Chris Tarr has a vision of uniting Cleveland’s west side neighborhoods into one large playground of great restaurants and tasty beers. The establishments already exist, but getting around safely, affordably and easily is another challenge.
 
After being stranded at Brew 133 in Lakewood during a snow storm last year, Tarr came up with the idea for the West Side Shuffle – a black school bus with a big white sign advertising the phone number to call to get on board -- that takes passengers from Lakewood to Ohio City and everywhere in between. The bus runs from 9pm to 2:45am on Friday and Saturday nights.
 
“I had this idea to unify all of these neighborhoods,” Tarr explains of his plan. “You should be able to go to any of the bars and restaurants in the neighborhood. People who live here love it here, and I wanted them to be more connected to the area.”
 
Tarr has been running the West Side Shuffle for the past two weekends, and by Saturday night he had turned a profit. “Saturday was fantastic,” he says. “We filled the bus two times. Some people called our number for a pickup; some people flagged us down on our route. People were very receptive, and everyone was nice and courteous.”
 
While Tarr rides the bus, collects the fares and mingles with the passengers, he employs a head driver, insured with a commercial driver’s license, and has two back-up drivers.
 
After two weekends, Tarr has already made some changes, based on riders’ requests. He is in the process of creating route maps, flyers and easier access to the Shuffle’s phone number – (216) 673-4222. He’s been working with some of the bars to create coasters with the number on them. Tarr also now allows riders to play their own music from their phones on the bus’ sound system.
 
While the normal fare is $4 cash or $6 with a credit card, Tarr has instituted a discount deal for certain bars. If riders are already on W. 25^th, they can ride the West Side Shuffle to Porco Lounge and Tikki Room, Platform Beer Co. or Jukebox for just $2.
 
As business grows, Tarr plans to expand service to West Park, W. 6^th Street and W. 4^th Street.

Edwins Leadership and Restaurant Institute, the French restaurant at Shaker Square that employs ex-convicts and gives them on-the-job training and a foothold in the industry in an upscale restaurant, celebrated its first birthday on November 1st.

Founder and chef Brandon Chrostowski sees many reasons to celebrate with the success the restaurant has seen in its first year. Forty-four students have graduated from the program and 40 have gone on to work in fine dining establishments in the region. In the first class, 100 percent of the graduates had jobs within 30 days of graduation and 85 percent of the graduates still were working in their jobs six months later.
 
Edwins took in $1.4 million last year, which covered roughly 73% of the school portion of the restaurant’s model, which teaches its student employees virtually every aspect of running a restaurant. Edwins also has a long list of sponsors and supporters who believe in second chances.
 
Goals for Edwins’ second year include 75 graduates with 80 percent job retention after a year; 81 percent of total expenses covered by restaurant sales and diner contributions; and a less than five percent recidivism rate.
 
Chrostowski says the restaurant has learned some lessons in the first year as well. Smaller classes of 12 to 15 accepted every six weeks instead of 55 students starting all at once result in a higher graduation rate. “You’re going to get better results with a smaller class because you’re going to get to know the students more,” explains Chrostowski.
 
Housing, transportation and childcare are the biggest issues for Edwins students to overcome. Those issues are being resolved through the kindness of patrons and friends. A group of Ruffing Montessori School parents and teachers recently walked in to Edwins to offer their help. That group now provides childcare five days a week. Chrostowski was able to secure 30 beds on E. 130^th Street and St. Clair Avenue for those employees who need a place to stay. And he recently brought on a case manager to help with additional support needs.
 
“We’re all working as hard as we can for each other to get on with the next phase of their lives,” says Chrostowski, who also credits his staff of three managers with providing guidance and support. Chrostowski is always looking for volunteers to help continue Edwins’ success.
 

The premier healthcare gathering in the country takes place this week at the Cleveland Convention Center. Here are four Cleveland healthcare innovators being featured at the conference.

The Shark Tank style competition, now in its second year, is designed to give new businesses financial assistance and expert advice to get off the ground.

With fireworks and smoke machines, and science experiments galore, CWRU officials on Thursday officially broke ground on the new home to thinkbox, a collaboration and innovation center housed in the former Lincoln Storage Building, now known as the Richey-Mixon Building.
 
The CWRU board of trustees voted unanimously last Sunday, October 12 to approve the renovations with the $25 million out of a $30 million goal. Phase I is due to be completed in August 2015.
 
Phase I includes renovations to the first four floors. A glass skyway will connect the athletic center to the thinkbox entrance. The first floor will be a community floor with a bike station. “It will be a younger-feeling creative space that suits our students’ lifestyle,” explains thinkbox manager Ian Charnas. “The second floor will be the ideation floor with amenities such as whiteboards and meeting rooms modeled after Stanford d. School in California.”
 
Floors three and four are dedicated to some real hands-on innovation. Three will house a prototyping floor and a small metal shop, will offer tools for nearly every metal project conceivable. “We’re sending an email out, saying 'come enjoy several thousand square feel to do your projects and get messy.'”
 
Charnas expects thinkbox to both attract and retain innovative thinkers to Cleveland. “This is helping to build industry in the region,” he says. “Most of our students are recruited from outside of Cleveland, and even Ohio. This is a big golden carrot to keep these folks in the area.”
 
The announcement was made during Case’s homecoming celebration. Case president Barbara Snyder was accompanied by the major donors to make the announcement amid smoke machines and fireworks displays on monitors. Instead of a ribbon-cutting, the group flipped a giant old-fashioned power switch.
 
Students dressed in white lab coats embroidered with thinkbox and blue hard hats made commemorative chocolate coins using liquid nitrogen, with the help of Sweet Designs Chocolatier and Piccadilly Creamery. A laminar flow fountain – the kind where the liquid leaps about – dispensed punch that shot from a white display case into guests’ glasses.
 
Charnas says they hope to raise the remaining funds in the next year and shoot straight into phase II renovations, which will include the remaining top three floors.
 
 

In a report released Sunday by Team NEO, the automotive industry in Northeast Ohio is expected to hold a lot of promise in the upcoming decade. According to the report, the area has the second-largest Tier I auto production markets in the country, meaning the suppliers here make the parts the go directly on the vehicles, second only to Detroit.

Team NEO predicts the Gross Regional Product (GRP) in automotive to grow by 79 percent to become a $4.5 billion industry by 2024. Employment is also expected to grow by 19 percent. Jacob Duritsky, managing director of research for Team NEO, attribute the predicted growth to the area’s diverse mix of auto manufacturing.
 
“No one has a crystal ball, but based on our industry mix, the trend is pretty steady,” Duritsky says.  Add to the mix the jobs brought back to the Avon Lake Ford plant and the scheduled manufacture of Ford’s medium trucks, the F650 and F750, as well as tremendous investment in Ford’s Brookpark and Lordstown plants and Honda’s presence in the state, automotive has a strong hold in an industry that is expected to decline elsewhere in the country.
 
Automotive is one of only two manufacturing industries in Northeast Ohio to grow in the next 10 years. The other is food manufacturing. “We’re experiencing manufacturing employment, essentially, to remain flat,” says Jenny Febbo, Team NEO vice president of marketing and communications. “Automotive is one of only two expected to grow.

When Apryl Beverly signed up for the Bad Girl Ventures education program last spring, she had her eye set on winning the $25,000 loan awarded to one of the class finalists. What she ended up learning was how to make her business, BAAB Writing and Marketing, create its own success and income.
 
“The BGV program is geared around applying for a loan at the end of the class,” explains Beverly. “I was so, I need this money, I need this money. And when I didn’t get the loan I thought, what am I going to do now?”
 
What Beverly did was put the lessons she learned in the program to work and managed to drum up more than $26,000 in contracts from five clients between May and July. BAAB is a business writing service. Beverly and her staff assist their clients with writing business plans and proposals to coaching and marketing services.

“After moving past my pity party, I realized losing was the best thing for me,” says Beverly. “It's not about loans and competitions. It's about perseverance and the drive to make things happen.”

Before she started BAAB (the initials of her family members) in 2011, Beverly had worked in PR and marketing at a few different companies. She used her previous employers as a starting point to grow her own company. “I just started reaching out to previous employers, people I met in the BGV program; asking my existing clients to give me more work,” explains Beverly. “I had to be really focused and I said this is what I need to do. Now I’m not even looking for a loan. I realized I can do it without one.”

With BAAB’s growth, Beverly has been able to hire a part-time editor and a part-time writer to assist with the workload. Eventually, she plans to hire a full staff so she can focus on running BAAB.
 

NorTech hosted its first Innovation UnConference at the Cleveland Convention Center Wednesday, September 24. It was billed as an exchange of innovative ideas with no set topic or agenda, but rather a chance for the more than 250 participants to set their own discussion topics.
 
“This is no longer NorTech’s conference -- it’s your conference,” NorTech president and CEO Rebecca Bagley told the group in her registration welcome. With that, more than 50 people lined up to present their discussion topics. Thirty-two sessions were chosen and the group broke into smaller discussion groups. Attendees were reminded of the two-leg law: If you don’t like a discussion or are bored, get up and move to another group.
 
Discussion topics ranged from “Collaborations Between Small and Big Companies” to “Growing Entrepreneurs from Education into the Economy.” Bagley said most of the topics centered around talent attraction, energy and technology topics.
 
The event idea originated from the MassTLC Unconference in Boston, which has been holding its event for the past 10 years. Cleveland organizers were pleased that the Cleveland Unconference surpassed Boston’s first-year attendance numbers. The Boston event has grown to about 1,200 people each year.
 
Additionally, Bagley said the idea came to her when she was on a panel at a conference and was bored. “Looking into the audience, I thought, I know he has something to say, I know she has something to say,” she recalls. “This is about how we accelerate the pace of innovation.”

Participants also had the opportunity to have one-on-one half-hour sessions with 32 mentors to pick their brains and ask advice.

Ingenuity Fest will return to Cleveland Lakefront Dock 32, the Great Lakes Science Center and the Rock Hall, this weekend, September 26-28, for its 10th year of highlighting and celebrating innovation in Cleveland. In addition to the music, art and technology demonstrations that attract attendees every year, Ingenuity is featuring some new attractions this year.

The event kicks off with an opening party at the Great Lakes Science Center, called “Science After Dark.” The adults-only party offers a chance to drink, mingle, explore the exhibits and see artists’ interpretations of technology in our lives.
 
A can’t-miss is a flame bonfire sculpture, powered by stationary bicycles, says Annie Weiss, Ingenuity’s marketing manager. “The faster you pedal, the brighter the flame is,” she explains.
 
Perhaps the most significant addition to Ingenuity Fest this year is the Engines of Ingenuity Summit on Saturday, September 27 at the Great Lakes Science Center. Hosted by Plain Dealer tech columnist Michael DeAloia, the summit schedule offers dialogs between large and small companies, exhibits and presentations.
 
Weiss says the summit grew out of the feedback from prior attendees. “We saw an opportunity for this market,” she says. “I feel like there are a lot of summits for entrepreneur startups or corporate businesses, but now a lot of connections between the two. We wanted to bring unlikely conversations to the event.”
 
Such unlikely conversations include Intellectual Property versus Open Space, featuring area business leaders. “It covers when do you share with the world what you made and when do you hold it close to you,” says Weiss. Other topics include Defining Audience, Hacking Health, and Games and Gaming.
 
The summit concludes with a presentation by Bizdom, The Art of the Pitch. “It’s learning how to explain and present your idea,” says Weiss. The pitch segment will feature area business founders and people experienced with pitching their companies.
 
Jeff Duerk, dean of the CWRU school of engineering, will deliver the keynote address, “The Maker Movement and the Future of Manufacturing.”

The summit is free to attend the day of the event, but advanced registration costs $5.

Cleveland filmmaker Robert Banks, Jr. doesn’t consider his feature film Paper Shadows a film about Cleveland. Yet the entire production -- shot in 35mm black and white -- was filmed in various parts of the city

“Officially, it was all filmed in Cleveland -- east side, west side and we used archived footage of Cleveland in the ‘50s and ‘60s,” says Banks. But we’re not naming Cleveland. I didn’t want this to be a ‘Cleveland’ movie. It’s Metropolis, showing different aspects of a city in transition.”
 
Paper Shadows depicts a shared creative angst between two main characters: a widowed African-American Vietnam vet who works as a janitor at an art college and a young, white middle class female undergrad completing her final year at school. The two main characters represent cultural, class and generational gaps in society.  
 
The film uses experimental film techniques to create metaphoric symbols of the social frustration and emotional angst caused by the supporting characters. “We’re using the city as a metaphor for a woman getting a facelift,” says Banks. “All of the characters represent facets of people I’ve met over the years. I consider my films to be a moving collage.”
 
Paper Shadows is Banks’ first feature length film. He’s made 25 to 30 short films and he’s lost track of the number of film festivals his work has appeared in. Paper Shadows is Banks’ “last hoorah for cinema,” using the 35mm film instead of modern-day digital techniques.
 
Banks launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the completion of his film. On September 15 he exceeded his $10,000 goal with 252 backers and $12,685. He hopes to have the project finished by December. Banks has been using the film as a teaching experience for his students at the New Bridge Center for Art and Technology.

Jeanne Petrus-Rivera became a vegan seven years ago, partly for health reasons. She quickly learned that one of the things vegans miss most is dairy. So she set out to create a tasty, healthy alternative. With that, Petrus-Rivera started Red Lotus Foods, making a variety of cashew-based products that are tasty, healthy and wildly popular at local farmers markets in Northeast Ohio.

“As a vegan, I found a lot of people who are interested in going vegan, but found it hard to give up dairy products,” says Petrus-Rivera. “Most non-dairy products are disappointing.” Cashews, on the other hand, are lower in fat but loaded with monounsaturated fat, antioxidants and other good things. Petrus-Rivera discovered that they also make a great substitute for dairy.
 
Red Lotus produces vegan flavored cashew spreads, cashew sour cream and a sweet cashew creme. “They’re really so flavorful and delicious,” she says. “I think this is the way to go to make vegan more accessible.” Flavors range from sun dried tomato and black garlic to the new spirulina bleu.
 
Petrus-Rivera participated in both the Bad Girl Ventures and Cleveland Culinary Launch and Kitchen business programs earlier this year. She operates out of the CCLK with one employee, her husband, and sells her products at farmers markets. More recently, she’s been dropping samples by local restaurants in hopes of forming partnerships.
 
Petrus-Rivera’s dream is to form a cooperative out of Red Lotus. “We’re really just at the beginning of something that’s part of a whole paradigm shift,” she explains. “I have a huge vision and I hope to achieve it in the next three or four years.”