City sells convention center to county for $20m

The city and county have a deal. The county will pay Cleveland $20 million for the current convention center site and Public Hall, Mayor Frank Jackson and commissioner Tim Hagan announced this afternoon.

The deal removes the last main hurdle to building the Medical Mart and a new convention center. MMPI will now start marketing the new project to prospective tenants and shows, while working out financing and other details with the county.

Jackson extracted several changes to the Med Mart deal from the county. The county agreed to a new protocol for deciding which non-medical conventions should be booked into the new center. It includes a role for Positively Cleveland. The deal also spelled out more details about the benchmarks MMPI will be held to as it develops and runs the project. The city will share in the profits if the county sells the naming rights to the center. The county also agreed to more specific requirements for hiring local workers and small businesses on the project.

The county "urges" the city to spend $2.5 million of the payment for the land on renovating Perk Park on E. 12th St.

I'll post more later today.

For now, here is a link to the agreement in pdf form. It's 12 pages. (The other 37 pages of the pdf are the rules for the county's small business program, which the county agreed to get MMPI to follow.)