Rebirth of a Rust Belt city
CLEVELAND, Ohio—Like Chrissie Hynde said: I went back to Ohio, and my city was gone. Unlike her remembrances (she’s from Akron), the Cleveland I grew up in has been replaced—at least in the downtown core—with a handsome and energetic urban center that has a forward-spin feel.
It’s like when visitors come to Little Rock and are impressed with the always-happening River Market area, or tourists who go to New Orleans in March and think wow, this place has really nice weather. Neither is reality, but are pleasant experiences nonetheless.
After graduating from downtown’s Cleveland State University, I left the city in 1979, heading south. It wasn’t hard to say goodbye. The scrappy, tough-talking town I’d known was disappearing as the city’s steelmakers, having thrived near the banks of the Cuyahoga River since the mid19th century, began to suffer from inflation, imports of foreign steel, environmental regulations, lagging productivity, and rising labor costs.
In 1979, according to Case Western Reserve University’s Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, U.S. Steel abandoned its historic Central Furnaces plant. Over the next five years six more plants closed.
My sister, a glamorous executive secretary for a suite full of U.S. Steel bosses in the city’s prestigious 40-story Erieview Tower back then, was told she could relocate to Detroit if she wanted to stay employed. She declined, went back to school at Cleveland Clinic, and became an aesthetician in the renowned medical facility’s plastic surgery department.
She made out OK. Many didn’t. Those steel mill jobs paid well and had great benefits. The loss of income hurt the city and caused its population to drop from 914,000 in 1950 to 390,000 in 2019 as workers packed up and left in search of work.
Coming to the rescue: Another Akron native, LeBron James. When he was drafted by the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2003, energy flowed in as well. “In the first seven years LeBron was here, he gave business people the confidence to double down and invest,” Joe Roman, president and CEO of the Greater Cleveland Partnership told ESPN in 2018. “It changed the energy behind the decision-making process. … Companies have all of a sudden said, ‘Cleveland is a cool place to be.”
LeBron left for Miami in 2010, came back to Cleveland in 2014, then headed west to join the L.A. Lakers in 2018. There was much howling about impending economic doom following the Lakers move. But my visit in September didn’t show signs of disaster.
Maybe it’s because I headed to previously undiscovered destinations like the Greater Cleveland Aquarium on the west bank of the Cuyahoga River (yes, the one that caught on fire in 1969; the jokes about this are getting old, people). There I found fascinating habitat-housed sharks, poison dart frogs, turtles, lizards, angelfish, birds, snakes, and jellyfish, as well as hands-on exhibits (visitors can touch a stingray as it glides by in a doughnut-shaped pool). Regarding visitors: There were plenty, old and young, on a sunny Saturday afternoon.
The area surrounding the aquarium, known as the Flats, used to be grubby, dark, and populated with biker bars. When my cohort was younger, we sought entertainment and companionship at the renowned Agora Ballroom, Viking Saloon, Cleveland Stadium in the summer (where the likes of Rod Stewart would play for 80,000-some fans), and Fat Glenn’s at Cleveland State. Not the Flats.
Now it’s loaded with stylish restaurants, bars, and entertainment venues. I didn’t see any bikers.
Professional-team support knows no bounds; two out of three people on Euclid Avenue were wearing Cleveland Indians shirts or hats. The Indians were in town that weekend, and Progressive Field attracted 40,000-some fans for a Sunday afternoon game. The cheapest ticket that day was $28; craft beers were going for $12.50, burgers and fries were $13.50 (my dad, a rabid Indians fan who died a decade ago, was distressed the last time I took him to a game and the beers were $4).
Those prices weren’t stopping anybody from eating, drinking, and buying more Indians gear.
Another sign of economic stability was an Aston Martin parked near the swank Kimpton Schofield hotel on Euclid Avenue. I asked the valet if it had a manual transmission; he said no, it had paddle shifters. We both shook our heads sadly and went our separate ways.
Walking through the mixed-use Warehouse District on a Sunday morning allowed for greeting many dogs out for a stroll with their millennial owners; one was a white miniature poodle with an orange topknot, orange paws and an orange-tipped tail. Must have been a Browns fan.
A Monday morning stop at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (which opened Sept. 2, 1995) should have been a slow time for the I.M. Pei-designed museum near the shores of Lake Erie. Yet it was packed with baby boomers (admission $26; $24 for seniors) reliving the music of their youth. You could hardly get near Garage, an exhibit that opened July 1 that gives visitors a chance to play electric and acoustic guitars, take a tutorial on keyboards or drum kits (in soundproof rooms), and play along to the likes of The Who— huge fun.
Other fun stuff included a seemingly endless lineup of interactive displays at the Great Lakes Science Center that invite guests to land the space shuttle, treat patients with stem-cell interaction, measure baseball-throwing speed, work on a car, and much more; a fair number of the exhibits weren’t working properly, which atests to the amount of use they get from adults and kids. A final highlight was the chance to meet Linda, a delightful five-pound oppossum recently found at the Browns’ FirstEnergy Stadium who’s now a docent sidekick of the Cleveland Natural History Museum.
Among the losses: Higbee’s, the department store on Public Square that plays a role in A Christmas Story, has been replaced by Jack Casino. Yet film fans needn’t fret. A century-old house on West 11th Street used in the filming of the 1983 holiday classic opened its doors as a museum on Nov. 25, 2006.
Maybe the city I knew is gone, but I’m happy with the one that’s replaced it.