On August 3, the Urban Land Institute (ULI) Cleveland hosted an engagement session at Dunham Tavern. It invited any interested parties there to discuss the Art in Place grant ULI Cleveland has received “to connect artist, developer, and community voices to drive more inclusive and participatory real estate outcomes” in the Hough neighborhood.
To say there was a lot of skepticism, even during the opening presentation from ULI and Midtown CDC prior to the table discussions, is an understatement. Even the examples of such collaboration shown in the opening presentation — the quonset huts called City Goods filled with maker boutiques abutting the fancy new Church & State apartments in Ohio City’s Hingetown, a mural on a public school — seemed to fuel skepticism about the intentions of promoting art as a tool for building community.
For a start, the ULI definition of “Hough” as area of interest felt shaky. It was acknowledged by the presenters that Chester Avenue acts as a sort of freeway splitting Hough from the Midtown Corridor. In the Midtown Corridor, almost everything that could be considered a “neighborhood” has been razed, replaced by institutional buildings, and new developments, such as the bland, hulking apartments between Carnegie and Euclid at East 73rd, don’t give you a sense that a “neighborhood” could take hold there. Hough neighborhoods with any population density are far from that area, to the north and east.
Both at my discussion table and in the summaries from the dozen or so tables presented following the discussions focused on the residents of the area: who were they, how would they benefit, how would they afford an area studded with fancy new real estate projects.
My table was facilitated by arts advocate Deidre McPherson of Assembly for the Arts, and also included curator Thea Spittle; painter and founder of the nonprofit Museum of Creative Art, Antwoine Washington; photographer McKinley Wiley (whose wife Rhonda joined the discussion midway); and artist/educator Sherry Lynn, who said she’d recently moved home to Cleveland from Atlanta. Five were black; two of us were white. I don’t know if any lived in Hough.
But it seemed to all of us that it was important to avoid viewing art as some colorful murals slapped on a wall to earn “art” points, and to instead engage artist/developer collaboration from the earliest stages and artist/community interaction on an ongoing basis.
Antwoine proposed an interesting idea: instead of simply building some artist work/live space, why not create an invitingly open arts campus, with playgrounds, performance space, community gathering spaces, classrooms and galleries as well as studio and living spaces, and offer programming to give people a reason to visit over and over? He pointed out that art should be for the people who live there, and that there should be dialogue between the residents and artists about what they’d like to see. “Art should reflect the neighborhood,” he said, while Sherri added that with art programs in schools cut, any art initiative should look to bringing art learning opportunities back.
The point was raised that, with the area heavy on renters rather than owners and out-of-town corporations with little interest in neighborhood quality of life owning so many homes, the area was transient. Unemployment, affordability and displacement were raised as key issues to be addressed before art can make any difference. “We have to turn renters into owners,” said Antwoine. Sherri asked if the city can do home buying assistance for artists. McKinley pointed out that with poverty, unemployment and building abandoned for decades rife in Hough, any progress was in the very early stages.
During the meeting, someone had referred to East 66th Street, which runs past the new Cleveland Foundation Building, as potentially being restyled as “Black Street.” So after the meeting, I took a drive north down East 66th. Immediately north of Chester there’s a handful of the McMansions that dot that part of Chester. Further on there are decrepit and abandoned homes, empty lots and churches. Chateau Hough and League Park baseball field provide some signs of life. A building across from League Park that a few years back was being eyed as a potential candy/ice cream shop for the kids who came to play baseball has been demolished. It’s now an empty lot.
A few blocks further north, I saw an abandoned convenience store with cracked pavement and a locked fence surrounding it. I stopped to take a picture when a man named Stanley, in his mid ’50s, rolled up on his bicycle and inquired with curiosity about what I was doing. He told me he grew up in the area and could tell you where each of his friends and their families lived. He said he now lives with his family in Maple Heights, but every day after work he comes here and hangs out in a park around the corner with a bunch of guys he used to run through lots and climb fences with as kids. He recalls coming to this empty convenience store but can’t recall when it closed — a long time ago. Many of his friends, he says, still live there and his mother lived at Eliza Jennings a few blocks away until she died in 2020. He calls Hough his “safe haven,” as he sets his music on his phone and prepares to bike home to Maple Heights!
So what is a neighborhood? What makes it a “safe haven” for the people there? And what have real estate interests done to preserve and boost the community of Hough that currently exists? Not many people at the meeting believed some murals would be transformative, and it’s like Stanley would agree.
One Response to “REPORT: Who Is Hough For?”
Laura Kennelly
Thanks for the update. Somehow the concluding interview here (with the bike rider) reminds me of the chorus in Hadestown about how it’s an old old story and how we keep going back to try, again, to fix what went wrong…I wish we could. Maybe we can?