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.

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.)

Springsteen opens for Obama

I think any smart politician would want Bruce Springsteen vouching for him at campaign events. The singer's six-song set and speech at Barack Obama's rally in downtown Cleveland today were plain-spoken and stirring.

Springsteen, appearing solo with an acoustic guitar, started his set with "The Promised Land," a 1978 song about resolve in the face of adversity. Next came "Youngstown," a stark ballad that mentions Northeast Ohio in the first line, followed by "Thunder Road," the classic first track from the Born to Run album. He sang the last line, "We're pulling out of here to win," to huge cheers.

With his wife, Patti, Springsteen sang a song he hasn't released on an album yet, dedicating it to Obama. "I'm working on a dream/Though it can feel so far away," went the chorus. He got the crowd singing on "This Land Is Your Land," and even sang one of Woody Guthrie's less-known verses, set "in the squares of the cities" and in a "relief office" -- noting the moment and evoking the Great Depression.

"For 35 years, I've been writing about what it means to be an American," Springsteen told the crowd. He said he believed in "economic and social justice, America as a positive example in the world, truth, transparency, and integrity in government," and a right to a job and a living wage. "Today those freedoms have been damaged and curtailed by a reckless and morally bankrupt administration." His songs, he said, have often measured the distance between the American Dream and reality. "I believe Senator Obama has taken measure of that distance in his own life and in his work." He finished his set with "The Rising," a poetic redemption song, the title track of the album he wrote in response to the 9/11 attacks.

A friend listening elsewhere in the crowd, inspired, texted me to read the words engraved on Public Hall behind Springsteen. He asked me to quote them on the blog, thinking them appropriate for the occasion. They read: "A monument conceived as a tribute to the ideals of Cleveland and builded by her citizens and dedicated to social progress, industrial achievement, and civic interest. Patriotism, progress, culture."

Update: Lots of video of Springsteen's performance on YouTube today, of varying quality. Here he is peforming "This Land Is Your Land" and "Thunder Road." Go to youtube.com and search for Obama, Springsteen, Cleveland for more.