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About This Shaker Square Website

Privacy     Fair Use Notice     Contact Us
 

ShakerSquare.net is an independent website for Shaker Square.

It is not affiliated or supported by the owners of the Square or any organization. I've maintained it since 2004, pro-bono, no ads, no sponsors.

In the beginning

In December 2003, Key Bank, which had loaned $12.7million to finance the Square's 1999-2000 purchase and renovation, took it back from the new owners who could not meet their obligations. I lived near the Square and was amazed to find that it had no web presence. Having built several websites and, as a former small business owner, wanting to help the businesses on the Square, I decided to create a website for Shaker Square, pro-bono. It believed would be a short-term project, for in a few months the Square's new owner or its Merchants Association would take my site over or create their own website. I registered shakersquare.net and got to work.

That was February 17, 2004, more than 20 years ago!

The early years

With the help of wine merchant Gene Veronesi and the cooperation of the business owners, in less than a month this site had a page for each store and restaurant, plus pages on how to get here and where to park. Nearly three years passed before the new owners, the Coral Company, published their website for the Square. By then we had community and history pages: more than 100 pages. More than 10,000 visitors a month came to this site. Other websites linked to it. It ranked #1 on a Shaker Square search, and still does. Click to try it.

The middle years

The Coral Company's website listed the businesses on the Square, and the website of those places showed menus, hours and more. We reduced and then removed our business pages. Our community and history pages grew.

Later years

With the Coral Company and SHAD.org promoting events, this site now focused on history, community links, and support of community initiatives.

2021-22 Putting the Square in strong hands

Before the pandemic The Coral Company, owner of Shaker Square, borrowed more than $10 million (not long-term financing, a loan due in two years), and says it cannot repay the loan. With a foreclosure auction looming, in November 2021 bill 2021-1038 is introduced in Cleveland City Council. It will prevent foreclosure and put Shaker Square in the hands of two experienced non-profits. In April 2022 our ward 4 Council representative gave her support to the bill, which was then approved by Council and signed by the mayor.

Current status

This Shaker Square website now reports news of the re-envisioning and renewing of Shaker Square.

See you on the Square.

Arnie Berger   January 11, 2023

 

About the Webkeeper

Arnold Berger has lived in a condominium near the Square since 1992. 'Arnie' previously lived downtown and before in the Onaway School neighborhood of Shaker Heights. An Industrial Engineer, he worked at Lincoln Electric, earned a PhD at Case, taught at Case, Pitt and CSU, and owned a company that developed applications for law firms and the Cleveland Foundation. In 2016 Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson recognized his community service as webkeeper for Shaker Square. (See proclamation.)

 

 

Privacy

Your right to privacy is very important to us.

When you visit this web site and access information you remain anonymous and no personal information is requested or stored.

If you send us an email, we will use it to reply to you but we do not save or share your email address. If we forward your comment or question to a third party, we cannot be responsible for that third party saving your email address.

Our pages provide many links to other web sites. Since we don't control such linked sites, we encourage you to review their privacy policies.

This site logs activity to show how visitors find our pages, which pages are viewed and how long each visit lasts, but the activity log does not identify individuals. We read reports generated from these logs, but they are summaries with no individual data.

 

Fair Use Notice

This website contains some copyrighted material whose use has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owners.

ShakerSquare.net has made this material available in our efforts to educate our community and to inform visitors on some issues that have a bearing on our neighborhood and its citizens. This copyrighted material is:

  1. A small part of our web content;
  2. An even smaller part of the content of the third party site; and
  3. Is not used for commercial purposes.

We believe this constitutes "fair use" of the material as provided for in section 107 of the United States Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond "fair use" you must get permission from the copyright owner.

If your copyrighted material appears on this web site and you disagree with our assessment that it constitutes “fair use”, please contact us.

 

Contact Us

This site links to many websites. If you find errors on those sites, please contact them — not us. But if one of our links to another site does not work, please let us know. To report errors or to make a comment or suggestion, send an email to arnie [at] shakersquare [dot] net

 
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