The I-X Center Is Back, Thanks to Haslam Sports Group: CLE Daily

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🎒 Meet Your Teacher: CMSD's Back-to-School Meet and Greets run today and tomorrow at schools across the district, ahead of the first day of classes Aug. 24. 

☀️ Sundown Countdown: Cleveland's last sunset after 8 p.m. until 2027 is just days away. Monday, Aug. 31, the sun will set at 8:01 p.m. The sun won’t set after 8 p.m. again until April 9, 2027.

🏀 Cavs Tickets Drop Today: Single-game tickets for the Cavaliers' 2026-27 season go on sale to the public at 9 a.m., with the home opener set for Oct. 24 against Brooklyn. 

🚨Wing Week: Cleveland Wing Week — today through Aug. 23 — is your chance to compare chicken wings from all around town, with more than 25 restaurants offering $10 wing specials.

ICYMI: Inside Mediahead, Rob Kvasne is reliving his Video Game Connection days — shelves of Game Boys, Segas and PlayStations, and once upon a time, a $1,149.95 copy of "Bubble Bobble Part 2." 

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Trivia Question

Cleveland-area Congressman Robert Sweeney was the last Ohioan to hold this title, which was made obsolete by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Things To Do: Trade Shows will return to The I-X Center, thanks to Haslam Sports Group.

By Annie Nickoloff

The I-X Center announced that it will open its doors for trade and consumer shows once more. The announcement follows a new leasing agreement with the Haslam Sports Group.

Returning shows:

• Cleveland Boat Show (Jan. 14-17)

• Cleveland Auto Show (Feb. 26-Mar. 7)

• Great Big Home + Garden Show (Jan. 29-Feb. 7)

• Ohio RV Show (Sept. 10-13)

• Cleveland Christmas Connection (Nov. 20-22)

Lisa Vo, I-X Center general manager: “We are pleased to continue delivering the high-quality events and experiences our clients and attendees expect, backed by the operational excellence that has defined the I-X Center for decades.”

How it happened: Michelle Burke, president of the Ohio Marine Trades Association, which hosts the annual Cleveland Boat Show, says that the Haslam Sports Group reached out to her in 2025, after trade shows were told they were shutting down at the I-X Center, with interest in hosting future trade shows at its new Huntington Bank Field domed stadium being constructed in Brook Park. Burke is the one who suggested renting the I-X Center so that trade shows could remain “strong and solvent for the future” before moving to the dome in 2030.

Michelle Burke: "The Haslams saved the consumer and trade show industry for this region; really, for the state of Ohio. This was the largest book of shows in one place in the entire state of Ohio, and they saved that."

Looking ahead: The I-X Center building is still being marketed for future manufacturing-based redevelopment while the events take place, according to a news release. In a City Club discussion in June, before the deal was approved, Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb hinted at plans of redeveloping the I-X Center.

Mayor Justin Bibb: “I was talking to a site selector, one of the best site selectors in the world, and they're targeting the I-X Center for a massive company to potentially come to Cleveland. If this deal passes, our city council will get 215 acres of land back to our control, all the I-X Center back to our control, and now I have the I-X Center … and that acreage to market and sell to companies around the world to choose Cleveland as their home.”

Read the full story.

Talk of the Town

Ohio's governor's race is a dead heat. Polling on Vivek Ramaswamy vs. Amy Acton has swung within a point or two either way all month, with Ramaswamy better known statewide (80% name recognition) but more polarizing than Acton, the state's former pandemic-era health director. 

Ohio lawmakers are drafting bills to rein in Flock cameras statewide. Following weeks of local uproar, including Monday's packed Cleveland Heights council meeting, Republican legislators in both the House and Senate are writing bills to regulate the license-plate readers, addressing data retention and outside-agency access.

Cuyahoga County voters will decide on a health and human services levy hike. Council unanimously agreed to put a 2.5-mill increase on the November ballot, which is about $87.50 a year per $100,000 of home value, while shelving a separate plan to make the county sheriff an elected position. 

Cleveland leads the nation in arts funding, but the model's running low on runway. A new Assembly for the Arts study warns that the public and philanthropic dollars propping up the region's cultural institutions aren't a sustainable long-term fix. 

Two of Cleveland's biggest highway projects hit milestones this month. The first phase of ODOT's I-77 widening wrapped Aug. 1, while the $61.9 million I-490 rehab and the newly broken-ground I-90 Innerbelt Central Interchange project keep reshaping the West 7th/Broadway interchange through the next several years.

FirstEnergy says it has to replace Lakewood's entire power grid — and it'll take up to nine years. CEO Brian Tierney told a Crain's Cleveland Business event Wednesday that the century-old system serving Lakewood and Cleveland's far West Side is "too old," "not reliable," and "at capacity," with a full rebuild costing hundreds of millions of dollars. 

Arts & Culture: Doriyan Coleman teaches analog photography in a digital world.

By Annie Nickoloff 

When Doriyan Coleman hands out instant cameras to young students, he’s giving many a taste of photography that they haven’t experienced before. “Most of these kids, their first exposure to photography was an iPhone, so there’s no buttons. It’s just a slick screen," Coleman says. 

• Teaching Film: Now, as University Circle’s artist in residence, he teaches all-ages classes centered around analog photography, where students use instant cameras that print and develop pictures in their hands.

• Street Photography: The self-taught photographer picked up a digital camera about eight years ago and published his first book earlier this year. Where We Call Home collects 60 photos centered in Cleveland, plus a few shots in Columbus and Chicago.

• Analog All The Way: In his roles as an artist and teacher, Coleman has seen a rise in interest not in the newest camera equipment, but also backward in time. Earlier models of film cameras and discontinued film have big audiences among photographers looking for specific film grains and character to their shots. Beyond film photography, compact digital cameras of the 1990s and 2000s have also resurged in popularity for Gen Z photographers seeking nostalgic styles of photos that can be taken without using smartphones.

Doriyan Coleman: “A lot of manufacturers have switched to, ‘How do we get the cleanest, most lifelike thing possible?' You’re not always trying to do that with a painting or a photograph. Where one person might see a restriction, somebody else sees character.” 

Read more about Doriyan Coleman in our "going analog" series.

Yesterday's Trivia Answer

Before becoming the Indians, the Cleveland baseball team was called the Naps in honor of which Hall of Fame player-manager? Napoleon Lajoie

Check back tomorrow for the answer to today's question

From the Editor

Good news for a change on the I-X Center front. A few months ago, it looked like the region's biggest trade shows — the Boat Show, Auto Show, Home + Garden Show — might not have a home. Instead, thanks to a deal between the Haslams and the building's tenants, they're all coming back, at least through 2030. Worth remembering: sometimes the win for a city isn't landing something new; it's not losing what's already working.

— Ron Ledgard, Managing Editor

Have a story idea? Tell us what we should cover at conversation@clevelandmagazine.com.

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