This is an independent website for the Shaker Square neighborhood in Cleveland. We are not affiliated with the Coral Company nor with our neighborhood development corporation, SHAD.

Those who have visited these pages over the years know we have always helped promote Coral Company-sponsored events, welcomed new businesses, publicized improvements, and supported SHAD programs and events.

To some, Shaker Square is four old buildings and the land between them. But to me and to many thousands of others, it is a neighborhood — it is our neighborhood.

This website's mission is to serve those who live or work near the Square by providing information on what's going on at or near the Square, its rich history, and the current issues. It tries to get people interested in Shaker Square, whether it be to shop, to dine, or to move here. We try to be the most responsive website with an interest in the Square. We believe we are the most heavily visited Shaker Square site. We know we are the one top ranked by the search engines.

We went online in February 2004, a dark time in the life of the Square. KeyBank, which had helped finance the 1999-2000 purchase and renovation, had taken ownership back from the new owners. Several months later they selected the Coral Company's offer to buy the Square but a few months would pass before the Coral Company was able to close the deal.

I started this site after learning that the Square had no website. (SHAD, our neighborhood development corporation, had a ten page site, but it did not cover the Square and its events in any detail.) My decision was based on concern for my neighborhood (I have lived here for many years) and because as a former small business owner I could relate to what its business owners were experiencing.

During the next few months this site grew to 40 pages. It was a "pro bono" project, but I believed that soon the Square's new owner or the Merchants Association would offer to support it or even to take it over. That did not happen, so I've kept this website going as an independent effort. In February 2008 we start our fifth year on that basis.

Now this website has more than 100 pages. Its traffic grows each year. Currently it welcomes more than 12,000 visitors a month. These persons find our pages in three ways:

• Many businesses on the Square reciprocate for our link to their website by linking back to this site.
• The web pages of many civic, cultural and educational organizations in Greater Cleveland link to us.
• They search on shaker square. We are ranked #1 by all major search engines, including Google™ and Yahoo!™.

In September 2007 the Coral Company started a commercial website for the Square restaurants, merchants and business tenants. Though we still list basic information for all enterprises, we are now able to devote more time to expanding this site's role in community information and service.

Your comments and suggestions are welcome. Click here.

Thanks for visiting these pages.

Arnold Berger
April 2008