Ed Morrison · More on the Tower City bailout

December 26th, 2008

This is never a good sign.

When parties to a negotiation start talking to newspaper reporters before they talk to each other, you know something’s breaking down.

“I can’t find out what’s going on like you can’t find out what’s going on,” said David LaRue, president and chief operating officer of Forest City’s commercial group. Forest City owns Tower City.
Progress for a medical mart in Cleveland remains a mystery

(So, let me get this right. The County just paid Fred Nance $100,000 for negotiating in a negotiation in which the parties are not negotiating. That was after they thought the Cleveland+ people were supposed to pay the bill.)

The Tower City bailout (aka the Convention Center/Med Mart at Tower City) is not the goofiest public development project I’ve seen. But it’s getting pretty close.

(My award for the goofiest public sector development project goes to a developer in Shreveport, LA who wanted to put retail shops along side the riverboat casinos on the Red River. Except there was no there, there. The casinos were surrounded by parking garages. Undaunted, he proposed floating retail shops in the river on pontoons.)

Addendum (December 27)

Jill Miler-Ziimon, in a post on her blog dated yesterday, shines some light on why the Tower City bailout is probably in trouble. A recent Morningstar report evaluated Forest City Enterprises as having lost virtually all of its equity value.

Read more.

It seems pretty clear that the Kennedys (the family behind MMPI) are not so eager to get into business with the Ratners (the family behind Forest City) right now.

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Category: Economic Development
2 Comments »

2 Responses to “More on the Tower City bailout”

  1. Mark W. "Some Guy on Bridge" Schumann Says:
    December 28th, 2008 at 10:13 am

    Is it time to disband the Convention and Visitors Bureau yet?

    The “medical mart” was a horrible idea even before this report. The whole lack-of-a-business-plan angle should have doomed it at the start.

  2. Ed Morrison Says:
    December 28th, 2008 at 5:33 pm

    Surprisingly, I think it’s time to refocus the CVB. (You’ll never abolish it.)

    As this article in the Boston Globe makes clear, a visitor strategy plays a role in economic development. http://snurl.com/977o2

    (You can download the Philly Fed report here:
    http://is.gd/dSvC)

    Read also this article on rebranding New England. (It begs for someone in Cleveland to “steal these ideas”: CLE Social Media Club…are you listening?)
    http://is.gd/dQC0

    Cleveland has to start with having some people in charge who know what they are doing, though.

    Branding a region is not something you outsource to a consulting firm.

    (Branding consultants in the economic development space are notorious fast buck artists. The reason is pretty simple. Most economic development organizations assume that branding is some mysterious science. Because they are generally so naive, they make easy marks for ad firms. At the state level, another factor comes into play…political connections.)

    It’s ironic that CLE’s strategy is so bad, because at the state level, we actually have a person in Ed Burghart who knows what he is doing.
    http://is.gd/dSG5

    To start, put the shower curtain on the inside of the bathtub.

    Cleveland needs an events strategy, and I’ve never seen one.

    (If you don’t know what an events is, download a tourism strategy report from Australia. They use this approach quite successfully to build local and regional brands.)

    Then start connecting key message points (connect to the Ohio story Burkhard has developed), imaging and web sites.

    So, for example, eliminate confusion and provide guidance. I’m not sure how the CVB Positively Cleveland connects to Cuyahoga Arts and Culture:
    http://www.cuyahogaartsandculture.org/

    (It doesn’t, apparently.)

    In addition, the CLE airport branding (CLE) doesn’t connect with the Cleveland+ branding. (BTW, who’s idea was it to put kiosks in the airport? That decision was laughably out of date — a 1990’s strategy. Instead, provide free Internet. See the new Indy airport.)

    And the Cleveland+ brand doesn’t connect to the region. (Just ask folks in Akron and Youngstown…they resent Cleveland+, generally.)

    After several years of trying and a bunch of money, Cleveland’s branding is pretty much of a disconnected mishmash.

    Cleveland’s (and NEO’s) future brand can be built around sustainability, creativity, innovation and authenticity. It’s time to start heading in this direction.