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Think the latest Browns debate was ugly? It was tame by 1996 standards.
History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes, especially when it involves the mayor, City Council and the Cleveland Browns.
by Sean McDonnell, Cleveland.com
January 3, 2026
https://www.cleveland.com/news/2026/01/think-the-latest-browns-debate-was-ugly-it-was-tame-by-1996-standards.html
Revered former Cleveland planning director Hunter Morrison is dead at age 78
by Steven Litt, Ideastream, Dec 16, 2025
Hunter Morrison, Cleveland’s highly respected city planning director from 1980 to 2000, died early Tuesday in his sleep at his home in Silver Spring, Maryland, according to members of his family. He was 78.
Morrison was successfully managing a heart condition, his daughter, Catherine Campbell-Morrison said Tuesday, speaking from her home in Washington, D.C. No cause of death is known, she said. The family will announce arrangements when possible, she said.
Serving under former mayors George Voinovich and later, Michael White, Morrison insisted on design excellence from architects and developers and pioneered early efforts to connect downtown to Lake Erie with the construction of North Coast Harbor.
Morrison oversaw planning for the nationally acclaimed Gateway sports complex, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Key Tower, the East Wing of the Cleveland Public Library’s Main Branch, the revival of Playhouse Square and other pivotal projects of the 1980s and ‘90s.
He left his position in Cleveland when his then-wife, Jane Campbell, a Cuyahoga County Commissioner, launched her successful campaign to become the city’s first and only female mayor in 2001.
Morrison went on to hold influential planning jobs in Youngstown and to lead the 12-county Northeast Ohio Sustainable Communities Consortium, which in 2014 completed Vibrant NEO 2040, the most comprehensive regional plan in a half century.
“He was definitely a legend,’’ Grace Gallucci, the director of the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, said Tuesday in a text.
“His passion for what Cleveland could be, and the physical structure of Cleveland, drove his life,’’ Campbell said, speaking from her home in Cleveland.
Morrison and Campbell divorced in 2008.
“He was imaginative, he was determined we were going to connect to the lakefront, that we were going to have places for people to live at all different economic levels, and that it was going to be the city on the hill, the city on the lake,’’ Campbell said.
During his tenure at Cleveland City Hall, Morrison insisted that architects and developers should bring their A-game to the city.
“That was the message we sent out to everybody,” he told The Plain Dealer in 2020. “You’re building Cleveland. Don’t pimp us, don’t rip us off, and don’t give us junk.”
Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne, who succeeded Morrison as the city’s planning director, said Tuesday that Morrison “never stopped caring about Cleveland.’’
In addition to Campbell and Campbell-Morrison, survivors include Barbara Orton of Silver Spring, Morrison’s longtime partner; daughter Jessica Merrill (Tyler) and their three children, all of Little Rock, Arkansas; brothers Edward Morrison, (Bei) of Simpsonville, South Carolina; and Thompson Morrison, (Mary Beth) of Anderson Island, Washington; and a brother-in-law, Nat Balch, of New Hampshire.
Morrison grew up in Shaker Heights and Pepper Pike before studying city planning and political science at Yale University and earning a master’s degree in urban planning at Harvard University.
He joined the Peace Corps and worked in Nairobi, Kenya and in eastern Nigeria as a town planner in the early 1970s.
After returning to Cleveland in the late 1970s he led Homes for Hough, a subsidiary of the Hough Area Development Corp.
His work in building the first new housing in the East Side neighborhood torn by a riot in 1966 caught the attention of then-mayor Voinovich, who appointed the 32-year-old Morrison as the city’s planning director.
Early in his tenure, Morrison found out that the architecture firm designing the BP Sohio building, now 200 Public Square, had positioned the building so that when viewed from the north on the nearby downtown Mall, it would have been off the centerline axis of one of Cleveland’s major outdoor spaces — a potentially embarrassing mistake on skyline scale.
Morrison convinced Voinovich to have the city buy the property needed to shift the construction site for the tower to the east so that it would align with the central axis of the Mall. Had he not done so, it would have been a huge embarrassment to Cleveland, Ronayne said Tuesday.
“He was a special guy, a big thinker who cared about the details,’’ Ronayne said. “He knew history, and he respected it.’’
Mary Rose Oakar, pioneering Ohio congresswoman, dies at 85
by Sabrina Eaton, Cleveland.com
September 14, 2025
The Cleveland Democrat served eight terms, championed women’s economic rights and secured $400 million for breast cancer research during her congressional career.
The link is here
Did Playhouse Square’s rescue hinge on a magazine picked up at a barbershop?
by John Vacha, Plain Dealer, February 2, 2025
The renovation of Cleveland’s Playhouse Square traces to the late Ray Shepardson’s casual look for reading material while waiting for a turn in a barber’s chair. But what if the previous patron had walked off with that copy of Life magazine five minutes before Shepardson came in for a haircut? Maybe: No deja vu moment, no renovated State and Ohio theaters, possibly no Playhouse Square. Think about it, writes guest columnist John Vacha, author of “Playhouse Square and the Cleveland Renaissance,” published last year by the Kent State University Press.
by John Vacha
https://www.cleveland.com/opinion/2025/02/did-playhouse-squares-rescue-hinge-on-a-magazine-picked-up-at-a-barbershop-john-vacha.html
How a 1963 Cleveland case shaped stop-and-frisk police tactics, and why it still matters
In a State of Access: Ohio Higher Education, 1945 – 1990
by Jonathan Tyler Baker, 2020, Doctor of Education, Miami University, Educational Leadership.
The link is here
In a State of Access is a historical study about the way public higher education in Ohio became both generally accessible to nearly every citizen while also offering elite undergraduate and graduate programs. This project grapples with the question of how national, state and regional factors – from the mid-1940s through the end of the 20th century – influenced the way Ohio’s leaders viewed the purpose of public higher education and influenced whether Ohio’s leaders chose to focus on making public higher education more selective or accessible. State leaders initially balked at the idea of funding public higher education. When they did decide to make the investment, ideological battles, economic stagnation and the state’s budget deficit continually influenced how state leaders viewed the purpose of public higher education. As a result, state leaders never succeeded in building a system of public higher education that reflected a clearly defined, well-organized purpose. This dissertation is the first full-length study about contemporary public higher education in Ohio and one of the few case studies of any state’s system of higher education. As the public and politicians at the state and national level pay more attention to the accessibility of higher education, and the role of a college degree in a globalized, service economy, a case study of Ohio helps us to better understand why public higher education is still struggling with problems over access.
Diocese of Cleveland
Anthony Pilla, Bishop of Cleveland Catholic Diocese for 26 Years, Dies at 88
by Sam Allard, Cleveland Scene 9/22/2021
The link is here
Cleveland.com article (firewall)
Bishop Anthony M. Pilla, Cleveland native who guided Northeast Ohio Catholics for quarter-century, dies at 88
by David Briggs
The link is here
The Mike White Years by the Journalists Who Covered Him
Wednesday, October 21, 7pm via Zoom
with panelists:
Brent Larkin, The Plain Dealer
Tom Beres WKYC-TV (retired)
Leon Bibb, WKYC-TV, WEWS-TV
Moderated by Mark Naymik, WKYC Channel 3 – Cleveland
The recording is here:
The 1990s in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio were molded by 3-term Mayor Michael R. White (1990-2002). Changes to the Cleveland Public Schools, Gateway stadium (and stadiums in general), the Browns, the airport, and many other decisions were made that are impacting the region to this day. Hear from the journalists who covered Mayor White as they look back 20 years later.
Sponsored by Cleveland History Center, Siegal Lifelong Learning Program at Case Western Reserve University, League of Women Voters-Greater Cleveland
Photo: Plain Dealer
CLEVELAND, Ohio — It was one of the largest public corruption probes in Cleveland history. Allegations arose that influential people received tens of thousands of dollars in bribes, which turned into millions’ worth of government contracts.
It was also years before the local pay-to-pay political atmosphere came to light through another, more well-known probe into Cuyahoga County’s government.
The FBI’s investigation into Cleveland began in 2002 and led to convictions against eight people. Leading the pack was Nate Gray, a connected businessman and longtime confidant to former Cleveland Mayor Michael R. White who was released last month from federal prison.
Read more here:
The link is here
1979 CSU
Left to right councilmen Richard Harmody, Michael Zone, George Forbes. 1964 CPL
George L. Forbes was the longest and perhaps most powerful City Council President in Cleveland history, serving from 1973 – 1989. He was interviewed for Teaching Cleveland Digital on August 21, 2013. This is part six of a multi-part interview with Mr. Forbes and covers the 1980s when he was President of Cleveland Council, his relationship with Mayor George Voinovich and his campaign for Mayor in 1989. Produced by Michael Baron. Cameras by Jerry Mann and Meagan Lawton, Edited by Meagan Lawton, Interviewed by Brent Larkin.
