City View Shopping Center

[BDFD]

I know cutting & pasting articles without linkage is frowned upon here but I have no idea who the source is nor do I have the time to look for it. I'm guessing it is from the PD or the Sun. But what is your take on this? I have been to that plaza a few times recently and every time it smelled like what a bag of smashed assholes would smell like.

Sparing me the 'Well, they can bury the landfill deep enough and vent the methane and everything will be ok...' comment, why on Earth would you build a shopping center and resturants (resturants?!) on a covered up landfill? Back in the 80's, weren't some ex-Giants players getting cancer at an unusually high rate from having to play in the Meadowlands?

GARFIELD HEIGHTS, Ohio -- A Wal-Mart store in Garfield Heights' City View Plaza has been closed because of health concerns.

The plaza is built on an old landfill and the store has been shut down indefinitely because of safety concerns for customers and associates.

Wal-Mart spokeswoman Tara Stewart said an independent contractor evaluated the building and that Wal-Mart didn't like what the contractor found.

"Whatever it was, structural shift, foundation issues, sewer backup, water main, methane, electrical – lots of different things and to us, wanted to be sure what was going on in the store," said Stewart.

Earlier this month, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency threatened to shut down City View if the owners did not step up monitoring and venting of underground explosive gases.

Wal-Mart told employees Monday that the store was closing. The mayor of Garfield Heights was told a short time later.

A representative told NewsChannel5 that the developer has made progress in making improvements and monitoring the methane gases, and at this point they believe the center is safe.

The EPA said health department officials as well as EPA workers are at the shopping center every day, monitoring the gases, and they believe that the center is safe as well.

Anyone who has prescriptions at the Garfield Heights Wal-Mart can pick them up at the Bedford location, at 22209 Rockside Road.
[url][/url]

[Larvell Blanks]

my wife worked up the hill from there and thankfully she's no longer around there. Each office in her building had to get water coolers because they were told, "it's not a good idea to drink the water from the tap". The routinely had to leave the buiding because of high levels of methane and that building is located 300 yards from the shopping area. You think it smells now, you should have been around that area when they were doing the initial construction.
How anyone gave the green light to that project is beyond me.

[FUDU]

There was controversy over this place from the get go. Methane was a concern, no matter the efforts there was talk that since there was so much more methane seeping out of the ground (due to the landfill) there could be no guarantee that somebody couldn't set the place in flames just by lighting a cigarette outside.

Simple greed is to blame here.

[skatingtripods]

There's a reason that it's referred to as Garbage Heights.

I went to Trinity down by Granger and 480 and on hot days, the smell would just be awful, even as far as there.

There's even a phase two of the project across the street, but that's been halted as well. It's really not all that convenient for me, as I'm halfway between there and Ridge Park Square. There are two Giant Eagles that are closer. But it was convenient for the people in Garfield. It sucks for them because as you go further east out 480, the neighborhoods and shopping centers get worse and worse.

[BDFD]

Yes, I moved away from The Heights (Maple, that is) about 9 years ago but my ace was still living on McCracken (again, in Maple) at the time it was being developed. As far as the center of Maple Heights that rank smell could be smelled when they were razing that landfill. But hey! All the housewives in the Valley driving Hummers had could hang out at Bed Bath & Beyond after The View was over. That was the important thing I suppose.

The hilarious thing is when looking across the road from the main plaza, there is that huge mound. Everyone and their brother knows that that is a landfill, regardless if you are from the area or not. Nothing like eating at Fat Burger and seeing the dirt sarcophogus that is entobming decades of Clevelander's garbage.

Part of me wants the thing to fall flat on it's face and be turned into a DMZ (due to the greed) but at the same time, many would lose their jobs. I dunno...

[WarAdmiral]

A bag of smashed ass holes is a perfect description. I stopped at the Dicks there last winter, and I haven't stopped back since. There was an article in the PD about 4,5 months ago about the history of the land there. Sounds like they need to find a way to trap the gas, and use the energy. I remember watching a program when I was young about some foreign folks using pig shit gas to illuminate their shacks. They might be sitting on a gold mine, if they could figure out how to control it and store it.

[Madre Hill, Superstar]

Three things I'll never understand:
a.) Building a shopping center on top of a landfill
b.) Building a shopping center on top of 150 years of industrial pollution
c.) Building up retail when there is perfectly good retail available not that far away (i.e. the build-up at Broadview and Pleasant Valley while Parmatown and Southland have plenty of empty windows)