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Ed Morrison · The pie fight: Commissioners throw an old tomato
April 30th, 2009
The pie fight continues…and, like all pie fights, nobody wins, and everyone ends up looking ridiculous.
The Commissioners start laying down deadlines in the paper…never a a good sign. Reminds me of the Amos and Andy joke: “Are you giving me an old tomato?”
Commissioners give Cleveland a deadline on convention center offer
Meanwhile, from the tone of the comments to this story, it looks like the blogosphere is on to Sam and Albert. Once again, they are throwing pies…As usual, they are throwing their pies from behind the curtain, so (they think) no one can see them.
Some fear medical mart deal could damage local film industry
Last 5 posts by Ed Morrison
- Signing off - February 3rd, 2012
- "The current global development model is unsustainable" - February 1st, 2012
- Market opportunities for developing Chicago's green economy - January 29th, 2012
- Plain Dealer flubs its explanation for firing Tony Grossi - January 27th, 2012
- Linking and leveraging university assets to strengthen regional economies - January 27th, 2012
April 30th, 2009 at 10:00 am
Watch. Toby Cosgrove is going to get his Medical Mart right next to the Clinic at the Cleveland Playhouse complex. Fine with me, as long as we can get the “nonprofit” non-tax-paying Clinic Foundation to pay for their own MedMart. Whether it’s pies or tomatoes, this garbage STINKS!
April 30th, 2009 at 11:35 am
One wonders…
1)…Are those Crack Investigative Reporters at the PD that gullible…or that cynical?…It can only be one or the other…
2)…Do those Editorial Beacons Of Openness And Transparency read Cleveland.com, or do they really believe they’re fooling people with this absolute nonsense?…The attitude reminds me of the motto of the old Firesign Theatre Universal Church Of The Presumptuous Assumption Of The Blinding Light: “Show the people a light, and they’ll follow it anywhere;”
3)…We know the Men Behind The Curtain don’t read Cleveland.com, or the blogs…much too populist and unlikely to “support the process”…And besides, we know they don’t care about what you think…The PD is their version of Pravda, the Purveyor Of The Party Line…I’m sure THEY think this double-header is a triumph of Effective Media Management.
I came to the conclusion many years ago that, editorially, most everything in the PD outside of sports is written for about 1000 people in Cleveland who use it to communicate with one another in code.
What is the message here? Perhaps it is that if The County and MMPI got to deal with the “private” Cleveland Play House, there’d be even LESS need to maintain a “veneer of openness” around the land acquisition process.
Or perhaps, since the CPH property wasn’t a factor in the GCP hack job of a “siting study,” and now is available, the alternative site now makes sense, since it means acquiring a bunch of land from a single “civic-minded” property holder. The Clinic can buy the CPH property for $20 million, and sell it to The County/MMPI for $40 million 24 hours later. The Clinic makes money (which it likes), gets a Medical Mart close to its front door, and then Tower City’s new casino project can be the next Project Which Must Get Done So We Can Save Downtown.
The Men Behind The Curtain should be ashamed of themselves…though time and again they’ve proved themselves incapable of feeling shame…Either they really think people are morons, or they just don’t care what anyone outside the Board Room thinks about anything. Has to be one or the other…
April 30th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
“Or perhaps, since the CPH property wasn’t a factor in the GCP hack job of a “siting study,” and now is available, the alternative site now makes sense…”
Surely there is no coincidence in the sudden availability of the Playhouse site.
“Either they really think people are morons, or they just don’t care what anyone outside the Board Room thinks about anything. Has to be one or the other…” Oh, John, I really think it could be both!
I can just see Cleveland’s future mayor Chris Ronayne, Toby Cosgrove and Chris Kennedy planning the whole thing. Maybe they even let godfather Hagan sit in on it.
April 30th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
The Play House has been in both artistic and business decline for more than a decade. Their physical plant is killing them. The leaders of CPH have been saying for a couple of years that CPH was unlikely to survive in its current form as a producing company.
Their move downtown makes a good deal of sense. Sharing staff and resources with PlayhouseSquare, GLTF, CSU, etc.,also makes a lot of sense.
The combination of their current state of affairs, a crappy arts economy, the opportunity to move downtown, and the chance to sell to CCF may have made CPH move a little faster than they’d planned.
And it IS true that CCF runs one of the nicer hotels in town…The InterContinental…and every other major downtown hotel is within 10 minutes away.
But this seems more like an opportunity than a conspiracy. And in general, if I had to pick who’ll do it right, the City, the County, or the Clinic, I pick the Clinic.
And yes, I misspoke: it IS possible that our community’s corporate institutional leaders BOTH consider the public to be morons AND don’t care what anyone else thinks…
In many ways, though, perhaps it’s more…authentic…not to make any pretense of caring about what the community really thinks, or what the community really needs. The absolute nakedness of self-interest involved ought at least to lessen public criticisms of the players’ hypocrisy…
May 1st, 2009 at 6:36 am
The wonderful aspects of Med Con comes in revealing Cleveland’s civic pathology. It’s not too dissimilar to the bizarre twists of civic life in Louisiana.
Understanding the corrupt civic life in Louisiana starts with a simple premise: There is no civic interest either expressed or carried forward by leadership with the responsibility to lead.
The cynicism that erodes civic life in Louisiana runs deep. The colorfully corrupt practices of Huey Long and his infamous “deduct box” (where state workers had to kick back a portion of their wages) have created an environment in which public funds are simply a source of free financing for private interest.
Not surprising, this culture of corruption destroys any prospect for economic development like weed killer on a lawn.
But nobody much cares, because private interest rules. Deciding what matters extends only to “What’s in it for me?” This self-absorption leads to strategies which help explain why it has taken Cleveland over a decade to make a decision on a convention center. The simple rule: “If it ain’t mine, kill it.”