A CoolTown block in Ohio (Part 2)

Continuing Ben Ezinga’s story from yesterday:

“It’s a sustainably-designed mixed-use building with some great retail and restaurants lined up for the first floor, and 49 mixed-income condos and apartments for rent, a mixture of live/work and loft-style.

Oberlin’s a funny little creative, artsy college town with a lot of great history, architecture, and ideas, way out in the middle of northeast Ohio farmland.  Every year it’s refilled with bright, idealistic young people, but until recently very few of us have seemed to stay here after graduating to apply what we’d learned.  There’s some real progress starting to be made here, and it’s fascinating to be involved in the organic emergence of a cooltown while reading about how other cities are trying to plan to become cooltowns.”