Cleveland’s enclave of entertainment could be mirrored in Detroit

OK, so Cleveland isn’t exactly Detroit but this mixed-use entertainment project could be something that our city might see eventually. The developer of the project, who also restored the Book Cadillac has proposed something similar along Washington Boulevard.Excerpt:The current vitality of Fourth Street is the culmination of 15 years of work by the Maron family to turn a worn thoroughfare and its old buildings into a prime example of 21st-century urban redevelopment in the Midwest.“In the early 1980s, there were some people who wanted the unwashed, unloved warehouses and flats on East Fourth Street to be demolished,” said Thomas J. Yablonsky, the executive director of the Historic Gateway Neighborhood Corporation, a Cleveland nonprofit group focused on downtown development. “Give the Marons credit for the all-encompassing environment and experience they’ve put in one place there.”City leaders and local developers say East Fourth Street is confirmation of an entertainment-focused economic strategy that Cleveland’s development executives and lawmakers pursued in the mid-1990s when $650 million was spent on two new stadiums for its major league baseball and football teams, a new arena for the basketball team and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Read the entire article here.