Brewed Fresh Daily

"Providing a recipe for 'reproducing Ohio City's success in other neighborhoods' is pretty much impossible. In my experience, successes such as these are often the result of a confluence of many factors that simply can't be duplicated. Ohio City always has had fantastic historic housing stock, which was the original attraction for many of the neighborhood's urban pioneers in the 1970s. Of course, we've also been blessed by the West Side Market, an anchor of the neighborhood for a century. Throw in our proximity to downtown and the lakefront and you have some good basic ingredients for rejuvenation. The people aspect is, by far in my opinion, the 'secret sauce' in the success story. The residents and business owners in this neighborhood are active and engaged. They're also incredibly diverse in so many ways--ethnicity, incomes, political philosophies, etc. This, more than anything, has resulted in a level of energy and enthusiasm that's not common across the city proper. For whatever reason (and maybe this is where luck comes in), Ohio City has attracted the types of people who want--need--to be an active part of shaping and improving their neighborhood. And that has translated into what's going on today--and it's especially visible in the development corporation, whose excellent staff and committed volunteer leadership have made numerous developments possible when no private developer was willing to stick his neck out by himself for a risky project. Many of the projects created by Ohio City Near West Development Corp. in the past decade have played a huge role in raising the level of awareness of the neighborhood. The easiest, most succint advice would be to identify your neighborhood's principal assets on which you can build; anand get a group of committed, talented people together who are willing to work tirelessly, for no glory, to maximize those assets and create new ones."