Posts Tagged Gateway
Progressive Field Will Get a Facelift of Some Kind
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Economic Development on May 11, 2010
May 11, 2010… You who are paying close attention may have noticed that in my last posting here I said that a Gateway official told me that – despite a contrary mention in a New York Times article – Progressive Field was NOT getting a re-do.
Well, apparently that’s not true. Sorry about that.
Crain’s Cleveland Business this week reports that the Cleveland baseball team will soon announce an agreement to make “significant changes to the ballpark.” As I said in the original post, who knew? Apparently, not us, the owners and taxpayers.
Apparently, the ball park owner, Gateway Development Corp., which you and I heavily helped pay to build, didn’t know either. Gateway said today it has not been advised of the changes. Crain’s knows but the owners don’t. Is that the way it’s supposed to go?
Bill Reidy, retired partner of PriceWaterhouseCoopers and a former city law director, is chairman of the Gateway board. Cuyahoga County and the City of Cleveland have representatives on the board.
I guess the Cleveland Indians and owner Larry Dolan make the decisions without much consultation with the owners – essentially us – the taxpayers of Cuyahoga County.
Gateway top two officials – Todd Greathouse and Brian Kelly – assured me that Gateway – even if the Indians made capital improvements – would not pay for them.
I kinda find that hard to believe if major changes are in the cards. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Here’s the Crain’s story, which doesn’t say anything about the cost possibilities or who will pay for them:
http://www.crainscleveland.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100510/SUB1/100509860
To a question of how much Gateway has in any capital fund, the pair assured me it has none. Further, capital improvements WOULD be paid by the team. Each year an operating and capital fund is established with the team meeting the costs.
However, if these are to be major changes unlike normal capital improvements, the public needs to be assured that the team will cover the costs. Especially when it appears that Dolan is making the decisions without even consulting with Gateway’s board.
The public should hear directly from Gateway board as an assurance that no more public money will be plowed into the stadium for the revenue enhancement of the team owners.
The team now pays both operating and capital funding. This resolution came about after a long fight over stadium and arena costs. Without this agreement a few years back Gateway was faced with the possibility of bankruptcy. The team owners, among others, would have been embarrassed by such an occurrence.
Progressive Field, first known as Jacobs Field, was built in the early 1990s primarily from revenue from the County’s sin taxes, which raised some $266 million for the stadium and arena. It opened in 1994. The County had to add revenues to the project because of cost overruns. In addition to the “sin” taxes each year the County has had to pay some $10 million on bonds let by Cuyahoga County to cover additional costs. These payments have cost taxpayers more than $100 million thus far and they continue to be paid. The stadium alone cost $176 million to build. It now has a seat capacity of 45,199.
The team is worth, according to a Forbes magazine compilation of MLB teams worth, $391 million. Dolan paid Jacobs $323 million for the team in 2000. Forbes says gross revenues of the team last year were $170 million. The team is 21st of the 30 teams in gross revenues. Gate receipts were $37 million, according to this listing.
The Gateway board meets only about four times a year. Coverage of the board meetings by the news media has been infrequent to none in recent years. Maybe it needs to be on the assignment list again.
A Few Things to Get Off My Chest
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Economic Development, Media, Politicians on April 21, 2010
April 21, 2010… Wait a minute now. I read where “public-private collaborators” have announced that University Hospitals and the Cleveland Clinic are telling vendors that they better locate in the Euclid Avenue Corridor.
I really don’t have an argument against trying to get more medical businesses to locate in the city. But the threats came over as a bit over the top.
And isn’t it a bit hypocritical of Steven Standley, chief administrator of University Hospitals, to tell vendors “You need to move into the city, or we will find somebody who will.” So he told The Plain Dealer. That’s a blunt threat.
It is an especially two-faced threat for a spokesperson from University Hospitals.
UH is building a brand new multi-million dollar hospital. It is not in Cleveland. Not on Euclid Avenue. So Standley isn’t taking his own advice.
Instead, University Hospitals is building a $230-million medical center in Beachwood, at the Chagrin Highlands development.
The 53-acre medical complex is being built on City of Cleveland land handed over to the late Dick Jacobs. It is virgin land that now is housing businesses – and a hospital – that should be in downtown Cleveland.
So much for that regionalism talk too.
We can thank the leadership of former Mayor George Voinovich and Council President George Forbes for this grand robbery of Cleveland. They did it in the dark too.
And UH has the nerve to threaten other businesses to locate in Cleveland “or else.”
By the way, The Plain Dealer – as in almost every single dirty deal as the Chagrin Highlands deal – fully supported it.
Now companies as Eaton Corp. flee downtown Cleveland for these virgin lands, made more enticing by Gov. Voinovich administration’s gift of more than $130 million in I-271 road improvements and a new exchange to serve the Beachwood location.
Do as I say, not as a do, I guess.
Here’s the Chagrin Highlands website:
http://www.chagrinhighlands.com/
EMBARRASSING MISTAKE
Plain Dealer Editor Susan Goldberg quickly on Wednesday corrected an embarrassing mistake from the Tuesday paper’s Health section.
The story was headlined: “Women learn to fight back against attack.”
The drawing, unfortunately, that dominated the top of the page – 10 by 8 inches – showed two figures, one a woman, the other a man choking her. Clearly, the drawing showed the assailant as black and the victim as white. Looking, you just had to ask “Why? What’s the message?”
I don’t believe it was meant to be racist. But that’s the way it turned out. About as clueless a rendering as I’ve seen.
You have to wonder where the editors were at The Plain Dealer. Maybe this is a perfect example of the cost of staff cuts. They sure weren’t giving a glance at their newspaper.
Goldberg obviously noticed also. “To avoid similar situations, a senior editor will approve every illustration that appears on our pages, taking particular pains to look for unintended imagery that could easily be misconstrued. We apologize.”
Well, thank you.
Goldberg wrote on the front page of a similar section that the “illustration on the Health section front Tuesday offended scores of Northeast Ohioans, and rightly so.”
Better believe it.
No mention was made of how many complaints were made to the paper. Surely not as many as were shocked by it.
CITY’S DECLINE CHECKED, SAYS LARKIN – OH, REALLY
It had to be one of the most misleading headlines ever in the newspaper – “Gateway checked Cleveland’s decline.”
Wouldn’t you expect that from an old buddy of Dick Jacobs? You have to wonder just how many freebies Dick gave Brent Larkin, past Plain Dealer editorial page director. You will remember that he took Brent on his jet to an All-Star game in New York City. Why Larkin wasn’t sacked then simply attests to journalism’s illness. Having him still spout his stuff further attests its condition hasn’t changed much.
Here we are 20 years later and what’s the worry – oh, the Cleveland Indians may be leaving town. Again. What can we give them this time?
Well, I guess we spent a billion dollars or more for these 20 glorious years.
Yes, we did get some new night spots. Not that we wouldn’t have gotten ANY development anyway. But Larkin should walk the downtown streets and see where he thinks Cleveland has been saved. Maybe it’s only the spots he’s taken to that he sees.
Then he can walk some of Cleveland’s neighborhoods and tell us what’s been saved there.
A hundred-yard dash down East 4th Street doesn’t make a saved city.
And you might read today’s Plain Dealer front page. The Cleveland schools – left out of the 1990s by tax abatements and exemptions – expect to have 40 students per classroom.
Unless, of course, teachers give back from their less-than-ideal pay checks. Oh, yeah.
Don’t, however, ask for a Brent Larkin column asking the team owners – past and present – to put up a dime for all the Comeback City they have enjoyed.