Last month, staff from the Cleveland International Film Festival (CIFF) played matchmaker. They held meetings throughout the region in an effort to match the 36th annual festival's most compelling, topical titles with nonprofit organizations whose mission and work relate directly to the content of the film.

When the 2012 festival kicks off on March 22, 125 nonprofit partners will join with CIFF to help market the festival and engage the community in discussions and ed... Read more >

When it comes to making challenging New Year’s resolutions, Josh Schwarz knows how to set the bar high and deliver results.

The Case Western Reserve University sophomore is a computer science major, and his  resolution for 2011 was to create one Facebook application a week -- 52 in all. To his credit, Schwarz met the goal -- on time and on target.

“I’ve always been into computers,” Schwarz explains. “I’m constantly wanting... Read more >

How would you spend three days on a bus with strangers? If reading, watching movies or sleeping are among your top choices, then the Startup Bus is not for you.
 
The destination is the South By Southwest (SXSW) technology conference in Austin, Texas, but that's almost beside the point. Startup Bus is all about the journey -- three days on the road, brainstorming and launching new companies with fellow hackers (programmers), hipsters (designers) and hustlers (entr... Read more >

Mahalls 20 Lanes, a vintage Lakewood bowling alley that's been owned by the same family since it was built in 1924, is being fixed up by new owners. Joe Pavlick and Kelly Flamos are renovating the historic venue, which features two 10-lane bowling alleys, a billiard room, several bars and a kitchen, and also plan to add live music.

"We're still working out the specifics of our plan, but we want to restore Mahalls to its former glory," says Pavlick, a for... Read more >

The Rock Hall is raising the curtain on two multi-million dollar initiatives that are bound to amp up this city’s appeal to rock-and-roll fans. First is the Rock Hall’s recently completed $7 million-plus renovation of its museum. Also, the Rock Hall’s new Library and Archives opened its doors in the new Center for Creative Arts building on the campus of Cuyahoga Community College.

A final, critical piece of funding has now fallen into place for the City of Shaker Heights' long-awaited Van Aken District plan. The city recently announced that it had been awarded $4.4 million from the Ohio Department of Public Works (ODPW). That, on top of $14 million the city already has assembled, will allow Shaker to proceed with Phase I late next year.

Phase I of the project will reconfigure the confusing, much-maligned junction of Van Aken, Warrensville and C... Read more >

Steven Peffer cannot easily explain why he calls his new record shop House Frau; he just likes the German-sounding name, which reminds him of dark, wood-paneled bars and frothy steins of beer. Yet the entrepreneur has a crystal-clear view of why he's opening a vinyl record store in a digitally-oriented economy: Shoppers are hungry for tangible shopping experiences, he says, and there's a viable niche market for new and used records.

"Sure, you can fire up a w... Read more >

To grow Ohio’s considerable clout in the aerospace industry, the state’s leaders are looking north to Canada as an important source of trade partnerships.

The Canada-Ohio Aerospace Summit held last month in Cleveland attracted a large number of Canadian and Ohioan aerospace business leaders and government representatives. It was initiated by the Ohio Aerospace Institute to help industry leaders get to know each other better with the hope of nourishing business... Read more >

As the number of local bike commuters continues to increase, so too does the number of savvy entrepreneurs who serve and service them. In recent years, a mini boom of bike-based businesses has developed across Northeast Ohio, including frame builders, messenger bag makers, rickshaw drivers and an indoor bike park that attracts visitors from throughout the Midwest.

When Will Friedman took the helm of the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority in June 2010, he soon learned about Dike 14, an outcropping of land on Cleveland's east side that had been a dredging facility from 1979 until 1999. Friedman quickly realized that the Port could do more to transform this burgeoning wildlife paradise -- which was closed to the public due to environmental concerns -- into a world-class nature preserve.

"I saw it as a potentially great ... Read more >

Grace Brothers, a seven-acre nursery and garden store in Broadview Heights that previously relied upon the suburban market, is vying for a new, urban market. This month, the family-owned company will open a gardening, farming and pet store in the growing Detroit Shoreway neighborhood on Cleveland's west side.

"We were selling to the new home market and kind of living the bubble, but then it evaporated over the last four years and things came to a standstill,"... Read more >

Public Square Group, a nonprofit organization that promotes skateboarding and skate parks as tools for redeveloping urban neighborhoods, engaging youth in positive activities and promoting active lifestyles, is opening an office and indoor skatepark in the MidTown neighborhood of Cleveland.

The new office and skatepark, which has been dubbed "Skate Kitchen," will be located in the historic Cadillac Building at E. 30th and Chester, adjacent to Jakprints. Skate Ki... Read more >

A partnership between two Ohio medical device companies could make getting a good night's sleep easier for people who suffer from sleep apnea.
 
The new SleepView portable sleep monitor and web portal lets doctors monitor patients’ breathing and other sleep patterns at home. The device meets American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s diagnostic standards, and offers quicker, more efficient and cost-effective diagnosis and treatment.
 
Midma... Read more >

Vedette Gavin knows how difficult it can be for any new initiative to take root in an older neighborhood. So, instead of pushing her "Healthy Eating and Active Living" program onto residents of the Buckeye and Shaker Square-Larchmere neighborhoods, she has planted seeds in resident leaders who are growing it from the ground up.

"Place impacts choice and choice impacts health," says Gavin, a Community Health Fellow with the Saint Luke's Foundation, ... Read more >

With a strong manufacturing infrastructure and more than 630,000 skilled workers, Ohio has the opportunity to become one of the most attractive states in the U.S. for clean energy manufacturers, according to the Ohio BlueGreen Apollo Alliance. Yet while Ohio has created policies to make clean manufacturing a priority, it needs to create further incentives to spur growth, according to The Ohio Green Manufacturing Action Plan (GreenMAP), a report by the Alliance.

“Suc... Read more >