Last summer, the Near West Recreation League's t-ball league was a hit for Cleveland kids. Organizers believe a recently debuted bowling league will play a similarly big "roll" in the health of a community that didn't have much in the way of organized sports.

The bowling program, open to 70-plus youngsters between the ages of 6 and 10, launched February 16 at Corner Alley in downtown Cleveland. The league is part of a two-year partnership between Ohio Savings Bank and Ohio City Inc. to support recreation activities on the Near West Side. Downtown Cleveland Alliance is also a partner in the new program.

The bowling league was created for children from Tremont, Detroit Shoreway and other West Side enclaves, although similar to the t-ball league, kids have been coming from other parts of the city to participate.

"Sports are a great way of bringing people together at a young age," says Eric Wobser, executive director of Ohio City Inc.

They're also a method of keeping people in the neighborhood, maintain the rec league's leaders. Retaining young families in the 25- to 34-age group has been problematic for Ohio City and downtown. Sports can be another amenity that grows a neighborhood population, while also integrating a community of diverse backgrounds.

"It's improving the quality of life," Wobser says.

If the bowling league proves successful, the rec league will add other sports throughout the year. Plans for the remainder of 2013 include youth-oriented baseball, soccer and basketball. The league may "age up" as well, from young kids all the way to junior high students.

"We've struck a chord with the community," says Wobser.
 
 
SOURCE: Eric Wobser
WRITER: Douglas J. Guth

Cleveland is quietly transforming from a meat-and-potatoes to a beets-and-tomatoes kind of town -- at least at the edges. Not only are there more meat-free diners in Cleveland. But vegans are finding more meat-free dinners thanks to progressive new eateries and chefs, who are more than eager to please this growing faction of foodies.

For a number of years at the tail end of the 20th century, Greater Cleveland's public and private leaders attempted to pull the city up through ambitious marketing campaigns. For awhile it seemed to work. The national media began referring to Cleveland as the "Comeback City" in conjunction with the grand openings of ambitious projects like Tower City Center, Jacobs Field and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.
 
But toward the end of the '90s a strange thing happened: The city, for all intents and purposes, stopped marketing itself.
 
Why?
 
"We began to believe our own press," says Rick Batyko, president of the Regional Marketing Alliance of Northeast Ohio, which conducts the Cleveland Plus campaign. And civic officials "moved on to other tasks and defunded marketing."
 
In essence, Northeast Ohio stopped telling its tale with the tale barely begun -- a rather large mistake in retrospect. "The underlying economy wasn't doing that well," Batyko says. "That's something you couldn't see in the skyline shots."
 
During the mid-2000s, the region's narrative thread was picked up by Cleveland Plus campaign. Established in 2005 -- with founding members that included Greater Cleveland Partnership, Positively Cleveland and Team NEO -- the organization champions Northeast Ohio as a culturally rich, yet affordable place to live.
 
Read the rest of the story here.

Back in 2011, Fresh Water ran a feature about Ohio's newly instituted Film Production Tax Credit, which helped attract big-budget productions like "The Avengers" and "Alex Cross," plus smaller films like "Take Shelter" and "Fun Size." We decided to revisit the topic to see how it's working out for Cleveland, and Ohio.

Arts and culture can define a community, creating a critical mass that translates into jobs, business opportunities and, ideally, sustained economic prosperity. These were the words of Northeast Ohio Sustainable Communities Consortium Initiative (NEOSCC) director Hunter Morrison during a January 25 roundtable hosted by the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture (CPAC).

These also are words that CPAC president and CEO Tom Schorgl likes to hear. The focus of the roundtable event was sustainability, and how the arts and culture community can assist the region as it evolves through population and land use shifts. The local arts sector becoming engaged in these issues can help keep Northeast Ohio resilient, vibrant and sustainable, said Morrison, a notion that the CPAC president shares.

"We have cultural clusters throughout the region, and the ability to communicate on a larger basis with the population about those clusters," says Schorgl. "We need to continue to reach our audience."

The roundtable, which drew over 50 attendees to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History's main gallery, was CPAC's first such event of the year. The nonprofit will sponsor similar forums through November, with an overall aim of connecting the arts and culture realm with professionals from sectors including community development and health and human services. Past roundtable speakers have included Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald, Cleveland Metropolitan School District CEO Eric Gordon, and City of Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson.

"The idea is to provide a forum for new ideas around a common cause," Schorgl says.

 
SOURCE: Tom Schorgl
WRITER: Douglas J. Guth

If you've enjoyed a drink at Lolita on a weekend night during the past two and a half years, chances are good Will Hollingsworth poured it. During that same period of time, Hollingsworth has been formulating his greatest recipe yet: The perfect bar, which will open this summer in Tremont.

The motto of the Near West Family Network (NWFN) is "Stronger Families, Stronger Cleveland." Good schools are an important means of bringing those families into town, maintains the volunteer group's founders, hence the forthcoming Near West Cleveland PreK-8 School Fair.

The fair takes place February 2 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at St. Ignatius High School. Sponsored by NWFN and advocacy group Ohio City, Inc., participants will get information about the private, charter, public and parochial schools found in Ohio City, Detroit Shoreway, Tremont and other Near West Side neighborhoods. School representatives will be on hand to provide information and answer questions.

"There will be a gamut of educational options available," says NWFN co-founder and Ohio City resident Norma Polanco-Boyd.

The mother of two daughters expects between 18 to 20 schools to be represented at the fair. "The goal goes back to the reason we started this organization [in November 2012,] says Polanco-Boyd. "We wanted to create a resource-based organization to retain families or attract them to these neighborhoods."

Along with the schools, Polanco-Boyd expects attendance from a handful of non-academic groups as well. These entities will provide yet another source of information for participating parents.

The NWFN website has a list of schools serving the Near West Side. Polanco-Boyd, a community affairs officer with a bank regulator, moved to Cleveland from Chicago with her husband, Joe. At the time, the couple didn't know anyone; Polanco-Boyd helped create NWFN for young families in similar straits.

The school fair is a critical to her group's mission, Polanco-Boyd believes.  "We want to grow Cleveland and help maintain its vibrancy," she says.
 
 
SOURCE: Norma Polanco-Boyd
WRITER: Douglas J. Guth

The health of Lake Erie has come a long way in the past 40 years, and it is now considered by many to be a case study of a recovering ecosystem. Yet not very many people know that, in part as a result of cleaning up our water pollution as well as our close proximity to a Great Lake, Northeast Ohio companies have developed rich expertise in water technology.

To leverage this cluster, influence policy, and conduct research and education, a group of organizations have launched The Alliance for our Water Future, a new nonprofit organization that seeks to spur innovative solutions to freshwater issues locally and globally.

"Silicon Valley is an example of what one industry cluster can do for a region," says Byron Clayton, Vice President at NorTech. "Companies all worked together in that region to leverage their strengths. In Northeast Ohio, we have a great legacy in cleaning up industrial waste water. We identified areas where we have the best chance of competing, and that's been the focus of our water technology cluster."

The areas that NorTech identified are automation and controls (identifying the best, most efficient way to control water), absorbents (extracting contaminants from water) and corrosion resistance (preventing water systems from corroding).

NorTech's role is to identify, organize and accelerate clusters. The Alliance will help promote this success story and spur cross-sector collaboration. By working together, the groups involved in the Alliance hope to make a global impact.

"This is about the economic future of our region," says Fran DiDonato, Program Manager of the Alliance. "If we can show that we had success with cleaning water, then that gives us credibility when we export our solutions to other places."

Two Northeast Ohio companies, MAR Systems and ABSMaterials, were recently selected by the Artemis Project as 2012 Top 50 Water Companies. Rockwell Automation is also considered a major player in the water technology field.

The founding members of the Alliance are NorTech, Case Western Reserve University, Port of Cleveland, Cleveland Metroparks, Cleveland State University, Hiram College, Great Lakes Science Center, Kent State University, MAR Systems and Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District.


Source: Byron Clayton, Fran DiDonato
Writer: Lee Chilcote

Each year in Cuyahoga County, 20 fortunate artists are awarded $20,000 Creative Workforce Fellowship grants to pursue their art, which often takes a back seat to more pressing needs. The fellowships also help to brand the region to outsiders as an artist-friendly place to live.

Angela Ben-Kiki, the artist and designer behind Green Garage Studio, has come full circle by opening a new studio and showroom in a two-family rental that she owns on W. 11th Street in Tremont.

Ben-Kiki was one of the first entrepreneurs to open a design-focused store in Tremont when she owned the shop Go Modern. She eventually closed the store to focus on being a mom. Now that her daughter is older, she has returned with new energy to the place where it all began.

"I produce well-crafted gear for everyday -- commuting, travel and leisure," she explains. "It is sustainably produced and one-of-a-kind. Many of my products have multiple uses, and we choose distinctive fabrics made in America."

Among Green Garage's signature products are denim bags for men and women. She purchases material from American Denim Growers in Littlefield, Texas. Despite the prevalence of denim in clothing, relatively few bags are made out of it.

"I bought a remnant of denim years ago, and that got me started," she says. "I made an everyday errand bag, and people said, 'Hey, where did you get that?'"

While Ben-Kiki's studio in Tremont recalls her history in the neighborhood, she's branching out in new directions, she says. Her newest products include aprons, pouches and a men's mesh bag. She also plans to get more into bicycling gear.

"I have a passion for design and usefulness. That comes from vintage times. To produce something that is meant to last for years -- I find it very gratifying."


Source: Angela Ben-Kiki
Writer: Lee Chilcote

"I don't cook like any of those other guys on the block, I'll tell you that right now," promises Cajun chef Johnny Schulze, tossing out the names of celebrity chefs Michael Symon and Rocco Whalen, both of whom have Tremont restaurants. "I pull from what I learned growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The reason I'm doing this restaurant is I want to cook what I'm really good at."

Schulze is talking about his planned restaurant and watering hole Bourbon Street Barrel Room, which was recently approved by the local Tremont block club, a major feat given the propensity of skiddish neighbors to blackball new liquor licenses. The 100-seat restaurant, which will be located on Professor Avenue between Fahnrenheit and Edison's, is expected to open by next summer.

Bourbon Street will serve authentic, reasonably-priced Cajun cuisine, something that Schulze says doesn't exist in Northeast Ohio. "The way I see it, they live off the land, these Cajuns," he says. "They make do with inexpensive ingredients. It's seafood-heavy. It's about building flavors -- like a jambalaya, it looks very simple when it's served, but when you taste it, you're diving into multiple flavors."

Schulze and co-owners Justin and Barry Clemens know that such rich, spicy flavors pair perfectly with craft beer. So, in addition to traditional Cajun dishes such as gumbo and shrimp creole, Bourbon Street will offer plenty of beer selections, wine and liquor. "You might even be able to order a hurricane," hints Schulze.

When he was recruited by the owners, the veteran chef had been operating the Zydeco Bistro food truck with no plans to open a restaurant. "I built a food truck to retire -- I didn't want to work for anyone ever again," Schulze says with a laugh. "I tried to say no at first. But Tremont has the right atmosphere; it's culturally diverse and feels like you're outside the French quarter. I can pull this off."


Source: Johnny Schulze
Writer: Lee Chilcote

Nearly 100 years after it was first constructed, the Hope Memorial bridge, which is home to the famous Guardians of Transportation statues and connects downtown to Ohio City, is now considered to be "complete."

That's because a 14.5 foot protected bikeway just opened, making the street safer and more accessible for pedestrians and bicyclists who would prefer not to ride in the street. The $4.5 million investment is consistent with the city's new Complete and Green Streets law, which requires sustainable transportation options to be incorporated into new road projects.

"We really want to encourage more people to bike more often. Anytime you can create an environment where you can take kids out, you know it’s a safe place," says Jacob Van Sickle, Executive Director of the nonprofit group Bike Cleveland. "We're always advocating for infrastructure that makes biking as safe and stress-free as possible. To create a mode shift, that's where we need to be."

The Ohio Department of Transportation agreed to pay for the bikeway as well as bike-friendly enhancements to the Abbey Road bridge a few years ago. At the time, it was offered as a concession to multimodal transportation advocates who had pressed for bike lanes to be built on the new I-90 Innerbelt bridge.

The Carnegie-Ontario intersection also has been made safer for pedestrians and cyclists thanks to a new pathway along the bridge's northeast end. That pathway will lead cyclists and walkers to cross at Eagle Avenue. Finally, the Guardians of Transportation statues will also be lit at night as part of the roadway project.


Source: Jacob Van Sickle
Writer: Lee Chilcote