BOOK REVIEW: CROSLEY Two Brothers and a Business Empire that Transformed the Nation -- part 3

Powel Crosley

CROSLEY
Two Brothers and a Business Empire that Transformed the Nation

By Rusty McClure with David Stern and Michael A. Banks

Review by Steve Wright

Together, the brothers Crosley teamed to sell their famous radios to consumers around the globe.

They didn't invent radio, nor were they the first to sell them. But the strived to make radios much less expensive than the others on the market.

Author McClure dubs this Powel's business model of selling to "the masses, not the classes" -- a method of selling under-priced, well-built products and profiting on a high margin of sales.

It is little wonder with this Model T-like business plan, that Powel himself put his formidable public relations and marketing skills toward creating a national image as "the Henry Ford of Radio."

To program those radios, and to have a means of advertising their product over the air waves, the Crosleys created one of the first radio stations in the nation.

WLW, right from the start, became a giant in the industry. Along the way, it launched the careers of the Mills Brothers, Doris Day, Andy Williams, Red Barber and countless others.

To this day, WLW is one of the most powerful and popular AM radio stations in America and it continues to create larger than life on-air personalities.

It also is flagship of the Cincinnati Reds, the team the Crosleys saved during the depression by purchasing the basically bankrupt local team.

When attendance was sagging, Powel fought with baseball's tradition-bound old owners and commissioners and eventually won the right to hold the first-ever night baseball game in 1935.

The brothers Crosley had earlier pioneered another mainstay of pro baseball -- the broadcast of a live game.

The Crosleys owned the Reds for nearly three decades, guiding them to a World Series victory and changing the name to Red Legs during the Cold War intensity of the mid to late 1950s -- when Red sounded a bit too communist to a city that had forced the changing of streets with German names all the way back at WW1.

TOMORROW: Automotive Dreams & Unheralded Legacies

Wright is the author of more than 5,000 published articles on urban life, architecture, public policy, planning and design. He is active in working to make sure universal design, which provides barrier-free access to people with disabilities, is incorporated to the essential and rapidly-evolving practice of sustainability.

RESOUCES:

http://www.crosleybook.com

http://rustymcclure.com/novels/crosleybook.html

BOOK REVIEW: CROSLEY Two Brothers and a Business Empire that Transformed the Nation -- part 2

Author Rusty McClure

CROSLEY
Two Brothers and a Business Empire that Transformed the Nation

Impacted greatly by their father's loss of fortune, home and status during the Great Panic of 1893, the Crosley brothers formed a bond that only could be broken by death.

However, each brother's reaction to their prominent attorney/investor father's virtual bankruptcy was as different as day and night.

Lewis remained a rock -- living in a walk-up apartment building when his brother was living the millionaire's life. Lewis was frugal, grounded, balanced to the point where even though he did the work of dozens of me, he was always home to his family by 5.

Powel was the risk-taker, the gambler, the one ready to leap off the tall cliff in hope of bighting onto the brass ring before falling into the abyss below.

Powel suffered many a setback in his 20s, losing large sums of cash and blowing up opportunities to the point where no one in the family could have imagined him a wealthy and powerful man just a few years later.

Through the 500-page historical journey, McClure puts a very human face on every twist and turn.

Before we see a single black and white image of Powel in the pages of Crosley, we see a powerfully-built and driven man using every bit of his 6-foot-4 frame to dominate, business deals, press events and even clashes with the highest ranking members o Washington D.C.'s government power elite.

Lewis, also over 6-foot-tall and as capable man as one ever born in the hills above the mighty Ohio River, is warmly portrayed as the rooted family man with the soul of a Midwestern farmer, not a captain of industry.

Powel, the true moneymaker and leader of the brothers, was a family man too -- but flying about the U.S. to work hard on business and play hard at sea and he hunting range didn't exactly mean he was home for dinner at 5 every weeknight and around play father and husband on the weekends.

Nevertheless, he was crushed by the death of his first wife and the eventual lost of his namesake son (Powel III) and grandson (Powel IV.)

TOMORROW: Innovation & Selling to the Masses, not the Classes


Wright is the author of more than 5,000 published articles on urban life, architecture, public policy, planning and design. He is active in working to make sure universal design, which provides barrier-free access to people with disabilities, is incorporated to the essential and rapidly-evolving practice of sustainability.

RESOUCES:

http://www.crosleybook.com

http://rustymcclure.com/novels/crosleybook.html

BOOK REVIEW: CROSLEY Two Brothers and a Business Empire that Transformed the Nation

CROSLEY
Two Brothers and a Business Empire that Transformed the Nation

By Rusty McClure with David Stern and Michael A. Banks

EDITOR'S NOTE: Black Friday, the Friday after Thanksgiving Sales, the Kick-off to the Christmas Shopping Season...whatever you want to call today, it is the No. 1 day that revolves around the American consumer. In honor of innovative consumer goods -- through boom times and depressions -- we launch a four-part series today that examines the lives of Powel and Lewis Crosley. The Cincinnati, Ohio brothers were great leaders in the early 20th century development of affordable radios, home appliances an even radio broadcasts into the homes of millions of American consumers.

Review by Steve Wright

Among the great names of American entrepreneurs, innovators and success stories of the Industrial Age, Crosley is lost.

Though not as wealthy or influential as the Rockefellers, Fords, Carnegies or others, brothers Powel and Lewis Crosley made their mark on the early American consumer age -- let they are fairly anonymous even in their home state of Ohio, not even a half century since their deaths.

I spent the first 35 years of my life in Ohio. My grandparents very well could have had an old Crosley radio.

I listened to superstation WLW, 700-AM and enjoyed the pageantry of Major League Baseball's home open played in Cincinnati -- a decades-old tradition in tribute to the first professional franchise in the history of America's Pass Time.

I may have vaguely heard that before WLW was bought up by a giant conglomerate, that a local Cinci family had owned the powerful, 50,000-wat radio station.

I'm sure my avid following of baseball history must have uncovered some mention of a Crosley Field -- the fabled old home of the Reds/Redlegs.

But it was abandoned and demolished by the time the Big Red Machine was terrorizing the National League from the early to mid 70s at the sterile confines of the new Riverfront Stadium on the Oho River.

To give the Crosley name its proper place in 20th Century American history, Ohio author Rusty McClure -- son of Ellen Crosley McClure, the daughter of Lewis M. Crosley, the surviving direct descendant of the Crosley brothers.

Crosley (Two Brothers and a Business Empire that Transformed the Nation) escapes the pitfalls that could have swallowed an author writing his family's own history.

But McClure, along with David Stern and Michael A. Banks have produced a highly-readable book worthy of its New York Times, Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek bestseller status.

In Crosley, we meet brothers Powel and Lewis. Powel, older by two years, was the dreamer, schemer, restless innovator who used his boundless energy to tap into emerging American consumer trends before they became trendy.

Lewis was the steady, quiet brother -- a gifted engineer who guided a team of fellow engineers, designers, assembly line workers and others.

He was the rock-steady, can-do cog that oversaw every aspect of production -- whether the item being produced was a radio, automobile, large appliance, radio station or piece of equipment to help the Allies win World War Two.

TOMORROW: A brotherly bond & putting a human face on greatness

Wright is the author of more than 5,000 published articles on urban life, architecture, public policy, planning and design. He is active in working to make sure universal design, which provides barrier-free access to people with disabilities, is incorporated to the essential and rapidly-evolving practice of sustainability.

RESOUCES:

http://www.crosleybook.com

http://rustymcclure.com/novels/crosleybook.html

SAVE MIAMI'S HISTORIC WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN PARK

It is unconscionable that the City of Miami would even consider paving over this little angel's paradise to put up a parking lot. But that's exactly what will happen if Bryan Park's green space is ripped from the grasp of the public that has played on it for nearly a century -- and handed over to a tennis club that will kick out families and pave over everything for tennis courts, club house and parking.

SAVE MIAMI'S HISTORIC WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN PARK

On this Thanksgiving Day, we have a lot to be thankful for as residents of urban Miami's historic Little Havana neighborhood.

While Calle Ocho is famous around the world, an unsung little two acre park five short blocks south of SW 8th Street is under siege.

For nearly a century, Historic William Jennings Bryan Park has served as a rare urban oasis for the working class families of Miami.

In overdeveloped town with the least amount of park space of any city in America, Bryan Park is an asset the should be duplicated in dozens of other neighborhoods aching for open space with a green, grassy play field to serve thousands of children and families.

Sadly, a small group of politically-connected tennis players are lobbying hard and forcefully to pave over the entire park to make it there personal tennis club.

The idea of taking away public land for one privileged group is ludicrous, but the tennis lobby has frightened many people into signing petitions in favor of the tennis center -- by falsely telling them that if the park isn't given over to globe-trotting tennis teams, it will be abandoned and taken over by gangs and violent criminals.

We live on Bryan Park, we see thousands of children and families playing and exercising on the one acre of green space left in a park already half paved over with tennis courts, hitting wall, park office and playground equipment.

We will fight the good fight to protect this park for the people.

We hope readers will forward this link and tell city officials to protect neighborhood parks.

If tennis players want a private club, they can secure sponsors, grants, public private partnerships and other means to build their compound on a piece of commercial land large enough to accommodate the parking, traffic, lighting, noise, stormwater runoff and other impacts that are out of scale for the tiny houses and narrow streets of the Bryan Park neighborhood.

We trust that the Honorable Francis Suarez, the Miami District 4 Commissioner who represents our area, will honor his commitment to preserve the rare and valuable green space in the beloved Bryan Park.

We trust the Mayor of Miami, who used to represent this area when he was a Commissioner, will honor the will of several hundred Bryan Park residents who signed petitions against the tennis center five years ago -- and were lead to believe that they had successfully protected their park forever.

We trust that the Miami City Administration and remaining four City Commissioners will hear the voices of hundreds of thousands of City residents who have voted again and again to preserve what little green, open space is left in the Magic City.

We trust that other neighborhoods throughout the City will join our cause for preservation, just was we will come to their defense when needed.

We trust this threat to parkland for children will be resolved before the press -- television, radio, newspaper and on-line - will be forced to expose the piggishness of tennis backers who would toss kids into the street to pave over a playfield for a single-use sport and the foolishness of anyone who would support such a land grab by the few to the severe detriment of the many.

We trust that the hardworking people of the Bryan Park neighborhood -- many of them immigrants to this country who believe in a Democracy that protects their public park from hostile takeover and preserves their right to play soccer and flag football, to fly kites and play catch, to bring their toddlers play safely and freely on the green urban oasis that is Bryan Park -- will not have their park stolen from them.

EMAIL MIAMI CITY COMMISSIONER FRANCIS SUAREZ AND TELL HIM TO SAVE BRYAN PARK AND THE LITTLE NEIGHBOHROOD AROUND IT -- fsuarez@miamigov.com

OR PHONE COMMISSIONER SUAREZ AND TELL HIM TO SHOW GREAT LEADERSHIP BY FINDING A PROPERLY-SCALED SITE FOR A TENNIS CENTER -- (305) 250-5420

Please forward the link to this blog posting to everyone you know who cares about parkland preservation in America.

To help our cause, please contact me at stevewright64@yahoo.com


Politically-connected tennis supporters would pave over the precious green grass --used by this and thousands of other families dependent on this respite from the concrete jungle - to sate their piggish hunger for a tournament-caliber tennis complex.

SAVE MIAMI'S HISTORIC WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN PARK

This family, playing on the green playfield, will be tossed out into the street if the City of Miami paves over Bryan Park to turn it into a tennis club.

HISTORIC WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN PARK:
AN URBAN OASIS THAT MUST BE PRESERVED

On the eve of Thanksgiving, we have a lot to be thankful here in our 1920s home in the heart of Miami's fabled Little Havana.

This year, we launched this unique blog on land use, planning, sustainability, wheelchair-access and travel.

While all of our articles have been global, we regret that we must dedicate some space to a very local concern.

For the second time in five years, a group of selfish tennis parents are trying to rip an historic little park from its working class neighborhood -- so it can be paved over as a tennis club for the exclusive use of a handful of elite tennis players.

This bullying attitude toward any and all users of the green space at Bryan Park nearly succeded in destoying a rare urban oasis.

A group of valiant activist residents shamed city officials into doing the right thing five years ago and Bryan Park was spared.

But now the threat is greater than ever, so we present these bullet points that lay out the reasonable and just case for preserving Bryan Park:


• Miami has the least amount of parkland of any major city (according to the Trust for Public Land) and needs to be creating more grassy playfields, not less.

• Pavement is not park land. Tennis courts can only be used for tennis and only a few people can play on a court at a time.

• Bryan Park's acre of grassy play space is an urban gem because it can be used for dozens of things -- including soccer (hundreds of kids practicing or a full-out game with portable nets), flag/touch football, kite flying, playing catch, exercising on a soft surface and many more impromptu games not restricted to a specific playing field.

• Bryan Park is the perfect blend of space right now -- half is active with tennis courts, a hitting wall, barrier-free playground, comfort station, park benches and tot lot. The other half is heavily-used open space.

• Bryan Park is entirely surrounded by small single family houses. A tennis center would overwhelm it with parking, light, hours of use, traffic and other issues when a semi-private club takes over a park.

• If the thousands of kids and families who use the green play space are driven from a park paved over for the exclusive use of tennis, they will have nowhere else to go.

• If City leaders work wisely, they can located a tennis center on any of the dozens of commercial sites that would not suffer from pavement for courts and parking, a clubhouse, grandstand and other impacts.

• Southwest 13th Street already floods frequently. Covering the western half of Bryan Park with impervious surface would cause very damaging flooding of the small, single story homes along the park.

• A tennis center would completely take a nearly century old park and urban oasis of play space away from its working class neighborhood.

• In a democracy, the government does not take away the peaceful enjoyment of thousands (everyone who uses and enjoys the safe green grass) for the benefit of the few (tennis -- a single use sport that forever destroys the green space whether it gains, or quite possibly loses interest and players in the years to come.)

• If there is a groundswell of support for a tennis center, then the tennis supporters should work with pro tennis, tennis associations, sponsors, foundation grants and sources to generate funding for location that would not take away park land and negatively impact a low-rise neighborhood with narrow streets and little parking.

• A tennis center would be ripe for a public-private partnership. If such a partnership cannot materialize -- and none of the above funding sources can be tapped -- then there is not enough support behind a tennis center to justify its construction.

• The Bryan Park neighborhood has already compromised greatly. For more than half its long life, the park was a wide open green and play space with no pavement within its two acres.

• Over the decades, neighbors have compromised again and again while a comfort station, basketball courts (later tennis), enlarged playground and hitting wall were built over the green play field.

• Neighbors of Bryan Park are simply asking to preserve the half the park that hasn't been altered from its intended use as open space.

• Many residents are so tired of being promised their park would be saved (like we all were promised five years ago) then put under siege again, that they simply stop coming to meetings to protest.

• A decision to pave over a park cannot be made simply because a few dozen tennis coaches and parents want it to happen and the old neighborhood is too bewildered and battle scarred to fight.

• Preservation is a legacy issue for an elected official with a legacy surname. Protecting an historic park and finding an alternate, properly-scaled site for a tennis center is hard work. A young commissioner with a bright future will prove himself by establishing a track record of going the extra mile to create such a win-win solution.

EMAIL MIAMI CITY COMMISSIONER FRANCIS SUAREZ AND TELL HIM TO SAVE BRYAN PARK AND THE LITTLE NEIGHBOHROOD AROUND IT -- fsuarez@miamigov.com

OR PHONE COMMISSIONER SUAREZ AND TELL HIM TO SHOW GREAT LEADERSHIP BY FINDING A PROPERLY-SCALED SITE FOR A TENNIS CENTER -- (305) 250-5420


TOMORROW: A Thanksgiving Day essay that tells the real story of our beloved Bryan Park.

Please forward the link to this blog posting to everyone you know who cares about parkland preservation in America.

To help our cause, please contact me at stevewright64@yahoo.com



Bryan Park is in a very old neighborhood with small, single-story homes that flood when it rains. This picture shows how bad the flooding is after ten minutes of rain. If the acre of grass is foolishly paved over, can you imagine how many millions the bankrupt city will be paying to homeowners for willfully contributing to the flood hazard?

THE GREAT RESET: HOW NEW WAYS OF LIVING AND WORKING By Richard Florida -- PART 3

THE GREAT RESET: HOW NEW WAYS OF LIVING AND WORKING
By Richard Florida

Review by Steve Wright

Author Richard Florida is a big fan of alternate transportation -- anything from bicycles to safe pedestrian routes to better local and regional trains.

Florida reasons that even if more people are telecommuting, they still will benefit from the ability to conduct commerce by transportation means far less costly and restrictive than the automobile.

The Great Reset says young people, the innovators who will drive our human creativity-based new economy, already are forming new attitudes toward ownership that are less centered on houses and cars.

Florida makes said connectivity will be key to our economic future. He envies European and other nations that are far ahead of the U.S. in terms of high speed rail.

He states that Boston-New York-Washington have already become a super-productive mega-region because of relatively fast trains that connect the densely-populate cities.

Economic figures prove our that these mega-regions have a much higher economic output per capita when compared to sprawled areas.

Florida believes high speed rail could be a key toward reinvigorating the Great Lakes/rust belt region.

Chicago and Pittsburgh -- cities that have successfully shaken off their industrial pasts to become high-tech, high creativity centers -- could help uplift their still-struggling post-industrial neighbors, such as Detroit and Cleveland, with high speed rail connectivity.

Secondly, rail connectivity within the mega-regions.

There are the fast trains along the Boston/New York/Washington corridor that have allowed Washington, in effect, to become a commuter suburb of greater New York.

If you buy into Florida's theories, it is extremely disheartening that several governors and other politicians elected earlier this month are making noise about rejecting billions of dollars of transit funding.

Whether you accept all of Florida's ideas or not, you will enjoy his wit, vigor and clear writing that turns the most mind-numbing of economic research into a feast of thought for the future.

We highly recommend The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive the Post-Crash Prosperity.

Wright is the author of 5,000 published articles on urban life, architecture, public policy, planning and design. He is active in working to make sure universal design, which provides barrier-free access to people with disabilities, is incorporated to the essential and rapidly-evolving practice of sustainability.

RESOURCES

http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Great-Reset-Richard-Florida/?isbn=9780061937194

http://www.creativeclass.com/

THE GREAT RESET: HOW NEW WAYS OF LIVING AND WORKING By Richard Florida -- PART 2

THE GREAT RESET: HOW NEW WAYS OF LIVING AND WORKING
By Richard Florida

Review by Steve Wright

Author Richard Florida writes that we must admit that the U.S. is a service-based, not factory economy, so we must work to convert low-paying, unrewarding service jobs into middle class careers that engage workers as a source of innovation.

Florida, the director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, cites some innovative companies that empower even their lowest level retail workers and provide them with the opportunity to be rapidly promoted.

Florida, founder of the Creative Class Group, also believes the American Dream should no longer be homeownership -- it should be mobility.

Mobility, he said, can be achieved by making more people renters instead of homeowners.

Florida states that research proves that government policies incentivizing home ownership can actually be detrimental to the new economy.

He said a family underwater on its home loan is unlikely to sell at a huge financial loss to move to another region or state for better job opportunities.

But that is exactly what it must do in the era of the Great Reset and if more people rented, they could pick up stakes and more to prosperous regions much more quickly and easily.

While he is a progressive known for praising cities that accommodate gays, artists and other urban pioneers, Florida is no fan of the lion's share of the Obama
Administration's stimulus billions being spent on road projects.

Florida said road building is a short-term fell good, not a long-term plan in an era prolonged austerity in which many families will not be able to spend tens of thousands of dollars per year on a two or three automobiles.

He writes that it is better to focus on transportation infrastructure that is not automobile-centered.

Florida prefers big spending on airports, because most of these essential transit hubs for business in America have fallen into disrepair and our nowhere near as efficient or innovative as their foreign counterparts.

TOMORROW: PART 3 -- SALVATION THROUGH TRANSPORATION, INCLUDING HIGH SPEED RAIL

Wright is the author of 5,000 published articles on urban life, architecture, public policy, planning and design. He is active in working to make sure universal design, which provides barrier-free access to people with disabilities, is incorporated to the essential and rapidly-evolving practice of sustainability.

RESOURCES

http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Great-Reset-Richard-Florida/?isbn=9780061937194

http://www.creativeclass.com/