A Black Lives Matter protest at Euclid City Hall in August, 2017, crystallized tensions the community is facing over policing and other issues. Photo: Marion Marchet

EUCLID, Ohio – The raucous Black Lives Matters protest that disrupted a Council meeting at Euclid City Hall in the summer of 2017 jolted eyewitnesses for very different reasons.

Tom Cooke, a member of Euclid’s older, wealthier, white community, saw shouting protestors as a threat. “I was trying to figure out ‘how am I going to get out of this Council chamber?’ ” he said.

Troy Harris, an incident management analyst at Progressive Corp., began to worry only when police showed up in body armor. He feared being beaten purely because he’s black. “That was one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen in in my life,’’ he said.

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Euclid's industrial zone, viewed from Euclid Avenue looking north, not far from the spot contested in the 1926 lawsuit Ambler v. Euclid, in which the U.S. Supreme Court established the constitutionality of zoning. Today, Euclid is part of the latest chapter in the history of black suburbanization, a demographic shift as profound as the Great Migration. Photo: Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer

In the end, the protest ended peacefully. Since then, Euclid has remained what it had been before the protest: A gem in a vise.

Once a thriving blue-collar factory suburb, Euclid now finds itself squeezed between declining resources and costly, potentially crushing problems.

A rapid racial transition in its population has coincided with the need to address rising poverty, crime and a struggling school district. At the same time, dramatic erosion in the city’s tax base, caused by economic forces outside the city’s control, has hampered its ability to respond.

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Dr. Richard Montgomery ll, his wife, Charisse, and their son, Richard lll, hang out in the living room and unwind by playing video games. The Montgomerys are very involved in the Euclid community, being active in the newly-formed Euclid NAACP chapter and working toward equality and less division. (Lynn Ischay/The Plain Dealer)

People in Cleveland’s third biggest suburb see those problems very differently, but those on all sides say they’re not giving up on the city’s future.

“I think it can be a great example nationally if we can work together and not allow those divisions to push people out,” said Charisse Montgomery, 41, a black resident who works long distance as communications director for the College of Pharmacy at the University of Toledo.

“We can be the city that makes the melting pot work,’’ said police Capt. Kevin Kelly. “We can be the example for everyone else. You don’t have to flee; we can make it work.”

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Residents relax along Lake Shore Boulevard in Euclid in September, where city city experimented with "traffic calming" techniques to make the area safer for pedestrians. Local and national media have largely retreated from covering struggling inner-ring suburbs such as Euclid, except for stories about crime. Photo: Lynn Ischay, The Plain Dealer

Promise and Loss

Euclid’s story is part of the ongoing migration of African-Americans from cities to suburbs in the U.S., a demographic sequel to the 20th-century Great Migration of blacks from the South to Northern industrial cities.

Through the 1960s, blacks were confined to inner cities by redlining, exclusionary zoning and other racist policies. Black families have been moving to suburbs by the millions ever since, empowered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

The 2008-09 recession and mortgage foreclosure crisis added a new wave to the migration. As inner-city neighborhoods collapsed, inner-ring suburbs suddenly became more affordable.

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As recently as 1970, African-Americans amounted to one half of one percent of Euclid’s population. Between 2000 and 2015, nearly 12,000 African-Americans, many from low-income families, moved to Euclid from failing neighborhoods on

Cleveland’s East Side and from East Cleveland.

The influx was greater than in any other Cleveland suburb, and part of an exodus in which Cleveland lost 42,500 black residents.

As they arrived, many white residents fled. Euclid shifted over the past decade from majority white to 59.5 percent black.

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Tracee Hale celebrates a Euclid Panthers touchdown at the school's new stadium on Friday, September 21, 2018. Hale's son, Cee Jay, was the Panther's quarterback last year. She is the coach of the freshman cheerleaders and head of the boosters club. (Lynn Ischay/The Plain Dealer)

A step up

Tucked into the Northeast corner of Cuyahoga County along the Lake Erie shoreline, Euclid has long been a place of promise. After World War II, its factories helped launch the children of Slovenian, Irish, German and Czech immigrants into the middle class. The more recent newcomers feel the same sense of hope, and of need.

“I came from a neighborhood where kids are getting shot in their face,” said Tracee Hale, who is black, a teacher who brought two school-age children to Euclid in 2012. “That’s not the life I want my children to live – ducking bullets.”

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Established residents, though, saw signs of trouble and loss.

The population fell from about 70,000 in 1970 to 47,200 last year, and the poverty rate more than doubled, from 9.7 percent to 21.5 percent between 2005 and 2015. Crime rates rose among teenagers. Roughly half the city’s housing units – including mid-century modern residential towers and modest brick bungalows - are rented now.

Euclid also has classic inner-ring problems: aging streets, utilities, and public facilities. Jobs and tax revenue declined as economic globalization lured some corporations to leave the region. Other employers took advantage of sprawl-friendly government policies to move to newer communities.

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The city’s commercial, industrial and residential tax base fell 27 percent between 2005 and 2015, according to Cleveland State University’s Northern Ohio Data and Information Service. At $197 million, the decline was suburban Cuyahoga County’s second-largest loss in dollar value after that of Parma.

Meanwhile, Ohio was cutting funds to local governments and capping state support for schools, including Euclid’s.

Euclid is a classic example of inner-ring suburbs across the country confronting a gap between needs and resources while coping with an influx of poorer minorities moving in from adjacent cities, said Sheryll Cashin, a Georgetown University law professor.

“It’s a textbook for these kinds of communities,” she said.

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Tom Bier at Cleveland State University. Photo: Steven Litt

Regional disadvantage

Under the home rule provision in Ohio’s constitution, Euclid, like all other communities in the state, must solve its problems within its own geography and tax base. That’s true even though state policies have encouraged sprawl, said Cleveland State University Associate Tom Bier.

“Our way of life is to build new places and move on,” Bier said. “Who cares about the old ones? ‘Euclid, you’re on your own. Good luck, goodbye!’ Who cares?”

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A 2017 aerial view of Euclid encompasses the sprawling Lincoln Electric plant at left and its signature wind turbine off East 222nd Street, the CSX rail line and I-90 to the north, residential areas closer to Lake Erie, and the downtown Cleveland skyline in the distance. Photo: Jason Zagar

Why Euclid matters

But of course, Euclid’s future matters, even to its affluent neighbors. It lies between Cleveland and nearby failed city of East Cleveland, and prosperous suburbs to the east in Lake County, and to the south in Cuyahoga County.

It has numerous assets on which it can rebuild, including multiple exits on I-90, minutes from downtown Cleveland and University Circle, the region’s cultural, educational and medical hub.

Euclid’s industrial zone contains nearly 250 companies, including Lincoln Electric, whose 2,500 employees work at its world headquarters plant, easily identified to commuters on I-90 by a 443-foot-high wind turbine, the city’s most visible landmark.

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Many Euclid residents fought hard to prevent Shore Cultural Center, situated between Lakeshore Blvd. and East 222nd Street, from being torn down. The building, once Shore High School, is on the National Register of Historic Places. It houses a church, studios, a theater, massage therapist, and many classes, such as Jazzercise, martial arts, music and art. The building has some of the original windows which are drafty at best and missing at worst. They are trying to raise funds to replace those windows through a program called "Every Pane Counts." (Lynn Ischay/The Plain Dealer)

The city also boasts four miles of Lake Erie shoreline, a municipal golf course, a new fishing pier, an ice arena, the Shore Cultural Center, a former high school-turned-community center, and a public library packed on weeknights with students doing homework or adults adding to their computer skills.

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Euclid officer Erica Rodriguez, second from left, gets some backup while arresting a 21 year old woman during a traffic stop. The woman had a warrant out for assault with a weapon in Cleveland. She was stopped on Babbitt Road in Euclid. (Lynn Ischay/The Plain Dealer)

Divisions over public safety

Despite its strengths, Euclid has had a well-documented history of racial discrimination in housing and political districting, which has eroded trust. And nothing has contributed to its divisions as much as the debate over policing and public safety.

In March of 2017, Euclid patrolman Matthew Rhodes shot and killed Luke Stewart, an unarmed black motorist. U.S. District Court Judge James Gwin dismissed a wrongful-death lawsuit by Stewart’s family, but said the city had a “blasé” attitude toward use of force training and called some training materials “grossly inappropriate.” Rhodes was cleared of wrongdoing and is still on the force.

Another white patrolman, Michael Amiott, was videoed last year beating another black motorist, Richard Hubbard III, who allegedly had tried to walk away from a traffic stop and then allegedly tried to resist being handcuffed. The video showed Amiott repeatedly punching Hubbard in the face. Hubbard was cleared of all charges.

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Euclid Mayor Kirsten Holzheimer Gail spoke at the September ribbon cutting for a new lakefront trail. Photo: Steven Litt

Mayor Kirsten Holzheimer Gail fired Amiott but was forced to reinstate him after he won an appeal to a labor arbitrator. “The behavior he displayed is not the behavior I want in our Euclid police officers,’’ Gail said, adding the city had added training in “procedural justice.’’

Nevertheless, seven plaintiffs have filed six lawsuits alleging police brutality. On Tuesday, another seven residents filed felony and misdemeanor assault claims against Amiott in Euclid Municipal Court, based on the widely circulated videos of the Hubbard arrest.

Gail declined to comment on the litigation.

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Larcenia Cannon (grandmother and caretaker of Euclid High honors freshman Jada Graham) speaks her mind at a rally to protest the recent re-instatement of Euclid police officer Amiott, who used excessive force at a traffic stop. Videos of the beating went viral. Cannon addressed the unequal treatment of blacks by police in the inner ring suburb of Euclid and across the country. (Lynn Ischay/The Plain Dealer)

The police incidents inspired dozens of people to join the Black Lives Matter protest at City Hall in 2017 and, black residents said, raised real fears in their community.

“Have you contemplated dying recently?’’ asked Richard Montgomery II, Charisse’s husband. He said he worries about being stopped by police every time he puts his key in the ignition. He's a member of the new Euclid chapter of the NAACP, which claims 130 black and white members disturbed by the city’s response to complaints about police brutality.

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Euclid mayor Kirsten Holzheimer Gail swears in two new police officers, from left, New officers from left to right: Officer Sam Thirion and Erica Rodriguez, during a Council meeting on Monday, October 15, 2018. (Lynn Ischay/The Plain Dealer)

Other residents, both black and white, cite different reasons for feeling unsafe; they see groups of young people congregating in parking lots, parks or city streets after school and at night.

A police spokesman, Lt. Mitchell Houser, said officers must decide when and how to intervene, with a force that has been reduced over the past two decades from 105 to 90 members.

After a September home football game against St. Ignatius, for example, officers used a pepper ball gun to break up 30 teens who were fighting and drifting into the adjacent neighborhood.

“It gets tough,” Houser said. “You’re wildly outnumbered, and that’s why you use pepper balls to break up fights.”

Kelly, the police captain, called force an “ugly” option officers don’t want to use unless there is just cause. “When we get certified, we are certified as peace officers,’’ he said. “We go through de-escalation training. . . . It’s nothing new. It only works if the other person agrees to de-escalate.’’

Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court data show 939 charges were brought against children in Euclid in 2016, more than in any other Cleveland suburb. The biggest categories: personal offenses, property crimes and violations of public order.

It’s not clear whether the high number of cases stems from over-zealous policing, or behavior that’s worse than in other inner-ring suburbs. What’s clear is that residents feel uncomfortable on both counts.

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Jada Graham, 14, is an honors freshman at Euclid High School. She is on the swim team, studies Chinese and plays the viola. She is concerned about the crime in the city, so she says she stays busy with lots of activities. (Lynn Ischay/The Plain Dealer)

“You never know what can happen, when someone’s going to pull a gun out or someone’s going to get stabbed,” said Jada Graham, a 14-year-old honors freshman who swims on the high school team, plays viola and enjoys studying Chinese and biology.

Yet, Jada, who is black, also describes Euclid as an over-policed city. “Everywhere you turn, you always seen police cars,” she said. “Where I live almost every night, you can hear sirens, especially in the middle of the night.”

“I try to focus on the good side,’’ she added, “like my friends and activities like swimming.”

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Tamika Nunley visits her office at Oberlin College to collect some research for a book she's writing. The Euclid High graduate, now history professor at the college, is on sabbatical, and is about to go to Virginia to do more research and writing. (Lynn Ischay/The Plain Dealer)

Questions of upward mobility

Whether Euclid can deliver upward mobility for its children is another critical issue.

Tamika Nunley, whose father is black and whose mother is Korean, said she passed the state’s 9th-grade proficiency exam as in 1999 only on her fourth attempt.

Nevertheless, she dreamt of going to college and listened closely when striving peers told her to enroll in honors English and history classes. She got permission and she excelled.

Now 33, she’s in her fourth year as a tenure-track assistant professor of American history at Oberlin College, polishing the manuscript of her first book.

She lives in South Euclid and is proud to have been inducted into the Euclid High School Hall of Fame in 2017. And she said she’s not unique.

“Almost all of my friends have done exceptionally well,” she said. “These people did phenomenal things.”

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Jeff Rotsky, coach of the Euclid High School Panthers football team, at work at a game in September. Photo: Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer

Jeff Rotsky, the fiery football coach of the high school Panthers, said he sees such stories unfolding every year among students on his team.

“Our kids are going to grow up and they’re going to change the world in ways you can’t even imagine,” Rotsky said before a practice in September, his raspy voice rising. “We will have doctors! We will have lawyers! We will have business people! We will have young men who understand!”

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Euclid Schools superintendent Dr. Marvin Jones ll, believes his life experience growing up in a high-poverty neighborhood in Dayton will help him improve academic performance in Euclid schools. He earned a football scholarship at East Tennessee State after focusing on his studies in high school. "I’ve always had to make really, really hard decisions. The decision about whether or not to sell drugs. You know, the decision about whether or not I’m going to go with a friend who I know is about to rob this store. The decision to focus on my grades." (Lynn Ischay/The Plain Dealer)

But many children now enter the district two, three or four years behind grade level, said Marvin Jones, who succeeded Charles Smialek as superintendent of Euclid schools last summer.

Causes, he said, include lack of parental support at home and a high rate of children who enter or leave the district during a school year. That rate was 16 percent in 2016-17.

In September, the district got an “F’’ grade from the state’s Department of Education. Among Ohio’s 608 public school systems, it ranked 598th. If Euclid gets two more F grades over the next two years, it could be taken over by the state’s Academic Distress Commission, like schools in Youngstown, Lorain and East Cleveland. Jones says that would “destroy” Euclid’s system.

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Jeffrey Beck, 62, is a retired marketing executive who began a "Just Say No" campaign against additional Euclid taxes. Euclid already has one of the highest property tax rates in Ohio. (Lynn Ischay/The Plain Dealer)

The district also wrestles with declining public support. For decades, Euclid voters tended to approve tax hikes to improve their schools. Levies passed in 2009 and 2016, for example, funded bond issues that raised $135 million in local funds, plus $69 million in state money, for a two-phase school reconstruction effort.

Yet in November, voters rejected a tax levy renewal that would have preserved $5.6 million a year for the schools.

Voters also rejected a five-year property tax levy for street repairs that would have raised $1.1 million a year, and a change in the city’s charter that would have given Council the authority to cut the residential income tax credit for wages earned outside the city from 100 percent to as low as 50 percent.

Opponents called the tax measures a question of affordability. Euclid already has one of the highest local property tax rates in Ohio -- $3,744 a year per $100,000 of home value.

“The leadership needs to understand we simply cannot afford it,’’ said Jeffrey Beck, who is white, a 62-year-old retired marketing executive who recruited 20 volunteers to join a “Just Say No” campaign against the tax measures. “The people in this city are struggling.”

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The front of Euclid High School is fenced off because it is a construction zone. Repairs and remodeling are ongoing, and the back of the school is temporarily the main entrance. Euclid High Panthers already have a new football stadium. (Lynn Ischay/The Plain Dealer)

Jones, who is black, said that racial bias (as well as the district’s “F” grade) may have contributed to the failure of the school levy. Roughly 85 percent of the district’s 5,200 students are black; many white families send their children to private Catholic schools in the area.

“We have to start to have conversation about the biases that we harbor, but that requires interest and engagement,” he said.

Jones says the families of his students clearly bear responsibility for their children’s learning. But, he added, some of those families need help, too.

“I hate the idea of pointing the blame on solely on families,” he said, “because there’s things we should be doing as a community together to make sure that the community thrives.”

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Downtown Euclid. Photo: Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer

Taxation, investment, and representation

Euclid’s geography contributes to perceptions that it’s a divided place. The city’s 10 square miles are bisected by the industrial zone along I-90, giving it distinct north and south sides.

Black residents said the city has long slighted the down-at-the-heels commercial zone along Euclid Avenue on the south side, favoring investments in the city’s downtown, on the north side, along Lake Shore Boulevard, where more whites live.

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A couple watches the sunset from the pier at Sims Park in Euclid. September 26, 2018. The city is planning a marina to the east, adding further access to its four miles of Lake Erie coastline. (Lynn Ischay/The Plain Dealer)

A case in point was Council’s recent vote to capitalize on the Lake Erie shoreline by putting $6.8 million toward a new lakefront trail that aims minimize erosion in exchange for easements allowing public access.

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Marcus Epps is very involved with Euclid politics. He has been a vocal opponent to the Kristen Holtzeimer Gail administration, and is considering a run for mayor. Here, he watches a wedding ceremony in Euclid City Council chambers. (Lynn Ischay/The Plain Dealer)

Marcus Epps, a business broker and political consultant who ran unsuccessfully in a four-way race for mayor in 2015, cited the trail as an example of how Euclid’s white leaders are “bleeding this city dry” to favor residents close to the lake.

“Our leaders and the old regime have already given up,” said Epps, who is black. “In their head, they see the writing on the wall. The face of the community is changing; it doesn’t matter as much to them anymore.”

Mayor Gail, who is white, called Epps’s remarks “insulting” and “ridiculous.”

“You can’t please everybody,” she said, “so how do you set a vision and work for it when you don’t have resources?’’

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Lincoln Electric's World Headquarters is in Euclid. The company built their 2.5 megawatt wind turbine in 2011. It is 423 feet tall from it's base to blade tip and can be seen from miles away. Each blade is 164 feet long, weighing 12 tons. Blade tips can travel 165 miles per hour. The turbine provides 10% of the plant's electricity. (Lynn Ischay/The Plain Dealer)

Gail argues that the city is pursuing projects and investments that will benefit the entire community over the long haul, including the trail.

She points to recent accomplishments such as replacing the outdated 1970s-era Euclid Square Mall with a new Amazon distribution center that is to boost income tax receipts with 1,000 new workers.

Lincoln Electric and BWX Technologies are investing $90 million in expanded facilities in the city’s industrial zone. And in June, the Treasury Department certified five Census tracts in the city’s industrial zone as eligible for new Opportunity Zone tax incentives for business investment.

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Tom Cooke, a lifetime Euclid resident, as were his parents and grandparents before him, loves having Lake Erie in his back yard. The builder made the Edgecliff house exactly how he and his wife wanted it, bringing the outside inside through well-placed windows, natural materials and artwork. (Lynn Ischay/The Plain Dealer)

Gail also points out that the city has managed to avoid deficits narrowly, but her critics are unimpressed. They say she has failed since her election in 2015 to unite the city, set a firm course and reboot the tax base.

“Euclid is pretty much in a panic mode right now,’’ said Cooke, 64, a successful contractor who lives in a large mansion he built on Euclid’s largely private lakefront.

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Pearletha Taylor, 70, grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, but is a longtime resident of Euclid's south side. (Lynn Ischay/The Plain Dealer)

On the city’s predominantly black south side, 70-year-old Pearletha Taylor, president of the Heritage Park Community Association, echoed Cook’s thoughts, emphasizing the city’s failure to repave streets and provide more recreational options for kids that might help keep them out of trouble.

“The city is going backward,” she said. “I’ve been praying it would come forward. But the way the administration is handling things, they have made a lot of people angry.”

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Cassandra McDonald, president of the Euclid NAACP, talks with the media before a rally to protest the reinstatement of police officer Michael Amiott. Amiott was fired for using excessive force against an African American man during a routine traffic stop. A bystander's video of the assault went viral. An arbitrator ruled to rehire Amiott and give him his back pay. (Lynn Ischay/The Plain Dealer)

Cassandra McDonald, the founding president of Euclid’s new NAACP chapter, said that the only solution for African Americans who seek more influence at City Hall may be to win more elections. McDonald, who is black, said the chapter will offer a slate of candidates in 2019.

If they win a majority, it would complete a political evolution that began in 2008, when U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen O’Malley ruled in a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice that the city’s at-large elections system violated the Voting Rights Act.

At the time, Euclid was roughly 50 percent black but no black politician had ever won an election to Council.

The court ruling required Euclid to draw eight single-member districts, plus an at-large president. Kandace Jones became Euclid’s first black Council representative in 2008.

Today, three of Council’s nine members are black. Stephana Caviness, Brian Moore and Taneika Hill represent Wards 1, 2, and 3 on the south side.

But Caviness said that if all five white Council members on the city’s north side vote in favor of downtown improvements.

“They don’t even need the south side to vote for it,’’ she said, adding that she’d like to see at least four districts on the south side, to balance the four on the north.

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A new trail is under construction from the fishing pier at Sims Park in Euclid, foreground, along the lakeshore stretching east. This earlier photo shows Euclid's shoreline prior to the project. Photo: DroneWerx/Special to The Plain Dealer

Perspectives on solutions

Though voters rejected the school levy in November, Superintendent Jones said the district may seek a new vote in 2019.

Beck, meanwhile, wants to end the income tax the city shares with the school district. Euclid is the only city in the state with such a tax.

Ward 7 Councilman Daryl Langman backed the lakefront trail, and he wants to explore whether to lease the city’s water treatment plant to Table Rock Infrastructure Partners of Sausalito, CA. Mayor Gail said she won’t rush into an arrangement that might raise water and sewer rates.

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North Pointe Apartments in Euclid, formerly known as the Watergate, changed hands in 2007. Once a part of the east side's "Silver Coast," the complex on Lakeshore Blvd. has had many complaints of rats near dumpsters and garbage in hallways. There has been an uptick of foreclosures as well. (Lynn Ischay/The Plain Dealer)

Others say Euclid needs to double down on housing code enforcement now that thousands of homes and apartments are being rented, in many cases by out-of-town limited liability corporations.

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Route 90 splits Euclid in half, the north from the south, and primarily residential from industry. Cleveland's easternmost inner ring suburb has changed dramatically in the last two decades. The once upscale "Silver Coast" high rises are tarnished. Renters are replacing home owners, absentee landlords flipped houses when the housing bubble burst. The racial divide is wider. But many members of the community are passionate about working to fix the problems. (Lynn Ischay/The Plain Dealer)

Whatever happens, Georgetown’s Cashin said, Euclid should make integration and race relations a centerpiece of its policies.

“Successful integration doesn’t happen naturally,” she said. “It takes effort. It’s like a marriage, or anything else. You have to work at building your community.”

But Langman said that regardless of racial issues, it’s essential to improve the city’s tax base and finances.

“Whether you have an all-white government or an all-black government, it’s those kinds of things that if you don’t solve them, you’ll struggle,” he said. “Until you get the economics right, you really can’t do anything else.”

Plain Dealer reporter and photographer Lynn Ischay contributed to this story.