There's a deep connection between the history of redlining on the East Side of Cleveland and the continuing decline of neighborhoods hollowed out by subprime lending and the mortgage foreclosure crisis of the 2000s.
So said Terry Schwarz, director of Kent State University's Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative in her kickoff to a panel discussion on why redevelopment in poor, predominantly black neighborhoods on the city's East Side is lagging that of the West Side.
To illustrate her point, she showed contemporary maps of distressed and foreclosed properties on the East Side of Cleveland that looked eerily similar to redlining maps of the 1930s and '40s.
Spotting racism in lending
"It wasn't subtle," she said, speaking of a redlining map. "If you read the historical documentation [about federal housing programs that refused to lend] the reason that loans in these areas that are colored red was tied to the race of the people who lived there."
Tuesday's event, held at the Cleveland Heights-University Heights main library on Lee Road, felt prescient.
It preceded by one day Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson's release of his "Neighborhood Transformation Initiative," aimed at pumping $65 million in city and philanthropic money to boost investment in Hough, Fairfax, Glenville and Buckeye.
The Heights Libraries, Case Western Reserve University's Laura & Alvin Siegal Lifelong Learning Program, the League of Women Voters of Greater Cleveland, The Plain Dealer, and Cleveland.com sponsored the panel.
The speakers were Shaker Heights Director of Development Joyce Braverman; journalist, Chateau Hough winemaker and Ward 7 candidate for City Council, Mansfield Frazier; Rick Semersky, CEO of VIP Restoration, Inc.; and Wayne Mortenson, director of development for Cleveland Neighborhood Progress.
Bright spots emerging
While acknowledging difficulties of redeveloping the East Side, the panel also highlighted successes including Semersky's Hub 55, a food and beer-related project along East 55th Street in the St. Clair Superior neighborhood.
It also touched on the work of Cleveland Neighborhood Progress, which turned the once derelict St. Luke's Hospital complex on Shaker Boulevard at East 116th Street into senior housing, the home of a charter school a Boys and Girls Club and more.
Braverman described the upcoming development of the Van Aken District in Shaker Heights, where apartments, offices and eateries will wrap an outdoor plaza, bringing density and vitality to a former strip shopping center and parking lot wasteland.
Frazier, however, picked up on Schwarz's theme of structural racism by asserting assertion that banks still aren't lending on the East Side, thereby continuing the area's impoverishment.
"This country was built on two things: slavery and credit," he said. "We got rid of one, I guess. But we still don't have equal credit."
Frazier said he launched Chauteau Hough, a winemaking business to change perceptions of a place synonymous for decades with riots that occurred in 1966.
When asked during the Q and A portion of the discussion what would keep people in Cleveland, whose population continues to fall, he said the answer was simple: "Building more quality homes. That's a no-brainer."
But he warned without being specific that certain "neighborhoods are past the tipping point. You have to be judicious in determining where to build the homes, so people will have value after they're built."
Great infrastructure needed
Semersky said the city could encourage redevelopment on the East Side by building "really great infrastructure," such as the proposal to build a "Midway" system of separated bike lanes that would run down the center of Cleveland Streets that once carried streetcars.
"Infrastructure is the best things that cities can do to help developers," he said. "Do really great infrastructure and then get out of the way. We'll figure out the rest."
Jury is out
The panelists were less than enthusiastic, though, about Opportunity Corridor, the $331 million, 35 mph boulevard now under construction that will connect the stub end of I-490 at East 55th Street to East 105th Street and University Circle.
Critics have called the project, financed with bonds backed by state turnpike polls, as a boondoggle and a cut-through for suburban commuters, not an investment that will leverage meaningful job creation.
Urban renewal redux?
Mortenson said the jury is out on whether Opportunity Corridor is a wise move or a repeat of 1960s Urban Renewal, a federal program that paid developers to bulldoze large areas in cities for later redevelopment, while pushing existing residents out.
"Neighborhood Progress is supportive," he said. "We're doing everything we can to make Opportunity Corridor a good project."
But he added: "It could be one of the best things to happen, or it could be another version of urban renewal."
