Letter: Heights Arts urges support for FutureHeights as CH's CDC

To the Editor:

Just after the turn of the millennium, two grassroots organizations formed in Cleveland Heights, each with a mission to help the Heights area thrive by making the most of the unique attributes of our area. One of those groups was Heights Arts (of which I am the second executive director); the other FutureHeights.

While Heights Arts set about leveraging the community’s unusually rich resources in the arts to enhance the quality of life here, FutureHeights concerned itself with promoting a vibrant and sustainable future for Cleveland Heights and University Heights through innovative ideas and civic engagement, with special attention to commercial and residential districts and community planning. Our two organizations have often worked closely together on projects ranging from public art, to neighborhood music offerings, to streetscape design, even a pop-up holiday store featuring local artists—an idea which would evolve into the current Heights Arts Gallery.

Like the leaders of FutureHeights, we at Heights Arts are passionately committed to the things that make our community great, and we are also aware that we all face challenges common to many older inner-ring places. Those challenges require both creative solutions to specific problems and broadly coordinated strategies—a combination of thinking and expertise that FutureHeights has come to embody over the years. When FutureHeights declared its intent to take on the role of Community Development Corporation (CDC) for Cleveland Heights, the board of directors of Heights Arts quickly affirmed the concept by approving a resolution supporting the idea.

An active and innovative CDC can play a major role in building the commercial and social strength of a neighborhood, and we at Heights Arts think the casting of FurureHeights as the CDC for our town is perfect. We urge our neighbors in the Heights area to support FutureHeights as our new CDC.

Rachel Bernstein

Rachel Bernstein
Executive Director of Heights Arts

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Volume 10, Issue 6, Posted 10:36 AM, 05.30.2017