Posts Tagged Quicken Loans
Plain Dealer Gives Free Boost to Gilbert’s Subsidized Restaurants
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Economic Development, Media, People on October 20th, 2009
October 20, 2009… Well, thank you Plain Dealer for the free publicity. Just what independent downtown restaurants needed – two new publicly-subsidized restaurants in the Quicken Arena to draw business away from other restaurants.
The Pee Dee Tuesday in a prominently displayed Metro front page applauded the opening of two new restaurants by the “Iron Chef” (Michael Symon).
The Pee Dee devoted four columns, eight inches deep with a nice headline: “Symon opens 2 restaurants at the Q,” accompanied by an attractive photo of the business and one of Symon.
“The superstars won’t all be on the court this season at The Q,” sings the Pee Dee. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay. My, oh my, what a wonderful day! Plenty of sunshine headed their way.
Now we’ll have a celebrity chef on our subsidy list, too. What can be better in these dark days when so many can’t even find a job?
We – the public – paid dearly for the restaurant facilities at the Quicken Arena and now Dan Gilbert gets the benefit. So when he gets a monopoly casino, he can have more restaurants that compete with the independent downtown restaurant business.
Yes, let’s give it all to the billionaire. Doesn’t it make you feel good?
And remember, these restaurants have the luxury of not having to pay property taxes. Oh, boy. The entire Quicken Arena facilities are tax free! Tim Hagan and Mike White – flying to Columbus in a private corporate plane – got the legislature to exempt all the Q property FOREVER! What fun guys.
And isn’t this exactly what Dan Gilbert will do in the casino he can build if Issue 3 passes – build new restaurants that will attract or keep business from privately-owned restaurants throughout downtown.
Why aren’t they screaming?
Let’s shut down Cleveland street business and force everyone into the Quicken Arena, Progressive Field or Browns Field. Let everything be a sports bar.
Let me tell you again what we gave the sports franchise owners at the Quicken (formerly Gund) Arena. Sammy’s at the Arena has space for 323 guests, 63 at the bar. Didn’t matter that a Gateway board member – Denise Fugo – was given the restaurant business, requiring her, of course, to leave the board.
Here’s what taxpayers helped provide – a $1,841,380 restaurant sporting $178,750 of new furnishings and some $350,000 worth of kitchen equipment. Total bill: $2,370,134.
Remember: No burden of paying those nasty property taxes either.
No wonder Sammy’s says it serves “off-site private residences, yachts, businesses and anywhere else.” Yachts, of course.
Altogether, food concessions at the Quicken Arena cost $6,119,520.
Some of the cost at Sammy’s included 300 restaurant chairs, costing more than $100,000; bar stools at $500 each ($13,500 total); and terrazzo tables at $13,415 each. One sports bar kitchen cost $263,000.
Concession stands with grills and pizza service were well spotted on two levels, I wrote back in 1994, ranging in cost from $62,000 to $132,000 and totaling in cost $1,048,350. The Press, of course, got some special treatment with a banquet kitchen at $121,050. No wonder they’re such boosters and don’t write about the corruptive side of professional sports. Usually, right before their eyes.
Hey, nothing’s too good for our sports heroes and their owners.
The “beer room” (need it cold) cost $63,700. The automatic system for dispensing the beer cost $200,000 and to dispense soda, only $180,000.
There’s a lot more including ice cream outlets at a hefty cost of $198,000.
But when you’re having fun, what’s the difference. Especially when you don’t have to pay. The politicians – all legal, they say – provided major league service – free of charge essentially.
They’ll do the same for the Medical Mart, don’t worry.
The Pee Dee, of course, never told the public any of this. They only cheerlead, they don’t lead.
The Quicken Arena, in addition to Cavs games, has 175 special events during the year, Cleveland promoters tell us. The public, which sprung for most of the dough to build this special place, gets ZERO from the extra events, a gift to billionaires – both the Gunds and Gilbert.
That’s the way our system – free enterprise – works. Free.
By the way, if you can afford these fancy priced places in the Q, you won’t have to bother touching a Cleveland street. You can simply drive to the tax-free Gateway garage because we also provided – at great cost to the City of Cleveland – 1,700 free spaces to the sports owners in the garage for special people.
So when the Pee Dee promotes these new restaurant facilities without telling you the back story, do you think this is professional journalism at its best?
If you do, send a complimentary note to Susan Goldberg, the Pee Dee editor for her and her staff’s fine work.
Dan Gilbert… 2-Timer, 3-Timer, 4-Timer?
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Economic Development on October 13th, 2009
October 13, 2009… What do we really know about Dan Gilbert? Not much. But it sounds as if he’s the kind of guy that plays one city off against another for his own benefit.
I think anyone with any sense understands what Gilbert is about.
A columnist in the Detroit News questions Gilbert’s motives about his dedication to Detroit (oh, not Cleveland?).
“Dan Gilbert, the self-proclaimed Detroiter working big plans for his diverse business empire, remains bullish on his hometown,” writes Daniel Howes.
Howes says that Gilbert – who supposedly located a few jobs here – plans to locate his headquarters for Quicken Loans in downtown Detroit, along with other business activities. That’s 2,000 jobs, they say, for Detroit.
“But there’s potentially big money to be made down in Ohio where Gilbert, the principal owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, is a prominent force behind a ballot initiative (Vote NO on 3) to green light casinos for the Buckeye State’s four largest cities. Bullishness, it seems, has limits when opportunity knocks,” writes Howes.
He goes on: “The bottom lines for Gilbert are that casinos will come to Ohio, surrounded as it is with gaming in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Indiana and Michigan. And, second, that Detroit’s casinos can effectively compete with new rivals in Ohio – especially Toledo – because they are already competing against Michigan’s roughly 20 casinos outside the southeast corner. That’s debatable, too.”
The bottom line is that Gilbert is interested not in Detroit, Toledo or Cleveland. He’s interested in the bottom line. HIS.
The entire column follows:
Ohio gaming tests Detroit boosters
Dan Gilbert, the self-proclaimed Detroiter working big plans for his diverse business empire, remains bullish on his hometown.
It’s where he plans to locate the corporate headquarters of his Quicken Loans Inc. next spring. It’s the struggling downtown he says he wants to help with innovative development that makes a difference. The beleaguered city also is a transnational hub for Vegas-style gaming in the Midwest, home to MGM Grand, MotorCity Casino, Greektown and, across the river, Casino Windsor.
But there’s potentially big money to be made down in Ohio, where Gilbert, the principal owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, is a prominent force behind a ballot initiative to greenlight casinos for the Buckeye State’s four largest cities. Bullishness, it seems, has limits when opportunity knocks.
“I guess it is a little bit ironic,” he said in an interview Monday. Adding to the irony is the fact that Gilbert’s main man on the Ohio casino effort is Matt Cullen, the General Motors exec-turned-Gilbert guy and arguably the biggest Mr. Detroit this side of the city’s official economic development apparatus.
Except for one. Also partnering with Gilbert and Cullen is former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer, assuming the Ohio casino initiative passes and the opportunity for investment becomes real. Archer appeared earlier this month at a forum in Toledo to promote casino gaming in Ohio, testifying that three casinos here provided jobs and economic development but not the feared spike in crime.
The best part: The Detroit guys and their partner, Penn National Gaming Inc. of Wyomissing, Pa., are relying on a “don’t-let-your-gambling-dollars-leave-the-state” campaign to persuade Ohioans to approve casinos after four failed tries.
If the homer argument worked for Michigan against Windsor, the thinking goes, why not use it in Ohio against Michigan, Indiana and Pennsylvania — especially amid tough times with double-digit unemployment?
Right. The locals in Detroit should love this. Start with the Ilitch family, whose interests in Detroit and MotorCity Casino, almost are as old as Gilbert’s company. Then come those pushing to get Greektown out of Chapter 11.
Finally, there are Mayor Dave Bing and the government bureaucrats in Detroit and Lansing who depend on Detroit gaming taxes to fatten slimmed-down revenue projections.
“We were kind of just watching this opportunity unfolding in Ohio where we have significant business interests,” Gilbert said, confirming that his company expressed preliminary interest in acquiring Greektown Casino out of bankruptcy. “We’re about rebuilding the urban cores of the cities we’re involved with. It really is something that is not a threat on either side of Lake Erie.”
That’s debatable. Less so, Gilbert says, are Quicken’s plans for Detroit: The mortgage lender still plans to move roughly 2,000 people — including its executive team — to a new headquarters in the Compuware building on Campus Martius. Quicken still plans to bring related businesses — Quicken’s title company and Gilbert’s Fathead sports marketing company — and “technology companies” he won’t identify.
The bottom lines for Gilbert are that casinos will come to Ohio, surrounded as it is with gaming in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Indiana and Michigan. And, second, that Detroit’s casinos can effectively compete with new rivals in Ohio — especially Toledo — because they already are competing against Michigan’s roughly 20 casinos outside its southeast corner. That’s debatable, too.
Under terms of Ohio’s Issue 3, to be considered by voters on Nov. 3, Gilbert would have options to build casinos in Cleveland and Cincinnati. Partner Penn National would have options on projects in Columbus and Toledo, the most likely competitor to Detroit’s casinos.
“Gilbert is … the face of the deal there, no doubt about it,” said Jake Miklojcik, a gaming expert who is president of Michigan Consultants Inc. and a temporary board member of Greektown Casino. “There is an impact. It’s the leakage that’s the issue. And I do think gaming in Ohio is inevitable.”
Which tells you everything you need to know.