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Image Matters
May 14, 2003 @ 7:35 AM and again at 9:10 AM
on 90.3
Meetings to
redesign Cleveland's lakefront are underway this week. The goal
is to come up with a plan that best reflects the essence of Cleveland.
In other words, it's all about image-the image Northeast Ohio projects
to the world and to itself. The choices the region makes about the
lakefront, or the convention center, or arts institutions or sports
facilities-all reflect who we think we are. As part of Making
Change: Reinventing our Economy, ideastream's Shula
Neuman spent some time in a Cleveland neighborhood whose image makeover
is enhancing the area's economic picture.
 
When Koula Lazar
(lay-zar) was a teenager, she thought spending time in Ohio City meant
taking your life in your own hands.
KOULA LAZAR: During high school we used
to go to the Agora…one girl drove and in order to get to Agora,
she would cut through west 25th. I would jump in back of the car
and I’d say, “are you crazy, what are you doing driving down this
street?”
 Forty
years later, Lazar is one of many store owners on West 25th Street
enjoying Ohio City’s recent renaissance. It’s been four years since
Lazar moved her store—called Something Different—to the neighborhood.
She says when she was checking out Ohio City as a possible location
for her store, she recognized both the neighborhood’s risks and potential,
since it’s home to the West Side Market.
KL: And we were aware that there were
panhandlers. But it didn’t bother us that much. But we saw the business,
we saw the people that were going through the market. Now we needed
to bring all those people from the market and head north from the
market.
Over the past five years or so, merchants and residents of Ohio City,
seem to have figured out how to attract the thousands of shoppers
to stick around. New restaurants, boutiques, and markets have opened.
And a new condo building is under construction right on West 25th
Street. Long-time resident and former city council woman Helen Knipe
Smith says the “new face” was really 30 years in the making. She says
the efforts were mostly random, but the thing that boosted Ohio City’s
image the most was the makeover of Market Street, directly across
from the West Side Market.
HELEN SMITH: You walk down that street
and people sort of stood up straighter and thought, “This is a cool
neighborhood and it’s mine.” Y’know there was this whole attitude
that sort of happened with this street. So it was not just an image
for outsiders but it was for people within the neighborhood to really
be proud of it and say this is mine.
It’s also been a financial windfall. In the past year, the Near West
Side Neighborhood Development corporation reports more than 20-million
dollars have been invested in commercial and residential development
projects. Dave Sharkey, vice president at Progressive Real Estate,
says housing investments are paying off big for those who got in ten
or twenty years ago.
DAVE SHARKEY: We’re now seeing renovations
over 200. We’ve seen construction in the mid-twos. We’ve seen some
renovations hit the 300 mark.
Yes, he’s talking 300-thousand dollars. Sharkey says with its dubious
image removed, Ohio City is attracting those who previously saw it
as too great a risk—and even these new settlers value what everyone
says is the neighborhood’s dominant image:
DAVE SHARKEY: It’s a very diverse neighborhood
both racially and ethnically and also economically and I know that
a lot of people who have lived here and have lived here a long time
want to maintain that.
Helen smith backs that up…
HS: If they had to vote tomorrow on
it, they’d all go to their polls and say they want to keep a diverse
neighborhood
Including shop-owner Koula Lazar:
KL: But it is, it’s very eclectic. And
being from an ethnic background, I feel right at home here.
Now, the appeal of diversity may not be the sole factor that’s lifted
the neighborhood’s fortune, but it probably didn’t hurt.
ROB DEROCKER: Well it certainly plays
into business development and the attraction of industry.
Rob DeRocker (dee-rock-er) is executive vice president with Development
Counsellors International—a New York-based company that’s worked on
marketing strategies and economic development with cities from Tacoma,
Washington to Geneva, Switzerland. DeRocker says when companies shop
around for new markets, the first thing they do is draw up a list
of possible places to target.
RD: You’re not going to make the long
list if A) your image is a negative one or B) it’s a non-image,
which is the case with a lot of cities.
 DeRocker
says once a place like Northeast Ohio can define an image for itself,
it has to broadcast that message as much as possible to the rest of
the world. He says over time—even 30 years, as was the case with Ohio
City—people will stop thinking, “Yeah, Cleveland, so what,” and start
saying, “huh, that’s Cleveland?” To get there, the region has to capitalize
on its physical and financial assets, says Joe Roman executive director
of Cleveland Tomorrow. That means a new lakefront, but it also means
new seed funds and business policies.
JOE ROMAN: And those are the easiest
ways to begin changing an image is to have real stories—even anecdotal
as they may be at the beginning—and continue to build that track
record. Everything becomes easier as the track record gets bigger
and more robust.
It may sound like pie-in-in-the-sky wishfulness, but Roman says it
comes down to a place—be it all of Northeast Ohio, or only Ohio City—knowing
its own identity first, so others recognize the image.
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