Posts Tagged University Circle
Does Cleveland Really Need a New $350 Million Road? And Who Says So
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Economic Development, Media, Politicians on April 9th, 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.
Cleveland’s Real Corrupters
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Economic Development, Media, Politicians on March 5th, 2010
March 5, 2010… The Cleveland Corporate Corrupters had a big meeting yesterday. They’re already deciding how to spend tens of millions of dollars we don’t have.
It’s an act of piracy seldom defined by the mass media. The media simply play it as “that’s the way things are done” apparently.
No other voices need be raised. The Plain Dealer, our major source of information, doesn’t have the imagination to even prompt dissent or an alternative view. It’s not in the mass media’s DNA.
One of the greatest needs in Cleveland is a new Public Square, according to these masters of the county’s universe. These people set our civic agenda for their selfish private needs. Never expect less.
The headline in the Plain Dealer says, “Business leaders see $100 million in new income.” So let’s grab it guys,” should have been the subtitle.
These plutocrats already have it spent. On things THEY decide WE need.
These same people – corporate leaders – have been setting the agenda in Cleveland forever. I’m familiar with what they have done since the mid 1960s. It’s always been shameful. And selfish. And largely mistaken. Just look at where we are.
It started with an urban renewal program that helped destroy much of the east side of Cleveland, forced a black migration, then white flight and promises never realized. They sent tens of thousands of people out of their homes without providing adequate replacement housing.
That’s why a federal urban affairs official told me, “Cleveland’s our Vietnam. We’d like to get out but we don’t know how.”
Our corporate and legal leaders – changed in name only over the years – have continued to set the agenda as THEY see it. Typically, they want welfare for themselves. The hell with the rest of you.
Some 500 of these vultures met under the auspices of the Greater Cleveland Partnership, a corporate front group that leads politicians around by their noses under the auspices of the Greater Cleveland Partnership, our chamber of commerce.
The latest theft derives from what they say will be an extra $100 million a year. THEY know how it should be used. The money, they say, will come from cutting Cuyahoga County’s budget by $50 million and adding another $50 million from casino revenue. Lick your fingers, guys.
The article appears in this morning’s Plain Dealer here:
http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2010/03/business_leaders_see_potential.html
This is undiluted propaganda. The Plain Dealer doesn’t ask anyone to give a contrasting view of how such money – if it ever is realized, should be spent. Can’t expect the Pee Dee to report honestly of the duplicity of these business front organizations. They are one and the same on such issues.
What do they want? These takers.
Another renovation of Public Square. They never seem to get in right. So let’s do it again.
Put more retail and housing on the lakefront, they say. Great idea? Except you’re just shifting the business from one downtown spot to another. At public cost. And even as we are greatly subsidizing the same kind of development in the Flats.
Corporate leaders, according to this report, are “thinking boldly.” Who’s to prove that? Not the Plain Dealer. Thinking greedily would be more accurate. We won’t get that kind of truth from our morning paper.
There are many needs in our city and county. Needs that go unmet. Ordinary people’s needs.
Nothing is said, for example, about one of our great needs – public transit.
The Regional Transit Authority (RTA) keeps cutting services and thus losing business. Never hear the big shots cry about this. They have Mercedes. BMWs.
Two hundred million dollars is okay for the bus service up Euclid Avenue from Public Square to University Circle. This fits the corporate desire to bolster downtown and the Circle area. One wonders whether there is any validity to this. Isn’t it just another bus line? But more productive? More meaningful to those who use it?
But bus service for people who depend upon RTA to get to work, to the hospital, to doctors, to shop. Well, we have to cut that. Don’t have the money. Don’t have the resources. Can’t pay for it.
Little voices don’t get heard.
I’ve been pressed by people who say the RTA has eliminated the bus service on the No. 25 Madison Ave. line in Cleveland.
RTA, they say, reversed itself and nixed the elimination of the route into Lakewood. They see RTA bending to Lakewood Mayor Edward FitzGerald. He’s running for County executive and that, of course, could affect RTA in the future. Suspicious but with a hint of truth.
“How are these poor people going to get to the West Side Market and Lutheran Hospital without the No. 25 bus?” they ask. They also complain that RTA didn’t hold a public hearing on the Cleveland change.
RTA says that one of its rail stations is right across from the West Side Market. However, you’d have to be on a rail line to get there. Minor point.
The point here, however, is that corporate leaders appear privileged to decide. It’s as if there is no alternative way to decide. The community agenda is set by these high muckety mucks. Others don’t have a seat at the table.
So sit back and what you need will be decided by Joe Roman and the boys. Joe made $451,241 in pay and bennies in 2008. Nice work if you can get it. And he does.
Isn’t this the leadership that has put us in the dire straits that we find ourselves? Can’t we ever get rid of it?