Did anyone call Jimmy Dimora with the good news about the 2016 Republican convention?

Is Jimmy Dimora rolling over in his cell today? Or, lying behind bars in a California prison, does he

secretly feel vindicated that the Republicans are coming to Cleveland for their 2016 convention?

If you’re excited the GOP chose us, there’s lots of credit to go around today. Ed FitzGerald deserves some (as Brent Larkin notes). So do Rob Portman and Frank Jackson. A bipartisan effort convinced the Republicans to hold their coronation in Cleveland.

No one, of course, has thanked Dimora, the former Democratic chair turned disgraced crook. Nor do I expect Tim Hagan, the hotheaded liberal Democrat who made the convention center his last big-spending project, to get much thanks from the pro-RNC crowd.

But the Republicans’ enormous convention wouldn’t be coming here without Dimora and Hagan’s controversial 2007 decision to raise the sales tax and build the convention center and Global Center. That big bet on the convention industry and visitor economy is the first step that made the RNC decision today possible.

Quicken Loans Arena will be the Republicans’ main convention hall, but the Cleveland Convention Center will be the RNC’s biggest supporting venue. More important is the cascade of development the project set off. No convention center means no hotel boom and no convention center hotel. Cleveland didn’t have as many hotel rooms as Dallas, but by 2016, it’ll have just enough.

Even the author of a very critical piece about the convention center hotel admitted as much today:

Well, fuck, now the subsidized Hilton hotel looks like a genius plan.
— Eric Sandy (@ericsandy) July 8, 2014

I’m remembering the argument that Chris Kennedy of MMPI, the convention center’s developer, made in a story I wrote five years ago.

“If you look at cities that have enjoyed urban rebirth, they are almost all associated with tourism and hospitality,” Kennedy said then. “Unless you introduce that element back into Cleveland, I don't believe any other strategy can be successful. Additionally, this strategy can turn a city around all by itself.”

Exciting, if true. And we’ll see. Cleveland is all-in with the visitor economy now.

Today’s news isn’t going to stop the debate about that, nor should it. One of the great divides of Cleveland politics is about projects like this -- big spending on attracting visitors, and on downtown in general.

The RNC is a lot like Dimora and Hagan’s gamble on the convention center, or FitzGerald’s double-down on a county-owned convention hotel. Cleveland will spend $55 million to $68 million to prepare for the convention, to attract visitor spending that can only be estimated, before or after -- $404 million? or $170 million? or even just $15 million?

The hype is beginning. Now let's start putting in perspective. Economic numbers are overblown and conv don't bring long-term eco impact.
— mark naymik (@marknaymik) July 8, 2014

Psst ... Cities. Mega-events don't pay ... New Report via @sandymaxey - http://t.co/39BJQ52vsZ … … … cc @Richard_Florida
— Richard Florida (@Richard_Florida) July 8, 2014

The boosters and skeptics, the optimists and pessimists, will fight on, just like the Republicans and Democrats will. Neither will be right all the time.

But sometimes events move the debate. Cleveland’s improbable return to the national political convention circuit is a big win for the optimists’ strategy.

Port wants new levy, Mall-to-lakefront bridge

Cleveland's port authority is making a bold new pitch to voters.  It'll ask for a property tax increase on the November ballot that would greatly expand its budget and reassert itself dramatically in the debate about the lakefront's future.  It's proposing to build a pedestrian bridge over the Shoreway to connect the lakefront to the downtown Mall.

Bridging the downtown bluff to get pedestrians, bicyclists and conventioneers from downtown to the Rock Hall and back, has been an eternal, elusive goal of Cleveland lakefront dreamers.  Mayor Frank Jackson wants to do it, but has had trouble finding the money.  Now it looks like he and county executive Ed FitzGerald have hit upon a way to fund it.

{I'm guessing this is why Jackson and FitzGerald have called a press conference for tomorrow promising "a major development in the progress of the Cleveland Medical Mart and Convention Center project."} [Update, 7/13: Oops, bad guess! They're announcing that the convention center will open early.]

A winter-proof pedestrian bridge that takes conventioneers to the Rock Hall and the Science Center joined the wish list once the Mall was chosen as the convention center and Medical Mart site. But there was no money for it.

Today's letter (pdf) from port CEO Will Friedman and chair Bob Smith lays it out.  They're asking for a 0.67-mill property tax levy, up from the port's current 0.13 mills.  That'd be a 480 percent increase, though 0.67 mills would still be small compared to the taxes Cuyahoga County homeowners pay for the Metroparks (1.81 mills) and tri-C (3.08 mills).  Owners of a $100,000 home would pay $20 a year for the port authority, up from $3.50.

Here's how the port wants to spend the tax increase:

• Stabilizing the Cuyahoga River's eroding riverbank on Franklin Hill near Ohio City: $43 million

• All-weather pedestrian bridge from Mall to lakefront: $25 million

• A new way to dispose of the sediment from dredging the shipping channel: $12.5 million

• Improving truck and pedestrian access to Whiskey Island, including a Lake Link Trail bridge over the railroad tracks: $6 million

• Improving the port cargo terminals: $3 million

I think I see what the port, Jackson, and FitzGerald are trying to do here.  Two big-ticket items are important but unexciting projects.  Take the eroding riverbank.  Drive down by Hoopple's and the Columbus Road Bridge and you'll see -- an entire road, Riverbed Street, that used to link Duck Island and the Flats West Bank is closed because it's collapsing.  Raising taxes to dispose of sediment, part of the port's core job, is even less sexy.

So the port and its backers add the lakefront bridge, which would make Cleveland a more attractive convention destination and could help attract a developer and residents to the proposed new neighborhood behind Browns Stadium.  They also add the Whiskey Island roads and bridge, which would benefit industry and please the cyclists and public-space advocates who want to connect the Towpath to the lake.

That's pretty smart political packaging and coalition-building.  Still, the plan will be closely scrutinized by the skeptics who questioned the motives behind the previous port regime's efforts to develop the waterfront. 

FitzGerald and Jackson found themselves in a bit of a quiet standoff late last year over downtown and lakefront issues. Looks like they've hashed through their differences and formed an alliance. It'll be very interesting to see what the mayor and exec decide together when they tackle what to do at the Mall and Public Square and with the casino tax money.  The politics of downtown development are shifting.

The port plan also could have a small effect on the levy campaign for the Cleveland schools.  Someone is bound to complain that Jackson is supporting two property tax increases on the November ballot.  But that complaint won't be too loud, simply because the schools levy is going to dwarf the port levy -- it could be a 9 to 11 mill increase, compared to a half-mill increase for the port.  The enormous school levy will stand or fall on its own.

Clevelanders now have a local issue to debate in November, something bigger than letting the mayor pick the fire chief or letting the county executive control the board of revision.  An exciting and controversial port levy?  Looks like it.

How’s the Medical Mart going?

From the downtown library’s windows, you can see it all: bulldozers clearing the land for the new Medical Mart and tearing the old convention center out of the ground. Only a block-long stretch of Lakeside Avenue still hangs in the air, like a bridge, stripped clear.

In 2½ years, the Medical Mart and convention center, Cleveland’s $800 million hope, will fill in that hole and that plot of land. Will it succeed?

I’ve been wondering about that again this week after reading a couple of articles about the project.

“Medical mart’s tenant list only tentative,” the Plain Dealer’s front page announced yesterday. There’s no news in that headline; MMPI, the Med Mart developers, made it clear in January that their tenant list was based on non-binding letters of intent.

What’s actually new is that the PD called the tentative tenants and got one to (apparently) violate a nondisclosure agreement and spill the terms of its deal. Here’s the story’s second graf:

"Basically they offered us a free showroom for three years and a $20,000 cash incentive to build the showroom," said Jerome Alicki [of Michigan furniture company Industrial Woodworking Corp.]. "I couldn't see any reason not to do that ... I thought if I say no to this, the CEO is going to fire me."

Well, we can’t say MMPI didn’t warn us. Here’s what its vice-president, Mark Falanga, told Cleveland City Council in February 2009, as quoted in my Inside Business story from that year, “Affairs of the Mart”:

We believe we will need to subsidize those showrooms heavily to get them to try something new. … It's going to take many years for this to ramp up, for Cleveland to prove itself to the medical community.

I figured “subsidize heavily” meant “really cheap rent.” But no, it means what it says, at least in Industrial Woodworking’s case: If you move in for free, we’ll help you build the showroom.

There are two ways to react to news like this. One is to say we shouldn’t start judging the Medical Mart until it opens in fall 2013. They told us it’d be a slow start-up, and they’ve got plenty of time to fill the place with good tenants and conventions.

The other is to say, uh-oh. Two days before the PD story, Med City News’ Brandon Glenn published a analysis that asked, “Is the healthcare industry really buying into the medical mart concept?” That’s always been the essential question, the project’s biggest risk.

Glenn looks at New York, where a competing medical mart project fizzled, and at Nashville, where Cleveland’s remaining competitor is struggling to attract tenants and financing and the local business weekly is growing skeptical. It may be good news that our competition is flailing — but it doesn’t mean our project will succeed. Glenn asks whether it’s a sign that the whole concept of medical marts isn’t taking off.

Here in Cleveland, Glenn links to my report that MMPI’s January tenants list included only 5 percent of the companies it targeted on its 2009 prospects list, and only 1 percent of the medical conventions it hoped for. (It’s signed a few more tenants since January, but won’t say who.) Only three tenants are listed on the NASDAQ or the New York Stock Exchange, Glenn notes, and two of those are local, Invacare and Steris.

The medical mart remains a promising idea, for plenty of reasons. The mart concept works well in other industries; MMPI’s long success in Chicago is evidence of that. And today, hospital administrators have to travel across the globe to shop for equipment and furnishings; wouldn’t they rather see it all in one place? Medical manufacturers already market their wares at health care conventions, shipping their sales staff and heavy equipment from town to town. Wouldn’t they rather lease a single showroom, next to a convention center, in a city known for its leading medical centers, where customers can also go see the equipment in action?

But so far the idea’s hardly catching fire. “The early results from Cleveland, Nashville and New York suggest an industry uncertain of the benefits that the untested medical mart concept could hold,” Glenn writes. “And Northeast Ohioans need to begin thinking about what happens next if you build it, but not very many people come.”

It’s too early to hit the panic button, even if there were a panic button to push. We’re committed to the project and the business risk -- the hole in the ground is proof of that -- and we’ll at least get a new convention center out of the deal. That’s the built-in Plan B. A state of the art meeting place with windows facing the lake will surely win back some of the convention business lost by the damp, leaky, column-cluttered, 79-year-old hall we just tore out.

For now, all we can do is watch the spending, plan for how to hold MMPI accountable under worst-case and moderately bad scenarios, market the town and the project, and hope that the venture works, the health care industry warms up to the Medical Mart and the risk pays off. The county council has pledged to give monthly updates on the project, while the PD promises weekly reports. Stay tuned.

My June 2009 story, "Affairs of the Mart," is proving to be a good guide to the promise and risk of the Medical Mart project and what needs to happen for it to succeed. You can read it here.

Med Mart lands less than 5% of top tenant prospects, 1% of medical event prospects so far

Cleveland’s Medical Mart is having trouble attracting big national names so far. Its first list of tenants and events, released Friday, showed that developer MMPI has signed a small fraction of the top prospects it identified in 2009.

Ohio companies and organizations make up most of the initial tenant list. Health events make up only about a third of the convention-hall bookings. It’s early – the project won’t open until fall 2013 – but the Medical Mart clearly has a long way to go.

So far, MMPI has landed only five of the 100 national medical manufacturers it named as showroom prospects in a list it shared with Inside Business in 2009. The hunt for national medical trade shows and conferences has been even tougher: MMPI has landed only one of the 264 medical events it listed as prospects two years ago.

InvaCare and Steris, two local medical manufacturers with national profiles, lead the list of 58 probable tenants who’ve already signed nonbinding letters of intent to lease showroom space. They were among the 100 medical furnishings and medical technology companies on MMPI’s 2009 tenant prospect list. The other three it’s landed are medical furniture makers Midmark, Cabot Wrenn Care and Intensa.

Missing so far are leading medical device companies such as Medtronic, Stryker, Philips Medical Systems and Siemens Medical Solutions — all companies MMPI named on its 2009 prospect list, all cited by MedCity News last week as desirable anchors for the Med Mart. The scarcity of big names is a reminder that the merchandise-mart concept is unproven in the medical industry. It echoes the careful, neutral responses I heard about the Med Mart from manufacturers when I was reporting on my 2009 Inside Business story, “Affairs of the Mart.”

Of course, MMPI has moved far beyond its two-year-old prospects list to sign other companies who fit the Medical Mart concept, from Michigan-based distributor Innovative Medical Systems to Johnson Controls, a large Wisconsin-based manufacturer whose building-efficiency products could benefit hospitals constructing new offices. MMPI President Chris Kennedy told Crain's it has letters of intent for all the space in the four-story Med Mart and may have to expand north -- where the county administration building is now -- to meet demand.

Kennedy described the tenant list as “broad and deep” when I talked with him at the groundbreaking ceremony on Friday. “[It’s got] everything from associations, educational institutions, design products and interior finishing products to hard-core medical technology and patient care devices,” Kennedy said. “Within each category, there’s a lot of depth. The team put that together strategically to create a mini-critical mass in each component that would be attractive to certain trade shows. And the trade shows are now coming because they have groups that are totally relevant to their area.”

The Med Mart needs tenants before the convention center can attract medical events. That may be why the 24 event bookings released Friday included only nine medical-related shows. In 2009, MMPI showed me a prospect list of 264 small and medium-sized medical conventions and trade shows. So far, only one event on that list has signed on: the Ohio Optometric Association’s EastWest Eye Conference.

Deal-making should pick up now that MMPI has broken ground, Kennedy says.

“The velocity of deals has increased dramatically over the last 60 days,” he told me Friday. “The reality is, people don’t want to commit to a building that they don’t know is going to be built. Convention managers don’t want to make a commitment four years from now to a trade show hall that might not be there for them. Those are enormous long-term decisions.

“Once they see construction, once they see those signed documents and a timeline that is reasonable, then they commit. And that’s what’s going on now.” MMPI is now signing about one new tenant and one new event per week, he says.

At FitzGerald’s first press conference, the buzz of a new start

An electric drill was whirring in Peter Lawson Jones’ old office this morning. Next door, the wall between Tim Hagan’s and Jimmy Dimora’s offices was already torn down, creating an open space for the new county council offices. A desk that belonged to a Dimora assistant collected detritus and flotsam: a mini-American flag in a pencil holder, a empty heart-shaped candy tray.

The commissioners’ meeting room was bare, the benches ripped out. A little dumpster stood on the dais next to a tool cart. In the corner, by the empty chairs, sat a binder: the county’s 2007 financial report, adorned with Frank Russo’s smiling face.

Ed FitzGerald, the new county executive, walked in and stepped to a podium in the back of the room. It was his first working day in his new job, and he’d already fulfilled a campaign promise. Before 10 a.m., he e-mailed all county employees a new ethics policy. (You can read the e-mail here.)

“We tried to very quickly set a very strong tone when it came to ethics and what we expect of the county employees,” FitzGerald told the reporters in the room. “They can’t accept anything of value under any circumstances.” They’re also required to report wrongdoing by others. A code of conduct for county vendors and contractors will come next. The idea, he said, is “to make sure we don’t have a repeat of what has happened in the last couple of years.”

It was a strange day of transition at the county administration building, full of bare plywood and moving boxes. Seven elected officials from the old government are still in office, until FitzGerald names his choices for their positions. “Some of them are leaving, some are staying,” FitzGerald said.

Treasurer Jim Rokakis was packing up to go. His last day is next Friday. He announced last April that he wouldn’t ask to serve in the new government. Recorder Lillian Greene has also told FitzGerald she’s leaving. Sheriff Bob Reid, coroner Frank Miller and courts clerk Gerald Fuerst have applied to keep their jobs.

FitzGerald said he’ll announce some cabinet appointments next week. A national search for a chief fiscal officer, chief information officer, and development director may take longer. He announced a January 27 jobs summit, the kickoff to his economic development plans.

Outside the window, another fresh start bloomed. Red construction trucks and fencing dotted Malls B and C. “The noise of construction is nice symbolism,” FitzGerald said, noting the buzz from outdoors. “We’re starting a new administration. We’re also starting construction of the Med Mart.”

To read my interview with FitzGerald in the January issue of Cleveland Magazine, click here.

Med Mart moving ahead -- finally!

All you kids who've been squirming in your seats, wondering when the show on downtown's Malls will start, can calm down now.

After a year of painfully slow negotiations, the land's all nailed down for the Medical Mart and convention center project. The stubborn Sportsman's Restaurant owner is getting paid $3.1 million -- almost 10 times what her little vintage corned-beef joint is worth. The stubborn mayor finally got what he wants: a deal that helps fix up Public Auditorium and preserves the lake views from Lakeside Avenue.

Architects are designing. The construction manager's hired. We're going to see the plans roll out, starting today, when the city planning commission takes a look at some early concepts. MMPI still says it'll break ground in October. That means I'll lose my favorite cheap downtown parking spot, but what else?

Steven Litt's analysis in today's Plain Dealer explains how MMPI addressed the mayor's concerns and preserved those lake views. Remember how I mentioned last week that Mall C won't be raised more than a foot? That's because the convention center exhibit halls won't go under it after all. They'll be under Mall B and -- this is the clever new part -- under the Medical Mart building on St. Clair. They'll build meeting rooms and a ballroom with a great view of the lake under Mall C.

I still think Mall B will look weird once this is all over, with the top of the convention center popping out of the ground, messing with Daniel Burnham's 1903 vision of a grand civic space. (Litt's only new hint about Mall B: "stairwell pavilions" will go right from street level to the convention center floor.) But then, Mall B is already full of concrete and empty of people. Maybe, despite the higher elevation, ParkWorks and the landscape architect can do something better there.

Most important, MMPI can break ground before long and get back to competing with the medical marts proposed in Nashville and New York. Today on the radio, I heard prosecutor Bill Mason praise the county commissioners for nailing it all down. Mason knows how tough it was, since his office does their legal work. Few people in town are in the mood to give the commissioners credit for anything, but at least give them props for nailing down a complex, five-way land and development deal.

Getting the land will cost more than anyone expected, and the big headline today will spark more criticism from those who don't want the project built at all. But now Cleveland can move on to the next debate: what the Medical Mart, new convention center, and new malls should look like, how they'll work, how they'll fit in with what's around them.

To read my June 2009 Inside Business feature about the risks and potential rewards of the Medical Mart as a business venture, click here. (Public Auditorium isn't part of the project anymore, and the groundbreaking date has changed slightly, but the rest of the details in my story hold up a year later.)

What new city-county deal means for downtown

The city and county's new convention center deal tinkers with a lot of stuff downtown. Some interesting details I noticed in today's Plain Dealer story:

-Mall B may look really weird in a few years. The city will let MMPI raise the convention center's ceiling as high as it thinks it has to -- even if that means it pops up from underground and pushes Mall B, the plaza between St. Clair and Lakeside, above street level.

The good news is, MMPI has hired first-rate talent to make the best of the situation: local nonprofit ParkWorks and a renowned architectural firm from Seattle are in charge of planning how to remake the malls. Mall C, north of Lakeside, can only go a foot higher than it is now -- a sign that City Hall wants to preserve the lakefront views over the bluff.

-Separating Public Auditorium from the new convention center is going to cost the county $8 million. Taxpayers probably shouldn't fret, since MMPI has pledged to pay for any cost overruns on the development, but let's hope the rising site costs don't tempt MMPI to scale back its ambitions for the Medical Mart and convention center designs.

-The county will still pay the city $20 million for the convention center site, even though Public Auditorium isn't part of the deal. No surprise: it looked like a unique asset a year ago, but it looks like a money pit now. So the city is promising the county it'll spend some of the $20 million on renovating the 1920s landmark.

-{Update, 5/18: I've gotten a copy of the agreement, and last year's deal to spend some of the cash on Perk Plaza is still in there. "The County urges the City to apply $2,500,000 of the Purchase Price to the restoration of Perk Park in downtown Cleveland," the agreement says. It doesn't obligate the city; it's just a recommendation.}

Perk Plaza is already being renovated no matter what -- the basic work of converting it from concrete maze to green lawn is already underway. But without the convention center money, Perk would have to do without some of the innovations that would make it more of a respite for East 12th Street apartment-dwellers: a fountain for kids to play in, a space for concerts, a heated trellis to make the park more comfortable in spring and fall.

-The deal revives a question I blogged about a lot last year: whether Positively Cleveland's funding will be cut to help pay for the Medical Mart and convention center. The sales tax earmarked for the project raises almost, but not quite, enough to fund it. The county hotel-room tax may have to make up the rest.

"The document also calls for the county to retain control of the amount of county bed tax revenue that goes to Positively Cleveland," the PD story says. That means the city's attempt to argue Positively Cleveland's case in the negotiations didn't get anywhere.

That must make it an unnerving week for the town's convention and visitor's bureau. Today's PD also says it and other tenants may have to move out of the Higbee building to make way for a temporary casino. But with sales-tax cash piling up in the bank until construction starts in October, the county won't have to solve the bed-tax dilemma for a while. It's one more thing to add to the new charter government's to-do list.

Med Mart won't be on Mall bluff

Looks like the crisis with the Medical Mart project is over. Developer MMPI has abandoned its controversial proposal to build the Mart on Mall C, the bluff overlooking the lake. It's ready to build on St. Clair Avenue again, now that negotiations for the land are making progress. Groundbreaking could happen by October.

That's the news from the county commissioners' meeting this morning. Laura Johnston has the details on the Plain Dealer's new Cuyahoga County Insider blog, and so does Tom Beres on wkyc.com.

Also announced today is a new construction agreement between the county and MMPI, detailing some rules and oversight the developer will follow while building the publicly financed Mart and convention center. It also describes how MMPI is using the $333,333 a month construction manager's fee from the county. That fee has been widely criticized, especially this fall, when the project stalled.

Most everyone who wants the Medical Mart built will be relieved to know the Mart plans have returned to the St. Clair site. Civic-minded fans of the downtown Mall will be happy too. Lots of opposition flared up to the idea of messing with Daniel Burnham's famous downtown plan by building the Mart on public parkland.

It also bypasses a political standoff between Cleveland City Hall and MMPI. Mayor Frank Jackson and city council were furious that MMPI made its case for building on the Mall by releasing its list of expensive problems it found in Public Auditorium. City officials demanded that MMPI help fix up the aging building as a sort of payback for having publicized its problems -- a weird argument that came pretty close to shooting the messenger.

There's still plenty of fallout from the November dust-up. Jackson and council will probably still make it hard for MMPI to finalize the purchase of the current convention center site -- they'll ask, rightly, what the plan is for separating it from Public Hall. Later, MMPI will need the city's approval for its building plans.

The November debate also may have affected Joe Cimperman's standing in City Hall. One reason he's fallen out with council president Martin Sweeney is his solo move to get MMPI to attend public meetings about the Mart, the PD's City Hall blog reports.

Dropping Public Auditorium from the plans still means Cleveland's Medical Mart loses its "first mover" advantage. MMPI originally planned to set up medical showrooms in the building this year, as a way of beating proposed New York and Nashville medical marts to market. Now it's a sprint to see who can open first. That's why Peter Lawson Jones quipped, "Take that, Nashville," as he approved the construction agreement today. (Meanwhile, the New York developers tried to speed up their project today by announcing they'll scale it back and lease a mart site, not build new.)

But the big news is, Cleveland's Med Mart is back on track, Cleveland City Hall recedes as a player, and the county has reasserted itself as MMPI's main partner. The county stepped up negotiations with the owners of the office building and parking garage across from the Key Marriott (see this Dec. 24 PD article), and those talks sound close to bearing fruit.

Administrators even have a plan to deal with the last holdout on St. Clair. They are thinking of seizing the last property, the Sportsman's Restaurant, by eminent domain -- not to hand over to MMPI, a move that could be challenged in court, but for a county park right next to the Med Mart site! Clever. Update, 1/8: This print-edition PD story says negotiations with the Sportsman are going well. So odds are, the county won't need eminent domain.

To read my article on the Medical Mart project from the June 2009 issue of Inside Business, click here.

My Medical Mart story, now online

In my newest feature, "Affairs of the Mart," I take a look at the prospects for the Medical Mart and convention center, Cleveland's biggest downtown project in a decade.

The story is in the June issue of Cleveland Magazine's sister publication, Inside Business, and it's online here.

Here are some key paragraphs:

The Medical Mart project is not the sure bet some supporters claim, nor the certain failure its critics envision. It is a significant risk on a promising concept.

It could give medical manufacturers and medical professionals an easier, more efficient way to connect and do business. But as an unproven idea in the medical industry, it is built on a challenging startup strategy. ...

Once the 77-year-old convention center is replaced with a state-of-the-art one, will conventioneers return to Cleveland? This simpler prospect has gotten much less attention than the Medical Mart. But it could make the project a success, even if the Medical Mart concept fails or takes a while to catch on.

(If you'd like to link to my article, you can use this shortcut: tinyurl.com/medmartIB.)

Dimora wants to move county offices for Med Mart

Scene writer Dan Harkins sat in on the county commissioners' testimony to Cleveland City Council on Monday, and he plucked out the biggest news from the friendly questioning and unanimous vote for the convention center site sale.

Jimmy Dimora wants to move the county offices to make room for the Medical Mart.

“The best way to go,” asserted Dimora, “is to locate the [new convention center] entranceway where the county administration building is and let the [landowner of adjoining property, who’s holding out for a better deal] negotiate with potential hotel developers in the future. And then we could actually take up one of your other empty buildings in town to locate our 1,500 or 1,600 employees and consolidate and hopefully save some money.”

I wrote about this possibility earlier this month, here and here. "Hopefully" save some money is right. On one hand, taxpayers shouldn't want the county to pay super-high prices for the land on St. Clair Avenue, the first-choice site for the Medical Mart and the convention center entrance. On the other hand, they also need to watch carefully to see whether the county's move would really save money.

The commissioners embarked on their ill-fated plan to move to the Ameritrust Tower site on the mistaken belief it would pay for itself. My June 2008 story, "Tower Play," showed it actually would've added millions of dollars a year to the cost of government.

This new move, if it happens, should be cheaper than the Ameritrust plan. By leasing new offices, the county might be able to break even on annual office expenses. (See this Plain Dealer story for how.) But it might end up paying more. I doubt the county would save money by moving. To do that, it would have to lease office space for 1,500 people for less than $5 million a year.

Also, if Dimora and Hagan are still on the commission when this move comes, I'll want to know if they're even willing to lease. If they still want to buy and own the county's new offices, as they did in 2005, that might cost more.

Also, the one-time cost of moving expenses would be in the millions. The county may be better off waiting to move until Cleveland sees whether the Medical Mart prospers.

Hagan on convention center deal

I talked to Tim Hagan yesterday about the county's deal to buy the convention center and what's next.

On the deal: "I think the mayor was a tough bargainer," Hagan said. "He did have something of value to add to the project: that is Public Hall." (MMPI hopes to book trade shows into Public Hall by 2011, and it says the historic auditorium will help the new convention center compete against cookie-cutter centers elsewhere.)

I took Hagan's comment as his diplomatic way of saying Cleveland asked for too much money. The city seemed focused on the land's historic and future value during negotiations, while the county focused on how little money it's generating now. Later in our conversation, Hagan hinted that he found it ironic that the mayor took such a tough stance at a time when the city only has nine conventions booked.

What's next: The county will try to buy the three private properties on the corner of St. Clair and Ontario, including the Sportsman's Deli and the Justice Center parking garage. That's where the Medical Mart building and convention center entrance will likely go.

"We’re in a quandary," Hagan said. "We don’t want to be held up." That is, the county doesn't want the private landowners to hold up the project by demanding a super-high price now that they know how much the county wants the land.

The other alternative is for the county to move to make way for the Med Mart, Hagan said. "We can knock down the county administration building and it’d be cheaper."

What he means is, it'd be cheaper for the county to demolish its building and hand the land to MMPI than to buy the three properties. But it's not cheaper to build, buy or lease a new county building. I hope this idea is a feint, a negotiating ploy. I think the lesson of the cancelled Ameritrust Tower project is that the county can't afford a new home right now.

What about eminent domain?: Can't the county just seize the three properties if the owners ask too much? No, Hagan said, because the land is being turned over to MMPI to build on. Recent court cases have limited government's use of eminent domain when a corporation receives the land, he said.

The future of Positively Cleveland: "They have a role to play in town, a significant role," says Hagan, sounding more measured on the subject than he did a couple of weeks ago.

Hagan says the county still may cut the convention and visitor's bureau budget, because some of its responsibilities will overlap with MMPI's. (The bureau would say there isn't much overlap.) But Hagan also said raising the hotel tax to fund both the Medical Mart and Positively Cleveland is also a possibility. Also, he hopes the hotel tax will generate more revenue once the convention center opens, as more visitors come to town.

Hagan says the county has to figure out where it can get "the biggest bang for the buck" with the hotel tax money. "I’m not suggesting we cut their funding, but just to look at that."

Who will like the city-county deal, who won't

After reading the city and county's $20 million deal for the convention center and Public Auditorium, here's who I think will like the deal and who won't:

Activists and bloggers who hate tax abatements won't like this deal one bit. The city pledges to support any county requests for tax abatements for the project. (The county has already promised to cover any taxes imposed on MMPI.) Also, the city promises to make up the tax revenue the Cleveland schools will lose if, as planned, the county buys three private properties at St. Clair and Ontario for the site of the Medical Mart building.

Film industry supporters will be sad to lose the old convention center as a potential soundstage. But Nehst Creations, the film company that signed a lease to move into the center, will be able to stay at least a year.

Fans of the downtown Mall will be nervous, but maybe also hopeful. The deal acknowledges that the Mall will have to be raised a few feet higher to give the new convention center the ceiling height that convention planners want. But the county says MMPI will pledge to create a new park there that's at least as good as the current one. MMPI's Mark Falanga has told me the company wants the Mall to be an attractive gathering place for Clevelanders, like Millennium Park in Chicago.

Minority-hiring activists should be pretty happy. The deal requires MMPI to require the contractor who builds the new convention center and Medical Mart to "utilize good faith efforts" to do two things:
-subcontract 25% of the job to county-certified small businesses
-hire a workforce made up of 40% county residents, including 20% Cleveland residents

The county will monitor the project to see if the contractor is meeting those goals.

The word "minority" never appears in the agreement, because the county can't require private contractors to meet racial hiring quotas. But about 60 percent of Clevelanders are black and Hispanic, and the county's small-business program for subcontractors includes a lot of minority-owned and female-owned businesses. MMPI will also work with the Cleveland schools to establish construction training programs that will lead to jobs on the project for the trainees.

Norman Edwards, the mercurial activist who shows up at nearly every county meeting to argue for more minority hiring on county projects (and who now faces a ban from the meetings for abusive behavior), may not be satisfied with this, but it seems to go about as far as the law allows.

Those who want to bring non-medical conventions back to Cleveland will be moderately happy. The deal includes language about booking non-medical events that benefit Cleveland's economic development, even if they aren't profitable to MMPI(!). If a scheduling conflict arises between two possible events, MMPI still gets to make the final decision, but the county says MMPI will consult with Positively Cleveland before deciding what to book.

Supporters of Positively Cleveland will still be uneasy. The city got the county to agree that the convention and visitor's bureau "provides significant assistance to the entire region," and to give it a role in resolving scheduling conflicts. But the city backed off and acknowledged that "The amount of county bed tax that goes to fund Positively Cleveland in the future will be determined solely by the county."

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.)

Deal near on convention center

The city and county are nearing a deal on the convention center. "I have not finalized an agreement with the County; however, significant progress has been made," Mayor Frank Jackson said in a statement about an hour ago.

The county commissioners gave Jackson until today to accept their "final offer" of $17.5 million for the current convention center and Public Hall. Jackson wants a higher price, and also wants to protect Positively Cleveland and non-medical conventions. (See my coverage of that issue here and here.)

"The price will be higher than the “ultimatum”; and, just as importantly, my concerns surrounding agreement details that protect the public's interest are also being addressed," Jackson said in a statement released to cleveland.com (and now to me too). “I look forward to moving ahead with this very important project."

Update, Sat. a.m.: The Plain Dealer and MedCity News report that a final deal may come Monday. Jones says the purchase price will be $20 million, but Hagan disputed that, saying the mayor is reviewing a possible deal over the weekend.

Update: Sat. 1 p.m.: This morning, Mayor Frank Jackson confirmed to me that he hopes to finalize the deal on Monday.

County gives Jackson ultimatum: Sell convention center or else

Check out WKYC's report from Tuesday night about the city and county's intense negotiations about the convention center site (video above, video and text version here). Mayor Frank Jackson, quiet for most of the Medical Mart/convention center debate, is taking a tough stand in negotiations with the county. Jackson wants the county to pay $25 million for the current convention center and Public Hall.

The county commissioners say $17.5 million is their final offer. If they don't get it by Friday, they say they'll consider other sites. No, not Tower City -- several sites near University Circle. (I think this likely means the Cleveland Play House property on Carnegie.)

Jackson is also standing up for Positively Cleveland, insisting its budget not be slashed and diverted to the Medical Mart. (See my coverage of this issue here and here.) Tom Beres, WKYC's political reporter, asked Tim Hagan about it, and Hagan sounds ready to gut the convention and visitor's bureau. "Positively Cleveland is not as important to the future of this community as a new convention center with a Medical Mart," he tells Beres.

Positively Cleveland's Dennis Roche, making the case for his organization, warns Cleveland could end up like Colorado, which lost a third of its tourism after eliminating its tourism bureau. A representative of a Gateway hotel says cutting the bureau's budget would be "very stupid." The commissioners might also vote to raise the tax on hotel rooms from 4.5% to 6.5%.

On tonight's 7 p.m. broadcast, WKYC reported another idea has come up in negotiations: the city might keep Public Hall, and the new project could stretch west instead -- to the site of the county administration building.

This may just be a negotiating stance or ploy, or a serious way to cut the selling price. If the county or city are serious about the idea, it'd open up two huge issues:

-The county would move to a new headquarters -- reigniting the debate about where it should move and whether it can afford another big new project. See my June 2008 article "Tower Play," about the Ameritrust Tower, which showed that constructing a new county building would add millions of dollars a year to the cost of government.

-MMPI has said it can start booking trade shows into a renovated Public Hall within a year of starting the project. That, it has argued, is key to being "first to market" -- getting a Cleveland Medical Mart going before a possible competitor in New York City opens. Leaving Public Hall out of the project would eliminate that competitive advantage.

Update, Thu. a.m.: In today's Plain Dealer, Jones confirms the Cleveland Play House is an alternate site. The story says the county administration building could become part of the Mall site for the project if negotiations for the private property south of it fall through. (That fits what I've been hearing.)

City defends Positively Cleveland, pushes for non-medical conventions in Med Mart talks

I've been writing a lot about whether the Med Mart deal threatens Positively Cleveland's funding and whether non-medical conventions will be a priority at the new convention center. Turns out Mayor Frank Jackson and his staff are asking the same questions. The city's negotiators want the county and MMPI to make concessions on those two issues before Cleveland will sell the current convention center to the county.

The Plain Dealer picks up the story today, reporting on Jackson chief of staff Ken Silliman's briefing to city council. "Keeping a prominent role for Positively Cleveland is key," Silliman (pictured) told council yesterday. More from the story:

[Silliman] also stressed that lots of industrial trade shows are eager to return to Cleveland once the obsolete convention center is replaced. Those events would pack hotels and restaurants, even if they don't appeal to MMPI.

"We are not as confident that a private entity will always make that correct decision," Silliman said. "This is a critically important area to us."

This is a major difference in how to look at the new convention center -- though one that could be resolved through compromise. The deal with MMPI says the county will send it proposals for convention bookings, and that MMPI "shall make commercially reasonable efforts to pursue" them as long as they don't "unduly interfere with intended uses of the Convention Facilities as part of an integrated facility with the Medical Mart."

"What we’re going to have here is a so-called themed convention center," Fred Nance, the county's negotiator, told me last week. That means medical conventions will usually come first, though it'll also depend on a show's size. "You could have a very low-level medical show that would be dwarfed by the impact of a non-medical show," he told me last week. "But all things being equal, the medical stuff would take precedence."

So Jackson is asserting himself to make sure the project doesn't lead us to a single-minded focus on medical conventions. He wants Cleveland to attract a new medical show market and the old convention crowds the antiquated center lost.

Med Mart: Dan Gilbert's weak argument

The Plain Dealer gave Cavs owner Dan Gilbert's argument for putting the Medical Mart at Tower City page-one play again Sunday. This time the lead was Gilbert's comparison of downtown Cleveland to downtown Detroit.

Gilbert argues that Detroit made a terrible mistake when it put three casinos in different places, two of them too far from the city's center. They lost a chance to give downtown Detroit a connected core.

True, but there's no lesson for Cleveland there. "NOTE: Maps are not at the same scale," says the fine print on page A16 under the PD's Detroit and Cleveland maps.

Detroit's downtown is much bigger and sprawled-out than Cleveland's. The Motor City Casino is 1.4 miles from Detroit's convention center, Cobo Hall. But the convention center site on our Mall is a half-mile from the Q, with East Fourth Street halfway between.

Yes, the Tower City site's big advantage is that it's connected to the Rapid, a shopping center, two hotels and the arena. But the mall site is hardly isolated -- it's next to two hotels, a block from Public Square, and the new center would have a big glass window overlooking the Rock Hall and the lakefront.

Developer Jeffrey P. Jacobs took out a full-page ad in yesterday's paper supporting the Mall site. His letter makes an interesting point about connecting downtown. "Successful urban planning... involves the creation of multiple traffic generators," Jacobs writes. "Moving visitor traffic throughout downtown will help sustain a community of businesses."

In other words, grouping things fairly close together is good -- but you do want conventioneers to get outside, into taxicabs, onto the streets.

{Correction, 4/21: In an earlier version of this post, I wrote that Jeff Jacobs' father, Dick Jacobs, owns the Marriott at Key Center, across from the Mall site. Actually, cleveland.com reports tonight that the Jacobs Group relinquished its 50% stake in Key Center this fall. See my new post.}

Med Mart: What next?

Now that the county has inked the deal with MMPI, what will happen next?

The county still has to buy the current convention center from the city. MMPI and the county will negotiate some more over the next year, fleshing out the deal in further agreements about finances, leases, construction and design. MMPI will start trying to sign medical manufacturers and conventions. It has a year to lease five showrooms and book ten conferences or shows. If all that happens, construction probably starts next spring. It'll take three years, though MMPI may book shows into a renovated Public Hall starting in 2011.

Questions to watch: How many manufacturers and shows will MMPI book, and what kind? How much attention will they devote to non-medical conventions? Will negotiations with the county go smoothly, or will sticking points and surprises come up? What will be the second stream of money to fund the project besides the sales tax, if any? If it's the hotel tax, what happens to Positively Cleveland?

Hagan on Med Mart deal

Tim Hagan argued the Med Mart deal will benefit Clevelanders by reviving an ailing public property, the current convention center.

"We’re negotiating with the mayor in good faith to claim a public facility that’s not being used, a public building," he said at today's commissioners' meeting. "We’re giving the taxpayers of Cleveland an opportunity to use this facility to benefit Cleveland and Cuyahoga County. Yeah, we've got a private partner involved in this, but we're not turning over public money [to them] to buy the land. It’s owned by the citizens." (In other words, the county will own the new center after the lease expires.)

Cleveland spends $7 million a year to maintain the current center, Hagan said. "Eight to nine million dollars is going to promote it over there. That's $17 million to promote an inadequate facility."

Hagan is referring to Positively Cleveland's budget, which the county may cut in order to switch its county bed tax funding to the Medical Mart. Actually, Positively Cleveland's president made the case to me this week that most of the group's work is not booking conventioneers. If Hagan doesn't think Positively Cleveland's work is doing much for the city, that probably won't bode well for the group's hopes of holding onto its funding.

After joking his invitation to Cavs playoff games might be revoked, Hagan ripped into Cavs owner Dan Gilbert and Indians president Paul Dolan. He jabbed at the Plain Dealer too. "We’ve got a newspaper that can’t figure out a business agreement to keep itself going giving us business advice. We’ve got two owners of franchise[s] who are not interested in the public’s view." Sarcastically, he pretended to be Gilbert: "Oh, I’m concerned about the future of the community, I’m concerned about downtown. Oh, and coincidentally, just as an aside, my building the Cavs are in will be close to that" -- the alternative convention center site at Tower City -- "while I’m promoting the possibility of gambling in town."

After returning to a frequent theme of his in response to criticism, that we're a representative democracy, not a direct democracy, Hagan called the roll. The vote was 3-0.

Just before signing the deal, Hagan made a reference to his heart trouble last week. He was hospitalized and had two stents implanted, county administrator Jim McCafferty told reporters. "Some of you have read that I had a little problem over Easter weekend," Hagan told the audience. "I’m doing just fine."

As cameras gathered to watch the commissioners sign the deal, county administrator Jim McCafferty cracked an awkward joke about the possibility Hagan might have a heart attack as he signs. Hagan laughed it off. "Aarrh," he said, and faked falling down in his chair.

Jones on Med Mart deal

Highlights of Peter Lawson Jones' comments about the Med Mart deal at the commissioners' meeting this morning:

Jones got very animated talking about why he thinks Cleveland needs a new convention center. "The current convention center is only 9 or 10% full," he said, because of its "dilapidated condition." Convention planners tell the county they'd book Cleveland if we build a new center. "We have more attractions than anyone in our competitive set: Cincinnati, Detroit, Pittsburgh, or Columbus," Jones said.

"The impediment is right there. Look out the window." Jones pointed outside to the Mall, at the current convention center. "That’s the problem."

The county should get its investment back in the first few years the mart and center are open, Jones said. MMPI has estimated the project could attract $1 billion a year in economic activity to Cleveland, he noted. "Let’s assume they’re only a fifth right," Jones said. "Then it will only take five years for us to get back our investment."

Other cities tried to court MMPI, adding pressure on the county negotiators, Jones revealed. Denver tried to get MMPI to build a Medical Mart and convention center there, he said. Echoing Nance's comment that MMPI is the country's best merchandise-mart operator, Jones defended the deal's price: "When you want the best, there’s a premium on that. You can’t get LeBron James for Larry Hughes’ money."

Jones said the county intends for 20% of the construction workers on the project to be Cleveland residents and for a "significant number" to be Cuyahoga County residents. He said the county will use "laws and the bully pulpit" to make sure minorities and local residents work on the project. MMPI "will adhere to our desires, whether expressed in rules and regulations or aspirations," he said.

He also said he believed the county has spent about $500,000 on the project so far, mostly for construction and convention-business consultants.

At about the six-minute mark of his 14-minute remarks, the often-wordy Jones said he was just getting started praising and defending the deal.

"Peter, I’ve got a bad heart," Hagan interjected mock-wearily.

"I’m trying to save you energy by making comments you might have made, and at a higher decibel level than I have," Jones replied with a smile.