Posts Tagged UCI
Does Cleveland Really Need a New $350 Million Road? And Who Says So
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Economic Development, Media, Politicians on April 9, 2010
April 9, 2010… Tell me – of all the serious, debilitating problems of Cleveland – why has a $350 million – less than three-mile road – become a major MUST for our community?
For the usual reasons.
The private people in charge of our public agenda want it.
With other roads, streets and bridges crumbling all over the place – with public transportation shriveling and dying – a short road traversing to University Circle and our medical giants has become No. 1 on our list of priority needs.
I don’t think so.
But Mayor Frank Jackson and the subservient City Council 19 appear not to notice. The usual ostrich position is assumed.
It reminds me of the time I arrived in Cleveland – 1965. That’s when the effects of the city’s urban renewal program began to show devastating impact on the city. A weight, by the way, that deserves an urban study that will show what happened to Cleveland, when and why. Don’t expect any university to make such a study. They would have to critically take on the Establishment. It won’t happen. Only private citizens could do it.
The same institutional forces and the people leading the push for this road made the disastrous decisions that help cripple Cleveland with urban renewal plans. Plans that helped certain interests and devastated others, particularly blacks. They felt the impact of urban renewal, or as it was often called then, Negro removal.
Our leaders and The Plain Dealer have given the road the fanciful name of “Opportunity Corridor.”
Let me quote from a study done in the late 1960s, probably available at the library. It was called “The Cleveland Papers” by the Illuminating Company, an apt but tongue in cheek reference to the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. It was done by an ad hoc group of Citizens.
Here is how it starts:
“The notion of a local oligarchy may seem quaintly parochial or – worse – paranoid. Yet we contend that Cleveland, one of America’s great industrial cities, is dominated by a coherent, readily identifiable business oligarchy. Its power is not based in hereditary class prerogatives, but in direct control of the region’s industrial and financial corporations. It is a self-conscious oligarchy, capable of strategizing and of exercising collective authority in the pursuit of common interests. Just as its industries dominate the city’s physical aspect, the oligarchy itself dominates every phase of the city’s political and cultural life. And it is this oligarchy which is above all to blame for the city’s destruction.”
Pretty strong stuff.
If you read the entire report – examining particularly the roles of the foundations and the medical empire – you will get an education of how the power today functions in just the same way. The purpose: public decision making to enable a similar oligarchy to control events and decisions.
Anyone who wants to know how Cleveland got as it is should read this booklet. Indeed, make a copy of it. If you are a teacher of civics, history or politics, assign it to your students.
Gov. Ted Strickland, one guesses to bolster Senate candidate Lee Fisher, recently announced some $4 million to help fund some design work on the road. It goes from I-490 at E. 55th Street to East 105th street.
Why do we need this road? Do we need more land for industry? Hell no. There’s land wasting away all over the place. Do we need more land for commercial? Hell no. Commercial real estate is devastated. Do we need more land for retail? Hell no. Retail is languishing, dying all over the place.
Is University Circle isolated? Unreachable by transportation? Hell no. Didn’t we just finish a $200 million plus transit system right up Euclid Avenue from downtown to University Circle and the medical empire? Yes we did. Even as RTA dumped routes transit-dependent people really need. Yes, we notice who is important. And who is not.
So why do we need a $350 million, less than three mile road? Because the same leadership that said we had to do urban renewal throughout the city back in the 1950s said so. We know that the Cleveland and Gund foundations gave $100,000 each to push for this road.
They were mistaken then. They are mistaken now.
Tell that to Terry Egger, publisher of the Plain Dealer and co-chair of the committee for the “opportunity” Side Street to University Circle. Tell that to Chris Roynane, head of University Circle Inc., and a candidate for the new Cuyahoga County Council.
Tell that to Joe Roman and the Greater Cleveland Partnership.
We are allowing the same oligarchy of corporate/foundation leadership to send us further into the hole. They have divined that we need a $350 million Side Street. And if you think the price is set, wait until we get the full bill.
Learn something from history. You won’t find it in the Plain Dealer. Check out the Cleveland Papers for a taste of reality. And think for yourself.
Plain Dealer Publisher Egger Driving “Opportunity Corridor”
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Economic Development, Media, Politicians on June 3, 2009
June 2, 2009… Steve Litt had to swerve and swivel in writing about the Opportunity Corridor – the road Cleveland’s Establishment now finds irresistible. The reason: His boss.
Litt, The Plain Dealer’s architectural critic, did well in being honest about a touchy issue for a Plain Dealer writer. However, he had to tread lightly in Sunday’s article.
After all, Terry Egger, his boss, is co-chairing the panel put together by the Greater Cleveland Partnership to push the “Opportunity Corridor.” Egger is publisher of the PD.
Why he would put himself into this situation can only be read as a need for power. Don’t see it any other way.
Co-chairman Egger had the public panel’s first meeting held incommunicado from the public, which will pay for it. Where? In his Plain Dealer’s offices. Weeks ago.
There is nothing like guarded secrecy from the same people who demand transparency of others. That’s the Plain Dealer.
Litt is a big booster of the road but he outlined some of the problems of a panel chosen to tell us that “We need this!” It’s the cry for another big project.
As someone mentioned to me today, I thought the Euclid Corridor was the highway from downtown and the interstate roads to University Circle. Didn’t we just spend more than $200 million for that? Yes, we did.
For that matter shouldn’t we be moving away from encouraging private transportation? Should we not be improving public transportation, doing everything we can to encourage people to use mass transit rather than getting in their auto. Shouldn’t we be moving people away from trying to save two or ten minutes by constructing multi-million dollar roadways?
I think the answer is YES.
As usual our leadership – the Greater Cleveland Partnership, the Plain Dealer, Cleveland Foundation and Gund Foundation, prime funders of the panel – moves us in the wrong direction. Very expensive wrong direction. The foundations anted up $100,000 each for a phony public show. Just give us slogans.
The less than three mile road – from East 55th & I-490 to E. 105th – will cost an estimated $350 million.
Litt correctly gives us citations from the Federal Highway Administration Web site about requirements that the public be involved in such decision-making.
That’s like saying children should behave or be quiet.
Not going to happen.
He quotes Egger saying that his “point of view is that the public’s business needs to be done in public.” Publicly? In his office. Are you kidding?
Egger says that even as he holds the panel meeting in his own offices at the Plain Dealer. In private. No press allowed.
What utter nonsense. None of this “planning” is going to be done with any real public input.
Litt and Chris Warren, Mayor Frank Jackson’s director of regional development, credit the panel with being more diverse. Litt cites membership by three Cleveland City Council members. Pleeeze!
We have another stacked deck, citizens. They could change the name of the city to Rigged Ohio. Nobody would notice and the foundations would pay for it.