MGK Day Dominates Weekend: CLE Daily

🌤️ 83°; Humid, Thunderstorms

🎡 Fair Game: The 129th Cuyahoga County Fair opens Tuesday and runs through Aug. 16 in Berea/Middleburg Heights, debuting a "Fair Nights, Enchanted Lights" drone-and-fireworks show alongside the Sunday demolition derby, harness racing and the midway.

🚧 Orange Barrel Season: Ohio's 2026 road-construction season is breaking records at an estimated $3.4 billion, ODOT says, including 231 Northeast Ohio projects worth $891 million. The biggest local job is the $328 million rebuild of Downtown's Central Interchange (I-90 at East Ninth), running through 2032. 

🏟️ Fixer-Upper: Fresh off a $200 million-plus renovation, Progressive Field now needs "urgent" repairs its makeover didn't cover — six aging elevators, a crumbling East Ninth Street pedestrian ramp and leaking hot water tanks — and landlord Gateway is deferring other work to afford them. At the same time, it waits on state grant money.

ICYMI: More coffee for the West Side — Dahlia Coffee opens a second location Sunday, Aug. 16 in Old Brooklyn (4855 Broadview Rd.), where owner Natalia Alcazar's Central American-focused roasts get more room for made-to-order breakfast sandwiches, local-vendor pop-ups and later hours. The original in Cudell stays put. 

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Trivia Question

This Cleveland-area manufacturer held half the market share for coffeemakers in the 1970s — thanks in no small part to TV ads featuring former baseball star Joe DiMaggio.

Music: MGK Day filled the weekend with Machine Gun Kelly's entertainment. 

By Annie Nickoloff 

It was originally meant to be the final MGK Day on Saturday. But the plan has maybe changed, according to Machine Gun Kelly, aka Colson Baker — and you can thank Cleveland weather for that.

• Total Downpour: Just a few songs into his grand finale set, intimidating gray clouds loomed over the festival grounds at North Coast Yard, and soon broke into sheets of rain. Baker crammed in a hurried version of his song “Wild Boy” during the downpour. Gusts of wind tugged protective tarps off of stage equipment and electronics.

• Dedicated Fans: While many attendees rushed out of the venue, others danced in puddles and crowded closer to the stage, waiting for the artist to return, chanting: “MGK! MGK!”

• End of an Era? After the rain stopped, Baker returned to the stage to sing an acoustic version of "Cliche" and apologized for the weather. He also hinted that he had originally planned for the 2026 festival to be the final MGK Day (though, that may have changed).

Colson Baker: “It’s so bittersweet. This might have been — might be — the last MGK Day that we do. Maybe the silver lining is, there’s no f***ing way I’m going out like that, so we might have to run this back next year.”

• MGK Weekend: Remember: “MGK Day” has always been a bit of a misnomer. Pre-shows, afterparties, emo night karaoke, motorcycle rides, skate trick contests and more compiled a Thursday-through-Sunday marathon of entertainment. Many of the side events took place at Shooters and 27 Club, two restaurants owned by Baker.

Check out our photos and read more about the 2026 edition of MGK Day.

Talk of the Town

Cleveland's job market is holding up. The metro's unemployment rate dipped to 3.3% in June — below the national rate and lower than 80% of U.S. metros — with 5,300 jobs added over the past year. The caveat: a steady job picture doesn't necessarily ease household budgets. 

$7 million to make homes lead-safe. Cuyahoga County's Board of Health opened a new grant to remove lead paint from up to 295 homes in 19 inner- and outer-ring suburbs — up to $10,000 per home, first-come through March 2030, for pre-1978 homes with a child 5 or under.

Trump's coming to town for the Patriot Games. Geneva's Spire Academy hosts the inaugural White House-backed Patriot Games Aug. 9–11 — a youth-sports showcase bringing one male and one female athlete (ages 14–17) from all 50 states to compete for $250,000 in scholarships, streamed on ESPN, with President Trump expected to appear.

Two Cultural Gardens get a refresh. The Cleveland Landmarks Commission signed off on upgrades in Rockefeller Park: the Syrian garden will restore its Nizar Qabbani bust (in sturdier, weather-resistant stone) and add a bust of the ancient queen Zenobia, while the Korean garden builds a pedestal for a King Sejong statue, with about $400,000 of its $600,000 goal raised.

Ohio's measles outbreak keeps growing. State health officials now count 45 measles cases in 2026, up from just 15 a week earlier — concentrated in Geauga (13), Tuscarawas (8) and Ashtabula (7), with five hospitalized. Two MMR doses are about 97% effective.

Development: Sherwin-Williams is quietly moving on a second headquarters tower.

By Ken Prendergast, NEO Trans 

The wait-and-see is over. For two years, Sherwin-Williams executives said they'd decide on a second downtown tower once they saw how employees actually filled the new campus. Since the May 11 ribbon-cutting on the 36-story HQ1, they've seen enough — and sources tell NEOtrans the company has started gathering costs, designs and materials options from architects, engineers and builders for HQ2.

• The Site: A 1.3-acre, company-owned parcel at the northeast corner of West Superior Avenue and West 6th Street — the exact spot Sherwin-Williams penciled in for future expansion when it sought city approvals for the campus back in 2021.

• The Shape of It: The working concept is 12 to 24 stories of offices stacked on a multilevel parking garage. A six-level garage under 12 floors would put HQ2 around 250 feet; an eight-level garage under 24 floors would push it to roughly 450 feet — in the neighborhood of One Cleveland Center, the city's sixth-tallest building.

• Why a Garage Is the Whole Point: The single loudest complaint among the roughly 3,000 HQ employees is parking. The campus garage holds just 920 spaces because it was designed for a hybrid workforce. This year, Sherwin-Williams is enforcing a return to the office five days a week. The math stopped working.

• The Twist: Even so, there are fewer Sherwin-Williams people in Cleveland than a year ago — hundreds fewer employees after a hiring freeze and senior buyouts, plus as many as 600 fewer contract workers, mostly in IT, who didn't follow the return-to-office mandate. What's driving HQ2 is less raw headcount than a renewed hiring push, tight floor plans and the slow, tedious work of shuffling teams between floors.

• Can They Afford It? They just spent $860 million on HQ1 and the Morikis Global Technology Center in Brecksville, and the company's debt-to-equity ratio runs about double its competitors'. But there's a playbook: three years ago Benderson Realty bought a 90% stake in the HQ campus for $210 million and leased it back. The HQ2 parcel wasn't part of that deal — leaving it available for the same trick.

The Caveat: None of this is official. Sherwin-Williams didn't comment; its VP of global corporate communications is out of the office until Aug. 11. The reporting rests on two sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Big Picture: Downtown's west end is already rearranging itself around this campus — the state paid $12 million for a nearby parking lot, K&D is converting the Rockefeller Building into 275 apartments with a 500-space garage, and the 144-year-old Gilman Building is up for sale with demolition a real possibility. A second Sherwin-Williams tower would be the biggest domino yet. 

Read the full story.

Things to Do This Week

Foo Fighters at Huntington Bank Field (Aug. 10): With new music and old hits, the Foo Fighters are bringing their Take Cover tour to Cleveland this week. They are joined by Queens of the Stone Age for a full night of rock and roll. 5:30 p.m., $54-$194, 100 Alfred Lerner Way, Cleveland, huntingtonbankfield.com

Feast of the Assumption (Aug. 13-14): One of the most highly anticipated events of the summer is taking place this week. Little Italy is hosting its 127th Feast of the Assumption. The historic neighborhood will be absolutely overflowing with visitors eager to eat some delicious food, dance to some lovely music and immerse themselves in the Italian-American culture. This event goes through Sunday, for a full weekend of pasta, cannoli and family. Thu. 6 p.m.-10 p.m., Fri. 6 p.m.-11 p.m., Free, 12021 Mayfield Road, Cleveland, holy-rosary.org 

Progressive Field Rock ‘n’ Blast (Aug. 14): This Friday, the Guardians begin a homestand against the San Diego Padres. But the game is not the main event this time. Friday is also Rock ‘n’ Blast, the biggest and best fireworks show of the summer. Fireworks will shoot off from all around the stadium with synced-up music for a massive, near half-an-hour display that is sure to rock! This unforgettable experience is available only this Friday and Saturday. 7:10 p.m., $25-$155, 2401 Ontario St., Cleveland, mlb.com

Friday's Trivia Answer

Totaling $6.5 million in labor and $1.7 million in materials, what Cleveland freeway was the largest Works Progress Administration project in the nation? The Cleveland Memorial Shoreway

Check back tomorrow for the answer to today's question

From the Editor

MGK Day was a fun event, with a ton of people heading Downtown to enjoy it. The roller skating rink, vendor village, local food truck options and atmosphere were all great, and it showed a lot of promise and vision for a festival-friendly future of Cleveland's lakefront.

However, before the rain, it was hot and humid. Like others, I was bummed to find no water refill stations once I was inside, and I struggled to find (and buy) a bottle of water as supplies ran low.

This isn't the only time I've run into hydration issues at a Cleveland event; it seems some venues have increasingly limited their availability of free water. This really bugs me. Concerts — especially when they're outdoors — can be intense experiences and can turn dangerous when folks get dehydrated. I hope that, if the fest returns, it fixes this issue.

 — Annie Nickoloff, Senior Editor

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