For lack of a better name, we call this "The Big Creepy Building." It's around W. 90-something and Detroit Av, and just gets more decayed and scary, which means it's appeared in Rust and Brique pretty often. I recently noticed that part of the building is literally starting to fall outward, and is at about a 25 degree angle to where it should be. The problem is, I can't get any very good pictures of the nastiest looking part of the place, which is the back side which faces the Rapid (Cleveland's commuter rail) tracks. It's hard to take a good picture from the Rapid, and honestly, I'm so shit-scared of this building that I don't dare even cross the pathetic attempt at fencing that seperates it from the street, even though it's wide open.


Anyway, while walking by this building sometime in the early summer, I noticed this sign. It's now almost December, the sign is still there, and the building is just getting more and more decayed. I have no idea what they decided at this meeting, and I didn't bother to look up the application at the library. I probably should, huh? Well, I would if the City of Cleveland didn't have the world's crappiest and least useful municipal website, and if it didn't involve running my rear end all around town.


I'm glad that they haven't knocked this place down yet, though, because watching a building totally succomb to natural forces is pretty interesting, and it's nice to have a building like this within walking distance. I'm also glad that this place is so far gone that it'll never get turned into lofts or some other yuppie cheese -- plus, the fact that it's across the street from a housing project might deter people with pocketbooks. After yet another winter of abandonment, this place will be even crazier looking -- so, I'm sure there'll be more pics in the future.

I'm not sure when my last update on the former Chicle gum factory on Detroit near West Boulevard was, or what I said in it. Longtime RNB readers will remember photos of this building appearing in early RNB while it was still an abandoned hulk. Soon afterward, it started being renovated into apartments. The renovation was complete by the summer of 2004. As usually happens when old buildings are loft-ified in Cleveland, no one in the neighborhood could actually afford the rent and no one who could afford it wanted to live in a shady industrial neighborhood with almost no conveniences. So, the place still just sat empty for a while. In the past six months or so, it would appear that at least one or two people are living there. I'm not sure how many apartments are in it (the building isn't too incredibly large). Here's a photo of the classy new sandblasted edition of the building I nicknamed "Dub Housing" after a Pere Ubu album. . .