"There's no place like home."
Dorothy said that in the story of "The Wizard of Oz" when she clicked the heels of her shoes three times and dreamed of finding a way back home. Dorothy's home was the place of comfort and safety. As in "The Wizard of Oz," Mayor Frank Jackson appears to be clicking his heels three times and dreaming of returning a Cleveland neighborhood to the "home" that it once was, and can be again.
It is the Glenville neighborhood which is the object of Mayor Jackson's heel-clicking. His footwork gets my applause. Glenville is my ancestral home. It and this city are part of my history and hole my dreams for the future.
I have not lived in Glenville for many decades, but I know it is in desperate need of revitalization. Yesterday, the city announced the neighborhood was part of Cleveland's Neighborhood Transformation Initiative, which is promoting a partnership of public money and private enterprise. Planned are 63 mixed-income apartments and commercial businesses, as well as help for some senior residents who need to upgrade their homes.
This plan is a shot in the arm to upgrade Glenville, which has seen huge swaths of abandoned houses and boarded-up commercial buildings. The neighborhood is a far cry from the Glenville of my 1950s and 60s youth where there were hardware, clothing, furniture and shoe stores, movie theaters and used and new car lots. Just memories now.
My old family photograph albums help tell a story. When my parents moved us into a home just off East Boulevard and Martin Luther King Drive, my family was comfortable and hopeful. Although there was crime, it was certainly not at the level we see today. For me, it was home and safe and it helped me grow up. Good schools, strong businesses, a good life. Other Cleveland neighborhoods have similar stories.
City Hall also has plans throughout the city. Some have long been underway. More are coming. It is hard work rebuilding a city. But with vision, investment, muscle and sweat, block by block Cleveland can be rebuilt.
Glenville is a vital key to Cleveland. It is nestled just north of the burgeoning University Circle, a hub for medicine, education and culture.
The push is on. Mayor Jackson is clicking his heels. But it will take more than wishes based on one's footwork in magical shoes.
Investment money is key in a pioneering effort. The land is there, and it needs cultivation with seeds of growth put in fertile soil. Glenville is the same soil in which I grew from infancy into adolescence and into my early years of adulthood. Like Dorothy, like Mayor Jackson, I'm clicking my heels, too. There is no place like home. I'm Leon Bibb.
