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Monday, July 07, 2003
Return to Conversations on the a New Cleveland Convention Center
A confluence of issues precluded me getting a post in on the CCC sooner. Most of recently it involved my Pitt-centric focus on the Big East-ACC matters.
So going back a almost a month, to two consecutive days of CCC propaganda. This was the first piece that I accidentally caught while flicking one Wednesday night, on the local NBC affiliate:
"DATELINE CLEVELAND: OUTSIDE THE BOX, Do We Really Need A New Convention Center?"
Cuyahoga County voters will have the decision of whether to support a new convention center or not on their November ballot and that vote will ultimately impact all of Northeast Ohio.
However, before one vote is cast, many questions need to be answered first. DATELINE CLEVELAND has spent the last months talking with many of the key people involved in this dialogue. The information in this broadcast may help the region's voters make up their minds about the degree of support they are willing to provide.
"Our city's economic future could be in the balance with the outcome of this vote," said WKYC Senior Political Correspondent Tom Beres and co-host of this DATELINE installment. "We felt it important to explain both sides of the convention center question and provide viewers with information and analysis. It's not just about a new facility; there are so many more concerns within this controversial issue and many factors that need to be taken into account."
"We have tried to shed some light on what each camp is thinking, how they are positioning their arguments and how all of the convention center discussions will impact our entire community," added DATELINE co-host Dick Russ. "This broadcast is designed to raise awareness. It really is one hour of programming viewers can not afford to miss."
Except that it lacked that one key element that it suggests in the title and even in the "summary" presented: both sides.
They never presented one person to actually oppose a new CCC. There was no one saying, "This won't help downtown." or "There is no actual empirical data showing that there will be real, sustainable job growth from spending $500 million on a new convention center." The closest they came to an opposing viewpoint, was an economics professor at Cleveland State who said it likely wouldn't provide near the bang for the buck that some other use for the same money could (more about him later).
Instead, most of the show was taken up explaining that the old CCC was outdated and that no one wanted to come to it. They listed and gave some of the pros and cons of the various sites set forward for the new CCC. Honestly, I was blown away by the level of puff that they could pack into an hour. To prove that Cleveland needed a new convention center, they looked to Pittsburgh.
Dave Copeland, several months ago summed up the success of the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh in an e-mail:
Success? Well, the people charged with promoting it have been very vocal that theyÂ’re ahead in their bookings. But the goals they established were so low that it would have been next to impossible for them to NOT reach them.
So now you have a building that is roughly $60 million over budget and $110 million more than the original estimate back in 1997. And it's a building that will need perpetual operating subsidies (there's no such thing as a "profitable" convention center. Boosters measure success by the extremely fluid "tourism dollars" which, any economist will tell you is difficult to quantify). The building itself is too small to compete for conventions with other cities Pittsburgh's size, and there's a whole host of structural problems (I did a series of stories in November 2001 about a foundation problem, and last February a worker was killed when a truss that was being installed collapsed. Cause: wrong bolts, which may or may not have been use for the 13 trusses previously installed).
And all that private development that was supposed to come once Pittsburgh built a world class convention center? Boosters now say what is really needed is a taxpayer-subsidized convention center hotel, because Pittsburgh doesn't have enough hotel space to draw big conventions. In other words, private investors don't think this is a big enough deal to plunk their own money down.
So if that's a success, the bar is incredibly low. Just like Pittsburghers were told "look at Cleveland" when Pittsburgh "needed" new stadiums, Clevelanders are being told to look at Pittsburgh
One of the best articles I read on the subject was in Cleveland Scene.
To be fair, Cleveland is looking to include a taxpayer-subsidized convention center hotel in the cost, so they are getting that part "right."
The next night, I found that the local PBS affiliate was having a roundtable discussion on the new CCC. ( real audio or windows media for those who want to listen)
The participants:
Madeline Cain -- Mayor of Lakewood
Jimmy Dimora -- Cuyahoga County Commissioner
Joe Frolik -- Associate Editor of the Editorial Page, Plain Dealer
Ned Hill -- Professor of Urban Studies & Public Administration, Cleveland State University
Frank Jackson -- President, Cleveland City Council
Ari Maron -- Partner, MRN Limited Partnership
Steve Strnisha -- Deputy Director, Cleveland Tomorrow
Do you know what is missing from this roundtable? An actual opponent to a new CCC. The closest thing to an opponent is Professor Hill. His argument, was the rather useless and wholly theoretical argument that the City of Cleveland would be better off economically to spend the $500 million needed for a new CCC on other things (that will provide a bigger bang for the buck, but when push came to shove he seemed to favor a new CCC over nothing) -- a completely irrelevant position since the issue isn't what to spend $500 million on, but whether to spend $500 million on a convention center --and at the same time proving the point of the tired joke from Econ 101:
Three people are stranded on a desert island - an engineer, a biologist, and an economist. They have a case of canned goods, but no can opener.
The engineer proposes using the resources on the island to break open the cans; the biologist suggests letting erosion do the job; and the economist says, "Lets suppose we had a can opener..."
So with those sort of "discussions" happening, it somehow seemed like a surprise when the business groups threw their support behind the Forest City/riverfront proposal.
Some are more naked in their reasons for a new site than others.
In Austin, the city donated an old airport to the Austin Film Society, which offers the hangars and office space at cost to feature and commercial films. Austin saw more than $75 million in film expenditures in its first year of offering the space.
In Philadelphia, the city allowed the Philadelphia Film Commission to convert an old convention center into sound stages for filming. This municipally-owned stage is booked with film business so often that officials now hunt for additional venues to accommodate more indoor film work.
A couple of options seem reasonable. First, if a new convention center is built on a different site, a substantial portion of the old convention center could be converted to sound stage use. Two to three spaces of 10,000 to 25,000 square feet apiece would be soundproofed as stage space, while an additional 75,000 square feet could be used by area vendors of equipment, as office and commissary space. Additional space could also be used to house costumes, props and related filmmaking amenities. Arts organizations - especially those with a performing or media arts focus - would be logical co-tenants for the facility.
...
[Chris] Carmody is president of the Greater Cleveland Film Commission.
Here's why I have had a hard time bringing myself to write about the new CCC lately. The situation has somehow managed to exceed my own cynicism. Seriously. The 5 or 6 proposals initially put out there were clear in their naked self interest. Forest City Enterprises was taking it on the chin, ainitialled their inital pathetic offering, and in the beginning of June offered a new site (and further mediocre reviews). Barely 3 weeks later their site is picked as the primary site to build a new CCC. Part of me wants to be optimistic because they not only have to get the following done by August 1
Dennis Eckart, head of the Greater Cleveland Growth Association, and Joe Roman, head of Cleveland Tomorrow, detailed the plan yesterday for Plain Dealer editors and reporters - with several caveats.
By Aug. 1, they said, political leaders and the property owners, Forest City Enterprises, must agree to:
Build houses on the vacant Scranton Peninsula, across the river from Tower City.
Expand The Avenue, Tower City's ailing shopping mall, be fore the convention center is built.
Address what to do with Public Hall, which will be vacated if a new center is built.
Commit to expanding existing hotels in the area.
If those things don't happen, business leaders propose that a convention center be built at the site of the current center, an aging, underground building near Mall C.
"This has to be an ironclad development agreement, not left to the whims of market forces," Eckart said. "We're going to ask the most for our $400 million public investment."
and then they have to get this on the ballot by the August 21 deadline. My only hope comes from the apparent hostility the most recent public meeting had to the proposed site for the CCC.
Business leaders and city officials started selling their plan for a new convention center last night, but not all taxpayers were ready to buy.
More than 100 people attended a public hearing, at which executives from Cleveland Tomorrow and the Greater Cleveland Growth Association presented their recommendation to build a $400 million convention center behind Tower City Center.
But many in the audience complained that the plan cost too much, was being pushed too fast or was designed to benefit its developer, Forest City Enterprises, which also owns Tower City and the land where the center would be built.
This alone wouldn't be enough, but then there is this matter. (subs. req'd)
As proponents for a new Cleveland convention center forge ahead in crafting a plan with politicos for building and funding a new center, they will need to court a soured constituency whose support previously was a given: the Greater Cleveland Lodging Association, the hotel industry trade group.
That comes at a bad time as the convention center drive enters a go-for-broke phase if money issues are to make the November ballot. Cleveland Planning Commission approved a site last Friday, June 27, for a new convention center - the first formal review by the city of a plan - and project boosters secured language in the state budget signed last week that assists development and financing mechanisms for a center. They are steps convention center backers have dreamed of for a decade.
Should convention center backers fail to mollify the hotel interests, business leaders and politicians pushing the plan risk the unbelievable: There is talk behind closed doors in the industry about opposing a hotel bed tax and other tax hikes vital to financing a new center and other economic development purposes, though that has yet to surface publicly.
The hoteliers' grumbling comes after convention center backers secured valuable language in the budget bill that allows Cuyahoga County to hike bed taxes by 2%, to divert existing bed taxes to the project from the Convention & Visitors Bureau of Greater Cleveland, to impose a restaurant and beverage tax, and to seek a 0.25% hike in sales taxes.
Executives of the Greater Cleveland Growth Association and Cleveland Tomorrow, the driving forces behind convention center planning, say hoteliers' concerns are groundless. They say that in working on the convention center plan, they have worked from a playbook that David Nolan, president of the Convention & Visitors Bureau of Greater Cleveland, helped to draft on behalf of the industry.
Mr. Nolan went on administrative leave a month ago after media reports questioned the bureau's spending practices and the bureau launched its own internal probes of the board-approved practices. The move sidelined from talks the industry's point man, and no one from the industry stepped into the void.
Now, a month later, five members of the hotel trade group and their lobbyist complain their industry hasn't been kept in the loop at the final stages of the business community-controlled project before it tossed the ball to the city of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County.
...
Bart Hacker, public affairs director of the Ohio Hotel & Lodging Industry Association, to which the Cleveland group belongs, said he found out about provisions for Cleveland's convention center only in the final days of budget deliberations.
"There was little interest in knowing what we thought or proposed," Mr. Hacker said.
Likewise, the only look that the hotel industry got at the business community's preferred site - between Huron Road and the Cuyahoga River, behind Tower City - was a brief presentation at a June 19 Convention & Visitors Bureau board meeting. That briefing came the day before the Growth Association and Cleveland Tomorrow issued their preference for the riverfront site.
"We'd been at other meetings where the other sites were discussed," said Joseph Khairallah, general manager of the Hyatt Regency Cleveland, "but we never saw the one they (business leaders) recommended." He has no complaint about the site itself.
The lodging association also has problems with the financial plan. While the state approved language allowing the county to increase bed taxes 2 percentage points, it also changed the way current bed taxes are allocated. A state law that gave the Convention & Visitors Bureau control of the 4.5% county bed tax - it uses 3% for its operations and marketing expenses and 1.5% to repay bonds on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum - was replaced by language giving that control to the county and having the money flow through the county's general fund.
The lodging industry wanted a 1 percentage point increase in the bed tax countywide and a 1 percentage point hike in Cleveland, Mr. Hacker said, not 2 percentage points countywide. The group also dislikes the potential 0.25% increase in sales tax the state allowed the county to impose for a convention center and economic development that also goes on hotel bills. Those increases, combined with the recently hiked state sales tax and all existing taxes, mean a guest in downtown Cleveland might wind up paying 17.5% tax on his hotel bill.
That's likely to give Cuyahoga County the second-highest total hotel tax rate in the nation, said Scott Ringer, general manager of the Cleveland Marriott Downtown at Key Center. Indeed, a study by the Meetings & Conventions trade magazine in August 2002 put the city at 15th position. At 17.5%, Cleveland would trail only Washington, D.C.'s 20.25% rate.
Emphasis added.
This may merely be posturing by the hotel groups, but with Nolan still on the sidelines the proponents of a new CCC are at a disavantage at selling the hotel people on the benefits. Especially after a winter where downtown hotels saw the occucpancy rates below 60%. Even with a new CCC there won't be much business in the winter, and they won't be too keen on dealing with another 300+ rooms on the existing Tower City hotels.
Since that less than positive first public meeting, the Cleveland City Planning Commission hasn't announced another public meeting -- that is unless, they might be cynical enough to wait until a couple days before the meeting to actually post the date, time and location. Would they?
I think I need some more gin.
Reasonable Idea or Shrewd Manipulation?
The house the wife and I live in is on the small side, and lacks much in cabinet space in the kitchen. This has forced some improvisation with a bakery cart and a free-standing shelf-unit. The bottom of the bakery cart has been my defacto bar area. The bottles and other bar supplies are on the bottom shelf and the bottle rack below that. The one thing we haven't found a good location has been our daughter's growing stock of baby foods.
Wife: Chas?
Me (slightly distracted by the baseball game on TV): Yeah, dear?
Wife: Do you think you could box up some of the bottles of booze you don't use often (starts to rush the words as my head whips around to full attention) so we can put Angie's baby food there and free up some of the counter space.
Me: What?
Wife: Well, just the stuff you don't drink regularly. Not the scotch, gin, bourbon, vodka and stuff like that. Just the, the...
Me: You mean the flavored liquors I bought for drinks you would like, but then still didn't bother drinking?
Wife: Yeah! Just those.
Me: (speaking slowly as I think about it) Well, I guess it would be okay... Wait, is this a clever ploy to start getting the alcohol out of the house?
Wife: (looking shocked at the accusation, then giggling a little) N-no! That's not it. I'm just trying to get non-essential stuff out of the kitchen to give us some more room.
Me: (still being suspicious) O-kayyy. I guess so. Sure.
I may simply be paranoid, but I'm going to do it.
Go West
The drive home was not as easy as the drive to my folks house. Not unexpected, since this was the Sunday after a 3-day July 4th weekend. Actually, it looked like I had the easier drive heading west than anyone going east. The PA and OH turnpike had major backlogs on the eastbound 'pikes. There was a 6 mile backup at the Breezewood exit, and a couple miles at the Warrendale exit. The Ohio/Pennsylvania border had a mile and a half back-up leaving Ohio.
The kid slept for about half the trip. Not as good as the trip out, but better than our return from Chicago where she screamed and cried for the final hour.
The one thing, I don't understand about the PA Turnpike. The rest stops. I have no idea why the last service station westbound on the turnpike is 77 miles from the PA/Ohio border, but there are 2 service stations on the eastbound side covering the same distance. That one rest stop still stinks from years of use and the fact that everyone with kids is almost forced to stop there before daring to continue any further west.
Thursday, July 03, 2003
In the 'Non
Safely in Lebanon, PA. We managed to stay just ahead of the getaway weekend traffic, and Angie slept most of the trip.
It's strange, but the PA Turnpike still doesn't aggravate me the way it does everybody else. It's narrow, only 2 lanes most of the time, lots of winding and hills, the construction; but, and maybe it's because the problems are so obvious and glaring, it isn't that bad as long as you stay alert and are willing to punch it when you have the chance.
Happy Fourth
The packing is done, and yet another weekend with family is about to commence. Going to see my family in Lebanon, PA. Great-grandparents have been waiting since March to see their great-grandaughter. Should be a fine time.
Hope everyone has a fantastic holiday.
Local Legal Shake-up
Great, even more unemployed lawyers in the Cleveland area.
Arter & Hadden has notified the state labor department that it will close its doors July 15, leaving all 246 of its Ohio employees out of work. The law firm sent what is known as a WARN notice to the Ohio Department of Job & Family Services. Such notices are re quired when companies are likely to let go significant num bers of workers. The firm said that until last week, it had been seeking more money that would have made a closing un necessary. Dan Bailey, chair man of Arter's executive com mittee, did not return calls for comment. In Cleveland, 44 at torneys, 67 secretaries and paralegals and 56 other em ployees would be out of jobs. The rest of the firm's Ohio em ployees are in Columbus.
Their Website doesn't have any info yet. Kind of a shock since the firm is 160 years old, and people with whom I went to law school are/were employed there.
Wednesday, July 02, 2003
Well, Interview Somebody
The wife and I just saw an unintentionally hilarious piece on one of the local stations, about a potentially serious problem at the University of Akron School of Law. Seems the law school accidentally sent a mass e-mail to all law students. In the e-mail, they sent a list containing each student's name, GPA and class rank. Luckily, a student alerted the school rather quickly and the e-mail software the school uses had a recall function, that appears to have worked for some and a second e-mail informed the students to delete the e-mail, so the harm was minimized as best could be expected.
The funny part of the piece, was that the tv station sent a crew down there to get student reaction. The piece was interspersed with undergraduate students commenting, no law students. The wife and I are looking at each other in utter confusion? Why are they talking to students who didn't get the e-mail and aren't in the law school? Then we realize the problem: it's summer, and they couldn't find any law students. So you have all of these undergrads kind of shrugging and saying it isn't a big deal, because to them it isn't. It wasn't their grades.
Why the Post-Gazette Sports Writers Suck
Reason #396: They don't see anything until it is 50 feet past them.
Bob Smizik, July 2, 2003:
The league's future should be clear. The football-playing members -- Pitt, West Virginia, Syracuse, Boston College, Rutgers and Connecticut -- must move ahead as an all-sports conference in which all members play Division I-A football. That's right, the new Big East must cut ties with the conference members whose primary sport is basketball. That means saying goodbye to Georgetown, St. John's, Villanova, Seton Hall, Providence and, yes, to Notre Dame, unless, in the extremely unlikely event, the Irish want to come aboard as a football-playing member.
Me, May 6, 2003:
In such a scenario, the 8 Big East football/basketball schools would have to become proactive, because it would only be a matter of time before the Big 11 came knocking or the ACC tried again. Here is what would have to take place.
* Goodbye basketball only schools. Be it a new conference or still called the Big East, the football/basketball schools would split. Yes, I'd be sorry to no longer have games against Georgetown, Villanova, St. John's, Seton Hall, and even Providence, but not that upset.
Given the Pirates suck, the Penguins suck, and the steelers are still a month from training camp; you would have thought a Pittsburgh sports columnist might take more notice as to what would happen to Pitt.
Tuesday, July 01, 2003
What Pitt Has to Do This Football Season...
To quote from one of those movies (along with Road House, any Clint Eastwood western, Silver Streak, Blazing Saddles, Demolition Man, and Slap Shot) that I can never seem to turn away from when it shows up on cable.
Jake Taylor: I guess there's only one thing left to do.
Roger Dorn: What's that?
Taylor: Win the whole fuckin' thing.
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