Between the Daugherty/Nance/Price era throwbacks that the Cavs rolled out this season, my awesome new t-shirt, and that I no longer spend an hour of each workday on route 77, I've been thinking a lot about the old Richfield Coliseum. It's probably mostly the t-shirt, really, because I've never had strangers smile at me in such numbers as they do when I wear it out of the house. So what I've been thinking is that I'm sure that these smiles come from more than just nostalgia, but also from the fact that the whole idea of the Coliseum was and remains so uniquely interesting. More specifically, that the Coliseum simultaneously represents the best of what Northeast Ohio is as well as the worst of what it could have been.
As for the best of what the Coliseum represents, I mentioned my old daily commute because, to some degree, I miss it. It's long been one of the things I love about Northeast Ohio, that I can live so close to each of two such distinct cities as Akron and Cleveland, and can get from one to the other so relatively quickly over such a relatively beautiful landscaped forest. Everyone knows the old joke that the distance between any two points in Northeast Ohio is "20 minutes."* And I've noted before that I'm sure it's all even part of what's contributed to the singular absurdity of the survival of the last racist caricature in all of America, right here in Cleveland; that it's so easy to live in beautiful 'country' that's such a short trip away from such a cityscape and that Wahoo represents to so many of us the magic of those first 'trips to the city.' 
So it's hard not to appreciate that "the Coliseum was built in Richfield to draw fans from both of Northeast Ohio's major cities, as nearly 5 million Ohioans lived within less than an hour's drive." In this way, the Coliseum was built to take advantage of the very best of the area. Of course, there's another way to look at this story; which is to conclude, as the Coliseum's Wikipedia entry suggests, that the facility was built to take advantage of 'urban sprawl.'** But isn't it such a fine line between "sprawl" and properly-spaced development?
Thankfully, by the time the Coliseum was built, local legislators had already gone far to contain the threat of damaging sprawl. In an excellent piece on "the rise and fall" of the Coliseum at The Trust for Public Land's website, Lee Chilcote notes that:
The fate of the property [where the Coliseum formerly stood] was but the latest act in a 30-year-old drama. In the 1960s, as suburban development seemed poised to spread for 40 miles between Akron and Cleveland, a group of farsighted civic leaders launched a plan to protect the bucolic Cuyahoga Valley, in the heart of the rapidly developing region. "At that time there were two competing visions for the Cuyahoga Valley," says Chris Knopf, director of the Ohio Field Office of the Trust for Public Land. "In one, the valley was paved over and developed. In the other, the open space was preserved, urban sprawl contained, and a park created for future generations."Of course, even with sprawl contained, there were good reasons to move the Cavs back downtown, but we can save those reasons for another piece. The point here is to remember that as funny as it can be to think of "the Palace on the Prairie," the whole idea of it might have been much-better conceived then we give it credit for. And anyone who was around for those twenty years might remember that it was a hell of run there in Richfield.
To wrap up, a deep bow to John Seiberling, Gund family, Bishop Pilla, Mike DeWine, Ralph Regula, Tom Sawyer, and the Cuyahoga Valley Association, and a quick note on how funny that nickname "Palace on the Prairie" really is. Of course, Richfield's not a prairie at all, but actually, one of the peaks of the Cuyahoga River Valley, and one of the most "mountainous" places in Northeast Ohio. The Coliseum itself was situated just a mile or two from the highest point in Summit County,*** that county having been named for its decidedly un-prairie-like qualities. Here are some photos of the river valley in the areas just surrounding where the Coliseum used to be that help show why we're bowing to the aforementioned folks. These photos were all taken twenty minutes away from downtown Akron, twenty minutes away from downtown Cleveland, and twenty minutes away from one another, naturally:
(David Hill, via AmericanWhitewater.org)
(da Lunatik (nice NEO landscape gallery here))
That's all for now. Maybe a Frowndup this afternoon. Happy Tuesday.
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*The only exceptions to the twenty minute rule are that Cleveland and Akron are forty minutes away from one another, and anywhere in Youngstown is an hour away.
**One of my friends lives in Phoenix and works downtown. He says he rarely goes for beers with his coworkers because they all live 90 minutes away from one another. Sprawl.
***Relatedly, Akron comes from the Greek word ἄκρον meaning "summit." Like as in Acropolis.
Train photo courtesy of the Cuyahoga Valley National Railroad via About.com. Old Coliseum photo courtesy of Don160@aol.com via Hockey.Ballparks.com.












