CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cleveland needs more curb appeal.
 
That’s the verdict of Positively Cleveland, the city’s convention and visitors bureau, which is launching a citywide effort to improve the area’s gray and crumbling public realm while making it easier to navigate the often-confusing pathways that separate downtown from neighborhoods and outstanding civic and cultural attractions.
 
Now in its third year of research, analysis and planning, the organization’s project is not simply to do a better job of selling the city to convention and meeting planners, but to improve Cleveland as a product capable of attracting more tourism and boosting the local economy.
 
Last month, Positively Cleveland announced a program to train cab drivers, bartenders, concierges, waiters and others who interact with travelers to become better ambassadors for the city.
 
The new thrust on community appearance and navigability – called “Seamless Cleveland,” is part of a larger effort by the tourism group that will include a branding campaign aimed at changing perceptions of the city and Northeast Ohio.
 
“The work of Positively Cleveland ultimately is about bringing more people to Cleveland spending money and creating jobs,” David Gilbert, the tourism group’s president, said Wednesday at an update on the project at the new Aloft Hotel in the new Flats East Bank development.
 
Among the invited attendees were representatives of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority and the Cleveland Museum of Art.
 
“This kind of stuff is really important,” James Kastelic, senior park planner at Cleveland Metroparks, said during the gathering. “If we’re bringing people here from all over the world, it’s really important they know where they are, where the attractions are and how to get there.”
 
Valarie McCall, Cleveland’s chief of government and international affairs, said Gilbert’s project has caught the attention of Mayor Frank Jackson.
 
“If we don’t do these important dot-connectors,” she said before Gilbert’s presentation, “we are doing ourselves a disservice.”
 
Anthony Coyne, chairman of the city's Planning Commission and its new Group Plan Commission, said, "I don't think we're collaborating on signage and way-finding across town. We need to do it."
 
Positively Cleveland initiated its overall effort in 2011 with a tourism summit and followed up by spending $50,000 to $100,000, on research that compared visitor attitudes toward Cleveland to those of Cincinnati, Columbus, Pittsburgh and Milwaukee.
 
Gilbert said that his group’s goal is to maximize recent big investments such as the city’s new casino, convention center and Global Center for Health Innovation. Ultimately, though, he expects the project to improve perceptions about Cleveland to spread across Northeast Ohio.
 
“We expect the full system we’re looking at to be extended throughout the city into neighborhoods and adjoining communities from Shaker Heights and Lakewood to the Football Hall of Fame and Amish country,” he said.
 
Consultants hired by the tourism group since 2011 include MMGY Global of Kansas City, Mo., a tourism and hospitality firm; Applied of London, England, which specializes in mapping and city navigation tools; Thunder Tech, a Cleveland-based Web design, advertising and public relations firm; and LAND Studio, the Cleveland-based nonprofit specializing in design and management of public spaces.
 
At Wednesday’s meeting, Gilbert and representatives of Applied and LAND Studio provided a progress report on the Seamless Cleveland project along with a detailed critique of the city’s appearance and its opacity to first-time visitors. They also provided a rough sketch about what a more visitor-friendly Cleveland might look like.
 
“The city itself isn’t welcoming, it isn’t intuitive, it doesn’t lead visitors from one destination to another,” said planner Michelle Bandy-Zalatoris, who helped prepare the LAND Studio presentation.
 
Too many downtown streets lack trees, are poorly lighted at night, and look empty and lonely much of the time, Bandy-Zalatoris said. This leads to perceptions – usually unjustified – that the area is unsafe.
 
Armed with maps and graphics, she singled out eyesore intersections at major entry points to the city as special liabilities. They included Carnegie Avenue and East Ninth Street, Carnegie Avenue and East 18th Street, Prospect Avenue and East 14th Street and East Ninth Street between the Shoreway and Lakeside Avenue.
 
“There’s a lot of beige in these images,” she said, clicking through slides of streetscapes dominated by concrete. “There’s not a lot that says, 'Welcome to Cleveland' here.”
 
LAND Studio plans to continue its work with Positively Cleveland by testing small-scale, low-cost design projects over the next few years before scaling up to larger and more permanent changes to the city’s streets and public spaces.
 
Tim Fendley and Adrian Bell of Applied displayed short videos showing how Cleveland could make itself more easily understood by visitors arriving from the airport with better information kiosks and Web-based navigational programs.
 
They also suggested that it’s time to consider simplifying place names and institutional titles such as “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.”
 
“Too long,” Fendley said of the Rock Hall’s mouth-filling moniker.
 
Gilbert said after the gathering that Positively Cleveland wants to spend $1 million to $2 million in the next 18 months on small experimental projects that might include pop-up art installations to improve the appearance of surface parking lots and a new base map that could be used by hotels and cultural institutions to help visitors get around the city.
 
The Positively Cleveland effort parallels that of other groups including bike organizations that want to weave trails and bicycle paths across the city and of the nonprofit Downtown Cleveland Alliance and the mayor’s Group Plan Commission, which are designing and raising money to improve Public Square and the downtown Mall.
 
Gilbert said he’s eager to collaborate, and that he doesn’t view the project to improve perceptions of Cleveland to be steered by his organization. Instead, he’s trying to be a catalyst.
 
“This is not Positively Cleveland’s plan,” he said during the meeting. “We’re doing this on behalf of the community. It doesn’t work without engagement of dozens of organizations.”

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