Anybody else discouraged by 2010 results?

[TJ in Oregon]

I am a little depressed by Cleveland being under 400,000 and it will continue to shrink for years to come. A huge contributor to many neighborhoods changing from working to slum was the foreclosure crisis. The entire east side of Cleveland is more or less one large sea of abandoned houses and warehouses. There are some areas that are like ghost towns. You walk down some quiet backstreets and see only a couple houses on entire blocks that are otherwise unoccupied. We have not takent the Detroit approach here and started burning buildings so Cleveland at least looks a little nicer for the most part.

While the entire metro area is struggling economically, everyone here still wants to leave the city of Cleveland. The school system is a wreck. The former CEO unveiled a huge plan to combine and close a bunch of schools, then immediately retired taking a huge severance package. Our county government was raided by the FBI two years ago and a whole bunch of politicians were arrested.

Our population loses are certainly not from gentrification because gentrification has only happened in a handful of places, such as downtown, Tremont (on the near west side), and University Circle (where the Cleveland Clinic, Case Western Reserve University, and all of the cultural institutions are). There are a few businesses expanding into Cleveland but no one in their right mind would want to live in most of the city right now.

That being said, there are some bright spots. Case and the Cleveland Clinic have facilitated the creation of 200 or so small start up technology firms over the last five years mainly supported by venture capitalists and the benefits of this project may start to manifest themselves in the next 10 years. It is also important that this is happening in University Circle, surrounded by most of the worst neighborhoods on the east side. Every time I go down Euclid Avenue (the main street through the near east side) it seems like another business has opened its doors. Still, we have not reached the bottom quite yet and it will be years before people start moving back into the city.