Posts Tagged Euclid Avenue
RTA Takes Us For The Wrong Ride
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Economic Development on July 18, 2009
July 18, 2009… Is the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA, bkna as RTA) taking us on another ride? As a transit system, it seems more like a servant of the same old special interests when it should be taking care of transit-dependent citizens.
Yes, I believe RTA does have a money problem with sales taxes and ridership down. Raising fares hardly seems the solution.
However, I also know that RTA hasn’t paid enough attention in the past to its spending. If it did RTA wouldn’t have to be cutting crucial services now.
We’re being told that there is a $5.5 million problem. The solution for RTA’s management is to cut services and raise the price by 25 cents.
That appears to be not a palatable solution.
If CEO and General Manager Joe Calabrese and his RTA board can’t find $5 million in his more than $240 million (2008) budget, then we need to get someone who can do the job.
RTA has become too accustomed to providing services that aren’t really necessary. Too comfy saying yes to the downtown scrounges.
The Euclid Corridor Improvement Project (Health Line) was a perfect example of spending transit money for non-transit purposes. The road was plenty wide for RTA buses. I’d like to know the annual upkeep costs of this Euclid Avenue beautification program.
If you’ve got a lot of extra money to spend, fine, beautify. However, RTA’s primary task is to move people from where they are to where they need to go, especially people who can’t afford to own vehicles.
RTA spent $69 million of OUR dollars for the Waterfront Line, rushing it to please Mayor George Voinovich and his buddy Dick Pogue. They wanted it up for the opening of the Rock Hall of Fame and their parties. To get it done, RTA had to forget about federal subsidy, which probably would have covered 80 percent of the cost. The Waterfront Line was ill-planned and now it ill-serves.
The Waterfront Line service has been cutback. It’s important that RTA tell us just how much it costs to keep this line operating at any level. Maybe it should be mothballed totally.
Equally unnecessary for RTA was the walkway from Tower City to Gateway, a cost of some $11-13 million. I’ve never been able to get an undisputed figure. RTA has to “reimburse” Tower City for utility charges on the walkway.
It’s time RTA got tough and told the Gateway Economic Development Corp., which operates the Gateway facilities, that it has to pick up the cost of the walkway and pay to have its fans delivered to its doors. Why should RTA’s riders pay for this?
Despite the fact that these RTA facilities help Tower City, RTA pays some $1 million a year to Forest City Enterprises, owner of Tower City. It’s annual fee for RTA’s use of space into Tower City. RTA pays an addition $32,000 to “reimburse” Tower City for central plant operations. It even pays a utility charge for use of the escalators! There’s room for negotiations here to lower costs.
Isn’t it time to renegotiate these fees lower since there’s less use and Tower City seems to always get reductions of its property taxes?
The County or the State needs to provide more funding to RTA, too. Why shouldn’t there be subsidies for mass transit? It’s a method of lowering pollution and reducing traffic. We build enough roads for cars.
A small surcharge on every car in the County each year should produce the kind of revenue needed for mass transit.
See-Saw Economics – Up Here and Down Over There
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Economic Development, Media on July 14, 2009
July 14, 2009… The drums are beating loudly and often about Cleveland’s East 4th Street. Even the New York Times had an extensive piece about the lively street that’s become an open air bazaar of restaurants.
It’s a small economic oasis in a virtual desert of inactivity. But not much more.
Go directly north across the street. Lively it ain’t. There sits the grandest of Cleveland’s buildings – The Arcade. Built in 1890. “It has no peer in the United States…” says Eric Johannesen’s Cleveland Architecture 1876-1976.
And it’s dying. Economically, that is.
Just a few steps from East 4th St.
As full as East 4th might be on any July noon, that’s as empty as The Arcade will be at the exact same time.
Into each project has flowed millions of public dollars. Chris Warren, the city’s economic development major domo, says $10 million has gone into East 4th St. Well, that’s high subsidies for such a short street.
I expect with tax relief and other subsidies it’s more than $10 million.
At The Arcade, more than $10 million of public money has been given.
It had a $6.26 million historic tax credit; a TIF (form of tax abatement) worth $6,454,000; a $1 million, 30-year city loan at zero interest rate for 26 years and 2 percent on the remainder; another $3 million loan for 20 years at 6 percent and another $2 million, 20-year loan via the County at 2.5 percent. Foundations also made contributions.
As bad as that is, The Arcade was seeking a $15 million property tax reduction in its value, a cut of more than half of what it was on the tax duplicate.
Look at The Arcade. It will depress you. The grand building lacks even the pretense of commerce.
So why the cheering for East 4th?
Just a few steps away from East 4th, the city gave $3.3 million in low interest loans to the Colonial/Euclid Arcades and diverted property taxes to help these two arcades. Both seem in economic decline. Very depressing.
So where is the percentage in the city dishing out free money? Does one subsidized street simply rob commerce from three arcades? Does anyone but the developer make money?
Indeed, all around the Great East Fourth Street Miracle – as seen by the Plain Dealer and New York Times – economic failures abound.
And don’t forget the $200 million RTA fix-up of Euclid Avenue, a pretend urban transit investment that rides right through this E. 4th and Arcade site.
If you go to East 4th street from any side, you’ll hit protesters. They’re handing out flyers that complain about the East 4th Street developer, MRN. Calls the developer “rats.”
“MRN, Ltd. wants to keep all the cheese for themselves. Tell them they have to share,” says the flyer from the Regional Council of Carpenters.
So despite heavy public subsidization, MRN won’t use union carpenters on their development, which includes housing.
By the way, the protesters have been out there for weeks. Have you read anything in the Pee Dee, The Plain Dealer, about this?