FitzGerald burnishes reformer credentials, floats new Great Lakes Expo in State of County speech

Ed FitzGerald tackled a political challenge of his own making today. How could he deliver a State of the County address without sounding like he’s running for governor? His answer: a pair of headline-making announcements and the latest hard sell of his reformer credentials.

First, FitzGerald announced that the Medical Mart has a new name, more vague, less blatantly commercial, more aspirational: the Global Center for Health Innovation. The name change seems inspired by the Cleveland Clinic’s Medical Innovation Summit, which will open in the Mart Center in October. It could also be borrowed from the latest announced tenant. FitzGerald announced that the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society will locate its Innovation Center here. It’s another win for the ever-strengthening project. The HIMSS center, which will take up most of a floor, was going to be an anchor in the failed Nashville medical mart.

Next, FitzGerald called for Cleveland to host a sequel to the Great Lakes Exposition of 1936-1937 in three years. Indulging a bit of history geekiness, he talked about how FDR pressed a button on the White House desk to open the Expo gate and later visited the grounds. Maybe, he speculated in the Q and A, a new expo could be based on medicine and music, like the 1930s expo was based on Cleveland’s industries of the time. Or it could be based on music and performing arts, entrepreneurship and local food. Or “it could be all those things or none of those things,” he said, trying to leave room for others in town to add their ideas.

Ever since the Great Lakes Expo lit up our waterfront with its carnival midway, its exotic Streets of the World and its towering art deco architecture, reviving it has been a recurring civic dream. Dennis Kucinich floated the idea in the 1970s. But world’s fairs, or almost-world’s-fairs, have a tougher go of it today than in those Depression years before the Travel Channel and frequent-flier flights to Europe. My advice to FitzGerald: think less about a sequel to the Romance of Iron and Steel and more about recruiting great characters who can stir up a bit of scandal. Who’ll be our Billy Rose, our Eleanor Holm, our Toto Laverne?

Near the start of the speech, you could learn a lot about FitzGerald by listening to him execute a pair of moves. First, he gave thanks for the federal corruption investigation, singling out U.S. Attorney Steve Dettelbach in the audience and issuing him a “long overdue thank you for your zealous pursuit of corruption and support for integrity.” (The corruption probe started before Dettelbach took the job, and he’s had to recuse himself from it, but minor point, I guess.)

Then FitzGerald called the corruption probe Phase One of the effort to clean up Cuyahoga County government and called his administration’s efforts Phase Two. “We dismantled the political patronage machine which was choking county government,” he said. FitzGerald’s opposition to patronage seems genuine and proven. But he’s still executing a clever pirouette, dancing past the real Phase Two, the Issue 6 campaign that created a new county government system. FitzGerald, awkwardly, opposed the charter he now governs under, a fact that still complicates his reformer persona.

FitzGerald made one other revealing move. It was the one moment when you could hear his gubernatorial ambitions loud and clear. I'll post about it tomorrow.

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.

FitzGerald says he’s aided corruption investigation: “I talked to the FBI about a lot of things”

In his inaugural address yesterday, Ed FitzGerald took a moment to kick corrupt former county bosses to the curb. “At a time when we needed great leadership the most, we were betrayed by some of our public officials,” the new county executive said. “Public servants who steal from the people are beneath contempt, and the only use that they’re going to serve is as a cautionary tale.”

FitzGerald’s done more than proclaim good riddance. In my interview with him in the January issue of Cleveland Magazine, the former Lakewood mayor and ex-FBI agent says he’s aided the federal agents who’ve investigated county corruption. “I talked to the FBI about a lot of things the last couple of years,” he says. To read the interview in the current Cleveland Magazine, click here.

The new county executive also talks about how he first learned of his cameo appearance as PO14 in the Jimmy Dimora indictment this fall.

We also discussed his relationship with county prosecutor Bill Mason, a former boss. I’ll post the full transcript of our conversation about Mason here tomorrow.

Portions of my interviews with FitzGerald also appear in the Power 100 package in the latest issue of Inside Business, Cleveland Magazine’s sister publication. There, FitzGerald talks about his Fourth Frontier jobs program, his goals for the Medical Mart project, and his thoughts about the power and influence that comes with his new job. To read the Inside Business story, click here.

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.

Voinovich's two legacies, in Washington and Cleveland

George Voinovich hasn’t changed much in 31 years. That’s clear from a moment in his recent Washington Post interview when he recalled his 10 years at Cleveland City Hall.

“When I was the mayor, shooting for those All American City Awards each year was a real motivator,” he said. “And it never would have happened without the private sector and urban pioneers helping us rebuild a city where Cleveland used to be.”

He’s echoing a line from his 1979 run for mayor: “I want to build a great city where Cleveland used to be.” It’s a line I quote in “The Great Divide,” my piece on Voinovich in Cleveland Magazine’s December issue.

My story describes how Voinovich realigned Cleveland politics as mayor by introducing the phrase “public-private partnership” into our vocabulary. In the 30 years since, our biggest arguments haven’t been between conservatives and liberals. They’ve been about whether you see Cleveland the way Voinovich did, especially whether you’re for or against big public-private projects downtown, from Gateway to the Rock Hall to the Medical Mart. The Post interview picks up on Voinovich’s ideology, asking him how he’ll be involved in public-private partnerships after he retires from the Senate Jan. 2.

In Washington, Voinovich will be remembered for his role as a deficit hawk and his moderate politics. He showed both streaks in this month’s climactic lame-duck session, blasting the Obama-Republican tax-cut compromise for running up more debt on one hand, and on the other, voting to allow gays to serve openly in the military and supporting the New Start arms control treaty.

At home in Cleveland, he’ll be remembered for his philosophy of partnership. Last week, when county executive-elect Ed FitzGerald created a task force of business executives to aid the transition to a new county government, his announcement explicitly referred to Voinovich’s 1980 task force that helped the city climb out of default. And the county charter calls for FitzGerald to sit down with representatives of labor, nonprofits and business to develop a new economic strategy for the region. Voinovich may be retiring, but his philosophy is written right into our new government.

Urban Outfitter: my profile of Ann Zoller

Ann Zoller, executive director of ParkWorks, has taken her nonprofit far beyond trees and flowers. She believes creating exciting public spaces is not just about carefree recreation — it’s a key to making Cleveland a place more people want to live. She wants to guide downtown’s landmark public spaces from the dull, gray present to a spring-like rebirth.

Zoller, more than anyone else, is responsible for this summer's rebuilding of Perk Plaza, site of a shocking 2009 murder, as a safer, more welcoming park. She’s also helping the Medical Mart developer redesign the century-old downtown malls. Even more ambitious, ParkWorks and the Downtown Cleveland Alliance want to radically remake Public Square into a destination as inspiring as the best urban parks in the country, possibly even by building a giant hill right over Superior Avenue and Ontario Street.

That’s why I profiled Zoller in “Urban Outfitter,” my feature in the June issue of Cleveland Magazine.

Zoller's political savvy helps her get things done. The former Mike White aide enjoys a solid partnership with the Jackson Administration (though that doesn't necessarily mean the mayor will fund a radically remade Public Square). And she's emerging as a key ally of influential younger politicians, such as Joe Cimperman and Chris Ronayne, who are trying to put their optimistic stamp on the city.

“For some people, a plan is the world,” says Cimperman. “They just love to plan. For Ann, the plan is just a means of getting something done.”

(To read my profile of Zoller, click here. You can link to it with this shortcut: tinyurl.com/CMZoller.)

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.

Feagler this weekend: the cartoon, Medical Mart, CSU, Afghanistan

I'm a guest on this weekend's edition of Feagler & Friends.

Host Dick Feagler, Joan Mazzolini of the Plain Dealer, Harry Boomer of 19 Action News, and I talk about the Call & Post cartoon, the Medical Mart, new Cleveland State University president Ronald Berkman, and President Obama's escalation of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.

The show airs tonight at 8:30 and Sunday at 11:30 a.m.

Mayor Jackson questions MMPI’s motives: 'Do they really want to be here?'

Mayor Frank Jackson just put out this press release challenging Medical Mart developer MMPI, asking if it is trying to get out of its deal to build in Cleveland.

MMPI's decision to release their study of Public Auditorium's flaws to the Plain Dealer has Jackson furious.

The Medical Mart project is now at a moment of crisis. What will MMPI, the county, and City Hall do next?

Bolds are mine:
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A Statement from the Office of the Mayor
Mayor Jackson Questions MMPI’s Motives: Do They Really Want To Be Here?

CLEVELAND – Since Mayor Jackson has been crystal clear on his willingness to keep Public Auditorium and explore MMPI’s new plan, MMPI’s latest actions cause him and others to question their motives. The city and taxpayers need to know if MMPI still plans to develop in Cleveland. The Mayor has been very supportive of and committed to this project. For an example, once the County selected the site, Mayor Jackson and City Council turned this deal into a letter of intent within 10 weeks. MMPI has had unlimited access to investigate the site since the spring. After many months of silence by MMPI and continuing inquiry by the City of Cleveland, on November 4, MMPI told Mayor Jackson and Council President Martin Sweeney that Public Auditorium had many problems, that it no longer fit their business plan, and that they now want to put the Medical Mart at the end of Mall C (rather than on the previous St. Clair site). Mayor Jackson responded that the City is perfectly willing to keep Public Auditorium and is ready to discuss the new plan. Two days later Mayor Jackson’s staff asked MMPI to send the highlights of the Public Auditorium building study. Instead of sending the study highlights so that the City can take appropriate action if necessary, MMPI elected to publicly trash Public Auditorium in the media even after the building was no longer a part of the plan. MMPI’s actions beg the question: Do they still want to develop in Cleveland?

City challenges MMPI on Medical Mart, proposal to build on Mall

Cleveland City Hall is stepping up to challenge MMPI, the Medical Mart's developers. Yesterday's council hearings laid bare the power shift since the Nov. 3 election: The county's friendly, private negotiations with MMPI aren't driving Med Mart decisions anymore. Tougher, testier stances from Mayor Frank Jackson and city council are.

MMPI says it can't afford to renovate Public Auditorium or buy land west of the Mall, as it planned to this spring. It wants to build the Mart on city-owned Mall C instead.

Meanwhile, the county commissioners, who have led the quest for the Med Mart since 2006, have been rejected by the voters and are heading out the door in December 2010. And the county's decision to wait until the day after the election to give the city the bad news on Public Auditorium backfired, with Jackson feeling left in the dark.

Tim Hagan's renewed warning that MMPI can just walk away if the city drives too hard a bargain has been ignored and ridiculed. The Plain Dealer buried his warning deep inside the Metro section, where lame ducks quack, and cartoonist Jeff Darcy cast him as Grumpy of the Seven Dwarfs. Councilman Joe Cimperman, a possible candidate for county executive, stepped up to say what the commissioners' critics have been saying for years: Med Mart decision-making needs to be more transparent to the taxpayers.

The thing is, though, Hagan has a point. MMPI came to Cleveland to make money, but goodwill between Hagan and Chris Kennedy also played a huge part in getting the company here and keeping them at the negotiating table. City Hall, known for being more demanding of private business than the county, could conceivably push MMPI so hard that they kill the deal.

City officials are insisting that MMPI renegotiate the site sale with them. They insist the city still get paid at least $20 million for the site, even though Public Auditorium won't be sold anymore. And they want MMPI and the county to help fix Public Auditorium, even though they won't use it. That last demand sounds like an example of shooting the messenger: the city seems to think MMPI wounded the auditorium's reputation by saying it needs $92 million in renovations instead of $32 million. But maybe the hall does need that much: MMPI's presentation yesterday on its flaws sounds thorough.

On the other hand, the city does need to defend its interests. Public Auditorium will be less valuable if it's cut off from the convention center. Also, the city is being asked to give up valuable parkland on the lakefront bluff, part of downtown's famous Burnham Plan. (Roldo, who's against the project, asks worthwhile questions today about how the deal will change.)

So the city's demands could prove unreasonable, or a good negotiating stance. We'll see.

Meanwhile, the county is paying MMPI $333,333 a month even though work on the site hasn't started -- payments the county administrator may suspend.

Also, I haven't heard anyone address my biggest concern about the decision to drop Public Auditorium from the Med Mart plan. MMPI said this spring that getting trade shows into Public Hall by next year was key to being the "first mover." It gave Cleveland a competitive advantage over the New York and Nashville medical mart plans, which have to be built from scratch. How much does waiting until 2013 hurt us?

To read my June article about the Medical Mart in Inside Business, click here.

WCPN hosted an hour-long discussion of the Mart yesterday morning with Cimperman and Steve Litt of the PD -- click here to listen. Litt evaluates the new proposal from his architecture-critic's perspective and says a Med Mart on Mall C could be brilliant, or awful. Jay Miller of Crain's Cleveland Business is on the Med Mart story, as always: see his report from the council meeting here. Scene, which just wants the Med Mart to go away, blogs with a clever Darth Vader reference. Brandon Glenn at MedCity News takes a different angle: an update on MMPI's search for Med Mart showroom tenants.

My Medical Mart story, on the radio

Here is my story about the Medical Mart, which I talked about on WCPN's Reporters' Roundtable this morning. And here is the audio archive of the show.

I got to talk about most of the main points in my story, but not all. (We talked about the Mart being a promising but risky concept, because medical manufacturers are noncommittal about it so far. I didn't get into how the risk is mitigated by the fact that Cleveland will also get back into the competition for conventions of all kinds.)

The most fun was talking with Mark Puente of the Plain Dealer (who I profiled in the June issue because of his exposés of former sheriff Gerald McFaul). Dan Moulthrop and I asked him about his story on Earle Turner, the city clerk of courts, apparently not showing up to work much.

Some odd details that didn't make the story, but came out on the air: Turner was wearing a blanket during one interview with Puente. Another day, Turner sat in his car for 45 minutes, trying to avoid getting his picture taken. Eventually he gave up and the newspaper photographer got his shot. It's not that bad a photo!

me on WCPN

I'll be on the Reporters' Roundtable on WCPN, 90.3 FM, tomorrow morning from 9:06 to 10 a.m.

Mark Puente from the Plain Dealer will also be a panelist. I'm looking forward to asking him about his exposé of Cleveland clerk of courts Earle Turner. Bill Cohen of the Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau will be on with us.

We're also going to talk about my Medical Mart story, the reform effort's proposed county charter, and the end of Cleveland's residency requirement. Lots of news this week!

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.)

MMPI's Chris Kennedy nears U.S. Senate run in Illinois -- will Med Mart be an issue?

Chris Kennedy, president of MMPI, is likely to announce a run for the U.S. Senate from Illinois next week -- and Cleveland's Medical Mart deal may become an issue in the race.

Kennedy's possible opponents are quietly questioning MMPI's deal with Cleveland, Greg Hinz writes on his Crain's Chicago Business blog. What they want to know about it isn't clear, though Hinz's post questions Kennedy and MMPI vice-president Mark Falanga about the public's financing of the Medical Mart.

"I almost pulled the plug on it a couple of times," Kennedy tells Hinz, explaining that it took four years of difficult negotiations to strike the deal.

Kennedy, one of Robert F. Kennedy's sons, may join the 2010 race for President Obama's former Senate seat, now held by the embarrassing Roland Burris.

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.

Medical Mart could have competitor in Nashville

Cleveland's Medical Mart could face competition in Nashville, with developer MMPI, Cuyahoga County's partner, racing against its rival, Market Center Management Company, to be the first to open.

The Dallas company says it might open its medical mart as early as next year. It hopes to beat MMPI, which plans to get its first Cleveland trade shows and exhibits up in Public Hall by the end of 2010. (The Medical Mart and convention center should be completed in 2012 and 2013, respectively.)

MedCity News says the MMPI vs. MCMC battle is as fierce as the Browns-Steelers rivalry. MMPI VP Mark Falanga accuses the Dallas company of a "cut-and-paste job," stealing its concept from MMPI's website. The Nashville plan has no funding, Falanga says. MMPI has vacancies in its properties, the Dallas guy snaps back.