Latest news with #JustinBibb
Axios
5 days ago
- Business
- Axios
Bibb launches "the Cleveland ERA," a new development agenda
In Cleveland, "era" is no longer just a word — it's an acronym. State of play: On Tuesday, Mayor Justin Bibb launched what he's calling "the Cleveland ERA," or Economic Resurgence in Action. It's a development agenda seeking to revitalize the city's economy and infrastructure. What they're saying: "Cleveland built its legacy on industrial innovation," Bibb said in a press release. "Now, we're opening the toolbox again — unlocking land, fueling development, and building a future where opportunity flows from our factories to our neighborhoods." Zoom in: The Cleveland ERA includes waterfront development, business attraction via shovel-ready industrial sites, and the Cleveland Hopkins modernization effort. Flashback: Bibb soft-launched "the Cleveland ERA" at his 2025 State of the City address. "We can build things in Cleveland and lead the industrial revival of Ohio and the nation," he said then.
Axios
5 days ago
- Business
- Axios
Cleveland launches search for lakefront developers
The city of Cleveland is officially seeking developers to transform up to 50 acres of its downtown lakefront into a year-round neighborhood — this time without the Cleveland Browns. Why it matters: This is the city's most ambitious lakefront redevelopment effort in decades. Mayor Justin Bibb sees it as an opportunity to undo past planning failures and finally connect the downtown core to Lake Erie. If successful, it would reorient downtown toward the water — a key component of Bibb's "Shore to Core to Shore" development framework — and create new housing, jobs, and cultural destinations in an area long occupied by surface lots and the Browns stadium. Driving the news: The city and its nonprofit development partner, the North Coast Waterfront Development Corporation (NCWDC), issued a formal request Tuesday to solicit interested developers. Developers have until Sept. 19 to submit. Zoom in: The city encourages a mix of uses on the waterfront site between West 3rd and East 9th streets, including retail, housing, entertainment, hotels, and public spaces. The request offers flexibility to repurpose or replace the existing stadium, which the city expects to be demolished in 2029 if the Browns move to Brook Park. Bibb told reporters last week that he hopes the Haslams will be "good corporate citizens" and contribute to demolition costs upon their exit. State of play: The city developed a lakefront master plan over three years of public engagement to identify core values for development, including racial equity, economic opportunity and climate resilience. Between the lines: That work was spearheaded by the landscape architecture firm Field Operations. The current request is for developers to execute on the vision. By the numbers: The city has already secured $150 million in federal and state grants to construct a pedestrian land bridge connecting downtown to the project site. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2027. The city is also offering an array of "incentive opportunities," including residential and commercial tax abatements, TIFs, the Opportunity Zone designation, job creation tax credits and proceeds from a New Community Authority to finance infrastructure and public amenities. The last word: Bibb wrote the 50-acre North Coast site "sits at the intersection of civic pride, economic opportunity, and global ambition" in an introductory letter to developers.
Yahoo
02-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb isn't happy about the Browns' relocation to Brook Park
The Cleveland Browns got what they wanted from Ohio, in the form of $600 million in taxpayer money and a change to the law that would have otherwise kept them from leaving downtown Cleveland for suburban Brook Park. And while the Browns are very happy about the outcome, Cleveland is not. "We are deeply disappointed that the final state budget includes both a $600 million public subsidy for a domed stadium in Brook Park and changes to Ohio's [Art] Modell Law — provisions we strongly opposed and requested be removed," Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb said Tuesday, via "Relocating the Browns will divert economic activity from downtown, create a competing entertainment district, and disrupt the momentum of our lakefront redevelopment." The change to the Art Modell Law allows Ohio teams to move within Ohio. Given that the Ohio legislature created the initial law after the Browns moved to Baltimore in 1996, it seems that there's little room for Cleveland to fight the legislature's decision to change the law. The planned use of unclaimed funds to pay the $600 million to the Browns may become a bigger impediment to the plan. A 2009 decision of the Ohio Supreme Court could provide the basis of a challenge to the plan to tap into the money for the purposes of funding the new stadium. Put simply, "unclaimed funds" are not abandoned. They remain the property of those who have not claimed them. The argument would be that those funds cannot be redistributed by the state for the purposes of building a new football stadium. And so, even as the Browns declare victory and rush forward to make plans for selling season tickets to their new stadium, there's a chance that Ohio will have to scrap the plan to pay the $600 million via unclaimed funds and come up with an alternative approach. The one approach that will never happen is to put the issue to the voters. When the voters have a chance to say whether their money will be used to subsidize the multibillionaire owners of sports teams, the response is usually, "Hell no." As it arguably should be. With the values of NFL teams skyrocketing, why shouldn't NFL teams pay for their own stadiums? The habit of using public funds for such projects feels less like good governance and more like the misadventures of Dennis Moore.
NBC Sports
02-07-2025
- Business
- NBC Sports
Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb isn't happy about the Browns' relocation to Brook Park
The Cleveland Browns got what they wanted from Ohio, in the form of $600 million in taxpayer money and a change to the law that would have otherwise kept them from leaving downtown Cleveland for suburban Brook Park. And while the Browns are very happy about the outcome, Cleveland is not. 'We are deeply disappointed that the final state budget includes both a $600 million public subsidy for a domed stadium in Brook Park and changes to Ohio's [Art] Modell Law — provisions we strongly opposed and requested be removed,' Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb said Tuesday, via 'Relocating the Browns will divert economic activity from downtown, create a competing entertainment district, and disrupt the momentum of our lakefront redevelopment.' The change to the Art Modell Law allows Ohio teams to move within Ohio. Given that the Ohio legislature created the initial law after the Browns moved to Baltimore in 1996, it seems that there's little room for Cleveland to fight the legislature's decision to change the law. The planned use of unclaimed funds to pay the $600 million to the Browns may become a bigger impediment to the plan. A 2009 decision of the Ohio Supreme Court could provide the basis of a challenge to the plan to tap into the money for the purposes of funding the new stadium. Put simply, 'unclaimed funds' are not abandoned. They remain the property of those who have not claimed them. The argument would be that those funds cannot be redistributed by the state for the purposes of building a new football stadium. And so, even as the Browns declare victory and rush forward to make plans for selling season tickets to their new stadium, there's a chance that Ohio will have to scrap the plan to pay the $600 million via unclaimed funds and come up with an alternative approach. The one approach that will never happen is to put the issue to the voters. When the voters have a chance to say whether their money will be used to subsidize the multibillionaire owners of sports teams, the response is usually, 'Hell no.' As it arguably should be. With the values of NFL teams skyrocketing, why shouldn't NFL teams pay for their own stadiums? The habit of using public funds for such projects feels less like good governance and more like the misadventures of Dennis Moore.
National Observer
06-06-2025
- Politics
- National Observer
Mayors are making climate action personal. It's working.
This story was originally published by Grist and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration In the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, Justin Bibb was living in a tight, one-bedroom apartment in Cleveland, Ohio. He couldn't open his windows because his home was an old office building converted to residential units — not exactly conducive to physical and mental well-being in the middle of a global crisis. So he sought refuge elsewhere: a large green space, down near the lakefront, that he could stroll to. 'Unfortunately,' Bibb said, 'that's not the case for many of our residents in the city of Cleveland.' A native of Cleveland, Bibb was elected the 58th mayor of the city in 2021. Immediately after taking office, he took inspiration from the '15-minute city' concept of urban design, an idea that envisions people reaching their daily necessities — work, grocery stores, pharmacies — within 15 minutes by walking, biking, or taking public transit. That reduces dependence on cars, and also slashes carbon emissions and air pollution. In Cleveland, Bibb's goal is to put all residents within a 10-minute walk of a green space by the year 2045, by converting abandoned lots to parks and other efforts. Cleveland is far from alone in its quest to adapt to a warming climate. As American cities have grown in size and population and gotten hotter, they — not the federal government — have become crucibles for climate action: Cities are electrifying their public transportation, forcing builders to make structures more energy efficient, and encouraging rooftop solar. Together with ambitious state governments, hundreds of cities large and small are pursuing climate action plans — documents that lay out how they will reduce emissions and adapt to extreme weather — with or without support from the feds. Cleveland's plan, for instance, calls for all its commercial and residential buildings to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. For local leaders, climate action has grown all the more urgent since the Trump administration has been boosting fossil fuels and threatening to sue states to roll back environmental regulations. Last week, Republicans in the House passed a budget bill that would end nearly all the clean energy tax credits from the Biden administration's signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act. 'Because Donald Trump is in the White House again, it's going to be up to mayors and governors to really enact and sustain the momentum around addressing climate change at the local level,' said Bibb, who formerly chaired Climate Mayors, a bipartisan group of nearly 350 mayors. City leaders can move much faster than federal agencies, and are more in-tune with what their people actually want, experts said. 'They're on the ground and they're hearing from their residents every day, so they have a really good sense of what the priorities are,' said Kate Johnson, regional director for North America at C40 Cities, a global network of nearly 100 mayors fighting climate change. 'You see climate action really grounded in the types of things that are going to help people.' Shifting from a reliance on fossil fuels to clean energy isn't just about reducing a city's carbon emissions, but about creating jobs and saving money — a tangible argument that mayors can make to their people. Bibb said a pilot program in Cleveland that helped low- to moderate-income households get access to free solar panels ended up reducing their utility bills by 60 percent. The biggest concern for Americans right now isn't climate change, Bibb added. 'It's the cost of living, and so we have to marry these two things together,' he said. 'I think mayors are in a very unique position to do that.' To further reduce costs and emissions, cities like Seattle and Washington, D.C. are scrambling to better insulate structures, especially affordable housing, by installing double-paned windows and better insulation. In Boston last year, the city government started an Equitable Emissions Investment Fund, which awards money for projects that make buildings more efficient or add solar panels to their roofs. 'We are in a climate where energy efficiency remains the number one thing that we can do,' said Oliver Sellers-Garcia, commissioner of the environment and Green New Deal director in the Boston government. 'And there are so many other comfort and health benefits from being in an efficient, all-electric environment.' To that end, cities are deploying loads of heat pumps, hyper-efficient appliances that warm and cool a space. New York City, for instance, is spending $70 million to install 30,000 of the appliances in its public housing. The ultimate goal is to have as many heat pumps as possible running in energy-efficient homes — along with replacing gas stoves with induction ranges — and drawing electricity from renewables. Metropolises like Los Angeles and Pittsburgh are creating new green spaces, which reduce urban temperatures and soak up rainwater to prevent flooding. A park is a prime example of 'multisolving': one intervention that fixes a bunch of problems at once. Another is deploying electric vehicle chargers in underserved neighborhoods, as Cleveland is doing, and making their use free for residents. This encourages the adoption of those vehicles, which reduces carbon emissions and air pollution. That, in turn, improves public health in those neighborhoods, which tend to have a higher burden of pollution than richer areas. Elizabeth Sawin, director of the Multisolving Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, said that these efforts will be more important than ever as the Trump administration cuts funding for health programs. 'If health care for poor children is going to be depleted — with, say, Medicaid under threat — cities can't totally fix that,' Sawin said. 'But if they can get cleaner air in cities, they can at least have fewer kids who are struggling from asthma attacks and other respiratory illnesses.' All this work — building parks, installing solar panels, weatherizing buildings — creates jobs, both within a city and in surrounding rural areas. Construction workers commute in, while urban farms tap rural growers for their expertise. And as a city gets more of its power from renewables, it can benefit counties far away: The largest solar facility east of the Mississippi River just came online in downstate Illinois, providing so much electricity to Chicago that the city's 400 municipal buildings now run entirely on renewable power. 'The economic benefits and the jobs aren't just necessarily accruing to the cities — which might be seen as big blue cities,' Johnson said. 'They're buying their electric school buses from factories in West Virginia, and they're building solar and wind projects in rural areas.' So cities aren't just preparing themselves for a warmer future, but helping accelerate a transition to renewables and spreading economic benefits across the American landscape. 'We as elected officials have to do a better job of articulating how this important part of public policy is connected to the everyday lived experience,' Bibb said. 'Unfortunately, my party has done a bad job of that. But I think as mayors, we are well positioned to make that case at the local level.'
