Hipsters battling to rent warehouse lofts. Trendy bars, espresso shops and music venues. A funky, celebrity-chef-owned restaurant serving bone marrow and crispy pig ears.

This isn't Brooklyn or Portland. It is downtown Cleveland. Nicknamed the "Mistake on the Lake," the much-maligned city on the shore of Lake Erie has long had a reputation for crime, pollution and corruption. Over the years, Cleveland's downtown became almost a ghost town at night.

Now, Cleveland's fortunes seem to be turning around. LeBron is headed home! The 2016 Republican National Convention is coming! The Browns nabbed quarterback Johnny Manziel in the draft! There is lots of exuberance and chest thumping in Cleveland, accompanied by lofty predictions of the positive economic impacts of these events.

But these events come on the back of more than a decade of steady and methodical steps taken by the city to tackle its economic and social issues. Last year, more than $600 million worth of investments were sunk into downtown projects, including a new convention center. A 484-room Westin opened last May, and there are five other hotels planned, including a Kimpton and a Le Méridien.

More people are moving downtown: Between 2000 and 2014, the city's downtown residential population increased 60% to about 13,000. Over 3,100 apartments were created over that same period, according to the Downtown Cleveland Alliance, a nonprofit that works with downtown property owners, with another 2,200 units either under construction or planned.