Bike-riding in the Cleveland area is up 50 percent since 2006, according to a recent survey by the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA). Cleveland Heights is hoping to push the figure even higher in next year's survey with the addition of "sharrows" on city roads.

"Sharrow" is short for "share-the-road arrows," which are painted onto road surfaces. "You use them when you don't have enough room for a bike lane," explains Richard Wong, the city's director of planning and development. Sharrows are intended to remind bicyclists where they should ride -- with the flow of vehicular traffic, not against -- and to encourage drivers to share the road.

"They'll help reduce tension between bicyclists and motorists," says Nick Matthew of the Cleveland Heights Bicycle Coalition, which gathered more than 500 signatures on a petition urging the city to become one of the first in Northeast Ohio to adopt sharrows. Cleveland was the first, on Franklin Avenue.

Last week, just two months after the petition was presented to the city, sharrows were painted last week on Euclid Heights Boulevard, between Taylor and Coventry. (West of Coventry, where on-street parking is legal some hours, the city will install yellow "Share the Road" signs.) By next year, Wong says, the city plans to paint sharrows on Coventry, Lee and Fairmount.

Cleveland Heights ranks in the top 10 percent nationally for bicycle commuting by residents, according to data from the 2000 Census.



Source: Cleveland Heights Bicycle Coalition
Writer: Frank W. Lewis

Since being founded in 2001, EverStaff has developed a national presence that touches 22 states. Still, the Cleveland-based firm has not forgotten its roots, as it continues to expand operations in Northeast Ohio. Within the past three months, the staffing and recruiting firm has added offices in Ashtabula and Cuyahoga Falls.

In addition to its Independence headquarters and the two new facilities, EverStaff has local offices in Brooklyn, Mentor and Solon. The goal is to continue to expand nationally while maintaining the local partnership of a smaller boutique agency.

EverStaff has grown its number of employees by 27 percent since this time last year, with the biggest surge occurring in its sales and marketing force.

EverStaff's local offices handle temporary staffing, temporary-to-hire, direct hire, payroll services and vendor management. The company  focuses on staffing for office and administration, light industrial/general labor, accounting/finance, sales, legal, IT and engineering.

"EverStaff's strategic plan has enabled us... to maximize the resources we provide to our clients," says Danny Spitz, president of the company.

Inc. Magazine this year placed EverStaff on its fourth annual Inc. 5000, ranking the nation's fastest-growing private companies.


SOURCE: EverStaff
WRITER: Diane DiPiero

Imagine being an entrepreneur and having at your fingertips resources for everything from pre-seed funding to regional incubators. Questions about how to turn an idea into a business, how to request funding and how to place your innovative idea in the proper hands could be answered by simply clicking a button or linking to a respected adviser.

That's the idea behind the JumpStart Entrepreneurial Network's newly launched website, which aims to make access to the appropriate connections simpler and more effective for entrepreneurs within a 21-county radius.

"By having this website serve as a single entry point to a continuum of resources, we're making access to those resources quicker and easier," says John Dearborn, president of JumpStart Inc. Interested parties fill out a form detailing their idea or startup business, and are then put in touch with the appropriate local resources.

Several area entrepreneurial support organizations, all of which have received funding from Ohio's Third Frontier, comprise the JumpStart Entrepreneurial Network:  GLIDE, MAGNET, Braintree Business Development Center, Youngstown Business Incubator, Akron Global Business Accelerator, BioEnterprise, Glengary, LLC, North Coast Angel Fund, North Coast Opportunities Technology Fund of Cuyahoga County, Innovation Fund founded by Lorain County Community College Foundation, Ohio Aerospace Institute, NorTech, IdeaCrossing and JumpStart. The region's higher-education institutions are also members.

According to Ray Leach, CEO of JumpStart, this influential group has together received $69 million in federal and state grants, reached annualized revenues of $100 million and created and supported 850 direct jobs at an average salary of $67,200.


SOURCE: Jumpstart, Inc.
WRITER: Diane DiPiero

Thomas Paine would be proud. At a time when it seems like every new idea is first floated online, Plain Dealer architecture critic Steven Litt has chosen good old-fashioned paper as the primary vehicle for his impassioned paean to beautiful surroundings, Designing a Better Cleveland.

"To the extent that Cleveland fails to make the most of public and private investments in buildings, highways, bridges, streets, parks and waterfronts, it will waste opportunities, fail to compete effectively with its peers and damage its economy," Litt writes in the introduction. "Everyone, in other words, has a stake in good design."

Litt calls the slim, gorgeously designed booklet "a mini-primer on the ways in which citizens, developers, planners and designers can raise standards of civic design in Cleveland." But it's clearly also meant to inspire.

"Economists may disagree over whether excellent architecture and urban amenities such as streetscapes, bike trails and waterfront parks are a cause or consequence of economic vitality," he writes. "Regardless, it never makes sense to spend a dollar on mediocrity when the same dollar can buy excellence. The reality is that great design demands greater effort -- on the part of clients, designers, government agencies and citizens. Cleveland continues to be plagued by a chronic sense of low self-esteem and by the notion that trying to improve the city through better design isn't worth the effort.

"THIS VOLUME REJECTS THAT VIEW."

The book grew out of Spectrum: the Lockwood Thompson Dialogues at the Cleveland Public Library, and was facilitated by Cleveland Public Art.

Since the book's inroduction in the PD, Cleveland Public Art has received nearly 200 calls requesting copies, according to executive director Gregory Peckham. "That seems like a good benchmark when it comes to the interest of the public about the subject of civic design," Peckham notes.

Designing a Better Cleveland is also available online as a PDF.



Source: Plain Dealer
Writer: Frank W. Lewis

The location search tool on the Ohio Film Office's new web site is a fun way to peruse some of the most scenic sites in the state. Choosing category "Industrial," subcategory "Factories/Plants/Mills," and region "Northern" will lead you to dozens of photos of the Flats, in all its Rust Belt glory. You don't have to be a filmmaker to enjoy it; the scenes almost start to write themselves.

But producers and directors are the intended users of the site, which was launched earlier this month in hopes of luring more production work to the state. "Ohio can work as a backdrop for any place or time period a producer is looking to capture," says Jeremy Henthorn, director of the Ohio Film Office.

The site also provides information on tax incentives available to productions that shoot here, and a data base of experienced crew. Need a Steadicam operator in Cleveland? A special effects coordinator willing to travel around the state? The data base also accept registrations from Ohioans looking for work.

In September the Plain Dealer reported that in its first year, the state's film tax credit has attracted nine productions that will spend a combined $33 million. They include 25 Hill, about a soap-box derby driver whose father dies in Afghanistan, which shot in Akron, and Unstoppable, the Denzel Washington action movie that opens November 12.




Source: Ohio Department of Development
Writer: Frank W. Lewis

Northeast Ohio could reap more than half the benefit of newly announced state tax credits intended to spark development. Key Community Development New Markets and Northeast Ohio Development Fund, both based in Cuyahoga County, were awarded $3 million and $2 million, respectively, in credits through the Ohio New Markets Tax Credits. All told, $10 million in credits were distributed to four funds in this first round of grants.

The credits are modeled after and supplement a federal program and are administered by the Ohio Department of Development. "By encouraging investments in areas of Ohio that need it most, we are ensuring future economic development opportunities and increased potential for new jobs," Director Lisa Patt-McDaniel said in a statement. "The Ohio New Markets Tax Credit program is one of the first of its kind in the country, and we are eager to see the new developments that come from this program."

Northeast Ohio Development Fund -- a joint venture between the Port of Cleveland, Ariel Ventures and Cohen & Co. accountants -- has identified several potential beneficiaries of the credits, according to the state, including the proposed Cleveland Aquarium, the Midtown Tech Park and the planned University Circle hotel.

Among the entities that Key may support are the Allen Theatre, which needs renovations, and Cleveland-based Ohio Solar Cooperative, an innovative, employee-owned company that leases and installs solar panels. Clients to date include the Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals, Case Western Reserve University, the City of Cleveland, and the Cleveland Housing Network.

Ohio Solar is part of the Evergreen Cooperatives network, which may benefit in other ways from the credits. Another recipient of the credits, Finance Fund, based in Franklin County, has listed the Green City Growers Cooperative, Evergreen Medical Recycling and Evergreen Record Retention Cooperative and companies it may support.



Source: Ohio Department of Development
Writer: Frank W. Lewis

Last summer, planners in the Cleveland, Akron and Youngstown areas spent two intense months assembling a consortium of 21 public- and private-sector entities and applying for a new type of grant available from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Now the real work begins.

Last week HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan visited the Cleveland-based offices of the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA) to announce that the consortium had been awarded $4.25 million dollars available through the Sustainable Communities Initiative. The initiative is part of the Obama administration's Partnership for Sustainable Communities, which seeks to coordinate the efforts of HUD, the EPA and the U.S. Department of Transportation in helping cities rebuild. The Northeast Ohio Consortium for a Regional Plan for Sustainable Development, as the 21-member group is called, was one of 45 chosen for a grant.

The money will allow the consortium to set up and oversee a private nonprofit that will explore ways in which the 12 counties — and nearly 500 municipalities — of the Cleveland, Akron and Youngstown regions can work together, according to Sara Maier, senior planner for NOACA. The three-year study "will give us a tool box of what we can do as a region moving forward," Maier explains. Issues like housing, sustainability, transportation and economic competitiveness, she adds, "don't stop at county lines."

As for the longterm goal, the application stated it thusly: "We envision a "Green City on a Blue Lake.' Over the last decade many factors have converged to make now the optimal time for the 12 counties, four [metropolitan planning organizations] and more than 480 governments in Northeast Ohio to unite for the purpose of planning for sustainable development. It is over the last decade that we have come to accept the reality that our economy is truly regional."

Participants hailing from Cleveland include officials from NOACA, Cuyahoga County, the City of Cleveland, Cleveland State University's Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs, the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority and the Fund for Our Economic Future (which organized the application effort).

Consortium members have also pledged more than $2 million in matching grants, exceeding the HUD requirement.




Source: NOACA
Writer: Frank W. Lewis

Danielle DeBoe does not object to the descriptor "retail pioneer," but notes that her business decisions are guided less by simple dollars and cents than by a desire to help Cleveland realize its potential. That's why she's preparing to relocate her jewelry/art/accessories/lifestyle shop Room Service from West 65th and Detroit, in the popular Gordon Square Arts District, to the up-and-coming Ohio City Market District, around West 25th and Lorain.

"I'm motivated by a challenge," says DeBoe, an Ohio City resident who set up shop in Gordon Square "before anyone knew what it was."

"It isn't just the retail end that drives me," she adds. "I like feeling that I'm helping to move along progress in Cleveland in general."

Few approach that effort as imaginatively as DeBoe does. Her side projects include the Made in the 216 shopping event and Dinner with Strangers, which is like networking only cooler.

Her relocation is part of an ongoing development push led by Ohio City Near West CDC and private developer MRN Ltd. The goal is to build on and expand the growth that's occurred on West 25th north of Lorain Avenue.

"Businesses are meant to serve the community in some way," DeBoe says. "If Room Service can help encourage people to cross over Lorain and shop, I'm willing to give it a go.




Source: Danielle DeBoe
Writer: Frank W. Lewis

Domokur Architects, based in Akron since 1979, has expanded into Cleveland via a merger with Tremont-based Michael Augoustidis.

"We like the neighborhood," says Linsey Domokur, who handles business development, "and we like having a Cleveland presence." The new office, at Starkweather and Professor, will house three new hires, including a specialist in the healthcare industry.

The firm's healthcare portfolio includes the Geneva Medical Center addition at University Hospitals, Akron City Hospital's Palliative Care Pavillion and Chardon Surgery Center. The firm has also designed several buildings for the J.M. Smucker Company in Orrville , the Cleveland Metroparks' Canal Way Visitors' Center and the Conneaut Public Library.

Domokur also opened a Chicago office in September.




Source: Domokur
Writer: Frank W. Lewis

Someday the Medical Mart may make Cleveland an essential destination for healthcare professions. But the city has already achieved such status among those who study blight, which is why Cleveland is hosting the third national Reclaiming Vacant Properties Conference, which continues through Friday at the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel on Public Square.

"This is by far the biggest," says Jennifer Leonard of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Community Progress, which organized the conference with Cleveland's own Neighborhood Progress, Inc. "Today, there are more places that are being challenged by vacant properties."

Cleveland, of course, would be at or near the top of any such list. But that's not the only reason CCP selected the city for this gathering, which occurs every 18 months. Cleveland also boasts an impressive array of dedicated advocates and innovative approaches to the problem, such as the Cuyahoga Land Bank and Judge Raymond Pianka's Housing Court.

Various parts of the city will serve as backdrops for discussions. "Mobile Workshops" will take participants to Euclid Avenue, as an example of using transit to spur development; a vineyard in Hough and other sites that have been reclaimed for farming or greenspace; Slavic Village, where the foreclosure crisis is combated with a "resident-driven approach to finding a new identity," and the hip and booming Detroit Shoreway community.

"It's actually kind of hard," notes Leonard, "to make sure the conference isn't too focused on Cleveland."

The conference is sold out, but more information is available at the web site.



Source: Center for Community Progress
Writer: Frank W. Lewis