OHIO GOP LEADERS TRADE LOCAL CONTROL FOR CASH: Remember way back when "conservatives" were against big government imposing its will on local communities? Yeah, I know, they were for balanced budgets then too. It's amazing how being in power -- and having access to all those corporate checkbooks -- changes your perspective.

Tasha Flournoy's excellent story in today's PD follows the money trail that led to the passage of Ohio House Bill 278 and the elimination of communities' authority over gas well drilling within their municipal limits. Of course the trail leads straight to the proud conservative leadership of the Statehouse GOP, including House Speaker Jon Husted.

Cleveland's legendary entrepreneur-mayor Tom L. Johnson used to campaign on the slogan "Home rule and just taxation". Ohio Democrats, take note.
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DUDE, WHERE'S MY CHA-CHING? So you think Steelyard Commons will generate a lot of local tax revenue? Maybe you should think again. Here's an article you might have missed by Jay Miller in Crain's Cleveland Business, October 13, 2004 (no link available):

Study: Towns often don't cash in on retail cha-ching

With interest growing in Steelyard Commons, a sprawling shopping center planned for the former site of a steel mill in the Flats, it's worth listening to a voice that questions the financial soundness of retail development.

The Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission -the central Ohio equivalent of the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency - is circulating a new report it commissioned titled, "Understanding the Fiscal Impacts of Land Use in Ohio." The report analyzes the local financial implications of economic development based on a survey of outcomes around central Ohio.

The study. prepared by Randall Gross Development Economics, a Washington, D.C., consultant, finds office buildings and industrial parks, filled with well-paid workers who pay local income taxes, are a net benefit to cities. Not surprisingly, residential development, which creates a need for more schools, generally has a negative impact.

However, retail development, despite its singing cash registers, is, at best, a wash but usually a slight drain on city coffers, the study contends.

When all the costs and benefits are tallied, the study found office development provides a net positive fiscal benefit to the community of $1.34 per square foot of space, and new industry adds 62 cents a square foot.

Shopping centers and other retail development, however, generate a net loss of 44 cents per square foot of new development, largely because of added costs related to the traffic they generate.

Only when retailing is part of a mixed-use development and public transit can mitigate the crush of cars does it become financially positive, the report said.

(Emphasis added.)

The Steelyard Commons site, of course, is far from any residential development, far from existing transit lines, and hemmed in by industrial and highway uses with no place to grow or diversify. Its locational "virtue" is being next to the Jennings Freeway and close to I-71.

Here's MORPC's page linking to the full RGDE study.
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THINGS I AGREE WITH, FOR A CHANGE

It's time to give due credit to a couple of people I've been pretty hard on recently.

1) First, the Plain Dealer editorial page (which means Mr. Larkin, I presume). I agree strongly with every word of the lead editorial today, along with this one from last Saturday. Today's is about the state GOP's plan to cut the Local Government Fund budget for cities (but not villages) by 20%, and Saturday's was about the General Assembly's rush to legislate against cities putting up "red light cameras" to catch speeders and raise money. But they're both really about the same thing -- the determination of Republican state legislators to undermine both the financial resources and the home rule rights of Ohio cities. The Saturday headline said it well: What local control? Plan to stop drivers from running red lights is in jeopardy because the Ohio House wants to run Cleveland.

This is one of the most important and least discussed issues in Ohio politics. The mayors and city councils of Cleveland and other Ohio cities are expected to work miracles -- in neighborhood and downtown renewal, job creation, and school reform -- all while controlling crime, keeping the streets clean and the garbage collected. Legislators, especially those from rural districts, are never going to accept accountability for any of these things, and most are utterly clueless about big-city development and administration. Yet the General Assembly jealously controls cities' taxation and borrowing options. (The Local Government Fund, as the PD points out, is supposed to compensate local goverments for the limits imposed by state law on their property taxes.) And increasingly, the Statehouse GOP is acting to limit cities' non-tax authority as well, in violation of the spirit (if not the letter) of the Ohio Constitution's home rule provision, and usually in the service of some corporate special interest. Examples include:

-- the current red-light camera legislation;
-- the ongoing effort to preempt Cleveland's predatory lending ordinance with a toothless state law, which the Campbell Administration has challenged and has so far defeated in court;
-- a 2003 law that stripped municipalities of authority to regulate gas well drilling (HB 278);
-- a 2000 law restricting municipal operation of cable systems (SB 67):
-- the recently introduced House Bill 188, which limits local (and state) government "electronic commerce services" that compete with two or more private providers... which some are interpreting a a preemptive attack on municipal bandwidth initiatives, though it may also prohibit the sale of public documents by agencies to the public if some private firms want to act as brokers.

The PD editorialists are calling out the General Assembly's GOP leaders on a critical big-picture issue. This is a case where Larkin and Co. deserve strong support from people who care about our city.

2) For a similar reason, I want to give at least 2.5 cheers for Mayor Campbell's casino initiative. I don't think casinos are going to make much real difference in Cleveland's future, and I have no opinion about the political strategy Campbell and Austin are pursuing, but they've framed the issue absolutely correctly: This should be a local question, decided by local voters. Ohio cities (and the Democrats who lead most of them) have to start pushing back in defense of home rule and the right to shape our own futures. Otherwise cities will forever be trying to make bricks without straw. I'm looking for a petition to sign on this one.

3) Finally, a big thumbs up for the education op-ed in this morning's PD by Mayor Campbell's opponent, Council President Frank Jackson. You want real ideas to debate in the Mayor's race? Well, now we've got some. Jackson will have to answer a lot of questions about this gutsy piece (especially about how he thinks public and private school systems can coexist financially) but he's certainly put some serious meat on the table. And his two most "do-able" propositions -- some public schools in the city that are regional magnets, and free tuition for the first two years of college for city residents -- make extraordinary sense to me. (I continue to believe that sending Cleveland to college would be a lot better ED investment than a new convention center.)

So, Mr. Larkin, Mayor Campbell, Councilman Jackson... good on ya, and thanks!
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NO COMMENT: Enetation, the comment system I use here, has been on the blink for the last few hours and making the whole page load very slowly. So I've taken their link down, which means no comments until enetation fixes itself.
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SYC "A DEPRESSING CLICHE": Just in case you missed it, architecture writer Steven Litt in yesterday's PD:

In design, Steelyard Commons is a depressing cliche. It consists of a long row of boxy stores facing a vast parking lot. Schneider has talked about gluing a veneer of faintly industrial architecture to the facades of the "commons" to evoke the muscular steel-making sheds of the past. But it's obvious the project will suburbanize a once robust industrial zone for which better uses could be found.

An exciting vision.

(Via the always excellent Cuyahoga County Planning Commission Weblog, which also has this.)
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1800 JOBS? Listening to the Steelyard Commons debate on "90.3 at 9", it occurs to me that I should re-post this from March...

"1800 PERMANENT JOBS": By now, if you live in the Cleveland media market you've heard it a hundred times: "Steelyard Commons would create 1,800 permanent jobs." This is the killer argument, the reason no sane community leader should do anything that might jeopardize the project.

But it doesn't have much to do with reality.

Let's assume that the new mall is built as projected, with five big-box stores (including an expandable Wal-Mart) and several dozen smaller spaces in adjacent strips. And let's assume the vacancy rate is low and the stores are very successful (you'll notice we're doing a whole lot of assuming). And finally, let's assume that the resulting work force is, indeed, around 1,800 people.

Does this mean we've "created" 1,800 new jobs? No, and here's why: New retail floor space doesn't create new retail jobs. Higher retail sales, i.e. more consumer spending, is what creates new jobs (sometimes). And since building a mall in the Flats will have no effect on the amount of money Cleveland-area consumers spend -- only on where we spend it -- it will result in little or no new job creation.

Here's a chart of total retail employment in the Cleveland-Lorain region during the last eleven years. During this period, millions of square feet of retail space were built in Cuyahoga and Lorain Counties: the South Park mall in Strongsville, Avon Commons, Legacy Village, the Promenade in Westlake, most of the Ridge Park mall in Brooklyn, etc., etc., not to mention a half-dozen Wal-Marts, another half-dozen Targets, chain drugstores on every corner and many specialty big-boxes. So look at the resulting employment change:

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Not what you'd call a robust growth picture, eh?

Retail employment doesn't grow when developers build more stores, it just moves around. This is especially true when the region's retail space is already overbuilt, as ours is, according to the County Planning Department's Northeast Ohio Regional Retail Analysis.

If eighteen hundred people get hired at Steelyard Commons, that will simply mean that a similar number of jobs are lost somewhere else in the area. And it's a sure bet that many will be lost to Cleveland residents, over 15,000 of whom already work in city or suburban retail establishments.

So please, can we stop talking about "creating 1,800 jobs" in Steelyard Commons? It isn't exactly a lie, but it's even farther from being a meaningful truth.

WAL-MART DEBATE ON WCPN MONDAY: WCPN's "90.3 at 9" will have a debate on the Wal-Mart issue this Monday between Ward 13 Councilman Joe Cimperman and Chris Ronayne, Mayor Campbell's Chief of Staff. The program is live from 9 to 10 am at 90.3 on your FM dial.

The call-in number is 216-578-0903.
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PUTTING SOME ACTUAL THOUGHT INTO DEVELOPMENT: Brewed Fresh Daily has posted the full text of an email sent around yesterday by Brian Cummins, the Ward 15 City Council candidate who just resigned as director of Old Brooklyn Community Development Corporation. Brian was one of the few voices asking for some serious discussion of Steelyard Commons when the project was was being waved through the regulatory checkpoints by City Hall last year.

Note carefully Brian's point about what the famous "retail leakage" study actually recommended, as well as County planners' derailed effort to devise a sustainable development plan for the valley. Then you'll want to take a look at the Cuyahoga Valley Initiative's website and the study done last year for the CVI by the Rocky Mountain Institute.

Do you see any strategic basis in there for fast-tracking a plan to cover 130 key riverside acres with a 4,500-space parking lot and a million square feet of cookie-cutter retail?

Me, neither.
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AND ONE MORE PLAIN DEALER QUESTION...

Why is it that the PD always refers to guys who runs big corporations and have the power to unilaterally order thousands of employees around as "business leaders"...

while someone who holds elective office in a federation of independent labor organizations, directing a handful of subordinate staff, is routinely described as a "labor boss"?

Just wondering.
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CLEVELAND BLOGGERS ORGANIZING AGAINST STEELYARD COMMONS WAL-MART

From Democracy Guy:

As we discussed at our bloggers/podcast meetup last night, the first No Cleveland Walmart organizational meeting has been scheduled...

Wednesday, May 25, 7pm, at the Treehouse. 820 College Ave. Corner of College & Professor in Tremont.

Bring friends. Spread the word on your blogs & podcasts. We're hoping to have a website up by then, some concrete plans, and we'll be brainstorming at the meeting for more ideas. Grassroots, baby.

STEELYARD COMMONS PROPERTY TAXES SPOKEN FOR?

When the Mayor talks about "$3 million in new taxes" from Steelyard Commons, we're supposed to get an image of teachers and policemen returning to work. But look what I just stumbled upon in Trails and Tracks, the Ohio Canal Corridor newsletter (see the Spring 2005 edition, page 9):

Ohio Canal Corridor has been negotiating with the city to design a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) District that includes Steelyard Commons and follows the routing of the Towpath Trail from lower Harvard Avenue towards Canal Basin Park. Such a District would allow for the enhanced value of the property taxes for Steelyard Commons to be directed to underwriting bonds that would provide local funding dollars for the Towpath project. These local funds would, in turn, be used as leverage (local match) for federal transportation funds for trail development. In other words, the single biggest question to building the Towpath -- where to find local match -- would be solved!

Needless to say, this idea is currently on HOLD. Like the development from which it would benefit, the TIF is in jeopardy. In fact, recent discussions with key administrative officials concerning Steelyard Commons suggest that the city will attempt to save the deal by directing TIF financing to Mitch Schneider to underwrite portions of the infrastructure he would have provided gratis. Let us hope that our civic leaders come together to salvage Steelyard Commons so it can move forward in a manner that yet allows a TIF for the Towpath. If not, it will be a rare opportunity squandered

"TIF" is a development tax subsidy that's a second cousin to tax abatement. The developer/property owner has to pay the regular tax rate on the new value created by the development, but the revenue doesn't go to schools and city services -- it gets diverted into a special fund for "public enhancements" to the project itself.

I cannot remember ever seeing a reference to a TIF District in all the reporting about the Steelyard project. Can you?
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NAMING NAMES



The gentleman pictured above is Brent Larkin, the editorial page editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. In this capacity, he wrote the unsigned editorial in yesterday's paper entitled "Supersurprise". This link is to a copy of the editorial, because access from cleveland.com will disappear after a couple of months, and I think it's important for this particular piece to be remembered... along with the individual who wrote it.

I've made this copy only for "fair use", of course. What use could be fairer than to file it away -- with Larkin's name written across it in big red letters -- to be pulled out and passed around in a year or two, when more neighborhood groceries are closing (like, let's say, the Dave's at Arbor Park) and people are looking for someone to blame?

Plain Dealer reporter: "Mrs. Jones, how do you feel about losing your local grocery store and who do you think is responsible?"

Neighbor on the street: "I'm really upset and I blame your newspaper, especially Brent Larkin. Here's this editorial where he beat up City Council to get Wal-Mart selling groceries down in the Flats, even though he admitted it would 'surely hurt some city merchants, including grocery stores'. What he meant was my neighborhood store, so don't come around here acting sympathetic now. Your Brent Larkin and his Wal-Mart buddies closed this store!"

Perhaps you think this is too personal. Mr. Larkin is just doing his job and expressing his opinion, right?

But Larkin knows better. He understands the power of naming names.

That's why he attacked Councilman Joe Cimperman so personally in another anonymous editorial on the Wal-Mart issue in February -- the one that scared Council away from its original big box ordinance, weeks before Wal-Mart sent its letter of tactical withdrawal from Steelyard Commons. (That editorial has long since vanished down the cleveland.com memory hole, but here's my entry that described it.) And it's why he made a point of clubbing Cimperman personally again yesterday... not just for proposing a law to limit big box grocery sales in the first place, but for "ineptly" failing to pursue it once Wal-Mart no longer seemed to be in the picture.

The idea, you see, is not just to argue and win a debate, but to identify, isolate and discredit your opponent. Make em crawl. Control the narrative. That's the kind of power that counts.

Of course this is not the rational, decent citizen's idea of a democratic community debate. And contrary to media wisdom, the real community debate about a Steelyard Commons Wal-Mart is not over. It may really have just started. Yesterday's editorial may someday seem like a nasty little yelp in the darkness before the dawn.

But keep a copy anyway. And remember who wrote it.

P.S. Brian Cummins emailed me to point out that older PD articles can be accessed through the Plain Dealer database of the Cleveland Public Library. Here's the database link for the February editorial I mentioned above. You'll need a local library card (CPL itself, or a cooperating system like Cuyahoga County).
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DEMOCRACY GUY ON STEELYARD COMMONS: Here, here, and here.

What he said.
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BLOGGER'S BLOCK: I don't know why I haven't gotten this thing back in gear for two weeks. Strange as it may seem, there are days when I can't bring myself to bloviate, and twelve of them just showed up in a string. Maybe it was the weather. Or allergies. Or a rare attack of good sense. Whatever it was, I think it's over.

And just in time, because...

THEY'RE BAAAAAACK! aWal-Mart, that is. Channels 3 and 5 are running the news that Steelyard Commons, aka Wal-Mart Commons, aka Schneider's Folly, is back on track with a full-service SuperCenter in the anchor slot. Here's Channel 5:

The retail giant agreed Tuesday to do the project in a proposal that does not require City Council approval.

Council Member Joe Cimperman accused Mayor Jane Campbell of sidestepping council.

"The mayor has shown that she would rather go around and do stuff under the cloak of secrecy instead of an open trusting relationship," said Cimperman.

But Campbell's chief of staff Chris Ronayne said this is not the case.

"What the developer always said to us: 'I have the zoning. I have the money. I have a plan. Work with me. And please don't stand in the way of retail opportunities in the city of Cleveland,'" said Ronayne.

Wal-Mart was brought back to the table with the assurance that it would be able to operate a grocery store alongside its retail business.

So, let's review some things we've learned in the last three months:

1. There was never a Steelyard Commons plan that didn't include Wal-Mart.

2. Wal-Mart was never going to put an anchor store in Steelyard Commons without a grocery operation.

3. Therefore, there was never a plan for Steelyard Commons that didn't depend on sucking spending and jobs out of unionized grocery stores in other Cleveland neighborhoods.

4. The Mayor either knew this all along, or got rolled. In either case, she's now in a position to take full, uncontested credit for the whole thing. She now gets to run for re-election as the Wal-Mart Mayor.

5. Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it.
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NO SURPRISES: Thanks to everyone who answered the call and wrote a comment on my last post, while I was down South enjoying a real Spring and some real music. Doc and his friends put on quite a show. Where else could you see 82,000 people show up for a community college fundraiser?

And you know, Wilkesboro doesn't even have a convention center. Go figure.

Anyway, guys, thanks for the comments and don't take this the wrong way, but the first rule of essay tests is "Read the question carefully".

I asked: "What's going to be the biggest issue in the 2005 Cleveland Mayor's race that nobody's talking about... yet?"

You answered: Race. Jobs. Poverty. Regionalism. The lakefront. Too many council members. Who's got a vision.

You think these are "issues that nobody's talking about"? Hmmmm. People, you gotta get out more.

Steve Fitzgerald came closest to a qualifying answer with his nervous prediction of a "corruption" issue. It's true, no one is currently accusing any of our mayoral candidates of theft, bribery or being in Nate Gray's wedding party. But Steve, this would be a more satisfying proposition if it had a little more, um, meat on it, don't you think? Do you have something you'd like to share with the class?

Otherwise, if you all are right, this is going to be a really unsurprising campaign.

Oh well. On Saturday I learned that three country boys I'd watched in the public picking area Friday night, joshing with the Wilkes County EMS crew while playing bluegrass standards at heartstopping speeds, were really a headlining band from... Switzerland. Maybe that just used up my quota of surprises for the week.

(Thanks to Clevelander for the tip about Frank Jackson's new website.)
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