When my plane touches down in Cleveland for the ASAE Annual Meeting & Expo in early August, it will be my homecoming. It was there, in that Northern Ohio city on Lake Erie, that my journalism career took off. Many decades have passed, so I’m a now prodigal son of what’s often called The Land, a nickname from the city’s hip-hop scene. (NBA legend LeBron James, who has been leading the U.S. Olympic men’s basketball team in Paris, is another prodigal son, and he calls it The Land—so, that’s good enough for me.)
Back when I was a young reporter at the Cleveland Plain Dealer—isn’t that the coolest name for a newspaper?—and later at Cleveland Magazine, the local electric company’s marketing slogan was Best Location in the Nation. Sheer hyperbole, but so was its antonym of Mistake on the Lake.
These days, make no mistake, Cleveland is on a major roll. It’s on hosts of “best of” and “must see” lists, and if you’ll be at ASAE Annual, too, you’re going to love it.
Here are a few reasons why.
Where We’ll Meet
LEED Gold-certified Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland, as part of a $49 million upgrade with a grand opening just in time for ASAE, will boost available space from 475,000 sq. ft. to 553,000 sq. ft. The grand renovation adds a 12,000-square-foot covered outdoor terrace with views of downtown. One of its ballrooms doubles in size, and across the property, visitors will see new infrastructure, including meeting room tech.
Where We’ll Play
On the evening of Aug. 12, a benefit for ASAE Research Foundation boogies to the city’s most famous attraction, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame—known to Clevelanders as Rock Hall—which attracts roughly half a million visitors a year. The iconic 1995 building designed by I.M. Pei, one of America’s greatest 20th-century architects, is bursting at the seams with its collection of priceless rock history, and late last year it broke ground once again with a $135 million-plus expansion designed by one of today’s best-known architects, Vishaan Chakrabarti, founder and creative director of New York-based PAU, the Practice for Architecture and Urbanism.
A new wing will echo Pei’s vision and increase the museum’s footprint by a third. Other upgrades are aimed at making Rock Hall even more inviting and memorable. Construction will be ongoing until late 2025 or early 2026, but without major disruption in the original hall.
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On the last night of ASAE, the closing celebration heads down to the Flats East Bank Entertainment District. I remember the Flats as a gritty area with an Industrial Revolution-vibe and a smattering of beer joints and party bars edging the serpentine Cuyahoga River, deftly navigated by giant freighters on their way to and from the steel mills. Those were the days when the river was so polluted it caught fire.
But long before the Seine in Paris, the Cuyahoga was cleaned up and today is used for boat tours, recreational boating and kayaking—and the always-high-drama freighter traffic.
The Flats is a booming fun zone, a worthy salute to the Cleveland music history that has transpired there over the years. One of the earliest of those hot spots, the Cove, opened in the early 1970s in a former warehouse where John D. Rockefeller started his first business. Other Flats clubs hosted groups like Jane’s Addiction, Red Hot Chili Peppers and R.E.M. before they broke into the arena circuit. Not to mention, the Flats was and remains home to a parade of nationally known as well as regional country, rap and hip-hop artists.
Of course, the city’s most incandescent musical moment never happened. That would be the scene in Rob Reiner’s “rockumentary” classic, “This Is Spinal Tap,” when his spoof of a heavy metal band, hopelessly lost in a labyrinthine backstage maze, shouts out, “Hello, Cleveland! Hello, Cleveland!” to the muffled roars of the unseen crowd.
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Where to Eat & Drink
Cleveland’s culinary scene has more than kept pace with other reinvented rustbelt cities. Some of the best restaurants are downtown, like Cordelia in the Warehouse District, where chef-partner Vinnie Cimino was nominated for a James Beard Award for his “modern grandma” concept of sourcing locally and creating new riffs on Midwest standards.
Another standout, Fahrenheit, moved to Public Square, the heart of downtown, last year to be “the sexy, chic spot to impress a date, land a client, celebrate a major life event or just treat yo’self,” in the words of a local food writer.
At The 9, beneath the Cleveland Trust Rotunda on E. Ninth Street, century-old bank vaults are now one of the city’s coolest upscale cocktail lounges.
If food tourism is high on your list, don’t miss West Side Market on the edge of what’s known as Ohio City. This European-style covered public market has delighted Clevelanders and out-of-towners who venture inside since 1912, and its dozens of vendors at permanent stalls sell fresh and smoked meats, cheeses, seafood, baked goods, handmade ice cream, flowers and much more. Plus, some of the city’s choicest restaurants and libation spots are close by along W. 25th Street.
A section of Ohio City called Hingetown is max trendy, boasting Larder Delicatessen and Bakery in a 1800s-era firehouse; Amba, with Indian-inspired small plates; and Alea, with wood-fired Mediterranean plates amid galleries and shops.
What to See
It’s worth building in extra time to catch the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in University Circle, which Travel + Leisure named a top spot to visit in 2024 as it completes a $150 million expansion. A short walk away, Cleveland Museum of Art is the only major gallery in the country with free admission to its permanent collection, which consists of 45,000 works spanning 6,000 years of history.
There’s much more, but this seems a perfect closer: How many times have you and your family tuned in to watch “A Christmas Story” during the holiday season? The house featured in that seasonal perennial, meticulously restored to its original movie appearance, is located just five minutes from downtown in the Tremont neighborhood. It’s open year-round, seven days a week. It has a gift shop. And, yes, you can buy a Red Ryder Model 1938 Air Rifle BB Gun—but don’t shoot your eye out!
