Cleveland Real Estate News

 I was browsing on UrbanOhio Forum today and found this article posted for everyone to see. (Thank you, Ken Pendergast)  There have been a lot of negative editorials and we all have opinions. But it’s pretty impressive that Crain’s Cleveland is coming down so hard on the Tower City site pick for the new Convention Center/Medical Mart. Here is the editorial, in it’s entirety:

EDITORIAL
Not so fast

4:30 am, August 25, 2008

Excuse us if we don’t automatically buy into the argument that a riverfront site at Tower City Center is the best, or for that matter the least expensive, option for the creation of a convention center and medical merchandise mart in downtown Cleveland.

It’s not that we flunked math in high school. The numbers presented by the committee charged with selecting the site for the long-discussed convention center and sidekick medical mart project are quite clear: It would cost an estimated $536 million to develop the duo at Tower City, while the price of replacing the antiquated convention center on Cleveland’s Mall with a new one accompanied by a medical mart would total $583 million.

That’s a $47 million difference in favor of the Tower City location.

But what becomes of the current convention center and the attached Public Hall if Tower City is the home of the new convention center?

Unless the old structures are used each Halloween as “The Biggest Haunted House in the World,” there likely will be a substantial cost to redevelop the properties for new uses. And it isn’t unthinkable that the cost — which probably would be assumed in whole or in part by taxpayers under the guise of state grants and tax breaks — could exceed by far the $47 million “savings” of choosing the Tower City site.

We’re also not convinced that a convention center at Tower City would be better for downtown as a whole than a meeting hall at the Mall.

We can foresee too many convention-goers flying into Hopkins airport, jumping on the Red Line rapid transit train that connects to Tower City, holing up in the Tower City complex for much of their stay and jumping back on the train to catch a flight home.

Thanks for visiting Cleveland, folks.

Conventions are supposed to put out-of-towners on the streets so that they spend their money at the restaurants, nightclubs, theaters and attractions that populate downtown. We believe the central location afforded by the Mall would generate a greater volume of such street traffic than Tower City (and don’t talk to us about creating above-ground covered walkways to get people from Tower City to other parts of downtown — how absurd).

If the taxpayers of Cuyahoga County are going to foot most of a half-billion dollar bill — without their direct approval, mind you — for creating the convention center/medical mart complex, then they darn well better get their money’s worth.

It isn’t as though they haven’t seen mass quantities of public money wasted before for projects that civic leaders thought were swell. Look no further than the $60 million Waterfront Line, the transit train running through the Flats that was a Cleveland Bicentennial project. It runs most days essentially riderless, and occupies prime riverfront property that could have been put to much better use.

Now comes a project 10 times the cost of the Waterfront Line. It must yield the maximum bang for those bucks. Otherwise, it will go down as the biggest waste of public money in the history of Northeast Ohio.

8.27.08 update: Two public meetings have been scheduled so if you have opinions and want them heard, yeay or nay, here are the details:

Tuesday, September 2, 2008 from 5 to 7 pm at the Cleveland Heights Community Center at One Monticello Blvd. near Mayfield Road.

Thursday, September 4, 2008 from 5 to 7pm at the Middleburg Heights Recreation Center on Bagley Road.

Peace Out – 3C