Downtown Cleveland Alliance Rebrands as Downtown Cleveland, Inc.

"Downtown Cleveland is the place." "Downtown Cleveland is where the work gets done." "Downtown Cleveland is clean and safe."

Such positive affirmations are the stars of Downtown Cleveland, Inc.'s rebranding and restructuring announcement and promotional video, a sort of "We Are Family"-tinged boost of fanfare for the non-profit cheerleader, which has changed its name from the Downtown Cleveland Alliance to Downtown Cleveland, Inc.

With cinematic shots — Adcom's interior; smiling kids leaping around Public Square fountains; high-fiving, yellow-shirted Ambassadors — the two-minute trailer promises, as usual, an improving city core.

Or, as one man put it, "[Making] Downtown Cleveland what we've always dreamed of."


The restructuring along with a new rainbow-colored "pin" logo—which represents the city's "iconic sunsets and lakefront, and beloved sports teams"—were debuted at the Ruth Ratner Miller Awards on Tuesday.

Underneath the kaleidoscopic "D" are the Downtown Cleveland Improvement Corporation, its property-focused arm, and the Downtown Cleveland Alliance, the community engagement branch that works to raise dollars to beautify and build up the neighborhood. The Warehouse and Gateway districts complete the "family" of organizations under one central goal.

“We’ve built a family of organizations," DCI's President Michael Deemer said at the award ceremony, used to spotlight downtown stakeholders, "under a cohesive brand umbrella tailor-made to carry out our vision of Downtown Cleveland as the hub of an inclusive, global city and a welcoming beacon of talent."

Deemer's speech coincides with a kind of city-county downtown boosterism boom, best represented by the announcement of "Reimagining Downtown Cleveland," a 10-page, 5-year strategy vowing to fix idle street lamps, repopulate long-vacant storefronts in a retail plan, and activate the city center.

On June 7th, Deemer joined Mayor Bibb, County Executive Chris Ronayne and Councilman Kerry McCormack, whose Ward 4 includes Downtown, on Mall C, to sell the strategy as a way to see Downtown continue to improve.

Deemer told reporters that DCI will be deploying 20 new Ambassadors in the coming years to creating the "safe and welcoming" presence the new trailer echoes. Moreover, Chief Wayne Drummond said he'll be buffing up CPD's Downtown Services Unit.

For Deemer, the re-branding, re-imagining, and re-envisioning (of the lakefront, riverfront, et cetera) all coalesce purposefully to, ideally, lift up Northeast Ohio's economy as a whole.

And, finally, finally, finally leverage our slice of Lake Erie.

"Great cities have strong cores," Deemer said at the press event. "Special cities connect those cores to the great waterfronts and surrounding neighborhoods."
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