Citizens' Group Re-envisions the Future of Cleveland Heights
By Lee Chilcote

Julie Langan, Director of a nascent non-profit called Future Heights is working to revitalize the city of Cleveland Heights. Future Heights was founded several years ago by residents looking for a collective voice. A few years later, Future Heights is taking on the challenges in Cleveland Heights through a mixture of old-fashioned activism, civic projects such as beautification, and programming aimed at local business districts that they hope will catalyze retail development. I first met Julie, the group’s only staff member, about a year ago. When I attended my first Future Heights meeting, “A New Home in the Heights,” which focused on housing redevelopment, I knew the group was onto something good, so I asked Julie to sit down with Cool Cleveland and discuss the progress of Future Heights' economic development plans.

She is from Painesville originally, and before she came to Cleveland Heights, she worked in state historic preservation offices in Arkansas and Virginia for fifteen years. But Julie was attracted to Cleveland Heights for reasons that many people share – the older houses, the closely-knit neighborhoods, the walkable shopping areas. The city is spitting distance from University Circle and a short ride from downtown, and has seen new housing and revivified retail at Coventry, Cedar-Fairmount and Cedar-Lee. It wasn’t always this way; the city has battled shuttered storefronts on Coventry and an empty mall at Severance over the past two decades. This one-time enclave of Cleveland’s wealthiest families maintains many of its advantages – a superb location, houses with character, neighborhood shops, diversity. Yet Cleveland Heights is fighting to retain its image as a suburb of choice.

I asked Julie what she sees as the challenges in redeveloping the Heights. She talked about the city as fighting to remain competitive. As the urban edge moves farther out, it is making a bid to renew its appeal through redevelopment. Future Heights is there to push it along – and make sure citizens have a voice in the process. “Cleveland Heights should be seen in everybody’s mind as one of the best places to live, it has the best location going. When I started, I was focused on what wasn’t being done here; what I’ve found over the last few months is that Cleveland Heights is ahead of its neighbors. But we need to address our image.”

According to Lou Tisler, director of the First Suburbs Development Council, a group working to revitalize the inner ring suburbs that surround Cleveland, Future Heights is ahead of the curve in its efforts to re-develop the city. “We’ve got to stop the deterioration that has already taken place in [the City of] Cleveland from happening here,” he said. “It’s really about the foresight of cities. Inner ring suburbs don’t want to qualify for Empowerment Zone money. They’d love to have it, of course – but they don’t want to get to the point where they qualify for it. This is about preventive maintenance.” Future Heights also seems to be at the center of a great paradox in this progressive-minded city. There is a contrast between the city’s residents, who say that they value community involvement, and an administration that Julie says shies away from it, fearing controversy. This is evident in the city’s response to the group. "There’s still not the type of communication I hope to have – or the collaboration," said Julie. But Cleveland Heights has always had a reputation for being more progressive than other suburbs, so what gives? According to Julie, “It’s true that the residents of Cleveland Heights are more progressive than most of Northeast Ohio. But the city government may be more conservative than the residents.”

There’s a twist on Julie’s argument that the city of Cleveland Heights isn’t as progressive as the residents are. Some would argue that the greatest challenge of Future Heights is that the residents of Cleveland Heights are not as progressive as they think they are. This may be reflected in the organization itself. For example, at the group’s recent annual meeting at the College Club, the audience was largely white. The problem is endemic to many community organizations here. The older, more established community leadership tends to be white, belying the city’s much-ballyhooed diversity while suggesting that the city’s ‘integration’ may not be all it’s cracked up to be. Diverse groups would need to step up and contribute by representing at these meetings, and Future Heights will have to tackle the diversity of its own membership as it seeks to reach out and grow – and to do so, the group may have to challenge community norms.

Not everyone agrees with Julie’s characterization of the city. Tommy Fello, the 30-year proprietor of Tommy’s Restaurant and President of the merchant-led Coventry Special Improvement District (SID), dismissed the notion that Cleveland Heights is difficult to work with. “I’ve had nothing but positive relations with the city – they are a phone call away,” Tommy said. “Kim Steigerwald and Richard Wong [the top brass of the Economic Development and Planning departments] have kept the communication lines open, and have helped us to find new businesses for Coventry. There are occasional differences of opinion, and we have to live with compromises.” Nonetheless, Tommy acknowledged that Cleveland Heights did not solicit the merchants’ involvement in the redevelopment of Coventry – a recent effort whose public-private partnership brought tens of thousands of extra dollars to the street, funds that were used for planters, lampposts and other amenities.

Despite its small office, Future Heights is a group looking to take root and grow in 2004. Two years ago, having an office was a gleam in board members’ eyes. Start-up funding from the Cleveland and Gund foundations turned it into reality. In a few years, the group may well have staff and a larger office. “What will be different in 2004 is that we will devote more energy to commercial districts,” said Julie of the group’s plans. Future Heights will continue the Clean and Green Program, a volunteer program to make the city more attractive through litter collection, planting flowers and weeding. They’ll also keep up the advocacy program – “the heart of the organization” – and hold more lectures on issues in the Heights.

Future Heights recently completed a survey of merchants in the city’s commercial areas. The needs of these businesses, most of which are small, independent merchants, include business development, marketing and web site development. Other needs include providing the Special Improvement Districts (SID’s) recently formed at Cedar-Fairmount and Cedar-Lee with administrative support and technical assistance. SID’s allow businesses to tax themselves, in order to create funds for district-wide enhancements such as sidewalk repairs, decorative lamps and flowers. The group has kicked off the process of helping businesses with several initiatives. They created a holiday gift certificate program to benefit local merchants, and are assisting with storefront design. “The city staff and budget is not going to increase in the near term,” said Julie, “perhaps there is something that Future Heights could do to help provide services that the city can't deliver. They have two staff devoted to supporting commercial districts and the storefront renovation program; one spent a lot of time getting the Special Improvement Districts approved [for the Cedar-Fairmount and Cedar-Lee areas]. But this person has just been cut to part time. When we talk to merchants about our city services, most of them say that they’ve never heard of the storefront renovation program." City governments are always complaining that they lack the resources to accomplish everything they’d like. Would they gain leverage through a partnership with non profits, as they did with the Coventry SID?

Julie views the Special Improvement Districts as a chance for neighborhood businesses to band together to fight larger chains and malls. “I think there is a lot of opportunity for districts to work more collaboratively, so that they know what the other districts are doing, and so that they cross-promote one another. We have a lot of districts and space – we don’t need them to be all the same, so let them develop specialties, their own identities. There may be economies of scale in bidding for services that these districts need – having a single contract for snow removal or landscaping, for instance.” There are also challenges in helping the SID’s get up to speed. “They’re going to be pressed to do everything,” said Julie. “They’ll probably have to write grants – yet they don’t have the experience to do this.” These new groups will have to develop the business skills and funds to promote their districts. Although Julie hopes that the technical assistance provided by Future Heights will help businesses with such things as designing storefronts, she will also focus on the bigger picture – involving residents in decisions about the future of Cleveland Heights. According to Tisler, cities with a tradition of community involvement fare better. “An involved citizenry really moves the agenda forward,” he said. “People do not want to move out when they’re involved in their community. They want to stay close to churches, friends, family and local retail. If you look at the communities that have the greatest levels of community involvement, these places are ahead of the curve.”

The question is – what is meant by community involvement? And does Future Heights, a fledgling non-profit with a staff of one, have what it takes to be a player in this city’s upswing? To be effective, the group will have to marshal more volunteers, build a membership base more reflective of the diversity of the community, develop more foundation support, and lastly, walk that trembling tightrope between citizen advocacy and productive partnerships with the city. This is no easy agenda. Time will tell whether the ambitions of Future Heights will bear fruit. In the meantime, however, the group’s director has plenty of ideas about the future of Cleveland Heights. In our talk, Julie weighed in on a planned development on Lee Road in the Cedar-Lee area, a brief walk from the busy Cedar Lee Theater. Developer Peter Rubin owns the Coral Company, a group that has developed projects in the Heights, and wants to build a five-story, luxury condo building with street-level retail boasting restaurants and nightclubs on a site where an old bank branch now stands. Though glad that Rubin, whom she considered a stylish, high-quality developer, was doing the project, Julie shook her head over the fact that he was hand-picked for the job. “This is one of the most developable parcels in the city – it’s not like these projects come along every week. Why wouldn’t the city put out a Request For Proposals, get a range of exciting ideas, and make selecting a developer a more open process?” Although the shovel hasn’t hit the dirt on Rubin’s development, one thing is fairly certain – when it comes time for neighborhood input, Future Heights will vie for a place up front. Visit the Future Heights website at http://www.futureheights.org

From Cool Cleveland contributor Lee Chilcote (:divend:)