This was a big meeting last night and the upshot of it is that I finally discovered which block club I’m supposed to be going to, officially. It ain’t this one. No big deal though, because both block clubs have stuff to do with my street and I’ll take any excuse to visit Lucky’s.
There was a lot of talk about converting the Tremont school into a swing school for high school kids. Pretty much everyone at the meeting was in agreement that Tremont doesn’t need high school kids being served lunch from carts between classes and having to use restrooms and classrooms built for elementary children in a neighborhood that has little enough parking space as it is. So, we signed a letter, a petition might be coming around and we’re supposed to make phone calls.
Then Progressive Urban Development put forth the plans for a townhouse development on the corner of Fruit, Brayton and W. 9th. I was a bit leery of it because merely looking at the vinyl-sided townhouses on the North Ridge fills me with ennui. But they said it had an “exciting” architectural design. It turns out the “exciting” design isn’t much more than an outer wall canted at a 15 degree angle over the street. The townhouses will be vinyl-sided and have corrugated metal on the canted part. Also, the only green-space will be hidden on the hillside and not visible from the street. Basically it sounds ugly as hell. [Honestly, look at the townhomes on their site. Ugly.] They said the permitting process hasn’t begun yet, and I know my landlord is unhappy with the project. I wonder how the neighbors on Brayton feel. No one else from Fruit was there. Maybe because they presented it to the wrong block club.
In slightly less antsy news, a fourth grader art show is planned in Lincoln Park in the upcoming months. I think I’ll probably help out with it if I can.
My landlord called me up after the meeting to tell me that I’m supposed to be going to the Auburn Block Club which is apparently the first block club in Cleveland and has some political clout [I don’t really understand how a specific block club can have clout, but I’m an ignorant bastard]. The Auburn block club meeting is tomorrow and apparently it is often quite, erm, lively. I’m going to go and see what I can see. I brought up the idea of a Tremont discussion site [didn’t use the word blog because I didn’t want to explain it to the older folks] that is unaffiliated with any of the local business or political interests. There was a lot of cricket-like silence and a few murmurs from you-in-the-back but we’ll see how the Auburnites feel about it.