Brewed Fresh Daily

If you're concerned about a city that's a great place to LIVE, I have serious doubts about the "build a new convention center, expand the airport" approach to community building. Because it doesn't build community, it builds "attractions" for tourist and visitors. I lived in Indianapolis part-time while teaching... I can attest to the bustling downtown - some weekday nights you'd have to try several downtown restaurants to find one where you could get a table without a long wait. Conventions keep the place hoppin'. I'm sure conventioneers think Indy is a great place to visit.

My Indianapolis neighborhood was the Old Northside, a gentrified area of big old houses similar in appearance to my Cleveland neighborhood, the Near West Side (or Ohio City, in marketing lingo). But in Indy there was no neighborhood life. Lots of people living inside houses and apartments, but no mom and pop stores, no street life, no sense of a community that people cared about. A clear indicator of this was a community meeting held to discuss problems with a halfway house for inmates a half block from my apartment. The community meeting drew about 30 people for what I'd call a "hot-button" issue for any neighborhood. In contrast, fairly routine block club meetings on Cleveland's Near West Side regularly attract this many people, and major issues like a threat to close our local YMCA bring out hundreds. That's a neighborhood. That's community.

While in Indy I also walked around downtown a lot, enjoying attractive park areas created near the Convention Center and downtown museums. Usually I shared the space with joggers and a few individuals, rarely families and children. In my unscientific view, I'd say these were mostly tourists, not residents. Now believe me, I know that downtown Cleveland lacks what you'd call a vibrant street life, nonetheless it feels more like a multicultural city than that tourist ghetto on the White River.

So be careful what you wish for. Indianapolis downtown does seem to be thriving, and perhaps it actually is. I'd be happy to visit there, and in fact am looking forward to returning when Herron opens its new downtown campus. But live there? I think not. I want to live in a real neighborhood, not a Chamber of Commerce brochure. We have real neighborhoods in Cleveland, and the benefit they gain from a new convention center is insignificant."