Skyline of Downtown Cleveland.
Photo Credit: Marriot.com
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We thought it would never return.
But lo and behold, after 22 years long years, the MLB All-Star game has returned to Progressive Field in a city stripped of its Chief Wahoo logo, replaced by the more diplomatic Block C
First pitch is set for July 9th at 7:30 p.m. EST.
The last time there was an MLB All-Star Game in Cleveland, Cleveland Indians catcher Sandy Alomar Jr. was the toast of the town and the game’s MVP, (the first Puerto Rican named MVP in an All-Star game), when he cracked a two-run home run in the bottom of the 7th to break a tie and propel the American League to a 3-1 win. The win broke a three-year losing streak for the AL. The crowd of 44,916 that night, was the largest in Jacobs Field history.
Interestingly, Alomar, 22 years later, is still in an Indians uniform as a first base coach. In 1997, when he was named to the All-Star team, the older brother of Hall-of-Famer Roberto Alomar, was having a monster year going into the break with a 30-game hitting streak and leading the AL with a .375 batting average.
Since 1997, the makeup of MLB players has grown more diverse. In 1997, for example, foreign born players (born outside of the 50 United States) made up 18.9 percent of MLB’s rosters. In 2019, that has leaped to 28.5 percent.
22 years was a long time ago, much has changed in Cleveland since 1997, the same year Michael R. White was mayor, fighting for a new NFL team (the Browns left Cleveland for Baltimore after the 1995 season); and Bill Clinton, the 42nd U.S. President, was in the White House riding a 55 percent approval rating at a time when few ever heard of a 24-year old female employee of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs and a former White House intern, Monica Lewinsky.
So, assuming someone has been away from Cleveland for 22 years, what exactly has changed in downtown Cleveland since 1997?
Quite a lot, at least according to Curtis Danburg, Senior Director of Communications at the Cleveland Indians.
“In 1997, we [The Cleveland Indians at Jacobs Field] were in the midst of the sellout streak averaging over 42, 997 thousand per night compared with just under 19 thousand per game in 2019.” “The Cleveland Browns,” Danburg additionally pointed out, “weren’t around and the Cleveland Cavaliers were in a down cycle.
Business activity in Cleveland isn't as robust as it was 22 years ago. There are currently three Fortune 500 companies in Cleveland, down from seven in 1997, according to Fortune Magazine.
There were also more active duty Cleveland Police officers in 1997 than there is today. According to Cleveland Police records, there were 1795 officers in 1997. In 2019, there are 1593 officers, 202 less than in 1997.
Since 1997, Progressive Field has sliced about 7,000 seats from its facility (capacity is now roughly 35,225) as it went through a number of renovations, beginning in 2014, which included a two-story bar area that is partially enclosed and an expanded section for children (Kids Clubhouse). A pedestrian bridge and other structures beyond right field were also installed to allow people outside the park to get a glimpse of the field. And in 2016, the Indians unveiled a 59-by-221-foot scoreboard, (the largest in baseball), a season-ticket holder club behind home plate, a beer garden, new concession stands, and a revamped left-field district, among other additions.
In 1997, at the All-Star break, the Indians led the AL Central with a 44-36 record (.550 winning percentage) winning seven out of their last ten and three games ahead of the Chicago White Sox. In 2019, the Indians carry an almost identical record, 45-38 (.542 winning percentage) but in stark contrast to 22 years ago, they are eight-and-a-half games out of first place; though, with still plenty of baseball left, particularly against their division rival, the Minnesota Twins.
What the second half of the season holds for the Tribe in 2019 is anyone’s guess.
We all know what happened in 1997. The Tribe advanced to the World Series for the second time in three years only to have their hearts slashed in Miami Gardens when the Florida Marlins beat the heavily favored Tribe in seven games on a walk-off single slapped by Édgar Rentería in extra innings.
Other changes in Cleveland since 1997?
For starters, the population has shrunk.
The population of Cleveland in 1997 was 498,246; in 2019 it stands at 383,793, a drop of 114, 453 residents, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But with the addition of the Jack Cleveland Casino (which opened in 2012), along with an explosion of bars (219), breweries (13), clubs (57) and two music venues, including the House of Blues, downtown Cleveland has simply been buzzing with an appreciable increase in hotel rooms.
In 1997, according to the Newmark Knight Frank Valuation & Advisory's Hospitality, Gaming & Leisure Group, the last time there was an MLB All-Star game in Cleveland, there were nine hotels. Since 1997, there have been 16 hotels added. As of June 2019, there are a total of 25 hotels ready to be booked in downtown Cleveland, midtown, and University Circle.
Along with more hotels, obviously, comes more rooms. For the 1997 All-Star game there were 2,722 rooms available in Cleveland spanning 9 hotels. Since 1997, there were 3,325 rooms added over 16 hotels. As of today, there are 6,047 rooms available spanning 25 hotels.
Photo Credit: Rockhall.com
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The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, downtown’s Cleveland’s signature museum, on the shore of Lake Erie, has gone through a significant transformation since 1997.
In 1997, the Rock Hall was only in its second year, the same year they unveiled their first major exhibit: “I Want to Take You Higher: The Psychedelic Era, 1965 – 1969,” a stunning display which included artifacts from John Lennon, Eric Clapton, John Sebastian, the Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, and a number of others.
Greg Harris, CEO of the Rock Hall, said that after the initial excitement at the Rock Hall, attendance dipped, albeit remained at steady levels for two decades.
In 2016, according to Harris, “we began a significant transformation to leverage visitor feedback, create new and immersive experiences, and welcome visitors to a space that is true to the power of rock & roll.”
The museum's transformation includes the spectacular Connor Theater, featuring arena-quality sound and larger-than-life screens, an All Access Café with a menu designed by Cleveland celebrity chefs, and a soon to be unveiled highly interactive exhibit, The Garage – a space where visitors can host jam sessions using real instruments and even design their own band merchandise.
Harris additionally points out that "our attendance levels have steadily increased along with these important changes, and now in 2019, our experience is better than ever.”
Another significant transformation in Cleveland since 1997 surrounds the world-renowned Cleveland Orchestra and Severance Hall, a concert hall in the University Circle neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio, located on the campus of Case Western Reserve, about four miles east of Downtown Cleveland, at the corner of Euclid Avenue and East Boulevard.
Severance Hall underwent a full renovation from 1997-2000, a massive renovation, in fact, which changed Severance Hall significantly, including restoring and relocating the 6,025 pipe E.M. Skinner organ, allowing it to be used again during concerts.
The renovation also involved removing the “Szell Shell” (a stage that created a shell in the Danish Modern style, aesthetically at odds with the building’s Art Deco style) and installing a stage shell that better matched the architecture style of the Concert Hall — with improved acoustics, along with restoring the murals in Reinberger Chamber Hall. A full-service restaurant was also added.
Since 1997, there’s has been a change of conductor.
Beginning in 2002, Franz Welser-Möst, an Austrian conductor, replaced Christoph von Dohnány as Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra.
For those who question whether Cleveland can still support a major orchestra with the explosion of audio streaming platforms, such as iTunes and Spotify, you can take comfort in knowing that the financial health of the orchestra has improved markedly since 1997, despite running into challenges stemming from the financial crisis of the late 2000s.
According to Rebecca Calkin, media relations manager at The Cleveland Orchestra, in 1997, there were a small number of households, mostly subscribers, who attended. “Now, we have a much larger number of households visiting us each year,” Culkin says. “This is fueled by our work developing a younger audience (20 percent of our audience is under 25 years old — around 40,000 people).”
"At the close of the 2017-18 year," Calkin continued, "our deficit has been reduced, ticket sales and touring fees are at an all-time high, and our endowment continues to see solid gains and contributions."
Photo Credit: PlayhouseSquare.org
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For theater-goers, there's also been major expansions at Playhouse Square, the theater district in downtown Cleveland, the largest performing arts center in the United States outside of New York.
According to Cindi Szymanski, Assistant Director of Brand Marketing and Communications at Playhouse Square, in 1997, only three of their five historic theaters had been restored (they had a total of six performance spaces). In 2019, by comparison, all five historic theaters have been restored (with a total of 11 performance spaces).
In 1996, the year before the last MLB All-Star game in Cleveland, Playhouse Square welcomed more than a million guests; a number that is still maintained today.
Yet another transformation in Cleveland has been the curriculum of Cleveland State University, a public research university in downtown Cleveland, which was first established in 1964. Many might be stunned if they browsed through the curriculum in the liberal arts department of CSU to see how much it has changed since well into the 20th century.
So many of the standard courses traditionally taught in history, political science, and English departments, to name a few, have been dropped to address the growing demographics and multicultural interests of students, along with the many global challenges of the 21st century.
The drastic transformation of a liberal arts education at CSU has rankled a number of educators.
Roger B. Manning, emeritus professor from the History Department at CSU, says that in his opinion, "it is not a change for the better. British history has disappeared entirely, and there are fewer courses in European history. " "Courses that I used to teach on history of technology, the Industrial Revolution and War and Western Society," Manning explained, “were not thought worth preserving.” “Throughout my career at Cleveland State, I argued for appointing someone in the history of science without success."
Professor Manning went on to argue that "these courses have been replaced with multiple courses on women's history, black history and queer history.” “While these courses might have a place in the offerings of a large department,” he explains, “and may be worthwhile subjects for research, they should not dominate the offerings of a small department.”
Frederick J Karem, Professor and Chair from the Department of English at CSU, takes a different tack when considering the evolution of a liberal arts education.
"From my standpoint, there's a lot that has remained consistent, but there have been exciting expansions--it's a great time to write and to study literature, at CSU and beyond. We still teach Chaucer, Shakespeare, and lots of classic English writers alongside a diversity of American writers, past and present," Karem says. "I taught one of the first seminars at CSU on Toni Morrison, our Lorain-raised Nobel laureate, and I'm sure they've been 100's more throughout the country since then. "
Karem went on to explain that “CSU has always had a multicultural emphasis because of our city's diversity. In the past two decades we've become more global in our focus, exploring literatures and authors that are in increasing contact in our interconnected world, the area of greatest expansion is what we study in the classroom. "
Karem additionally pointed out that besides hard copy books, they now study stories and narratives in many forms, including films, television shows, graphic novels, and digital media, all of which, according to Karem, "have complexity worth exploring."
In 1997, 22 years ago, it’s amazing how much of the future stared us right in the face; but we just didn’t fully comprehend that we were entering a new age, the digital age.
It was 1997, after all, in which Bill Gates, business magnate and principal founder of Microsoft Corporation, became the world’s richest businessman. The same year Yahoo! Introduced Yahoo Mail, while the domain Facebook.com came online on March 28, 1997, the domain Craigslist.com came online on September 24, 1997, and the domain Netflix.com came online on November 10, 1997.
All powerful forces in our lives in 2019.
In May, 1997, 40 million Americans and thousands in Northeast Ohio used the worldwide communications system, the Internet. A month later, in June, 1997, more than one million job openings were advertised on 5,000 Internet sites, estimated John Sumser, editor of Electronic Recruiting News, an on-line newsletter.
1997 was also the year comedian Ellen DeGeneres (starring on the hit ABC sitcom “Ellen”) courageously came out as a lesbian on the cover of Time Magazine (April 14), paving the way for other performers to pursue gay roles on TV without fear of retribution.
It was 22 years ago, too, when Bedford Heights Mayor Jimmy Dimora, a member of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections and chairman of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party, gave serious thought to running for Cuyahoga County Commissioner. NOTE: In 2012, Dimora was convicted of 32 charges, including racketeering, bribery, conspiracy, and tax charges and sentenced to 28 years in federal prison in one of the largest criminal corruption cases in Ohio history.
Finally, in 1997, Tony Grossi of The Cleveland Plain Dealer splashed with page one news (April 21) that Bernie Kosar, 33, hometown hero, after playing 12 NFL seasons, 8 1/2 with the Browns, was retiring from football. His last tour of duty was with the Miami Dolphins. A decision he made so he could "devote his time to business interests and pursue his goal of owning the Cleveland Browns."
The Browns returned to Cleveland (and the NFL) in 1999; but Kosar’s dream of owning the team never came to fruition.
In 1997, nearly 45,000 baseball fans attended the All-Star Game, and another 95,000 participated in Fan Fest activities throughout the weekend, leaving behind an estimated $38 million with hotels, restaurants, taxicabs and shopping centers.
According to Destination Cleveland, the convention and visitor bureau for the Greater Cleveland area, the estimated economic impact for this year’s MLB All-Star week is $65 million and the estimated attendance is over 100,000 guests between Progressive Field and Fan Fest.
So, as visitor’s come streaming into Cleveland in the coming days for the 90th MLB All-Star Game, they’ll be setting their sights on a city with a more vibrant downtown life than was true 22 years ago, more hotels, a bustling casino, an enhanced theater district, more restaurants, breweries, and clubs, to satisfy young and old ready for a good time and watch some baseball in the rock 'n' roll capital of the world.
—Bill Lucey
June 30, 2019
Thanks Bill, Great summary of our Cleveland Indians and the wonderful changes of the city that love ..
Posted by: Randy Barle | 06/30/2019 at 09:20 PM
As a long-time visitor, who covered the Yankees on the road starting in 1962, I felt Cleveland (and Detroit) fading in those years, and preferred other cities. But my 10 years as a news reporter changed my perspective....and now I root for the old cities to hold on, and I am encouraged by the life asserting itself in both Detroit and Cleveland. The great museum and orchestra of Cleveland remain. And the downtown ballpark adds life. I was at those cold games in 1997 WS. Keep going. Enjoy the game.
George Vecsey (ex-Newsday and NY Times)
Posted by: George Vecsey | 07/01/2019 at 10:08 AM