Cleveland's problems are not just Cleveland's anymore. Many of the suburbs in Cuyahoga County are facing the same issues.
From Cleveland's own planning commission [emphasis added]:
Cleveland is the central city of the nation’s 15 th most populous grouping of metropolitan areas—a seven-county region with a 2000 population of over 2.9 million. However, while the region’s overall population showed only very slow growth during the 1990s, the Cleveland metropolitan area saw a further decrease, as the decades-long trend known as “urban sprawl” continued. The city itself actually lost population at a slower rate during the 1990s than it had in previous decades, ending the century with 478,403 residents (2000 U.S. Census Bureau figure). As outward migration and development continue, it is Cleveland’s inner-ring suburbs that now find themselves facing many of the issues that the City has had to struggle with, including a declining population.
My point is not to knock Cleveland (its own population has done that already by spending the last half a century moving out, farther and farther away), I'm merely pointing out where the CLE flyers live and suggesting that a place nearer them (rather than in the City) might make a better meeting place.
