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.