In this post a couple of months ago I noted the change that comes from social entrepreneurship and the infusion of social capital.

I saw you and Chris at the opening Friday. That was quite a day for me, Friday. I was still digesting the words Norm had said the night before about Star Development in East Cleveland, I had begun my day at Burten Bell Carr learning about the tree farm and met with an amazing author, Diana Tittle who has written extensively about the area and launched Northern Ohio Live almost 30 years ago. Then I traveled across the Lorain Carnegie Bridge and met with Gloria Ferris and MaryBeth Matthews and Betsey Merkel on the Women's Enterprise Network business at Gypsy Beans and Baking Company. After our meeting, I asked MaryBeth to accompany me to see Bill Scheele's opening (Martha Eakin had introduced me to Bill at Ingenuity 2006 and told me a bit of his background with Cleveland Artists Foundation.)

Every time I visit the Detroit Shoreway Neighborhood however, I have to say that one name stands out in my mind. Let us not forget this visionary as we sing the praises of Gordon Square, now as you say Laura "anointed by the Gund Foundation", JAMES LEVIN!!!

Back in the late 1980s and 1990s during the Performance Arts Festival we practically slept at CPT during the month of March. I think we returned home to catnap in March during those years. The rest of the year we traveled there to see kick-ass, uncensored, (sometimes good and sometimes not) plays.

I stayed around the theater long enough to convince James that he should present dance and that idea finally brings large numbers of dance lovers to the area each spring. When my company, The Repertory Project began performing there in the early 1990s people would not come there. We struggled to get dance audiences to go there. Dance audiences are primarily an eastside crew developed by the Cleveland Modern Dance Association going back to 1956. These folks liberal as they may think they are refused to travel even a few blocks south of Carnegie to see productions at Tri-C's Metro Campus Auditorium, so getting them to park their BMWs in the Detroit Shoreway was a feat. We sold it (our work) for a song.

This was after and overlapping the 1980s when we launched the gentrification of the Warehouse District alongside SPACES - they were on West 6th Street.

Does anyone besides me remember seeing The Dark Bob in the Bradley Building? SPACES presented him - what a hoot!

Co-founder of Contact Improvisation, Laura Chapman  and Colleen Clark performed regularly in these dusty cold dark spaces back then. (Here is Laura in the first performance of Contact at the Weber Gallery in NYC in 1972.) We were fearless. Someone would say, “Hey, you wanna do a gig in an old dirty cold warehouse?”, and we would say, “hell yeah!” We did galleries and outdoor spaces too. Just anywhere we could get the gig. Did they pay? Oh hell no. But they have paid off for those neighborhoods.

Before SPACES moved across the river to the viaduct, I organized a party there for the Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane Dance Company. I was pregnant with my son then so I had the poor pregnant woman leverage. I told the board members what I needed – what food I wanted them to bring and how it was to be presented, how if they did not cook that they could call in their credit cards to the Corkscrew and buy wine for the event, how they would be responsible for getting the goods to SPACES before the show and that they would be required to be at the concert and at the party and pay for their admission and bring another couple as well. I might have done more of this if I had had more kids. None of these folks had ever ventured to W6th Street before. They all needed directions. The event was momentous, we raised beaucoup money, the party was great and in hindsight it will be remembered for a long time by the guests of honor. That evening in 1988 on the stage of the Ohio Theater was Arnie Zane’s last performance. He died of AIDS shortly thereafter. If you saw that performance you can never forget The Gift No God Logic and Continuous Replay. If you came to the party and stayed late you would recall the guy in the combat boots and kilt with the leather jacket that got the dancing started. He is Sean Curran.

It is true. Artists can leverage a renaissance in a neighborhood. Visionaries like James Levin and architect, David Ellison, and the countless board members and volunteers, even with their Green Party, anti-nuke, pro indigenous people, left leaning politics actually got people to take another look at this neighborhood. Let us not forget the roots of the hipness quotient now that the neighborhood has become a "neighborhood of choice".

It's soon time for the hip quotient to migrate to another sector of the city. Like the tree farm example that's coming in Kinsman and the numerous community gardens that will be planted this spring, let's spread the wealth Cleveland. The generation before you twentysomethings is still working, but it's time for you to step up and take the lead. Hey neighborhoods USE AN ARTIST NOW. Hey artists, USE A NEIGHBORHOOD NOW.