What's next? It's a question we all wish we had the answer to. But for folks looking to settle down, that question undoubtedly refers to place. In this running series, Fresh Water explores emerging Cleveland neighborhoods that are primed for growth. This week, writer Joe Baur examines Slavic Village.
The Centennial Gala, to be held on Saturday, Nov. 3, 2012, will officially kick off the Market’s Centennial fundraising campaign. The massive Gala will mark the first day of the next 100 years for Cleveland’s West Side Market.
Co-chaired by Michael Symon and Jonathon Sawyer, the Centennial Gala will also feature a spectacular lineup of national chefs and celebrities.
April Bloomfield, New York City: The Spotted Pig, The Breslin Bar, The John Dory Oyster Bar
Andrew Carmellini, New York City: Locanda Verde, The Dutch (Miami Beach and New York City)
Britt-Marie Culey, Cleveland: Coquette Patisserie
Karen DeMasco, New York City: Locanda Verde
Chris Hodgson, Cleveland: Hodges, Hodge Podge and Dim and Den Sum Food Trucks
Paul Kahan, Chicago: One Off Hospitality Group including Blackbird, avec, The Publican, Big Star, The Violet Hour
Jeff Michaud, Philadelphia: Co-owner Osteria and Amis
Jonathon Sawyer, Cleveland: Greenhouse Tavern, Noodlecat, Street Frites
Michael Symon, Cleveland: Lola, Lolita, Roast (Detroit), B-Spot
Marc Vetri, Philadelphia: Chef and owner, Vetri, Osteria, Amis, Alla Spina
Eric Williams, Cleveland: Momocho, Happy Dog
Paul Minnillo, Cleveland: Flour
Rocco Whalen, Cleveland: Fahrenheit, Rosie & Rocco’s
Andrew Zimmern: Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern; Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre World; Bizarre Foods America on the Travel Channel
On Friday, Nov. 2 -- the West Side Market’s 100th birthday -- the chefs will shop at the Market to purchase items to use in the dishes they’ll prepare for the Gala. The Gala will take place the following day in the West Side Market. In addition, the event boasts a VIP reception, tasting stations, live music and more.
A limited number of tickets are available for pre-sale here with the remaining tickets going on sale next month. The ticket price is $250 and includes valet parking, tastings of the chefs’ signature dishes, an open bar and commemorative 22-ounce bottles of Butcher’s Brew from Great Lakes Brewing.
For more info, watch this video starring Symon and Sawyer:
Established in 1960, the Cleveland Arts Prize is the oldest award of its kind in the country. The prize honors outstanding creative artists whose work brings vitality to Northeast Ohio. Following the death of two past winners, executive director Marcie Bergman launched a documentary film series to memorialize the winners.
While chef Jonathon Sawyer receives the majority of his well-deserved attention for his farm-to-table restaurant Greenhouse Tavern, located on East 4th St., Craig LaBan of Philly.com points out that Noodlecat should be receiving equal praise.
In an item titled, "Good road-trip eats," LaBan writes, “Noodlecat, the Cleveland ramen mash-up from chef Jonathon Sawyer, one of the more inventive and personal takes on the ramen trend, infused with good Midwestern ingredients: steamed buns (tempura-fried walleye!), noodle bowls with spicy Ohio corn chowder, matzo balls and brisket.”
“Also some killer desserts, including a buttered popcorn pot de crème with salted caramel and a deconstructed S'more (with a smoked chocolate torte) that were almost worth the detour themselves.”
TOA Technologies, the provider of mobile workforce management solutions, has hired Brian Cook as the company’s CFO. Since its founding in 2003, TOA has steadily grown from a small startup company to the global company with 350 employees around the world and more than 40 in Cleveland.
Cook, whose background is in global technology, telecommunications and media companies, will help guide TOA through its projected future growth.
“Brian is a good match for TOA because he’s lived through our future and he’s also not far removed from our past,” says John Opdycke, vice president of worldwide marketing. “We need someone in a financial role who is familiar with a company that is small and nimble and growing quickly.”
Aside from Cook’s international business and telecommunications expertise, Opdycke says Cook is a good personality fit with TOA. “The cultural fit was there,” he says. “Personality fit is important because we are still a small company.”
TOA recently entered markets in Latin American, Australia and New Zealand and is expanding locally as well. “We have seven of the top U.S. pay-tv providers as customers,” says Opdycke. “As things are happening, you really need more people. We’re bringing on people almost every other week.”
The emergency room at Fairview Hospital was built to serve 35,000 patients, but it likely will see 76,000 before the end of 2012, says President Jan Murphy.
That's a testament not only to the fact that a growing number of uninsured or underinsured families are too often waiting until they're forced to seek care, Murphy says, but also to the rising number of baby boomers who are growing older and in need of care.
To address the space crunch, Fairview broke ground on a 135,000-square-foot, $83-million expansion project last year that will be completed in early 2013. The expansion will add a state of the art emergency room to the hospital, which is a Level II Trauma Center and also serves both high-risk mothers and infants.
"At a time when the economics were a little bit against us, we're replacing a dated facility with a state-of-the-art intensive care unit," says Murphy. "We're committed to the Kamm's Corners neighborhood, and this project is bringing the Cleveland Clinic standard of world-class care into the neighborhood."
Fairview Hospital's addition is being built on the former site of the physicians' parking lot, which is being moved into a newly expanded parking deck. The project also includes the renovation of 25,000 square feet of existing hospital space.
If Bike Cleveland, LAND Studio and business owner Sam McNulty have their way, a used shipping container will be transformed into sleek new bike parking in Ohio City sometime next month.
The Bike Box, which will feature parking for 15 bikes in a locally sourced shipping container fabricated by Rust Belt Welding, started off as a conversation among cycling advocates about converting a single car parking space into multiple bike parking on West 25th.
"To be honest, I thought the City was going to look at me cross-eyed," says Sam McNulty, who is chipping in money for the project. The Bike Box will be placed on Bridge, outside of Nano Brew, his soon-to-open microbrewery. "Surprisingly, they were very excited about it. This makes a statement and says, 'Instead of bicycles and pedestrians being an afterthought, we're flipping the script and creating a space for bicycles.'"
As far as timing goes, McNulty says the organizers still hope to have the Bike Box up in time for events celebrating the West Side Market's 100th birthday. "We're shooting to have it hit the curb in time for the Centennial next month," he says.
McNulty says the Bike Box will replace one unmetered parking space. He hopes to eventually remove another parking space or two and create a "parklet" -- a streetside pocket park with grass, trees and benches -- but he's focused on the Bike Box first. "The park is more controversial and cutting-edge," he says.
Along with New York City, Albuquerque, Long Beach, and Miami, Cleveland was named by Bicycling magazine as an up-and-coming bike city.
"It's no joke," writes David Howard, "The city on Lake Erie has cycling dialed."
"What's to love?" he adds. "For starters, the stretch of bike lane that now runs the length of historic Euclid Avenue, linking the city's two employment hubs. A new towpath just beyond Cleveland's southern border reaches Akron—80 miles away. Plans call for webs of bike paths to unspool east and west as well. To lure tourists in, the Downtown Cleveland Alliance launched a bike-rental program last summer -- it will expand this year into a parking garage with showers and lockers."
"And then there's the diversity. In January, a nonprofit unveiled plans to build an indoor velodrome -- the third of its kind in the country and the only one east of the Rockies. The city is home to the vast Ray's Indoor Mountain Bike Park and Pedal Republic, which organizes bike-polo tourneys, tall-bike rides and alley cat races."
Food Network Magazine has crowned Barroco Grill's delicious Chorizo Arepa the top sandwich in all of Ohio. In a feature titled "50 States, 50 Sandwiches," the Lakewood eatery gets high praise for its Colombian street food.
"Arepas -- thick-stuffed corn tortillas -- have come to Ohio, and locals rave about this chorizo-stuffed one," reads the entry.
Enforcer eCoaching, a personalized wellness coaching service, has secured $250,00 from JumpStart to expand services across the country. A spin-off out of the Cleveland Clinic, Enforcer eCoaching was founded by Cleveland Clinic chief wellness officer Dr. Michael Roizen, television health guru Dr. Mehmet Oz and entrepreneurs Steven Lindseth and Arthur Benjamin.
The eCoaching focuses on smoking cessation, weight loss, hypertension control and diabetes control through personalized one-on-one email coaching and behavior modification.
“It’s based on 25 years of health coaching by Dr. Roizen,” says Marty Butler, Enforcer’s president and CEO. “We’re seeing a lot of niche treatment programs in the marketplace for companies looking to reduce their healthcare spending. Employers see a very strong return on investment.”
Butler says participants in the smoking cessation program have an 85-percent success rate, while weight loss participants lose an average of two inches to their waist lines.
Employers or private individuals can sign up for eCoaching. They select the type of coaching they want, are assigned a coach, and then check in with daily email correspondence. “It’s part automation, part personal coaching,” says Butler. “Every email is reviewed by a personal health coach, and they really build relationships and people become more accountable for their own healthcare.”
The convenience of email contributes for Enforcer’s success. “People can email whenever and wherever they want, and read the emails whenever and wherever,” says Butler. “We’re slowly nudging people to success because of the daily email exchange.”
In addition to JumpStart’s investment to help Enforcer complete its computer platform, the organization has also provided expertise in hiring sales and IT staff.
As experienced Clevelanders, we are well aware of the greatness this city has to offer. But it's always a treat to read the kind words of an outsider who experiences those joys for the first time. Such is the case in this lengthy piece by Patti Nickell from Lexington Herald-Leader.
Nickel points out that she, like many others, has never truly considered Cleveland a vacation destination: That is until she took the advice of a friend and decided to visit.
“Then something unexpected happened," Nickell writes. "I had planned to have a brief romance with a city I had never been to, but I wound up falling in love."
Over the course of her four-day trip, she dined at some of our most beloved eateries (Greenhouse Tavern, Lucky’s Café, Lola, and L’Albatros), visited some of our favorite places (Cleveland Museum of Art, Greater Cleveland Aquarium, and the Cleveland Botanical Gardens), and had cocktails at the famed Velvet Tango Room.
She also visited places we sometimes take for granted such as Severance Hall and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Two fine gems in this great city.
Nickell is now a converted Cleveland fan. You can read about her full experience here.
George Vlosich has been creating Etch-a-Sketch art since he was 10, but more recently his artistic creations have landed him on Oprah and earned him millions of views from followers on YouTube.
Now the arts entrepreneur, who has also launched a line of Cleveland-centric apparel and painted 40-foot murals of local sports icons inside Positively Cleveland, is opening a gallery on Professor in Tremont.
"Being on Oprah opened up opportunities for me, and now I create artwork for people literally across the world," says Vlosich, founder of GV Art and Design. "I'm trying to do things that take the Etch-a-Sketch and go beyond the red frame. I worked in advertising for the last nine years, but now I'm going full-time."
Vlosich's new storefront gallery is located in the space that formerly housed Asterisk Gallery. The artist is renovating the interior and restored the prominent storefront windows, which had long been covered up by a false, wooden facade painted blue. The gallery is scheduled to officially open sometime in October.
"I want to grow beyond Cleveland," says Vlosich of his future business goals. "I also want to start doing stuff that makes an impact on the community. We already do a lot of charity events, and we're going to get kids involved with artwork."
On Saturday, Aug. 4, the 2012 class was enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. In this video interview, Dave Motts of the Hall discusses the past, present and future of this remarkable sports repository. Opened in 1963, the Hall of Fame is 50 years old -- and getting ready to embark on its next 50 years of excellence.
The communities competing for the $1 million Talent Dividend Prize have a modest goal: boosting the number of college degrees in their city by one percentage point. If every participating city meets that goal, it could raise national earnings by a stunning $124 billion.
“It’s a chance for the venture capital community to come together and see some of the most promising startups,” explains Carolyn Pione Micheli, director of communications for CincyTech. “According to a study by the Kauffman Foundation, in 2007 all net news job growth came from companies that are less than five years old.” The event is the successor to the Ohio Capital Fund’s Early Stage Summit, which was held in Columbus for seven years.
The GLVF will only accept 18 startup companies in bioscience and IT to pitch their companies to investors. Other activities at the event include presentations on regional investment activity, and conversations about building future growth in startups and investing.
“In terms of growing fresh new jobs, small companies are the key, “ says Micheli. “The startup community is really important to our economic future.”
Keynote speaker will be Jeff Weedman, vice president of global business development for Proctor & Gamble. The application deadline for companies looking for funding is Aug. 12. Registration to attend is $200 before Sep. 15, $250 after that.
Source: Carolyn Pione Micheli
Writer: Karin Connelly
In the best of cases, getting a book published can take one to three years from start to finish. Or, you can do it the way Richey Piiparinen and Anne Trubek did with Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology. The pair of Cleveland writers managed to compress the entire Sisyphean process into an implausible three-month timeframe.
Thanks to the efforts of numerous neighborhood activists, once-blighted properties in Glenville and throughout Cleveland are being transformed into orchards, gardens and inviting green spaces. These incremental quality-of-life improvements are helping to craft a smaller city of higher quality.
Clevelander Beau Miller is in the process of shooting a film about the popular sax-playing street musician Maurice Reedus, Jr. (who happens to be the son of the late, great Grammy award winning saxophonist Maurice Reedus, Sr.).
Miller and cinematographer John Pope, director Joe Siebert and producer Todd Bemak hope to complete The Sax Man in time to enter it in the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. But to do so, they need to raise some cash.
The good news is that with just a dozen days left to go on their Kickstarter campaign, the group has raised over $20,000 of their $35,000 goal.
Donate a grand and you'll receive an Associate Producer credit in the film. How sweet is that?
The Cedar Center North project, envisioned as a bold, mixed-use development featuring a midrise condo building above new shops and restaurants, is a far cry from what the original developer and community backers had hoped for originally. Gone are the high-end condos, replaced by an upscale strip retail center filled with familiar national chains.
The Coral Company and DeVille Developments broke ground on the project, which has been in the works since 2001 but stymied by the recession that began in 2007, this spring. So far, they've secured leases from Piada, PetSmart, Menchies, Chipotle, Panera Bread, Starbucks, Jimmy Johns, Five Guys, Sprint, Sport Clips, Little Caesar's Pizza and Huntington Learning Centers, among other tenants.
When Piada Italian Street Food opens this fall, it will be the first location for the Columbus-based restaurant chain. For the most part, the other new tenants that have leased space at Cedar Center North already have locations in Northeast Ohio.
Despite the downscaled nature of the project, Patrick Sirpilla of co-developer DeVille Developments says that many members of the community are simply happy that the project has broken ground and is well on its way to completion.
"We're getting a great response from the community and people are excited about the types of tenants going in," he says. "We've gotten a lot of great comments on the design, which has nice architectural features and lots of brick and stone."
Sirpilla says that three of the tenants he is currently negotiating with are retail operators, and that he hopes to ultimately see more stores within the project.
Two new retailers, Gordon Food Service and Bob Evans, opened locations here last year. Although it is scaled back, Cedar Center North is much more pedestrian-friendly than its predecessor, a maligned strip mall dominated by parking lots. It features outdoor dining, bike racks, community areas and varying architecture.
A mile away, First Interstate Development recently broke ground on Oakwood Commons, a large new retail center off of Warrensville Center Road that will feature a SuperWalmart and other tenants that have not been announced.
Until recently, there was a void in Cleveland's art scene: the lack of a community darkroom, studio and photographic gallery. That will change with the opening of Cleveland Print Room, an educational organization located in the ArtCraft Building.
The organization "aspires to build awareness and foster appreciation for fine art, hand-processed photography," according to its Facebook page. Cleveland Print Room will offer workshops, affordable work space and collaborative exhibition space. Its members are devotees of shooting and printing film manually.
"When my daughter began looking for photography classes to take around 2005, we found that high schools, arts centers and universities and colleges were actively disassembling or downsizing their darkroom facilities," explains Shari Wilkins, founder of Cleveland Print Room. "This is a troubling trend and we lamented the lost possibilities. When one of the local art centers began selling off their art supplies and photography equipment, we were there, buying the photo equipment up. At that time, we were not even really sure why we were doing this."
Yet that prescient moment led to the creation of the Print Room. "After researching the need in the gap in services along with the resurgence of 20th century emulsion-based photography, it was an easy decision," she says.
Members will have full access to the space nearly 24 hours per day, and there will be a darkroom, studio and exhibition space. Wilkins hopes to be open by the fall.
The venue is located at 2550 Superior in a building rife with studios and galleries.