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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 events run by the Coral Company (they are paid
by monthly promotional assesments on all who rent on the
Square), 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 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
some
current issues.
It tries to get people interested in Shaker Square,
whether it be to shop, to dine, or to live here. We try to be
the most responsive website with an interest in the
Square. We believe we are the most heavily visited
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 raised
the funds needed 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. It does a much better job
today.) My
decision was based on
concern for my neighborhood (I've lived here since 1992) and because
having been an entrepreneur, 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 2012 we
started our ninth year on that
basis.
Now this website has more
than 180 pages. Its traffic grows each year. Currently
it welcomes more than 13,000 visitors a month. These
persons find
our pages in three ways:
-
The
businesses on the Square whose sites we link to, link
back to us.
-
The
web pages of many non-profit
organizations link to us.
-
In searches on
shaker
square we are ranked #1.
In September 2007, three
years after buying the Square, the Coral Company
started a website for the Square. We thought we could move
away from displaying
information for all enterprises - but, sad to say,
with the "official" site being out-of-date
for long periods, we
continue to do that too. The possible end of the SHAD.org
website may give us more reasons to continue this
effort.
Your comments and
suggestions are welcome.
Click here.
Thanks for visiting these
pages.
Arnold Berger
March 2012 |
