Life on Latitude 41 has Cleveland competitively positioned as a four-season city. That means capitalizing on all of them. Embracing winter isn’t a new phenomenon for Cleveland. Back before doom-and-gloom meteorology we used to have fun in the winters. Millionaires Row used to feature sleigh races down the middle of Euclid Avenue, and citizens from all corners of Cleveland skated outdoors on the frozen lagoons at Rockefeller and Wade parks.
Fun in the four seasons could be a branding opportunity for Cleveland as we celebrate four seasons of professional sports including last year’s American Hockey League (AHL) Championship along with another slightly better known championship team who also defends its title this season at Quicken Loans Arena.
Four-season weather should be a Cleveland selling point, yet, for years, we’ve shied away from the four-season brand when winter arrives while cities four to five latitude lines north of us like Quebec City or St. Paul are making the most of their winter weather and owning the snowy season.
Last year, I had the opportunity to visit Montreal en Lumiere, which was a multi-day winter festival during the coldest month of the year. Montreal was aglow on this particular February weekend as the city hosted Nuit Blanche — an all-day and all-night celebration of Montreal’s cultural institutions with late-night museum and music parties, outdoor skating and a light spectacle like no other. City streets were closed for street hockey and broomball, and zip liners crisscrossed between downtown office buildings. The Old Port was opened for canal style skating between pop-up shops and restaurants. At night local denizens and reveling visitors sipped hot cocoa, cider and champagne and dined by bonfire on traditional dishes like poutine, a Quebec-inspired creation of gravy over fries and cheese curds. Every public building was illuminated with artistic lighting and dynamic pyrotechnics showered the parks.
In between the outdoor revelry, we took in a hockey game with the legendary Montreal Canadians facing off against the Toronto Maple Leafs. This was a city showcasing its culture and celebrating its winter weather. Outdoor programming and city cheer eclipsed the fact that the temperature never climbed above freezing.
Moving south of the Canadian border, Fodor’s Travel recently showcased Seven Quirky American Winter Festivals, from the Walker, Minnesota Eelpout Ice Fishing Festival to the Colorado International Snow Sculpture Championships and the St. Paul Winter Carnival. Next up: Cleveland, Ohio.
The City of Cleveland has the arts and culture, sports and recreation, a history of illumination and the weather to take the plunge on a four-season offering that, yes, celebrates winter. We’ve started our own version of the Winter Classic with exciting outdoor hockey games at Progressive Field. This winter we’ll open two outdoor public skating rinks — on Public Square during Winterfest and in University Circle in conjunction with Holiday CircleFest. On the Rink at Wade Oval, we’ll host everything from demonstrations by Olympic ice skaters and Mite Hockey tournaments to learn-to-skate programs. Our Holiday CircleFest features all-day sleigh rides and ice sculpting. The evening concludes with the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Lantern Procession, which illuminates the possibility of a full Cleveland Nuit Blanche where, like other cities around the world, we could open our doors to all-night cultural offerings amidst brilliant artistic lighting against the winter skies. This precedent already is in place at Terminal Tower, Uptown University Circle and the Port of Cleveland. There’s also a standard for great Cleveland winter festivals.
Brite Winter emerged with exactly the idea to celebrate Cleveland’s winter with a fusion of music, art and winter. Brite Winter now rocks from the West Bank of the Flats in a reimagined winter RiverFest with a band lineup akin to a local South by South West in Austin with a distinctly North by Northcoast brand.
On the city’s near east side, the ever creative St. Clair Superior Development Corporation took stock in its Slovenian Heritage and the fact that Greater Cleveland is home to more Slovenians than anywhere else in the world outside of Slovenia and produced Cleveland Kurentovanje. It’s a winter celebration that now takes place on the Saturday preceding Mardi Gras where paraders don masks and fuzzy costumes to represent the Kurent, a mythical figure believed to chase away winter. But when parading in warm heritage costumes to grog and song, who would want to chase away the winter when we are having this much fun?
From outdoor skating fun downtown and in University Circle and more winter festivals from the Flats to St. Clair, Cleveland is emerging as a four-season city full of winter fun thanks to a foundation of creative ideas. We might build off of our work and package it in a winter carnival destination like Nuit Blanche as yet another four-season reason Cleveland is not to be missed.