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Ohio
First-Tier Cleveland Suburb Suffers from Draw of Newer Fringe Development
Having once been a new first-tier suburb, Lakewood drew the
Cleveland middle class and thrived until becoming older and
victimized in turn by fast-growing Avon some ten miles farther
west, writes Thomas Bier of the Cleveland State University's Levine
College of Urban Affairs in The Plain Dealer, pointing out
that Lakewood can only be saved and the cycle of urban decline and
outward sprawl rectified ''by changes in state laws, policies and
programs that now heavily favor the development of new communities
over the preservation of old ones.'' The numbers tell the story of
Avon, rich in developable land, and Lakewood, with none. In the
past two decades, Avon's industrial property value jumped 550
percent and commercial real estate 323 percent, while Lakewood's
declined by 29 and five percent, while residential property value
increased by 330 percent in Avon, but only by 22 percent in
Lakewood. Since 1990, Avon gained 5,700 people, or 77 percent,
while Lakewood lost 4,400, or seven percent. The old suburb faces
yet another problem, the writer notes. Aware that they ''must expand
the tax base'' and ''get more people with more money to invest in,
live in and spend in Lakewood,'' its officials proposed a $151
million mixed-use project in the depressed West End, planning to
buy and bulldoze 68 properties, including about a dozen whose
owners refuse to sell and sue the city to block its power of
eminent domain. ''If suburbs like Lakewood cannot use eminent
domain, they are trapped in decline,'' he stresses, pointing out
that opponents should ''direct their anger at state government
rather than the mayor and council,'' since ''Lakewood and other aged
suburbs are victims (as Cleveland was first) of state government's
one-sidedness.'' -- The Plain Dealer
10/14/2003
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