A developer has been chosen to convert Cleveland's lakefront dreams into reality, one that does not include a football stadium.

Teachers demand security improvements after a rash of car break ins at Cleveland schools.

And a creature not seen in Cuyahoga County in centuries was spotted on a Metroparks trail camera.

Ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Cleveland's long underutilized lakefront will be transformed as bold plans are moving from imagination stage to implementation phase.

The football stadium won't be part of the plan, but public spaces, retail, restaurants, even an indoor outdoor concert venue quite possibly will.

Frustrated teachers in Cleveland's public schools are calling for stepped up security after a rash of car break ins and school lots.

Ohio requires colleges to teach only the phonics based science of reading method of literacy education to future teachers.

But many, including Cleveland State, still use other methods.

According to a recent audit.

Governor Mike DeWine vows a crackdown and an animal not seen in Cuyahoga County in centuries.

A relative of the weasel is spotted on a trail camera in the metro parks.

Joining me to discuss these stories and more from industry and public media.

Criminal justice reporter Matt Richman and general assignment reporter Abigail Bo Tar.

And in Columbus Statehouse News Bureau Chief Karen Kasler, let's get ready to round table.

Cleveland's lakefront makeover took a major step forward this week when the North Coast Waterfront Development Corporation.

That's a nonprofit created by the city, selected Geronimo Development of Brecksville as the master developer.

It's a lakefront that now will not include a football stadium.

The stadium will be demolished after the 2029 season if all goes according to plan.

And the Browns will depart for a new complex in Brook Park.

Abigail, what are the broad brush elements of this development?

As I understand, none of it's like in stone yet.

But they're saying, here are things that could be.

Yeah, yeah, they're looking at, housing, retail, hotels, public spaces, dining options, and then brand new being looked at for the first time as an indoor outdoor music venue.

And this is about 50 acres on the lakefront, split between parking lots on dock 32 west of North Coast Harbor and then the land currently occupied by the Ground Round Stadium.

When you look at it, I mean, it's so much potential there and it's parking lots and and a stadium which had maybe eight, eight events a year.

Right.

Yeah.

It's so underutilized.

And so, there's just so much potential right now.

And especially I mean, we were looking at plans that originally did include the brown KDM.

So now people are saying we should perhaps change them because there will be so much more lakefront accessible to view, and we don't want to block any of that.

So, that just opens up for a lot more opportunities for development there.

Even before the Browns announced they were leaving, they were, in league with the city to try to connect the lakefront better to downtown.

There's a land bridge, this plan that will span over the shore way.

The shore itself will be, slowed down and slimmed down.

So we're talking about this development being lakefront, but it's also one that stretches into downtown and tries to marry the lakefront with the with the city.

Right.

It's like so disjointed right now.

Like it really feels like two different places, which I feel like is probably hindering both downtown and the lakefront by not having like a nice flow of of people coming to and from both areas.

And so, yeah, there's like the potential of, of having a better but better public access to that area and making it a place that people really want to spend a lot of time, making it accessible for people of all income levels.

It's really exciting.

Geronimo company is has a development arm and others as well.

It's pretty well known in Northeast Ohio.

Yeah, they're currently releasing more than $550 million in active development in Northeast Ohio right now, including the Gateway North mixed use housing and retail project at John Carroll.

And a mixed use development next to the Browns headquarters and practice facility in Berea right now.

We had our, Steve Litt, who writes freelance for us, do a couple of stories this week.

One was his sort of review of what the lakefront could be.

The other.

Talk specifically about the Geronimo, selection, but he mentioned the idea of it being so important to have lake views.

When they originally developed this plan, there was going to be a stadium there.

So you had some housing that would hug wi north of the stadium.

If the stadium's gone and that becomes something else, then maybe that housing has to change too.

What he's saying is we need to take a look at this whole plan.

Yeah, he's saying that doesn't really make sense because it would block like I think, 22 acres of lake views if it was built the way it is.

And so he is kind of pitching that.

They take a look at that again to hopefully open up some more of those lakefront views.

Now that there won't be a giant stadium in the middle of the plan.

There's another thing that's pretty tall and block views, and that's the steamship mather, that's parked at North Coast Harbor, moored, docked, actually, North Coast Harbor.

There's talk, and people seem to be receptive.

The Science museum, director said.

Yeah, that's what we could talk about, about moving that.

Right?

Yeah.

The Great Lakes Science Center owns and operates it, and they said that they're really wanting to be a good partner of better development in the area.

And so they're said that it's totally open for discussion to to relocate it.

So we have a lakefront that now has potential and has been underutilized.

What is what are the planners doing to make sure that what it is is not just some exclusive resort where you have to use your keycard to get past the gate and you get access to the lake and the public doesn't.

How are they making sure that this is something that's a benefit for the whole city?

Well, I think the first thing that they're saying they want to do is build some of those expansive public spaces to make it available to everyone.

And, the executive director of, of the Development Corporation has said that they want to begin work in the next couple of years on those public spaces.

So that would be the first thing that potentially open for public, and that they're trying to move mindfully and looking to attract people from all income levels, not just making this a place for ultra wealthy people to be.

Yeah, I saw there are places where you could sit and just view the lake.

There's basketball courts that are large, and there's a lot of things that that could happen to recreate.

And I think they want, mixed use housing.

And so it wouldn't just be like fancy condos or something.

It would be a mix of, of income levels of, of housing available to mixed income levels.

And if you add 450 acres to that, or 400 plus acres to that, which is Burke Lakefront Airport, they're talking about, we can be transformative.

Yeah, that would be crazy.

All right.

At the opposite end of the city, the future costs for upkeep of Progressive Field and Rocket Arena keep rising.

The stadiums are owned by the Gateway Economic Development Corporation, and they're responsible, Matt, for upkeep.

It's not just building it.

Those are public assets.

Even though the teams, play their.

We saw it in a report this week that a ton of bills are going to be coming due, and there's not a whole lot of money to pay for them.

Yeah.

So the, so the gateway, Corporation is, is responsible for the capital upkeep that is anything beyond just like regular maintenance.

And what they estimate is that over the life of the two leases, which is, 2036 for, for Progressive Field and 2034 for Rocket Arena, looking at a total of $400 million in upkeep, it comes out to about $17 million per stadium per year.

And you know, that is paid by the syntax primarily.

So, yeah, it's not a surprise because this is how stadium deals are done.

You have to do the capital repairs.

If they come up, then you know you're on the hook for it.

But gateway already the development corporation there, has lacked money.

The county and city have both put infusions in there.

You said it's paid for with the syntax, but there's a little bit of a problem with the syntax.

Yeah, it's not keeping up with these with these costs and not enough signing going on.

Unfortunately, no.

If the present moment, there's not enough sitting going on and, you know, you've seen it in county council, you see in city council where there's a lot of agitation now where they're getting a little tired of gateway coming to them to ask for money out of the general fund.

Last year was $20 million from each or this year.

And so there is growing pressure for them to figure out how to fill the gaps without coming to the general fund.

So some other thing besides the syntax or a bigger syntax or something.

Yeah, yeah.

And if if they increase the syntax I'll have to go to voters.

You know, and then there's other kinds of, say, clever, financing arrangements that the governments can come up with, but so far nothing's been been proposed.

Yeah.

Stadiums are not cheap endeavors.

No.

The Cleveland Teachers Union says the district needs to step up security, and the school's CEO says they're doing just that.

Prompting all of this was the breaking of 100 teachers cars.

One car was stolen.

Matt, these break ins at schools, are they isolated?

Are they part of this broader issue, which I know you've been looking at as a criminal justice reporter, which is cars are being broken into all over the city.

Yeah.

Over the last couple months, you've seen on the Near West Side, you know, late at night there have been series of break ins where people are just going from car to car, smashing windows and seeing what's inside.

They've had there have been there was a series of break ins during church where people were inside at service.

Cars in the parking lot were being broken into.

So this has become sort of a front and center issue for for law enforcement in some cases, smash and grabs and other cases just smash.

It's just vandalism.

And they're they're just, you know, making people's days bad.

Yeah.

As a general rule, sort of what they assume people are looking for is a, you know, a gun in the in the glove compartment.

So a lot of cases, you might just be taking a look to see if there's a so he's gun is sitting in the car and then moving on if it's not.

And there was an arrest this week of a young suspect.

Yeah.

They picked up a 14 year old who they say is, is involved in all of this.

And another juvenile they say is a ringleader.

They found one with, you know, a bunch of guns and, and so, you know, it's hard when it's juveniles to really track these, cases because, the juvenile court is not open the way that the regular court is.

But, you know, they are making arrests.

So their kids and you would think, okay, it's just the aggravation of having my window broken.

But what the teachers union is saying is, listen, these teachers are fearful because what we're talking about are armed young people who are searching for guns and breaking into cars.

What if you came upon one as you were walking out to your vehicle, right?

Yeah.

And you know, one of the things that came out is that a lot of the, the cameras that are outside of, school buildings aren't functioning.

The, you know, there's not enough security personnel to sort of have somebody stationed outside of each of these schools.

So, yeah, you know, if you walk outside at the wrong time, it could be a very dangerous situation.

We've talked a lot about the flock system, which is something that reads license plates.

And, the city has been involved in the former city council member is now sort of the this area's sales person for that or marketer for that.

How might flock help in this?

What are they talking about using it for to stop these Break-Ins so the flock cameras, they are just stationary and they grab a photo of every license plate and sort of, kind of a broader picture of the cars, you know, the make, the model, the color, all that stuff, and they store it.

And, if you know when, when cars are stolen, they'll put the license plate number into the flock system and there'll be an alert if that stolen cars plate and description or description, you know, pops up on a, on a, flock camera.

And so police officers will know there's a stolen car, say, in this case at a closed parking lot.

And that'll be a reason to kind of go see what's what's going on.

And then also, if there are to come outside of one of the schools and there's a bunch of, broken windows and you have sort of a, a time frame, you can go into the flock system and see whose car came in the lot during sort of about what time it occurred and then left, you know, when they were done.

And you can have a good idea of the car that was involved in that and then, you know, kind of find it elsewhere in the city as, as it moves around.

And that'll help you make an arrest, find potential suspects, pull the car over and search it and see if there's, you know, stolen items inside of it.

In addition to the help of law enforcement, the district itself has some plans.

I know that the CEO, Warren Morgan, sent a letter to teachers.

What is it?

The district's saying it will do.

So they are, you know, they're trying to figure out a way to have more security at, at the, schools to have, more of a presence.

And, you know, one of the things that the, that the, head of the teachers union said is and I think that the superintendent would agree that with the consolidation of schools, that they're just that they just voted on, it'll be easier with fewer buildings to patrol to be able to have more regular, you know, full patrol patrols of these lot.

Right?

If they keep that many security people, if they aren't people who are also, consolidated, then you'd have more security people and fewer places to, to patrol.

Yeah.

And I mean, Ksd has a has a police department.

They could have contract with, you know, private security, so they have options for increasing patrols, even if it's on a temporary basis.

All right.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine this week told universities and colleges to get on board with the science of reading literacy curriculum mandated by state law.

Or they'll face consequences.

An audit found ten programs, including those at Cleveland State and Ohio State universities, are not fully following a 2023 state law that requires future teachers to be given instruction solely in the phonics based system.

Karen lay out for us what science of reading is, why it's the state's choice, and why they don't want anyone even learning about anything else.

Well, the science of reading was something that the state adopted in 2023, in the budget, and a lot of states have adopted, I think, like almost 40 states across the country have adopted this.

It's a phonics based program that is rooted in phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and reading comprehension.

So basically the difference is they don't, teach kids to guess words or try to figure out words from context.

They really rely on phonics.

And so the audit was trying to figure out what schools were still teaching, the old ways of teaching reading to future teachers, which they were supposed to stop doing January 1st of this year and teaching only the science of reading.

And they found a couple of schools, there were five schools that were in partial alignment, meaning they still had some issues and ten that were not in alignment.

And they said, you know, Duane says that those schools have to figure it out, and he's putting them on a clock.

So the science of reading sounds like the way we learned to read it was phonics, right?

Yeah.

I mean, it's it's gone back and forth on different ways to try to find the best way that gives the best result for the most number of kids, because there's this period in late elementary school where you really go from reading picture books to chapter books, and if you don't read well, then you're not going to do well in middle school.

You're not going to do well in high school.

And that's how the slide starts.

At least that's the the argument for this.

So really boosting reading at the early levels is considered to be incredibly important when you're teaching future teachers how to how to make sure that kids have that solid foundation.

And the schools that are not in compliance are not schools that don't teach science of reading.

They do.

It's just that they're also including these other methods.

Right?

And it's not just a passing mention of something else.

It's the idea that that is included as part of the curriculum.

And the state wants to get that out of the curriculum entirely and get fully behind the science of reading.

And it's it's interesting to see the schools.

You know, DeWine showed us a graph of all the schools that were in alignment, and you've got, 33 out of 48 that were completely doing it.

Right.

There are no problems with that.

There's 73 metrics they have to meet.

And these schools are all doing it right.

And then you've got partial alignment that includes Ohio Wesleyan University, which is just north of Columbus and Western Governors University, which you see a lot of online advertising for that, and Capital University, which has a big law school here in Columbus.

But the ones that were not in alignment, I mean, Ohio State, Ohio University, University of Toledo, Wright State, Cleveland State, I mean, Bowling Green.

These are the state's biggest schools, you know, and so I thought that was interesting.

Indeed it is.

And the question, though, you said they they're doing it right.

There are a lot of teachers who don't think that science of reading is right, that they like these other methods too.

So there isn't unanimous that this is the best way or only way to teach students, right?

Yeah.

And I think that that's partly why the state is really focusing on the science of reading as the way we're going to do it in Ohio.

And DeWine's clock says if schools are not doing it this way, which because the idea is that it's taught to future teachers so that teachers are teaching it to kids when they get into primary education, if indeed those schools are not in full alignment by the end of 2026, then there's a possibility the Chancellor could revoke approval of those literacy educator programs.

And so that's considered to be, I think, a pretty big punishment for those schools because they're not in alignment.

Yeah, that's pretty big that you can't do it anymore.

Yeah.

Ohio has joined a new voter registration database that the Secretary of state said will help to ensure election integrity.

The partner states will remove ineligible or illegal voters through data sharing agreements.

Karen Ohio left a different database sharing program a few years ago.

Why did they leave then and then?

Why are they rejoining a different one?

Well, they left the database that was called Erik.

The electronic registration Information Center, because there were some conspiracy theories that were going around, launched by right wing Republican advocates who said that there was, involvement in that database.

That was inappropriate, but it was a database.

Erik had been in place since 2019.

There were about 20 states that were involved in it.

It was really considered a way that states could share data so that they could clean up their voter rolls, because states are required to clean up their voter rolls, get rid of duplicates and people who've died and all that stuff, that's a requirement.

And to do that, you have to have data that allows you to figure out exactly who has moved away, who's duplicate registered, who's died, that sort of thing.

So when they and a couple of other Republican states got out of Erik, there was the question of, okay, how do they continue to maintain the voter rolls and share information between other states?

So now Ohio has joined ten other states in this new project, which is called Alexa, not Alexa.

I don't say that out loud.

Everyone in their house right now is having Alexa tell them something.

Ellie X capital X A, and that is the database that they're now going to rely on to do that voter roll cleanup.

Do we?

I have no idea what Alexa stands for.

Do you?

I mean, I think the X in there is something related to X out people who are not supposed to be in the system.

So it's just it's I guess it's just a made up play here.

Yes, exactly.

It's a made up word.

So Frank Larose says that it's not common for people to vote in to two states in the same election, even though they may have to say residents in Florida and one in Ohio.

Yet generally, we don't see people gaming the system there, but still, this is necessary, he says, to make sure that it doesn't happen.

Yeah, I mean, voter fraud is incredibly rare.

And even Frank Rose, as acknowledged that previous secretaries of state have acknowledged that voter fraud is extremely rare.

But again, there is this requirement that voter rolls do have to be maintained and voting and more than voting more than once in a federal election is illegal.

You can be fined up to $10,000, put in prison for five years or both.

So that is an illegal act that obviously secretaries of state and elections officials do want to prevent.

And so this is a way that they say they can track this, even though it is a very rare occurrence.

So there aren't people aren't necessarily opposed to having such a database.

But there is concern that what's collected, might not be used responsibly.

Well, yeah.

And I think that was part of the conspiracy theories that went around about Eric before the state left.

Eric.

And, and again, that was one that had been established for a while, but it had kind of grown into popularity and widespread adoption before we got into this political climate, where there are people who believe, falsely believe that the 2020 election was stolen and things like that.

So this is just a partnership among other states, and it's fairly bipartisan.

We're not just talking about only Republican led states who are involved here.

I mean, you've got Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia that are joining with Ohio on this.

And so, yeah, I think there were some questions about how the data was used before.

And people are going to have questions about how data is used, because that's kind of the environment that we were in.

And people are starting to recognize that their data is incredibly important.

After two years of searching for a spot for a new police headquarters.

Akron has decided to leave it right where it is.

The Harold K Stubbs Justice Center will undergo a $67 million renovation.

Abigail, this has been two years, and they've looked at all these places and then kind of got back to square one.

I know it's kind of, Yeah, left us hanging there, but yeah, it's mainly budgeting the they the city says that by spreading out the renovations over several years in multiple budget cycles, that they'll ultimately be able to save money.

And by not vacating that building that's downtown, that means that it won't be vacant and won't try to face demolition.

It kind of preserves that building, and it's not becoming something that's like rundown and vacant in downtown right now.

staying in Akron, City Council president or the vice president, Jeff Osco, withdraw, withdrew his proposal to tighten restrictions on who can comment during public meetings.

He said his intent was to keep discourse civil and not to exclude anyone from commenting.

But the proposal drew protest.

Can you lay out for us what the proposal was and then why he pulled it?

Yeah.

So, I mean, it was at its core, excluding people.

It was limiting public comment to Akron residents, taxpayers, utility consumers, property owners and residents of the city's joint Economic Development district.

So not anyone would be able to to go to Akron City Council and speak in public comment.

It also proposed cutting off comments if they discussed matters beyond council's authority.

Council member Fran Wilson was one of the council members that expressed concern that the restrictions would exclude people.

Council passed some restrictions in 2023 on public comment.

Saying it's basically limits how many people can speak and can only do it once a month.

Yeah, right.

Which that has not been taken kindly to especially frequent tours of the public comment period.

And so Vice President Jeff Waskow, withdrew that this week.

But he did due to these, concerns that people had.

And he kept saying that he didn't mean for this to be exclusionary.

And other council members were saying this is at its core, excluding people.

So he withdrew it, but he said he's going to work with state officials and the city's law department to kind of revisit the idea next year.

Okay.

This week, the Cleveland Metroparks shared on Instagram trail cam photos and videos of what many call a Fisher cat, which actually is not at all a cat.

It was the first sighting of a fisher in Cuyahoga County in 200 years.

Fishers are carnivorous members of the weasel family and live in wooded areas.

Like some of my cousins.

while was sighting in Cuyahoga County, was first, this month, fishers have been coming back for a while, and they're not small.

No.

And their tails are so long.

So their bodies are, 20 to 25in, and then their tails are an additional 13 to 16.5 inches.

And I couldn't really picture that.

And then they started looking at that video and I was like, yeah, that just keeps going.

And they can weigh between 3 and 15 pounds, which is a big it's a big stretch of.

Yeah, exactly.

But I'm not you know, I guess it's good that something came back that you never knew existed.

They're awfully excited about it.

The fact that the trail cams picked this up.

Yeah.

I feel like, the Cuyahoga River and a lot of places in northeast Ohio are such, like, international examples of how, an environment can be revitalized.

And so I feel like any time there is an example of wildlife that had been pushed out and as long ago as 200 years ago.

That's just so crazy.

It was pushed out, by the way, that we settled this area.

Coming back, I think, means to, the people that work in the metro parks and naturalists and hobbyists that something's something they're doing something right, and something good is happening, and it seems like something's being done right.

And a number of counties in northeast Ohio, a number of species are making their return.

Yeah.

I mean, well, so they've there have been 40 confirmed sightings of the Fisher, across northeast Ohio, just none in Cuyahoga County until now.

And then I guess the populations of black bears, badgers, weasels and bobcats have also been expanding.

And those also have not been seen in Ohio, like, typically for like 200 years.

So it's kind of crazy.

All right.

Monday on the Sound of Ideas on 89 seven KSU, we'll hear a conversation from Gen Xers like me as we replay one of our favorite shows of the past year.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks so much for watching and I hope you have a wonderful holiday season.

Stay safe.