Ryan O’Donnell has created a way to add a personal touch to online gifting. The founder and CEO of Sociagram has created an online cloud-based platform to create customized personal video messages. O’Donnell recognized that people enjoy sending e-cards and adding other personal touches when they send online gifts.

O’Donnell started Let’s Gift It in 2011, an online group gifting site, but quickly recognized the market wasn’t there. “What... Read more >

Even in Ohio City's Market District, where monthly announcements of new businesses opening are not uncommon, this one is noteworthy. Boris Music, the Slovenian-born owner of the Hansa Import Haus at West 28th and Lorain, is set to break ground on a multi-million-dollar expansion that will transform a dated store into a restaurant and microbrewery.

For years, Hansa Import Haus has been a favorite of locals and those in-the-know -- its faded, faux-German exterior concea... Read more >

The 2014 Gay Games was a great "get" for the Cleveland-Akron area, as the region was selected over larger competing metropolises like Boston and Washington, D.C. The Cleveland Foundation has reinforced the notion of the games' importance with some hefty financial support.

The foundation recently awarded the games a $250,000 grant, forming a partnership that makes the organization the games' top sponsor. The event is now named the 2014 Gay Games presented... Read more >

A nonprofit seeking to create environmentally sound, high-performance building districts in Cleveland recently got a hand with its city-greening mission.

The Cleveland 2030 District, a group that would like downtown edifices to consume less energy and water and produce less greenhouse gases, received a $175,000 grant from The Kresge Foundation, funding that will go in part to the salary of the organization's first executive director as well as additional sta... Read more >

In the penthouse of the historic Palace Theatre, Charles Stack is hoping to foster a few new tech companies -- 10 to be exact -- in Cleveland’s newest business accelerator, FlashStarts.

Stack started FlashStarts in October 2012 and will hold his inaugural startup class this summer. “Come in with a half-baked idea and we finish baking it, slap some cash for equity, and start it in three months,” he explains.
 
Teams of two or more can apply t... Read more >

Global Cleveland recently launched its Asian Initiative, a program to attract and retain Asian talent to the region. “Asians are now the fastest growing and most educated population in the U.S.,” says Meran Rogers, Global Cleveland’s director of community affairs, adding that Cleveland has seen a 49-percent increase in Asians between 2000 and 2010.

Those numbers prompted Global Cleveland to reach out to various groups in the Asian community to identify f... Read more >

The final inspections for Cleveland Culinary Launch and Kitchen take place this week, and a customer is planning to come in the next day. The organizers behind Cleveland's first-ever shared commercial kitchen hope that's a sign of good things to come.

The kitchen's goal is to help local food entrepreneurs bring products to market. With so many food truck owners, caterers, urban gardeners and budding chefs making their products in cramped home quarters or churc... Read more >

Think you know Cleveland? Well, thanks to $4 billion in new downtown development, you just might not recognize it anymore. Soon-to-be-completed projects like the Global Health Innovation Center, Convention Center, Ernst and Young Tower, Aloft Hotel and those in PlayhouseSquare have pushed the city to a tipping point in its evolution.

A group of Cleveland furniture makers who have earned national attention for their work plan to open a gallery in the 5th Street Arcades in downtown Cleveland in order to showcase their work.

They believe a downtown gallery can be successful by co-locating with other like-minded retailers, serving the growing base of downtown residents and hosting shows to attract crowds. Thus far, 12 Cleveland furniture designers have signed up to take part.

Soulcraft Gallery wa... Read more >

When Jack Bialosky founded Bialosky and Partners back in 1951, he was just 27 years old and fresh out of serving in World War II. His vision and determination as an architect prompted him to follow his entrepreneurial urges and break away from his employer to pursue the clients he wanted to serve.

“He was working for architect Charles Kohlman at the time,” says Jack Bialosky, Jr. “As more work started coming in, Kohlman wasn’t interested in taking ... Read more >

Meet Andi Kornak, the new General Curator at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. After two decades working at the Binder Park Zoo in Battle Creek Michigan, Kornak moved here to accept a new position. "I feel very settled here," says the recent transplant.

For some, the term "Rust Belt" conjures unpleasant images of empty factories, foreclosed homes and unhappy people wandering cracked streets, wondering when times will get better. But what's really happening in some of the Midwest's major cities, and how different is it from the way these cities are often depicted?

Jack Storey thinks he has an answer. The impassioned city advocate has created a documentary chronicling what he believes is a more accurate r... Read more >

Memories of flashing lights, digitized explosions, rock music and quarters being ritually plunked into plastic coin slots have a happy place in the minds of many folks of a certain generation. Two Clevelanders want to bring those sights and sounds back to the city this summer in the form of a pop-up arcade.

Coin-Op Cleveland is a Kickstarter project helmed by John Stanchina and Mike Scur. While arcade gaming collapsed in the 1990s with the ascension of home consoles, the ... Read more >