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Cleveland

The North Coast Comes Back to Life

Between the coalfields of Pennsylvania and the iron mines of Minnesota, Cleveland flourished as a manufacturing center through the last half of the 19 th century and the first half of the 20 th, making steel and automotive parts, processing petroleum (Standard Oil was founded in Cleveland), and producing energy.   Its good jobs attracted immigrants from all over Europe , as well as African Americans from the South, and by 1940 it was America ’s sixth largest city.

Cleveland ’s decline began in the early 1960s, as factories relocated to the South or overseas.   Even after heavy industry was gone—and the economic benefits with it—the city continued to suffer the environmental consequences of the boom years. The Cuyahoga was so polluted that in 1969 it caught fire, leaving the city with a national stigma.   In 1979 Cleveland became the first American city since the Great Depression to default on its debt.   By 1990 its population had fallen more than 40 percent.

In the 1970s and 1980s, though, City government and local business leaders embarked on a series of farsighted efforts to promote Cleveland and attract investment back to its downtown.   A year-long lobbying effort in 1985 resulted in Cleveland being chosen as the site of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, which opened in 1995.   Business and civic leaders saw 10 years of effort pay off in 1994 with the opening of Gund Arena, home of the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers.   Cleanup efforts begun in the 1970s brought the Cuyahoga up to Federal water quality standards by the mid-1990s and also helped make the waterfront area known as the Flats a nightlife destination.

In the late 1970s, too, the City created a land bank to handle tax-delinquent properties, and made a point of directing the properties to CDCs.   Consistent access to land, and the City's considerable financial commitment (of its own money and the Federal money under its control), helped make Cleveland 's community development industry one of the most productive and best integrated in the nation.   Over the last decade Cleveland CDCs have rehabilitated 7,600 homes and built 6,300 new ones—80 percent of the new homes in the city.