Cleveland Amphitheater Update, West Side Market Renovation, OLA Auctions: CLE Daily

🌧️ 65°; Occasional Rain

⚾️ Baseball Is Back: Cleveland fans sing "Take Me Home, Country Roads" for Chase DeLauter.

🚗 No More Cars: An outdoor drinking area will close off cars coming down East 4th Street.

🍔 Food Run: Eat at 15 of Ohio's oldest restaurants from Westlake to Warren.

ICYMI: The Michelin Guide will now cover Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Pittsburgh, with its first restaurant selections set for 2027.

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Today's Trivia

What woman started her career as a commercial photographer taking photos of stately homes and steel mills in the Cleveland area, before becoming a legendary photojournalist?

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Bedrock reveals plans for riverfront amphitheater.

Development | By Ken Prendergast, NEOTrans

The developer and operator of a proposed riverfront amphitheater in Downtown Cleveland submitted their preliminary, conceptual plans for the project to the city, revealing the proposed layout and amenities of the planned venue.

Layout: Its plans show the new amphitheater will have upper- and lower-bowl seating, indicating the beginning of a variety of price-segregated audience services, settings and amenities within the venue.

VIP Area: Those holding premium-priced VIP tickets will have a separate entrance at West 3rd and Central Avenue, almost directly below the Lorain-Carnegie Hope Memorial Bridge.

• After VIPs enter, they will have an outdoor VIP drinking and dining area, VIP food and beverage counters and even VIP restrooms.

Shelter: Planned is a stagehouse that will surround and protect the stage from the weather as well as offer gantries for lighting, sound and pyrotechnic effects.

• There are multiple back-stage spaces behind the stagehouse offering artist suites, crew quarters and loading areas for trucks and buses.

The Missing Piece: One important design piece of the proposed venue is how a canopy over the lower bowl could be designed. Right now, there’s a placeholder shape standing in for the as-yet undefined canopy.

• A canopy can be a signature piece of architecture.

• Blossom Music Center is defined by its distinctive, large, sloping slate roof canopy is designed to blend with the natural wooded surroundings of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

Read more about what we know about Bedrock's Riverfront plans.

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🎥 Watch This

Looking to save money? Online liquidation sites like OLA Auction are helping Clevelanders save big on everything from electronics to home decor. With facilities expanding across Northeast Ohio, the sites work like eBay, but auction off returned and overstocked items instead of used goods from single sellers.

Stephanie Haney, host of Sound of Ideas for Ideastream, discusses some of her recent bargains in Cleveland Magazine's new recurring series, CLExplained.

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Talk of the Town

The Cleveland Clinic performs around 300 liver transplants per year. The Clinic's main campus is ranked No. 3 in the nation for liver transplant centers. The Clinic credits the willingness to accept higher-risk transplants and the changes that improved access to more livers.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has expressed "deep reservations" over the Nexstar and Tegna mergers for the Cleveland and Columbus television markets. Nexstar already owns Fox 8 Cleveland and WBNX, and soon WKYC, with a $6.2 billion merger.

The Ohio Supreme Court has found that the City of Cleveland is not liable for the 2019 drowning of William Johnson. Johnson's family brought the lawsuit over whether the city was liable for the death because the lifeguard chose not to sit in an uncomfortable lifeguard chair, opting instead for a folding chair that limited visibility of all the swimmers.

Online sports betting in Ohio could be on the chopping block due to restrictions proposed by Republican state lawmakers. Not only would it ban online gambling, but it would limit the amount of wagering that can be and the use of credit to make those wagers.

Today, Downtown Cleveland buildings like Terminal Tower and Public Square will be lit in blue and orange as NASA Artemis II returns to Earth. The NASA Glenn Research Center tested the Orion spacecraft before both Artemis missions and has monitored its service module since it launched.

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The West Side Market is in the middle of a major transformation.

Food & Drink | By Annie Nickoloff

The West Side Market has towered over Ohio City for more than a century. Now, it’s getting a much-needed facelift in an ongoing $70 million renovation.

• New To the Market: The renovation project is set to add a prepared food hall, courtyard, venue and teaching kitchen.

• Produce Upgrade: In January, the market debuted a refreshed produce arcade, with redesigned vendor stands, refrigeration, an HVAC system and new lighting. Plump vegetables, fruits and fragrant bouquets and herbs are now at eye-level for shoppers to peruse.

• Ongoing Fundraising: While most funds have been raised, Cleveland Public Market Corp. is still collecting a remaining $12 million to finish the entire building by early 2028.

Rosemary Mudry, Executive Director of Cleveland Public Market Corporation: ”Completion of the produce arcade has helped build trust in the project as the community can actually see the vision come to life.”

Up Next: A gut renovation of the basement.

Read more about the West Side Market renovations.

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Yesterday's Trivia Answer

What labor union, headquartered in the Cleveland area to this day, bills itself as the oldest union in the western hemisphere?

Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen

Check back Monday for the answer to today's question.

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From the Editor

The West Side Market is transforming, and so is the neighborhood it lives in. Over the past two decades, Ohio City has become the home to the hottest restaurants, bars, entertainment spaces and apartment buildings in the city. That comes with its fair share of difficulties for longtime tenants, some of which have reinvented themselves in the midst of shifting trends, or have been altogether forced out of the area due to rising rent. I'm glad the West Side Market is getting the attention it needs, and hope for local favorites to stay strong, too. - Annie Nickoloff, Senior Editor