Cleveland’s Old Brooklyn is now connected | News

Residents and businesses of Cleveland’s Ward 13 can now boast two advantages to living and working in Old Brooklyn.  The community is now minutes to downtown, seconds to the world, with the launch of Old Brooklyn Connected. 

Old Brooklyn Connected is a community development project designed to bridge the digital divide in Ward 13, create a community portal for residents of Old Brooklyn and Brooklyn Centre, and ensure that residents have the necessary skills to take full advantage of all the information available through the Internet.  In Ward 13, Old Brooklyn Connected will provide free, fast, and secure high-speed wireless Internet access for every home, business and institution.

The project covers roughly 4.5 square miles of Cleveland’s Ward 13 and provides a robust connection to the Internet.  The estimated cost for the set up, rollout and maintenance of the project to 11,000 households and more than 300 businesses is $ 1.3 million dollars for a five-year period.  This is an average cost of $1.91 per household/business per month over the five year span for free wireless Internet. 

Economic development is a central goal of Old Brooklyn Connected.  The project hopes to attract and maintain small businesses by:

• Keeping communication overhead costs downs
• Creating an innovative business environment ideal for professional services, home based businesses, and freelance professionals who rely on the Internet and flexibility of Wi-Fi

At the center of the project is the newly launched community website, Old Brooklyn Connected, that will connect residents and businesses to one another, to city services and act as the landing page from which they will launch their web surfing.