The Observation Deck

The 'peninsula'? Why is this still being discussed?
Any politician on any level who would support this would be swiftly and completely ridiculed and rightly so. 'Build an island in Lake Erie off the coast of Cleveland' It makes Alaskas 'bridge to nowhere' look like a good idea. Please folks.
Give this one up and put this horse out of its misery. Can we please have some workable ideas for Lakewoods future?

Dee

I don't understand your negative reaction to the peninsula idea.

Waterfront property is highly sought after and commands a premium price. It is in short supply. If a city had an opportunity to expand its supply of premium property, why wouldn't they do so?

The increase in property values and taxes, along with income taxes on "wealthier" new residents would be welcome.

We became a great nation because we had a willingness to think big and try new ideas and develop new technologies. The peninsula is a "big idea," but to summarily dismiss it is fatal. Right now, we need big ideas.

Grace O'Malley wrote:Dee

I don't understand your negative reaction to the peninsula idea.

If a private developer wanted to spend $200 million of his own money I would not say one word against the project. The reality is that no private developer is going to do it. And since no government is going to do it either it's just pie in the sky speculation.

There are some bold things that could be done that would make a difference but they not going to happen either. But I guess it's fun to speculate. So

Mr Call and I will announce our nuptials soon.
I am in no way negative on the concept of building a peninsula, or a bridge to Canada, or the world's tallest office building on Detroit Ave.
If as Mr Call says, if a private developer wants to do it, Ill be at the groundbreaking. Ill wear pearls and heels.
But if a Dennis Kucinich or Sherrod Brown proposed it he would be roasted over an open spit.
Lets get some money to fix Warren Rd first.

Dee Martinez wrote:Mr Call and I will announce our nuptials soon.
I am in no way negative on the concept of building a peninsula, or a bridge to Canada, or the world's tallest office building on Detroit Ave.
If as Mr Call says, if a private developer wants to do it, Ill be at the groundbreaking. Ill wear pearls and heels.
But if a Dennis Kucinich or Sherrod Brown proposed it he would be roasted over an open spit.
Lets get some money to fix Warren Rd first.

Dee

I would tend to agree with much of this post. But let's also be more spot on. We are still looking at spending $50 million on Clifton Blvd. So maybe that would be of first order.

The study for the peninsula, was less than the cost of the "Downtown" Sign study. So if we want to talk about bang for the buck, let's start there. One would have ZERO impact on anything, but rumors are flying of a bill for $62,000 being submitted to city hall. Of course that was turned down and the final bill was much less but was more than a real study of the peninsula.

Should we ever put away an idea that would add 20% value to your house and every house in Lakewood? Are we really to believe only a few can afford lake access?

I have seen many plans for Lakewood, and I agree with Pat Slife, that it might be well beyond our reach, and I agree with Bill Call, that we might want private developers to build it. But, if we can create $250 - $500 million in taxable property, jobs, and more for under $25 million, I have to think it is worth the $15,000 to look at it. Or should we look at more signs for the empty downtown area?

For the record, money was out there for the study, and one well known developer was more than ready to jump in.

But why let facts get in the way.

FWIW


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A problem with the idea of a private developer building the peninsula would be that it would no longer be public land.

A problem with the city building the peninsula would be that many residents in Lakewood would have an obstructed view of Lake Erie. Instead of sitting atop in Lakewood Park and watching sailboats go by, they would be looking at a marina with docked yachts and high end restaurants, possibly even condos. Not that many residents can afford yachts, or sailboats, or high end restaurants, or condos on lake front public property.

This is a public park, any development should be created for public use in general. It is the only public access to Lake Erie, the rest of Lakewood's shoreline is private. We can't lose this to private development, or price public land out of the reach of Lakewood residents.

And I've mentioned the possible environmental impact on here before. First and foremost we need to protect Lake Erie. If it can be done without adverse affects, then good. If not, it should be forgotten. But if it can, perhaps Lakewood Park is not the right location to pursue it. Perhaps over by the high rise condos and apartments?

Ideas and concepts should be adaptable.

If we are this starved for land, why not look into capping I-90 to connect both parts of Lakewood. This was done in Columbus with great success, creating a new shopping district with condos, restaurants included.

As has been pointed out, that peninsula idea has both good and questionable points to the concept.

The dickens always lies in the details though.

As the 5 Great Lakes are the world's largest supplier of fresh water, and as anyone knows who has ANY dealings with bureaucracy can tell you, if you would simply want to throw a little STONE into Lake Erie these days, the EPA would want to know about it, and probably measure the stone, test it for mineral content, and might well fine you, if you did indeed throw it.

If you wanted to change an entire shoreline nowadays? Good luck.

Dee:

The peninsula is back, because in a deeply psychological sense, it is a complex spinning through the city’s psyche and amplified on the LO Deck. As a complex - which is about all that can simmer in the flames lit for the on-line psycho-drama of the LO Deck - the peninsula is still glowing with the inflationary mana rooted in magical identifications by neighbors with the city of their dreams. Some of the positive attachments to the peninsula complex are rooted in relationships and responses to economic development arguments pro and con for Issue 47 - the horizon of battle that never sets on Lakewood.

To erect the peninsula in the imagination on-line is to capture matters of love, war, money, status, winning and competition.

The peninsula complex speaks, like the LO project itself, to an inflationary bias designed to make some feel good, and by way of the eternal Tao, others bad.

As a psychological fact, the peninsula complex will make others feel that such an incursion on nature, public land, public finance etc. would lead the city astray.

At the same time the peninsula complex contains within its own contradictions a warning against all inflationary economic stimulus.

All told the peninsula complex is one of the great manifestations of feelings, positive and negative, for the bodacious imagination that ripples and roars from time to time on the LO Deck.

The peninsula complex, like almost any instigation on-line, is a citizen psy-op, a meme looking for brains to inhabit.

Of course the LO Deck and the peninsula complex are marvelously hungry disturbances of the Lakewood psyche. As children of city's psyche, LO Deck and the peninsula complex are irrepressible and unlikely to ever go away.


Kenneth Warren

Kenneth Warren wrote:Of course the LO Deck and the peninsula complex are marvelously hungry disturbances of the Lakewood psyche. As children of city's psyche, LO Deck and the peninsula complex are irrepressible and unlikely to ever go away.

Searching for the Holy Grail is more fun than paving a street or reconfiguring Clifton Avenue or tearing down obsolete apartments.

Ken

Speaking only for myself, and unable to put myself deep in psyche of the city and others, it is back because it represents one of the great visions for Lakewood. In a city that used to be able to dream and even achieve great things.

New Schools, new libraries at a time when both you and I knew recession no depression was looming. It was a vision that came from over 6 months of hard work and drill down into over 100 people of what they thought, no, let me rephrase that "was needed" to make Lakewood Park more user friendly, more valuable and a focal point to draw people into Lakewood.

This back when GREAT ideas sprung off the pens of people. Of course the poison and negatives were there. Day after day I would take people up to show them the display, and show them the vision. It would be a solid part of my great theater. Trudging up to the third floor, through the dark staircase, unlocking the studio which was a great room with high ceilings, that was bare save for one programmer and then turning to the wall, and watching their eyes light up, for the art was even as captivating as the project. Depending on who they were, and their lineage in Lakewood, they would study and read the panels, I would hand them the brochure. They would almost always ask, "Is it even possible" as if to say, "Can we even dream this big?" They I would answer with some of the statements of those that went before them, "One well know Lakewood realtor said, it would add 10%-20% value to every house in Lakewood." they would study and ask, "Why don't we just build the park part?" and I would answer, "The project is designed to pay for itself. If you build just the park part the city goes bankrupt. Build the vision, and it pays for itself, and adds millions to Lakewood's bottom line." At the time we never realized that money could have paid for other visions like 30 more police, or backyard trash pick-up, or foolish flamboyant things like meals on wheels for elderly, etc. "How could we ever pay for it?" "Well the study would cost $15,000 - $30,000, but Savannah had found some of the funding" "Well that is just the study!" would come a sharp reply, and I would again and again say, "Yes but the army corp of engineers would also help foot the bill, and the land would come from the dredgings of the river." "Who would even buy this?" Then with glee I would answer, "Well the developer of Crocker Park said he would join in if it was made twice as big. He loved the vision so much, that he thought it would be foolish if left to under 150 acres."

Then again, they would take a deep breath, soak it all in and say who knows, maybe it is possible.

Day after day Savannah, would come in and take it to developer after developer, council member after council member, and then bring it back. From developers she got great kudos, and eventually a job with a developer. From council, and other she would get, "What a nice art project but..."

Yeah, I bring it back, not to rub yellow snow in the eyes of those that dream of strip malls(not speaking of the "debacle"), but the one planned across from the Robert A.M. Stern Library, and Marc's Plaza. The one that was planned for in front of the Beck, and now behind Marc's Plaza, or wherever it can be placed.

One of my closest friends turned to me one day, a very smart man, who had more vision than the rest. This is a man I had debated time and again on every issue, a friend so close we rarely agreed at the start of lunch but always agreed by the end. He turned to me and said. "You are right, Lakewood is a hillbilly hollar." But we chuckled, because in those days, it was at least one that could dream, dream magnificent things, and accomplish them as well. Lakewood has no right to have $25 million in schools, to have the best library in the region designed by one of the best architects in the world, that is filled with murals from the modern day Michelangelo. We have no right to any of those. But we dreamed them, they we worked together, and made them happen because they are grand dreams and visions.

We have to fix Warren Road, we have to fix Clifton, or the daily fines will bankrupt us. We have to cut staff, and backyard pickup. We have to close schools, and who knows what else.

That said, Lakewood sorely needs a grand vision to take us through the next six years of depression. We need a focal point that can bring the community together, something that give Lakewood hopes, and dreams, and dollars in our pockets. We need land to grow, we need value that had been falsely forced into our property back again for real. We need a place to feel the lake breeze in our faces, while we watch the sun set. Lakewood desperately needs a tomorrow.

You have proven that it works, and how it pulls us together.

Other wise, the only dream left is "Is there any reason left to go DowntowN?"

* Ken, others please note, no mention of 47, the WestEnd, except to clarify when I mention new strip malls, I am not talking of that, that, that, oh what was it called by one of the people that worked so hard to ram it down our throats, oh that right "debacle."

Ken, please note, my posts as of late have been filled with love, art, photos, and mirth.

Peace/....

I think I'd be happy if they just brought back the welcoming lady with the white gloves and station wagon, who brought the fruit basket and the flowers to new Lakewoodites.

Hey, I don't think anybody dreams more than banjo players from the hollers do.

It's just the KIND of dreams that we are dreaming these days, that make the difference...

The vision or the nightmare? Or, can they be one and the same? Should they be one and the same? Are they one and the same?

Perhaps our libary's artwork should have been inspired by Dali.

Is the eve of destruction the dawn of correction? (or was that the dawn of destruction and the eve of correction?)

Depends on the time of day, I suppose.

"Some people see things as they are and ask why. I see things that never were, and ask, Why not?." (attribute this wisdom to Robert Kennedy, George Bernard Shaw, or anyone you like, I guess)

Or is Lakewood in a perpetual gemeinschaft/gesellschaft dichotomy, as Tonnies alluded to?

Oh wait, I'm just one of those hill people from the holler. I'm not supposed to be that "deep", am I?

I think we need to commision a sixty-foot tall leaning trash dumpster on a snowbank to put in front of the library.

Now THAT's artwork.

Future vision.

Back to the banjo....

Personal to brother Ken:

Ich denke was ich will und was mich beglücket,
doch alles in der Still', und wie es sich schicket.
Mein Wunsch und Begehren kann niemand mir wehren,
es bleibet dabei: Die Gedanken sind frei!


from an old German song from the Peasant Wars

for the rest of you:

Thoughts are free.

Bill Call wrote:

Kenneth Warren wrote:Of course the LO Deck and the peninsula complex are marvelously hungry disturbances of the Lakewood psyche. As children of city's psyche, LO Deck and the peninsula complex are irrepressible and unlikely to ever go away.

Searching for the Holy Grail is more fun than paving a street or reconfiguring Clifton Avenue or tearing down obsolete apartments.

Ding ding ding. We have a winner. Give the man a kewpie doll.

We really need to concentrate on making the city more livable for everyone instead of those with yachts and scads of disposable income.

Valerie Molinski wrote:

Bill Call wrote:

Kenneth Warren wrote:Of course the LO Deck and the peninsula complex are marvelously hungry disturbances of the Lakewood psyche. As children of city's psyche, LO Deck and the peninsula complex are irrepressible and unlikely to ever go away.

Searching for the Holy Grail is more fun than paving a street or reconfiguring Clifton Avenue or tearing down obsolete apartments.

Ding ding ding. We have a winner. Give the man a kewpie doll.

We really need to concentrate on making the city more livable for everyone instead of those with yachts and scads of disposable income.

Valerie

While I agree with you, and Bill, and in the end Ken's marvelous take on the entire thing.

If one thing can do it all, then I have to think that is called...

... a solution.


FWIW


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To brother Gary

Tune up that banjo and let's reach for the stars together

I am sure you know the tune, but let me post the lyrics.

The lyrics to a song we all know, and many used to believe in.

Musical "Man of La Mancha" - The Impossible Dream Lyrics

Lyrics by Joe Darion
In this song, Quixote explains his quest and the reasons behind it ... in doing so,
he captures the essence of the play and its philosophical underpinnings.
(For me, it is absolutely magical.)

To dream ... the impossible dream ...
To fight ... the unbeatable foe ...
To bear ... with unbearable sorrow ...
To run ... where the brave dare not go ...
To right ... the unrightable wrong ...
To love ... pure and chaste from afar ...
To try ... when your arms are too weary ...
To reach ... the unreachable star ...

This is my quest, to follow that star ...
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far ...
To fight for the right, without question or pause ...
To be willing to march into Hell, for a Heavenly cause ...

And I know if I'll only be true, to this glorious quest,
That my heart will lie will lie peaceful and calm,
when I'm laid to my rest ...
And the world will be better for this:
That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove, with his last ounce of courage,
To reach ... the unreachable star ...



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