Well said.

Assuming that the people in that neighborhood have wants and needs different than your own neighborhood may be your first mistake.

I live in Cleveland. I don’t claim to have al the answers and I think you have some great ideas in there. Funny thing is, the stadium, after sports had left, was a community center for a while. But it fell into disrepair somewhere along the way. Today, directly across the street is the Fatima center (St. Agnes Our Lady of Fatima.) It is relatively new and quite nice inside (They even let me use their bathroom one time.) Aside from providing daycare and youth programs they do other things for the community as well. Part of what you say the LP project needs to do, would be redundant.

The blocks that surround the park really aren’t much of a neighborhood at all. A few blocks away there is new housing and a so-far successful a Hope VI mixed-income project. Parts of Hough look much better than they did a decade ago. The blocks around League Park are primarily vacant lots with what looks to be less than 50% occupied homes on them. The majority of the vacants have been demolished.

I truly welcome you arguments, they help sharpen the case to rebuild. But you need to get some fresh facts in there because from where I sit it seems like your just searching for any reason to oppose the forward momentum of the idea. At noon on any day of the week, it isn’t scary at all. If you ever get a chance, I highly recommend, to anyone, to take a walk through the park.

afh4: it looks like you and I aren’t going to be agreeing any time soon on this issue. It’s also likely that this isn’t the place to flesh it out (as you noted in a previous thread) and, more importantly, it’s certain that I am an armchair social reformist at a cleveland.com level of awareness – except with good grammar. I don’t know you, and I don’t want to be presumptuous, but it wouldn’t surprise me if you were in the same boat. Neither of us studied economics. Don’t know much about it, but I wish I did. So I will loosely appeal to it, maybe someone can correct me where I am wrong.

Ideally, The Big Hand would put a perfect school on the lot filled with only the best teachers and best resources – and filled with students who want to learn and whose parents actively encourage their education. That would be pretty sweet. But that doesn’t exist. What does exist is the ruins of an old ballpark. It doesn’t seem like that could add much to a community, right? But I would speculate (NO data here) that there are unintended consequences to pumping bad neighborhoods with things like community centers and boys and girls clubs. I won’t enumerate what those unintended consequences might be, but I would guess that they are bad, and would rather get into it in private.

Second, we are talking private dollars here! I can’t see how to siphon government money into more community centers in favor of private donations – a cause de celibre that someone with a big wallet might actually get behind. Your line of thinking can contribute to this neighborhood’s stasis. Here’s everyones first thought: “Only the best should go in this lot – something that helps kids get an education/seek help/shelter from their terrible homes and lives. That’s the only thing that belongs here.” The second thought is never, “ok let’s go rustle up this money from the city of Cleveland.” So nothing happens. Oh well, at least there isn’t a new baseball field.

If you allow a private investor to actually try to get something done, you might be surprised. Some would argue that the first – and only – step to rejuvinating a neighborhood is through a strong economy. Get private businesses back in there – however you want to – and the whole thing improves.

But what do I know, really? I’m no expert – at anything, let alone this. So your voice is welcome, absolutely. Play ball.

the idea that this project has intrinsic value and is important no matter where League Park is located does not jibe with me.

Your damn right. The location of a Negro League Championship team in an all black neighborhood is damn important.

Also, Andrew, I think your vision of what this thing ought to be is right on. And Jay mentioned the RBI program, which does very good work along these lines and I’d hope they could be brought in to contribute. I see this as a potential flagship project for the program.