The rising Parker at his "Renaissance Complex."

There is a particularly striking row of Victorian mansions on the south side of Euclid Avenue in East Cleveland, some boarded up, others subdivided and turned into nail salons and day-care centers. At the end of this stretch of road, almost directly across the street from the Superior Road Rapid stop, two enormous Corinthian columns rise above the surrounding houses, flanking a smaller side street called Rosalind. This is the beginning of what Edward Parker calls his "Renaissance Complex," a cluster of houses he has transformed into what he hopes will be the precursor to a more widespread rebirth of East Cleveland as a flourishing suburb.

A tall man with a booming voice and easy manner, Parker is reminiscent of an Old Master portrait. This is no coincidence: He is first an artist and second an entrepreneur. Parker's sculpture depicts a wide range of mostly African-American subjects, from his commissioned busts of Booker T. Washington and Zelma George, to his life-sized statue of Chicken George from Alex Haley's Roots. This combination of deep aesthetic awareness and entrepreneurial drive has contributed to his success, Parker says. "I see the houses I buy as sculptures. I try to design them not simply to flip them, putting minimal work in, but instead keeping the details in mind as I go."

Indeed, it was an appreciation for the houses themselves in this neighborhood that led Parker to buy the first one. "I came around the corner," he recalls, "saw the house and said, "Wow, I could never afford that.' That was 27 years ago." Since then he has acquired a cluster of four additional houses. The original building, once a nursing home for recovering alcoholics before sitting vacant for 17 years, has been transformed into a gallery space, live music venue, restaurant and art studio. Parker has used this space to host a number of fundraising events for an all-expenses-paid "Artist-in-Residence Summer Camp" for aspiring young artists from the area. To this he has added two large houses that he has divided into several apartments, and one that now serves as a bed-and-breakfast, full of amenities like a sauna and exercise room.

But Parker is not simply an artist, or a civic leader, or a businessman. It is the way in which he has combined all three that allows him to see East Cleveland's potential, if it can overcome the many obstacles that remain. The primary one is prejudice, both internal and external.

"I tried to get a loan one time to buy one of the houses in my complex, and the loan officer thought I was crazy to want to invest in East Cleveland, so he turned me down." He tells the story of a fire that severely damaged one of his properties. His insurance representative told him to "take the money and run." Parker admits that there are legitimate concerns about living in East Cleveland, a city plagued by a lack of funds for infrastructure and proportionally high crime rates, particularly drug-related offenses. But there is money to be made in the city, a fact most developers seem to ignore. According to the Cuyahoga County Auditor, the most Parker paid for any of his houses was $44,900 in January 2006, and a mere $23,500 for his most recent acquisition. These prices are far below the assessed value of the properties; let alone what they would fetch on the open market, given time.

The main concern for Parker is the cynicism often expressed by the city's movers and shakers. Maintaining the status quo, combined with damage control, has been the general rule. Parker served on both the city's school and library boards. After suggesting scrapping the curriculum and starting over with something more practical, something tailored to the needs of the community, he was not reelected to a new term.

This predilection for sweeping change is what led to the construction of those arresting three-story pillars on Rosalind. "Several mayors ago," Parker remembers, "I proposed the idea of using the block- grant money to do a start-up street." These funds were and still are usually dispersed more evenly across the city, but this plan would have concentrated the money on one block at a time, starting with Rosalind. Homeowners would have received grants to be used toward improving their houses, and the city would improve its land as well, building a new municipal hall of records at the far end of the block, and raising two large columns to mark the entrance of what would be the first neighborhood of the new East Cleveland. "Other communities have done it," Parker says. "Look at Ohio City and Tremont. And we're a lot closer to University Circle than they are."

Many city officials got cold feet. "They looked at what we were doing and thought it was crazy to spend all that money on what they saw as just a couple of pillars. They weren't looking at the big picture." This fear of risk and doubt concerning the possibility of change has been a common problem for the city in the past, according to Parker.

But why continue in East Cleveland? Surely there are easier places to make money, ones more hospitable to a person with Parker's particular combination of interests and skills. Parker laughs, "Blame it on Augustine, my mother. She taught me never to be afraid of hard work." And hard work it has been. With almost exclusively private funds, Parker has single-handedly laid the foundation for the revitalization of the neighborhood surrounding his properties. Most of the houses are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and are attracting diverse tenants, just as Parker envisioned. "It's always been my goal to make my houses nice, clean and organized enough to attract both people from the neighborhood and university students," he says. His tenants are thrilled to live where they do, in an urban environment within easy driving distance of Cleveland.

One of the most difficult problems early on, Parker admits, was crime. "The house across the street used to be a crack house before I bought it. Afterward there were still problems at the end of the street, but I made it clear that the other residents and I would not tolerate anything like that. We haven't had anything like the problems we had before. You just have to let people know you won't stand for it."

East Cleveland's situation may have been dire a few years ago, but Parker is hopeful for the future. "I think it will change. It's inevitable; I just hope I'm still here to see it. I think in six years you won't be able to recognize the place." This is in part due to a shift he sees in the way the city is run. "People are much more professional now, less willing to accept the corruption that was so common a few years ago. It's becoming easier to do business. The mayor has my full support."