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The new Euclid Avenue won't resemble sepia-toned photographs of the 19th century, when the mansions of Millionaire's Row lined the street. Instead, the avenue will be populated by students and medical workers, retirees and empty-nesters, who will be happy to ride the bus and save thousands of dollars a year by living without a second car. Developers want to provide buildings with cars for short-term rentals, or include RTA bus passes with leases. They say it will be far quicker to go from a downtown apartment to the Clinic on the bus than to drive and hunt for a parking space. Trends contributing to the rebirth on Euclid Avenue include the rising price of gas, which encourages transit use. Federal and state tax credits for historic preservation have tipped the balance in favor of renovating older buildings downtown. Growth in the medical sector is attracting research grants, venture capital and workers. A back-to-the-city movement among young professionals and retirees is also fueling growth. Leadership is another big factor. Top positions at major institutions along Euclid Avenue are held by advocates of New Urbanism, a type of city planning that caters to pedestrians and mass transit, rather than to the automobile. At CSU, President Michael Schwartz tore up a master plan he inherited from his predecessor, Claire Van Ummersen, which would have connected the university more firmly to the Inner Belt freeway and sealed its destiny as a commuter school. CSU's new master plan envisions dozens of new apartment buildings rising north and south of glassy new academic buildings along the north side of Euclid Avenue from East 17th Street to the Inner Belt. In Midtown, Haviland prepared for growth by leading the creation of a new zoning code, which outlaws stand-alone fast-food restaurants and requires new buildings to devote at least 60 percent of their ground-floor area to retail or other active uses. At the Cleveland Clinic, Chief Executive Officer Dr. Delos "Toby" Cosgrove recruited Berkeley, Calif., landscape architect Peter Walker to design parklike outdoor spaces to soften the Clinic's gigantic new buildings -- and to make Euclid Avenue more pedestrian-friendly. Chances for architectural achievement are high, with institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, the Cleveland Institute of Art and CSU hiring star designers for signature projects. Then and now, Euclid Avenue is special The impending revival has a certain dejÃ vu quality, said Christopher Leinberger, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. Every city has a "favored quarter" with a spine that connects the downtown to the wealthiest close-in suburbs, he said. In Cleveland, it's Euclid Avenue, which is being reborn for the same reason it attracted wealth in the 19th century. He compared the avenue's renewed potential to that of great streets such as Massachusetts and Wisconsin avenues between Dupont Circle and Bethesda, Md., in the Washington area or Peachtree Street in Atlanta from Midtown to the Buckhead neighborhood. Bus rapid transit stops designed by Robert P. Madison International are a signature feature of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority's soon-to-be- finished Silver Line on Euclid What's different Avenue. here is that the catalyst in Cleveland is bus rapid transit, a relatively new idea in the United States. On RTA's "Silver Line," as it's called, diesel-electric buses will move quickly along special lanes with coordinated lights at intersections. Euclid Corridor was one of 10 bus rapid transit demonstration projects launched by the Federal Transit Administration in 1999 in Boston, Charlotte,