working and hanging out here. I
would simply say, go back through issues of the Lakewood Observer, all are online. Go
back through discussions on the Observation Deck,or elsewhere. Read the story for
yourself in their words,and the comments of other Lakewoodites. Simply do a search
for Jay Foran, Mary Anne Crampton, Mainstreet, LakewoodAlive, Ken Warren, WestEnd.

I want to say again.No matter how any of these things shake out, PLEASE support the
LakewoodSchools,and any levy or bond issue coming up. We cannot hold students
hostage for the possible thoughts and deeds of outsiders.

I would like to also point out, that everyone mentioned in this discussion cares about
Lakewood. While some of us prefer open discussion and a better version of the bedroom
community we grew up in,or like you attracted you to move here Others see it differently.
Which is their right.

.

[sharon kinsella]

Unfortunately, the only kids that will get short changed kids are from Grant. I don't like the ideo of many little ones walking to school there. Definitely treachorous. These are grade school kids for petes sake, little ones. No, no a million times no!

In addition if you all were told that the BOE was going to be torn down in 5 years back then, it sounds like the decision about Grant was made back then.

Now they can use that famous line "But we held a community meeting and had residents on the committee and this is what THEY decided". What a crock.

[Betsy Voinovich]

Hi everybody,

Jim-- Not getting a lot of what you’re saying. Sorry, please slow down for those
of us who weren’t born in Lakewood. (My mom was, but it doesn’t seem to be helping me.)

What is LCPI? How did merging with them make LakewoodAlive more powerful?
Why did LCPI, whoever they are, allow this to happen? How is it possible that LakewoodAlive has been given money to help residents stay in their homes? Is that some kind of a joke? They have no background showing that they know how to do that, or that they have any interest in doing that. They’re developers, right? I don’t get it.

I don’t understand why a group whose agenda is development of buildings, has anything to do with Lakewood’s public school system. Has it been all right with the people who live here to have their public school system used as a chessboard for City Planning? It wasn’t all right with them to have people driven out of their homes on the West End, having to defend themselves from having their homes wrongly labeled “blighted”, to develop that area into a mall. (That’s what you mean by “Cheesecake” right? You’re talking about a Cheese Cake Factory restaurant? I looked up the “Sixty Minutes” broadcast.) Why would it be all right for the people who live here to have their children driven out of a school, and those families driven off the most densely populated streets of children and families in Lakewood?

Why are LakewoodAlive people, founders of LakewoodAlive, running these school committees like the “50 Year Committee” and the “Phase 3 Committee”?

I know a lot of moms and dads like me, with young kids, who never really paid that much attention to decisions made by the School Board, the City, in terms of city planning, or politics in general, who are reading this thread right now. We just thought Lakewood was a great, kind of old-fashioned place to raise our kids. Where we walk to school, know the librarians, the crossing guards, the people behind the counters at the Phoenix, Caribou, the bank, the drugstore, the post office. Kind of like Sesame Street. It’s “Downtown” just about as much as it seems like “Downtown” on Sesame street. Way in the background, you can see silhouettes of tall buildings in Cleveland. They actually have a downtown in Cleveland. As for the “center” of Lakewood, it is Sesame Street to us. A school that introduces us all to each other in a friendly way that is rated Excellent by the state of Ohio, academically, and also with it’s “Value Added” measure, which shows how much kids improve, year to year.

Please do us all a favor and spell some of this stuff out. We are willing to fight for our children and our families and Grant, our amazing central school, which takes more marginalized kids (refugees from all over the world: Albania, Somalia, Myanmar, economically disadvantaged from Cleveland) than any school in the city, and turns them into Lakewood kids. From getting F’s in East Cleveland, to not knowing how to speak English in the fourth grade, the very next year doing well, feeling comfortable and happy, and getting ready to go to middle school, like any other Lakewood kid. It’s completely nuts to think about eliminating a powerhouse school like this one. Is the Cheesecake factory supposed to go there now? Are these kids “blighted”? And what about my kids? Not refugees, not impoverished, just kids, living on streets like Westwood, Elmwood, Arthur, St. Charles, Belle. Neighborhood streets full of kids, delighted to be playing with each other after they walk home from school. Also blighted?

Is this how things have always been here, and those of us whose toddlers are just now entering the elementary school system were blind to how it actually is?

Sorry this is so long. Thank you for your patience, and for taking the time to educate moms and dads who are usually so busy running after kids that it is a great service to us to be able to sit down and read all of this in one place.

[Jim O'Bryan]

Betsy

I am pretty busy right now as you know.

But would love to speak about this later.

This is not the time or the place to talk of this.

LCPI = Lakewood Community Progress, Inc. Was the city's Community Development
Corporation (CDC). They were like North East Shores in Collinwood but much less
effective. Their big play before making Lakewood the biggest Cornhole Capital between
Cleveland and Rocky River, was filing for a $10,000 grant, er, contest from Hamburger
Helper. We did not get it.

more later

.

[Kate McCarthy]

(God I hate the term gifted. My neighbor told my wife, do not worry one call, and your children could be gifted too).

I am not fond of the term gifted but that is a term used by the state department of education who also sets the standards. The system is required to do a child count of children who fall into this category and have to come up with an educational plan to accommodate this group's special needs. I believe only Lincoln and Grant currrently have discovery programs for this group of students so if either school closed I would guess another elementary school would probably have to add discovery classes.

And children don't qualify for the program based on a phone call. Your neighbor is misinformed.

That said when my daughters started in Lakewood schools there were four elementary schools in a middle corridor -- Garfield, Franklin, Grant and Madison. McKinley, Lincoln and Taft served the north, and Harrison, Roosevelt and Hayes served the south. I cannot imagine eliminating all the elementary schools from the center of town. The area between Madison and Detroit is for the most part the most solidly residential area of Lakewood. To have absolutely no elementary school in that area at all seems to me crazy. The current Grant school is too small but that site would be ideal for constructing a new school. Why the debate isn't about whether to close Lincoln or Rooselvelt is beyond me.

[dl meckes]

There's no commercial zoning near Lincoln or Roosevelt.

[Christina McCallum]

Actually, Emerson, Grant and Lincoln have Discovery programs.

[Jim O'Bryan]

Betsy

Back to our discussion. I want to make sure you understand. I would hate to cause
any school administrator problems with calls from LakewoodAlive power elite. I
do not believe that LakewoodAlive put a hit on Grant. But I am sure that many of
their members would act like Pavlov's Dogs to bells and meat at the mere mention
of Economic Development and DowntowN.

As I am sure you realize, I have not attended any of the meetings, for my own reasons.
But it would nearly be impossible to control, I mean they gave you goals and kept to
them right? As Ken Wilder asked, all of this work was not boiled down to one brochure
by one person, right? And the chances of that committee of individual(s) being a
plant or even a member of LakewoodAlive, and/or wanting to be on the school board
is probably near zero, right? So there is no real chance of tampering.

But with over 400 members the chance of a LA member or two on the committee is
pretty good, but anything else would be a real stretch. I will start a new thread on
the history of LakewoodAlive, and a really cool chart with who does what with who.
It is fascinating how, one small group can get get paid by the city to recieve funding
from the city, and use that government funding to ask for donations, to pay them to
work for the city, and get volunteers to help them have "discussions" with or at the
schools, about economic development, with past school board presidents on their board
while getting private business awards, from other members of the group, which include
current board and council members, and now... Well you get the picture.

Whew, cheesecake break.
Excuse me homeless dog,can you spare a dime.

More to come.

As always I want to make sure that everyone continues to support the schools, and
any up coming bonds, levies, or student fund raising.

.

[Ahmie Yeung]

Actually, Emerson, Grant and Lincoln have Discovery programs.

If Emerson has a Discovery program, that helps explain their enrollment numbers a bit. As does HM taking the CHAMPS program. Both of those buildings are over-sized for the family housing density they serve - they represent the lowest density of houses with elementary children in them (as shown by enrollment data analyzed with the help of the County Auditor, which has an accurate count of how many housing units are in each area), yet they're the two largest elementary buildings.

[Donald Farris]

Hi,
Maybe I missed it, but I didn't clearly see an answer about the LEED question. Will these schools be LEED certified? What level? While being energy efficient was always promised with all new school construction, I don't believe it was delivered. A LEED rating is the only standardized way to demonstrate energy efficiency is delivered.

[Ahmie Yeung]

Donald,

All new school buildings in Ohio are required to be built to LEED Silver standards. That is something the committee was informed of early on. Considering proximity to community ameneties such as the post office and such, as well as already having ample land for green space, Grant has a bit of a jump on Lincoln just by it's location - but the location keeps being cited as a negative instead of a positive for some reason that I can't really wrap my brain around. As the mother of a 5 year old, I honestly feel safer with him walking along Detroit than Clifton - the drivers are paying closer attention because they're expecting more pedestrians than Clifton traffic does, and have the traffic lights and speed limit to help with that.


Hope that helps.


Ahmie

[Donald Farris]

Hi,
That's a good first step but since Lakewood sort of remodeled existing schools did they have to do Leed silver too? Are the schools recently completed LEED silver?