I hold out hope that the trustees and administration at Art House will see the advantage of Wirth House as a landmark.  Coffee shop, ice cream, wi-fi, visiting artist's residence, co-op programs, installation space...the possibilities are endless.  Art House has a historic crossroads location.  Denison and Pearl were some of the earliest roads, Indian trails along the Big Creek Valley.  We have to capitalize on our assets and this history...this story speaks to us. 

Today was Zoo Day/Free Mondays--Business interests in Brooklyn Village (I like that--unifying moniker) want to centralize our identity around the Zoo and it makes sense.  Families come from all over our region to visit the Zoo.  What do they see?  What other regional attractions are available to visit  (HELLO-Honey Hut!!!)? 

Grandparents with kids.   I remember the memories my grandparents created for me.  My grandparents took photos of us kids in front of beautiful houses. Visiting historic sites, picnics, ice cream at the old shop in Chagrin Falls.    We have an opportunity here to create a lasting memory.  Art House needs to seize the opportunity. 

Norm, years ago, the plan was for the hut to be torn down and the Wirth House to be renovated. As a matter of fact, Wirth House is what gave the Art House campaign and subsequent nonprofit corporation it's original name; it was not called Art Hut because the hut was not to survive, and it wasn't such a good rallying point for raising money and community consciousness. It was a big sales job back then, and in retrospect, we can see that it was a "bait and switch."

Denison is only three lanes wide, actually--two car lanes with a streetcar in the middle, and it really can't--or shouldn't--accommodate any parking. All other sections of Denison and Harvard have been coverted back to the three-lane configuration, with the exception of the area we're talking about now.

There's a good amount of parking available across the street at the Denison School lot, and the Wirth House is directly on the bus line for the 79 and the 807, and a couple of blocks from the 20, the 35, and the 50 running up and down Pearl.

It's a great location for a coffee house--especially with the quonset hut gone, as was the original plan.

Art Hut.

501 (c) not alllowed.  no other revenue only fund raising.

Really?  How do they manage to get the PreservationOhio site to drop their nomination of Wirth House (note:the Breuer is still listed) as one of the most endangered historic buildings in Ohio?  Who are these people?  Why are they hell-bent on the systematic destruction of my neighborhood?  Really?  Why? 
The administration recently turned down Councilman Cummins offer to assist with a campus that incorporates all the existing buildings, and, still provide parking.  What "drives" this organization to justify their funding and their very existence, generated by local dollars, to destroy one of the few remaining historic buildings this neighborhood has to distinguish it from the blandness of the suburbs and the fake recreations of developers?  What is their motive?  Is this someone's idea of a social experiment?

http://wilderness-voyageurs.com/rails-to-trails-conservancy-sojourn-2015.html

To me - if I was a kid- this would be the definition of summer fun. How do we define similar day-trips in CLE ?

When the Red Line Greenway is complete - families can put their bikes on RTA Redline  - get off at W. 65th and ride down to the Lakefront Cleveland Metroparks- or head up to Denison and get to the Metroparks Cleveland Metroparks Zoo --or RIDE downtown or to the West Side market - free from worry that their kids will be hit by a car.

Families staying downtown can pick up a bike share and ride Red Line Greenway out of Tower City to W. 65th to connect with Lakefront and destinations west.

West side folks can ride Red Line Greenway downtown and put their bikes on GCRTA redline for destinations in University Circle.

So many ways to leverage this trail for FAMILIES...start by saving Wirth House!

Jeff, there is a problem here with what a demolition does to the efforts of all of us here over the past 30 years--it leaves a gaping hole in the streetscape, and this is one of our older and more significant properties, the Wirth House. We need no more holes--we just had two new holes served up to us on Denison compliments of our local development corporation, and I know that one did in fact circumvent the review process we've had in place to prevent such atrocities. We have a couple of historic districts over here, we have our own historical society, we can participate in the state and federal tax credits available for sensitive rehabilitation of historic properties, we are a lovely park neighborhood on the edge of the big park, the Zoo, and the Big Creek, and we have worked hard at preservation here since the 1970s.

Two of our current showplaces over on Archwood and on Mapledale were on the condemnation list 20 and 30 years ago. Many others have been brought back from being boarding houses. Many of us have significant investments of time and money in our own properties. We know how to do rehab and restoration over here, and the new costs aren't much to worry about at all--we have ideas about adaptive reuse that make many things more possible than they would seem.

Also, when we get together in person the next time, I have stories to share about appropriations of block grant funds that will make you wonder about how this whole Art House/Wirth House conundrum got to where it is in the first place. There had been a curious lack of oversight until this past council election changed the patronage dynamic and the cash flow.

Norm, thanks for giving this important issue an airing. I am hoping that somehow we can all work together to do the responsible and sensitive restoration that was promised years ago, when the property transferred away from Peter Hasek Glass.

Jeff,

            Thanks for bringing another perspective to this discussion.      Your comments about what goes into restoring that old Victorian almost sounds like the very words Sheryl and her staff spoke of with what I perceived as very heavy hearts - when they had gotten jacked and jerked around regarding renovations funding, and had to make the decision with their board to ask to demolish. 

            I also believe it was Susan (I think) that made the point about ArtHouse's work with students.  I can't begin to tell you how innovative, open, accepting, and willing to work with kids of all stripes Sheryl Hoffman and her staff have always been. 

            As to the Quonset hut.  I'm not sure they built it, rather they inherited, I do believe, and put that facade on it to make it a bit better. I could be wrong, but I thought that was what I remember about it.

            I have a fairly close relationship with the ArtHouse staff, and let me assure you, they are far, far, FAR removed from being a “powerful” institution.  They are much more like a barely making it, struggling institution.

            As to the old Victorian.  If you knew how many rounds of support letters, letter campaigns, appeals that I have part of to assist ArtHouse in trying to get support and funding to save that Victorian - which years back, they actual did work out of - until it became far to structurally UNsafe and UNsound, that they had to move out - you might be take a different view point.  It was only until recently that ArtHouse has had to come to the place of abandoning the idea of saving their original "home". 

In my dealings with them, ArtHouse may be a small, "poor" by comparison, arts organization, but I LOVE working with them and developing and supporting their programming for kids.  Like Susan (or who ever it was) said, it's the WORK that they do that is the real important stuff.  They are AWESOME !!!  They have worked with my own massive and very often difficult bureaucracy to come up with all kinds of alternatives and options to make good things happen for kids.  They don’t look for what’s wrong or can’t be done, but rather the ArtHouse staff is always full of “let’s try this.”  It’s the work that that they do, and the attitudes that they have about kids, people and life, that makes me defend them.  Please don't jump to conclusions about their motives.  Or assume that they are flippant about this decision.  That is NOT what I've experienced from them over the past 4 years.

            And as to the documents, ordinances, city resolutions, etc.  Please be mindful that often bureaucracies make public what documents they want to make themselves look innocent.  There were a LOT of false promises, including promises of funding or support to get funding, that got switched at the 11th hour, and then denied in the first light of day.  There is far more, and another side to this story, then may first apparent.

And the artists that hang out, and work at ArtHouse … I want ‘em all to move to East Cleveland.  They are so cool !!!  Get to know them.  SUPPORT them.  Join ‘em.  You’ll be glad you did.

Laura, we mentioned that to the Art House-Hut folk a good while ago, and they dismissed it out of hand as being too expensive, but nobody really knew what the cost might be. Maybe it's time for them to run that one by themselves again and see if they can get more creative. All we do know now is that they're squirming like the Dickens to get out from under Wirth House, nobody from the community has been allowed inside the house, and we're having to take their word for it that it is in bad shape. They've meanwhile been wasting the asset these past few years.

As long as we're getting creative here, what about the exercise of eminent domain, for the public good, to reclaim public assets?

what about a flashing yellow light and cross walk? 

They could have annual fund raisers, maybe carnivals in the school parking lot.  Each year do something to the building. 

    A while back, Laura, Roger Bundy did a piece on "planned abandonment," which seems to be a tenet of the planning done around here. It's basically a "hurt and rescue" sort of operation where the people trying to control the dialogue declare an area blighted, deny it services, and then have a few "oops" episodes like Ladder 42 safety snafu, the Fulton Road Bridge over-budget overimprovement, Art House/Hut's bait and switch, the demolition last Saturday at the end of Riverside, the two opportune and hasty takedowns on Denison--one in violation of the 106 review process and pushed by the LDC--all the while aided and abetted by inept governance the likes of which we have seen from Merle Gordon, Jane Campbell, Frank Jackson, and Jimmy DiMora, to mention a few. The upshot of it all is that they all try to make names and reputations and money on the way down, and on the way up. It has nothing to do with building something unique or worthwhile, or preserving something valuable.

What's all this about "disrespectful" and people telling you "how to think and talk?"

I am still waiting to possibly hear of a creative solution to the Art House campus "expansion."  How will this non-profit's long range plan affect positive change for this neighborhood?  How does a parking lot and three benches to replace a century building revitalize this neighborhood?  I know that we can do better.  We can not squander the assets of this neighborhood that has more going for it than any other Cleveland neighborhood.

For years, we've likened living in Archwood-Denison to living in a small town--all sorts of people coexisting and supporting each other. The logical extension of this harks back to the Arts and Crafts movement, when the small town or community was self-sufficient--today, that idea has "sustainability" as a counterpart. Archwood-Denison came into being at a time when our country and our region were having some really productive ideas about what comprised "community." This is prior to the creation of the Federal Reserve Banking system,  and its handmaiden, the Internal Revenue Service, back at a time when people were thinking about how to support each other and promote each other's best interest, instead of living off each other in a system of taxing and ultimately dominating and enslaving. Newton D. Baker, when he was mayor, had some good ideas for planning in a city environment, and we ought to look back to those times, and a little prior.

I am not in any way at odds with the purpose of this web page. 

I really have to be edited though, some of us albeit have less of a command of composition than others; I have no troubles with comprehension though.

You and I never have had a conversation, so the use of coherent as a descriptive word is actually describing something that never took place.  You also call for things to happen transparently, as a function of a list of descriptive words that are…well; nothing is really far-fetched or mysterious about the communication on the site.  It certainly is not transparent; the site is really well indexed on the servers.    Type a list of your favorite descriptive words in a search engine and your posts will show up  as link  to REALNEO!   It kind of like sounds good …but are they actually appropriate, wordsmith?  

I think open source software is great, however I got away from IT for now. 

Sustainability as a concept is infantile in its form; it will evolve a time line much longer than any of our existences.  

The few will solve the problems, the minds that can envision the processes that meets that need and also benefits our society in ways that some are simultaneously arguing against.  When I hear people say “ without regard to costs” I look at the costs.  When people say, “ talk out of both sides of your head” I look at both sides.    

I like the way my mind works, actually I love my mind and I can wear a lots of hats and all of them have feathers in them.  I am not looking for recognition or notoriety fame or fortune.  

Did anyone call the county prosecutor and ask him if he actually used the word “philistine”?   Something makes me think Maag added that, did anyone else catch that?

I asked a PR representative at the Western Reserve to look into the Wirth House.  I could call the director of the art house and volunteer to manage the property for them? 

and she would be damn lucky to get me!

Some readers might not know that Jim's a Brooklyn Centre homeboy--his family's former house is just down on Garden, near "the new" Aldi's, and he was the Ward 15 councilman for years; at the time he took over the council job from Teddy Sliwa, he was still at/just out of Oberlin College. He introduced me to Gloria, and we consider him our marriage broker.

I wouldn't expect our "park neighborhood" to make the CLEVELAND Magazine rankings until we can secede from the City of Cleveland--they are a drag on almost anything, moving as slowly and as secretively as they do, and having such a crippled Landmarks Commission and Planning Commission. Did the article separate Ohio City or Tremont into its own separate entity? (I'll have to go track down the story.)

  In today's Plain Dealer, John Campanelli examines the psychology of people who visit open houses and quotes our local history champion Craig Bobby.  Craig compares Victorian Houses to works of ART that draws appreciation. 

Despite all the unnecessary drama, this unfolding story can be a work of art for the neighborhood. Connect the dots A-Z.  Non-profits pairing.  One non-profit loses its founder and will find it hard to regain momentum; another non-profit will need a space that provides for studio, gallery and residences for visiting artists from Europe. Reincarnation.  I want to be hopeful.  I agree with Craig Bobby.

Hmmm.  Ann Schorgl hired by Art House in February 2007 and now missing from the masthead at Art House a mere  eight months later.  

  Dear Art House Board, it is worth viewing this interview with visionary Mattress Factory founder Barbara Luderowski before we head into the next round of the Section 106 review.  Please.

  When the CDC purchased the complex of buildings at 3117 and 3119 Denison Ave for Art House,  Wirth House was found to be sound. 

Do lies and the misuse of public dollars affect the CAC scoring?

Today (actually yesterday, now) was a strange day of strange encounters.  I thought to myself, I want to see Vern Hartenburg and Dick Kerber from the Cleveland Metroparks so I can tell them about the potential Wirth House has to be a component in an overall marketing strategy for Brooklyn Centre as a family destination.  And, lo and behold, as I fake jogged through the zoo--I ran into them!  I think I scared them, but I did get to make my point!

And when I got to the pool at Estabrook, I thought, wouldn't it be great if someone who has the ear of Mayor Jackson was there?  And, there was a downtown staffer there--and the pool temperature was just right for lap swimming and he said so, much to the chagrin of some of the other staffers there.  And then I remembered that Mayor Jackson would be downtown.

And, I thought to myself, I want to run into Jeff Buster.  I wonder if he will be downtown taking photographs? Sure enough--he was there.  Now, will some one please believe me? WE , as one community, can do better for all of us.

Now, if I could only run into...Marc Dann :)