Cleveland Hough area Councilman TJ Dow is pushing neighborhood renovation over the $5 million League Park project with a community meeting scheduled for 6 pm on March 21 at the Fatima Family Center as Mayor Frank Jackson and his allies push the project and as the mayor and Cuyahoga County officials fight off opposition for a $140 million plan to revitalize the Cavaliers' Quicken Loans Arena over greater Cleveland neighborhoods....Underdog mayoral candidate and Ward 10 Councilman Jeff Johnson, who is Black like Dow and Jackson, is now running campaign television ads vowing to revitalize city neighborhoods if elected mayor....Mayor Jackson seeks to balance the interest of the business community and residents that he says benefit from commercial development, his supporters saying he is a good mayor and his critics saying the mayor must put communities first....By editor Kathy Wray Coleman of www.clevelandurbannews.com and www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's Black digital news leaders
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| Cleveland Ward 7 Councilman TJ Dow whose ward includes the historic and impoverished Hough District, home of the Hough Riots and where a $5 million League Park District renovation project to redevelop the ball park where the Cleveland Indians once played as well as the Negro Baseball League is at issue. A former community activist and former assistant county prosecutor, Dow is torn between the multi-million dollar project favored by Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and some city residents that will bring upscale commercial resources and his commitment to residents that call it elitist and secondary to revitalizing area neighborhoods |
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| Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, a three-term Black mayor of the majority Black major American city of Cleveland who this year is seeking reelection to a historic fourth term |
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| Cleveland Ward 10 Councilman Jeff Johnson, also a mayoral candidate seeking to unseat Mayor Jackson in this year's election by touting in part a return to the revitalization of communities |
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Cleveland Ward 7 resident Mansfield Frazier, also a journalist at the alternative Cleveland magazine Cool Cleveland.Com and a Councilman TJ Dow critic
(www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com). Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog with some 3.6 million views on Google Plus alone.Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, and who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview, CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.
By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief
At issue is the $5 million redevelopment of the League Park District, monies approved via a city council ordinance, and a community project that Cleveland Mayor Frank and city planners and architects, and even Dow himself all support and gave life to in 2014.
The meeting is expected to be controversial as Dow seeks to monitor commercial development in the impoverished Hough District, a Black area that is famous for the Hough Riots that occurred some 51 years ago, community outcries triggered in part by racial unrest and widespread public segregation.
Dow says that increased commercial business in the homestead area will heightened crime.
Dow's supporters and some residents in general say Hough, brought to fruition by longtime former councilwoman Fannie Lewis, should remain a safe-hood for Cleveland homes and that in the least streets need major repairs , the city schools remain in the bottom quartile statewide academically, and abandoned and debilitated homes are rampant.
Also a former community activist who overcame an effort by the political regime to oust him in a city council election four years ago in favor of Basheer Jones, a Muslim and Morehouse College graduate and community activist pushed then by 11th Congressional District Congresswoman Marcia Fudge publicly and the mayor on the sly, Dow is a fighter and has taken on various commercial entities since he became councilman in 2007, including the powerful Cleveland Clinic.
Nonpartisan elections for mayor and the 17-member city council are this year with Dow facing Jones again, among others, and the mayor's biggest opponent to date being Ward 10 Councilman Jeff Johnson of Glenville, the underdog who like Dow, Jones and Jackson is Black, Johnson already running television campaign ads saying that if elected mayor he would reinvigorate Cleveland neighborhoods.
The League Park venue, situated at the intersection of East 65th Street and Lexington Avenue in the Hough, was once the site of a ball park built in 1891 and once the home for the Cleveland Indians and the Cleveland Buckeyes, the 1945 Negro League champions.
Babe Ruth made his 500th career home run at the now defunct park
Restoration plans include restoring a bleacher wall, a ticket house, Major-League size and youth baseball diamonds, and football and soccer fields.
Robert Zimmer, a White man and the director of the proposed Baseball Heritage Museum, unused and temporarily located in a ticket house at League Park, is seeking a city variance for 15 parking spaces but the Board of Zoning Appeals, at the bequest of Dow, denied it, angering those in favor of the project, including resident Mansfield Frazier, a local journalist and Mayor Jackson ally who grumbles that Zimmer has spots for 13 cars and needs 15.
Fifteen parking spaces are required by law for Zimmer to open up the museum for educational or other purposes. But does Frazier, an ex-offender and self-made intellectual who owns a modest modern home in the neighborhood with his educated wife Brenda, and who writes commentary for Cool Cleveland.Com, a White-owned alternative Cleveland magazine, really represent the vested interests of Black people in the overwhelmingly poor community of Hough? Frazier and his wife own a bio-cellar and vineyard in Hough and he has complained in articles at Cool Cleveland.Com that Dow "attempted to put us out of business too." Frazier says both homes and upscale and low-level commercial business can coexist, and balks that Dow is stalling progress for the redevelopment of League Park. Like the mayor, Frazier wants the project to get fully underway, The mayor's stance is not unusual as he seeks to balance the interests of the Black community and commercial retail, his critics saying he tilts too far to the left of the needs of his constituents and Jackson and his supporters arguing that such projects bring in monies to offset financial shortfalls that urban centers face in Cleveland and nationwide. Dow, said sources, is torn between his commitment to his constituents as a whole and a community revitalization project that is tantalizing to big business and the elected officials they often manipulate. It is, in fact, elitist, Black people struggling to put food on the table theorize. A three-term mayor, former city council president and political novice, Jackson is also facing community criticism, as are the 11-member Cuyahoa County Council and county executive Armond Budish, for a$140 million plan to revitalize Quicken Loans arena.
Billionaire Cleveland Cavaliers franchise owner Dan Gilbert says it is time for an overall at the Q where LeBron James and his basketball teammates, last year's NBA championship team first also this year in the Eastern Conference, perform their calisthenics.
But Gilbert, opponents of the proposed Q-arena project say, is offering only a fraction of the monies, and wants poor people and other greater Cleveland residents to make what foes of the proposal say is an unrealistic sacrifice.
Led by Olivet Institutional Baptist Church senior pastor the Rev. Dr. Jawanza Colvin, the Greater Cleveland Congregations and the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus the opponents of the Q-arena project say the monies can be put to better use and that poor and lower middle class greater Cleveland communities are crumbling as downtown is getting an ongoing makeover with little financial input from big business.
The city of Cleveland, led by Mayor Jackson and city council, propose to handover $88 million for the Q-deal with city council holding hearing beginning next week on the proposed legislation. Councilman Johnson, however, has publicly opposed the Q-deal.
According to a report released last year by the Brooklyn Institute in Washington D.C., greater Cleveland is in the top 10 nationally for residents living in concentrated poverty,
(www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com). Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog with some 3.6 million views on Google Plus alone.Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com
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