If you’re talking artist communities in Cuyahoga County, it’s hard to overlook the creative energy that’s bubbling up in Cleveland. Artists are laying down roots in neighborhoods across the city, transforming the appearance of our main streets and finding ways to get engaged in revitalizing our urban core.

Cleveland is full of dense commercial districts showing new signs of life, old industrial buildings converted into modern live/work lofts, hundreds of great restaurants and a buzzing nightlife. It’s also a city of tree-lined boulevards and quiet residential streets with historic single-family homes. In short, it’s a city that’s large enough to provide you with a variety of inspiring settings … but at a fraction of the cost of other large cities.

While you can find artists in every neighborhood in the city, the former Community Partnership for Arts and Culture’s research shows that some city neighborhoods are drawing large numbers of the artistic community:

• Asiatown and St. Clair Superior
• Detroit Shoreway and Gordon Square
• Downtown and the Arts Quarter
• Edgewater
• Kamm’s Corners
• North Shore Collinwood and Waterloo Arts and Entertainment District
• Ohio City
• Buckeye – Shaker Square – Larchmere
• St. Hyacinth and Slavic Village
• Tremont
• University Circle and Little Italy

Like most of the urban centers in the Northeast and upper Midwest, Cleveland is a city of neighborhoods, each with its own distinct culture and character. For artists wanting to locate their home or business in Cleveland, we always recommend getting out and exploring these neighborhoods. Seeing the building stock, visiting commercial districts and talking directly with residents will give you a much better sense of which areas best meet your interests and preferences. Beyond this on-the-ground exploration, there are a number of other resources that can be helpful in your search for space.

Cleveland has one of the strongest networks of community development corporations in the country. These organizations work on the neighborhood level to improve the local economy and quality of life. Almost every neighborhood in the city of Cleveland has an active community development corporation. If you are looking to find out more about a neighborhood, or specific rental or ownership opportunities in that neighborhood, the local community development corporation can be a good first step.

• You can find a comprehensive list of these organizations on the LiveCLEVELAND! website.
• You can find out about additional investments community development corporations are making in the city through Cleveland Neighborhood Progress.

A number of other organizations provide great information for artists searching for space. These range from artist-specific initiatives, like ArtSpace Cleveland and Creative Compass, to more general resources for looking for space in the city:

• LIVECleveland
• Global Cleveland
• Retail Spaces Cleveland

• In addition to the formal initiatives and organizations listed above, a number of informal resources are also available to help you in your search for space within the city. First ask our own community of artists at the Creative Compass Forum. The urban policy forum UrbanOhio is a great place to find neighborhood information and ask questions about where to locate. A number of online neighborhood “tours” are available for Cleveland, including Neighborhood Link’s data-rich profiles and Design*Sponge’s detailed look at a handful of Cleveland neighborhoods. More recently, residents are making more of an effort to launch their own introductions to Cleveland, like the detailed New to Cleveland guide by residents Justin Glanville and Julia Kuo.