PUTTING SOME ACTUAL THOUGHT INTO DEVELOPMENT: Brewed Fresh Daily has posted the full text of an email sent around yesterday by Brian Cummins, the Ward 15 City Council candidate who just resigned as director of Old Brooklyn Community Development Corporation. Brian was one of the few voices asking for some serious discussion of Steelyard Commons when the project was was being waved through the regulatory checkpoints by City Hall last year.

Note carefully Brian's point about what the famous "retail leakage" study actually recommended, as well as County planners' derailed effort to devise a sustainable development plan for the valley. Then you'll want to take a look at the Cuyahoga Valley Initiative's website and the study done last year for the CVI by the Rocky Mountain Institute.

Do you see any strategic basis in there for fast-tracking a plan to cover 130 key riverside acres with a 4,500-space parking lot and a million square feet of cookie-cutter retail?

Me, neither.
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