Too much of Cleveland’s East Side looks like this — rural. From nearly 100,000 residents in the 1960s to fewer than 20,000 today turned this crowded area into an urban prairie. This is East 65th Street at Luther Avenue, where the Hough neighborhood meets St Clair-Superior (Google). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
TIF, $10M Bezos grant for near-East Side
Taken together, Cleveland’s Hough and St. Clair-Superior neighborhoods aren’t that big of area. But its large amount of vacant land weighs heavily on the City of Cleveland.
In total, these two neighborhoods measure just 3.44 square miles. In the lifetimes of Clevelanders 60 years and older, Hough and St. Clair-Superior combined to house nearly 100,000 residents. Then it was red-lined by investors into oblivion.
Today, fewer than 20,000 people live in these two near-East Side neighborhoods. And half of this 2,200-acre area is vacant. With a typical residential city lot measuring less than 0.2 acres, that translates into about 6,000 vacant lots here…