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To be truly successful, supporters say, the Global Center for Health Innovation, for which an invitation-only ribbon cutting is scheduled today, needs to be surrounded by $350 million-plus in new civic projects, including a convention hotel, a revamped Public Square, and a walkway to the lakefront.

(Gus Chan, The Plain Dealer)

Cleveland has excelled for decades at building shiny new attractions aimed at luring visitors and polishing a once-tarnished image.

It’s been less successful at maintaining momentum and creating the civic spaces and lively streetscapes needed to connect and amplify the new cultural and culinary riches.

That’s why today’s ribbon cutting at the city’s new Global Center for Health Innovation is as much of a beginning as it is an ending.

It marks a pivot point from the official completion of one project to the heavy lifting on a new round of public and private efforts aimed at making downtown more livable, beautiful, easily navigable and welcoming to visitors.

“We’re not done yet; we’re absolutely not done yet,” said Deb Janik, senior vice president for real estate and development at the Greater Cleveland Partnership, the city’s chamber of commerce.

In other words, forget about settling into the civic Barcalounger.

The health innovation center is the most visible portion of a $465 million, taxpayer-funded complex that includes the city's new convention center, completed ahead of schedule and slightly under budget in June and built largely beneath the 12.5-acre downtown Mall.

The goal of the two facilities is to attract scores of medical-themed conventions and tens of thousands of visitors every year. They can’t do that properly, supporters say, without a wave of collateral investments including new hotels, parking, landscapes and streetscapes.

Also on tap is a new effort by Positively Cleveland to connect the city's attractions with better maps, mobile apps, signage and fresh branding.

At least some of those investments could also boost the already striking increase in the number of downtown residents, which is part of a nationwide back-to-the-city demographic shift among young professionals and empty nesters.

For that reason, improving downtown could be a case in which making the city a better place to visit may also make it a better place to live.

Such understandings in part led to an historic collaboration launched in June by Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald and Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson.

They announced that the county would use a positive balance of $93 million from the health innovation and convention center projects to leverage up to $350 million in public and private dollars for new downtown developments.

The $93 million came from unanticipated savings, untouched contingency funds and extra sales tax revenue generated by a stronger economy, they said.

At the top of the agenda is the county’s project to develop a $260 million, 600- to 700-room hotel on the site of its soon-to-be-vacated Administration Building overlooking the west side of the Mall at Lakeside Avenue.

The basic landscaping package for the new health innovation and convention centers in Cleveland included large areas of grass with few extra plantings. Enhancements could come in a later phase.

The hotel, rising 19 stories or higher, will be a major new presence on the city's downtown Mall, a legacy of the 1903 Group Plan District, developed by Chicago architect Daniel Burnham.

If it includes a lively bar and restaurant, and perhaps even a bike livery, it could become a social hub in an area of government buildings now devoid of life after dark.

Other civic projects are the responsibility of the city’s new 11-member Group Plan Commission, headed by Anthony Coyne, chairman of the city’s planning commission.

Jackson has assigned the Group Plan Commission, which is applying for non-profit status, to scare up the cash needed to build a long-desired pedestrian walkway from the northeast corner of the Mall to North Coast Harbor and attractions including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.

The organization's responsibilities also include raising money for a massive re-do of Public Square and a new layer of enhancements to the Mall, which doubles as the green roof of the convention center.

Also on tap along the Mall is the renovation of the city's Board of Education Building on the east side of the Mall off Rockwell Avenue as a Drury Plaza hotel.

Beyond that, the city hopes to choose a developer to add new life to 19 acres of lakefront land north of FirstEnergy Stadium, now occupied by warehouses, plus another nine acres east of North Coast Harbor and the Rock Hall.

Apart from finding the money to make it all happen – the most difficult part of the new projects will be coordinating their design so they add up to a satisfying whole.

City officials say they already have design guidelines in mind, and will review every project rigorously. Yet everything bears close watching because the Mall district, originally planned 110 years ago by Chicago architect Daniel Burnham, is one of the city’s greatest legacies.

Some critics would argue that the roof of the new convention center, which curves up like a hillside in the center of the Mall to reveal a glassy, 27-foot-high entrance at Lakeside Avenue, has ruined the continuity of the grassy space.

But the swoop of the convention roof has also created a natural amphitheater ideal for outdoor performances and convention-related events, not to mention a beautiful new belvedere from which to take in lakefront views.

Protecting those views and others throughout the Group Plan District will require close attention. The same is true of whether to allow new elevated walkways to be added over city streets, or perhaps a network of cable cars.

Will the new signs for the Drury Plaza on the Board of Education Building respect the integrity of a neoclassical 1931 landmark designed by the highly admired Cleveland architecture firm of Walker & Weeks?

The four-story atrium window of the Global Center for Health Innovation faces east toward the downtown Mall and the buildings of the Group Plan District, including Public Auditorium. The new center can't truly be considered a success unless it helps to animate the spaces and buildings around it.

Will excellent public art fill the blank walls of the health innovation and convention centers? How will a new hotel tower fit directly across Lakeside Avenue from the Cuyahoga County Courthouse? Will the newly reconfigured Mall north of Lakeside Avenue, sandwiched between the courthouse and City Hall, include a reflecting pool or fountain? How about public restrooms?

Here’s a progress report on the upcoming round of projects:

- Lakefront walkway: Federal officials last month turned down for the third time the city's application for a $17.6 million TIGER grant (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) for the project. The Group Plan Commission will try to raise that amount through naming rights, sponsorships, foundation grants or other sources, Coyne said.

- Public Square: Over the next four to six months, the leading American landscape architect James Corner will refine plans for the square, which call for the closure of Ontario Street as it runs north-south through the 10-acre space. Ann Zoller, executive director of the non-profit LAND Studio, which is managing the project, said public meetings would be part of the process. Ken Silliman, Jackson’s chief of staff, said the Group Plan Commission is raising $2.5 million to pay for completion of designs for the project, which could cost $25 million to $30 million.

- Convention center hotel: Lawyer Jeffrey Appelbaum, who is representing the county as developer of the project, said the Atlanta architecture firm Cooper Carry will likely present schematic designs for the building to Cuyahoga County Council on Tuesday, Nov. 12.

- Mall enhancements: Appelbaum and Zoller said the design of additional plantings and amenities on the Mall, possibly including a food pavilion, public restrooms and a water feature, would await completion of the hotel design, which will affect public spaces around it, including the Mall.

- Public art: Appelbaum said public art will be added to the health innovation and convention centers, but that the process of selecting artists and financing projects will await further development of the hotel design and collaboration among the city, county and new operators of those facilities.

- Board of Education Building: Joseph Pereles, vice president of development for Drury Hotels, said the chain formally took possession of the administration building in September from the Cleveland Metropolitan School District after agreeing to a $4.5 million price. The hotel group hopes to begin renovating the building in the spring.

- Lakefront developments: City officials said the deadline for refined proposals from five developers in contention is Nov. 1.

- Positively Cleveland plans to spend $1 million to $2 million by the spring on one or two experimental signage and way-finding projects, and may also develop a “community-wide” design standard to make the city easier to navigate, said President and CEO David Gilbert. The organization also plans to launch a new branding campaign for the city in the spring.

The Positively Cleveland projects, like the other efforts on the agenda for downtown, are in many ways inspired by the completion of the health innovation and convention centers.

“For us, the ribbon cutting and the opening of the convention center and hotel are the reasons why we’re doing [our projects],” Gilbert said. “We absolutely want to make sure those investments are maximized.”