Cleveland Turns Uptown Into New Downtown

Cleveland Turns Uptown Into New Downtown
Ken Blaze for The New York Times
Published: November 29, 2011

CLEVELAND — Since 1950, when its population peaked at 914,808, Cleveland has steadily shed residents and jobs. In 2010, just 396,815 people lived within the city limits, almost 81,000 fewer than a decade before, and about the same number of people who lived in Cleveland in 1900.

But in recent years Cleveland’s municipal government and its Regional Transit Authority have rallied major employers, banks, foundations and developers around a central goal of rebuilding the city’s core according to the new urban market trends of the 21st century — health care, higher education, entertainment, good food, new housing and expanded mass transportation.

A point of focus has been the emerging Uptown arts and entertainment district along Euclid Avenue, near where John D. Rockefeller and other industrialists and financiers built opulent mansions.

In effect, the Uptown area will be what amounts to a new downtown for the University Circle neighborhood on the east side of the city. Within the square mile of University Circle, and within easy walking distance of Uptown, are Case Western Reserve, the Cleveland Institute of Art, the Cleveland Institute of Music, University Hospitals, Cleveland Clinic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Museum of Art and the Museum of Natural History.
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