The meeting ran a bit longer than usual last evening as we were in the sanctuary of Pilgrim Church. Which, while quite pretty and with beautiful stained glass and woodwork, is still a strange place to bring up fornication in back alleys and the usefulness of retaining walls.

ODOT showed up to talk about the Innerbelt plan, and talked mostly about changes to downtown Cleveland while skimming over the impact to our neighborhood. After some cross-examination by my fellow block clubbers, it was determined that 5 houses, 1 on West 15th street and 4 on Fairfield will be "acquired" to broaden the innerbelt. Also, it appears that the cold storage building is another casualty. It was also explicitly stated that ODOT has yet to "personally talk" with any of the homeowners. Craig Hebebrand sent me the most recent high resolution PDF of the project, and the buildings to be acquired are highlighted in yellow. It is a large file, 13.9MB, and you can download it here. [Innerbelt PDF]

Nancy Owad also stopped by to show us her plan for Grumpy's which is hopefully going to reopen around year's end. It will have lots more seating than the old place and will be open breakfast, lunch, dinner, and late nights on weekends, as well as the usual weekend brunch.

There was pizza from Big Guy's and Miss Machrye made her tasty rosettes.

[Update: I forgot to mention, James Draper's campaign manager stopped by to hand out some information and give us a brief rundown of Draper's platform. Tremonter encourages you to vote for the candidate of your choice in the upcoming election.]