CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cuyahoga County on Thursday pledged $5 million in American Rescue Plan Act money as part of a larger plan to help resuscitate the Global Center for Health Innovation.
This is the exact amount that the Cuyahoga County Convention Facilities Development Corporation board requested in February, when it proposed a $46 million facelift to officially marry the property to the Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland. We’re talking about it on Today in Ohio.
Listen online here. See the automated transcript at the bottom of the post.
Editor Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with editor Leila Atassi, editorial board member Lisa Garvin and content director Laura Johnston.
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Here are the questions we’re answering today:
I wish this was an April Fool’s Day joke, but it’s real. Days after we broke the story about Armond Budish and Cuyahoga County Council trying to squander $86 million in precious American Rescue Plan dollars on slush funds, Budish announced a plan to spend even more of the money on other questionable purposes. How much, and what for?
How much have airfares jumped in recent weeks in Cleveland because of the rise in gas prices?
What do we know about the Texas lawyer who has represented new Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson involving allegations of sexual abuse?
For the third time this week, we’re talking about the closing of Dave’s supermarket in Cleveland’s Collinwood neighborhood. The first two times, we thought Dave’s was closing because business had soured. But an interview with the landlord offers new perspective. What is it?
How serious is the case against Trevor Elkins, the Newburgh Heights Mayor charged this week for crimes involving his campaign finance account?
What’s to become of the former Lakewood Hospital site?
Why is nationally known Geraldo Rivera, who lives in Shaker Heights, ending his “Geraldo in Cleveland” radio show?
For West Siders, the Pearl Brookpark Car Wash has been a landmark for nearly six decades, so why is it closing, and what will happen to it?
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Read the automated transcript below:
Chris: [00:00:00] You’re going to think. Some of the stories we’re talking about on today in Ohio today are April fool’s jokes, but they’re not. It is today in Ohio, the news podcast discussion from cleveland.com and the plain dealer. I’m Chris Quinn. I am here with Lisa Garvin, Laila Tasi, and Laura Johnson. And don’t you wish some of these stories were April fool’s jokes.
I mean, wouldn’t that give you more faith in government? If they weren’t squandering our money and resigning from office and all the other things
Laura: are going to be the tire redistricting, uh, scheduled April fool’s joke. Just kidding me. Past fair maps Monday. We
Leila: certainly have the tomorrows.
Chris: We count that part.
Yeah, we own that. Well, let’s begin because I really do wish this one was an April fool’s joke days after we broke the story about Armand Buddhists and Cuyahoga county council, trying to squander $86 million in our precious American rescue plan dollars on [00:01:00] slush funds, Buddhist announced a plan to spend even more of those dollars.
On another question of her purpose, how much Layla and what is it for? Yeah
Leila: know, British has been rolling out these batches of our pub proposals. Many, many of them have been good for, for good purposes. You know, the kinds of initiatives they should be used for post pandemic recovery, but others have been terrible.
Like the 86 million, they plan to divide into slush funds, uh, for pet projects. And in yesterday’s our broad announcement, you’ll find at least one of those. Really suspect ideas. So everyone knows the board that oversees the global center for health innovation. I E the med Mart has been pushing the county to dump another $46 million into that facility to try to reclaim it from a failure by expanding the convention center into that space.
Well, many, many folks are opposed to that because. Obviously, we have a lot of other stuff to pay for most pressingly, a new jail [00:02:00] and justice center in the immediate future and urban Buddhists. As recently as February assured the people involved in, in the jail project that no money had been pledged to the global center yet.
And don’t worry about it and blah, blah, blah. Well, Caitlin Durbin noticed that in yesterday’s batch of ARPA allocations. There was this pledge of $5 million for the global center. That happens to be exactly the amount of money that the global center board asked county council for back in February to officially marry the properties to the convention center.
And kickstart that renovation plan going any further than that. We’ll, we’ll heavily rely on county bonds, county council hasn’t entertained a proposal for that yet, but it seems pretty obvious that’s on the horizon. I think it’s fair to assume they wouldn’t burn $5 million of precious ARPA money on this.
Albatross of a facility. If they didn’t plan on following through on the next steps, it just feels like the sneakiest backdoor way [00:03:00] to go about it. By trying to bury it in a laundry list of other ARPA-E spending.
Chris: I get the feeling that the county council is completely out of touch with the public. I I’ve rarely seen the unit nymity from our readers, that there is an opposition to spending another penny on the medical Mart.
It was a stupid idea when Tim Hagen and company first announced it, it has been a place where we just flush money down the toilet, multiple incarnations, nothing works, and now they want to spend 46 million more. Nobody wants. Yeah. I mean, it’s just, nobody wants that. We are working on a story. It’s going to show every penny that we’ve spent on this thing since it started.
But I’m just wondering if the public is dead set against this and the county commissioners or county councils moving forward with it. I wonder if we should do a story because I bet people don’t even know who their county council members are. Put all their faces out there. Say these are the people. That are flushing $46 million down the Midmark.
These are the [00:04:00] people that are creating $86 million in slush funds for themselves in direct violation of the purpose of the government. You know, there’s even a clause in the county charter that specifically says individual county council members should not have control over any money. They’re going to say, well, we’re voting on it together.
So none of us have control, but we even put that clause in the charter to stop these guys from doing this kind of stuff. And they’re doing it anyway. Nobody wants it. I mean, there is universal opposition to slush funds and to the idiocy of putting more money into the Metro. I’m
Leila: sure Caitlin would love to do.
You know,
Chris: I just, I mean, do you, who’s your county council member? I don’t think people know we need to put that, but they want to be your little mini mayor. Now they want to have 6 million to go grease the palms of their friends. We, we just, it, we should put a stop to it. We should put their faces out there and beg where, where, you know, millennials are of an age where they can run for [00:05:00] office and they have great illusions about the way the world should work.
Why don’t they run for these jobs and run it? These loser bureaucrats that are squandering Techstars. Think about that 46 and 86 million. What you can do with that money that would transform people’s lives. And they, you know, they don’t even talk about it. How did they announce this through.
Leila: It’s so weird.
And we were talking about this cause like, you know, the video rollout, first of all, it’s very cumbersome. You got to sit through 20 minutes of people taking turns, talking about their thing. And you’re taking note is just awful. You can’t ask, you cannot ask questions, which is another, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s so hot.
It’s just so awful. I don’t know who came up with that idea. I don’t know.
Chris: Oh, no, it’s a perfect idea. If you don’t want to hear from the public, if you don’t want to have to face difficult questions, you get on, you stay Jack. These [00:06:00] terribly plotted videos, you bladder and bladder and bladder, making people sit through to get the few facts that are in there.
So they don’t sneak something by, but there’s no accountability. The accountability is at the polls. But people don’t even know who these folks are. I mean, this is, this government is a mess and it is striking that they’re going to spend $46 million when they have not identified money to repair the crumbling courthouse.
And Buddhists did assure that criminal justice committee that they’re not going to flush money away. They’re going to take care of the cortex. And they’re doing it. I, I mean, I don’t know of a single justification for this. You don’t need it for the convention center. Why are they so hell bent on doing it?
Is there some contractor that’s going to get rich off of this that they’re all trying to take care of? I mean, what is, what is the real reason to, to squander $46 million?
Leila: It only be 41 million Chris, but
Chris: they’re borrowing, this is the [00:07:00] thing they’re putting the county deeper and harsher because they don’t have the cash to do.
Laura: It. Never had success with the medical Mart. Right. They’ve never had the success they wanted with the convention center. And they keep saying, if we build this, this will be the golden ticket, right? Like we’ll build the hotel and then we’ll get bigger conventions. And if we transform the medical to more meeting space, then we’ll be able to get the really big ones.
But I haven’t seen any proof that. Really we’ll come here.
Chris: It’s time to put them on front street so people can see their faces, see their names, understand who they are, because this is the crumbling. This is the final pumbling really of the redesigned government. It’s falling apart. Nothing. This was part of the plan.
Laura: You mentioned the idea of millennials running for these seats. And that was the idea when they did this in 2010, that this would be a part-time job for really smart professionals who wanted to help. Right. And actually when in building the charter, I think they were only supposed to get paid $25,000 a year, but there were a lot of entrenched Democrats that got that [00:08:00] pushed up.
And now we have career politicians to sit in those seats.
Chris: Well, yeah, like Marty Sweeney who’s came up with that. He’d do you know what though? The editorial
Leila: board, the other day, you know, we interviewed the, the two democratic candidates for county executive. We asked them specifically what should be done with the global center?
Is this a waste of money? And they were lame on this question. They had Chris rename was like, I’m not ready to say. We should sell that property. I, I think we, you know, I think Cuyahoga county needs a strong convention center and we need to do
Chris: they’re Republican opponent. Lee Weingart is emphatic on what he would do with that.
He wouldn’t drop another penny into it and he would get rid of it. So at least one person running for that office has the clear-eyed view of what a loser it is. Let’s move on. You’re listening to today in Ohio. How much of airfares jumped in recent weeks in Cleveland because of the rising gas prices we saw, I bought some plane tickets for my daughter’s family for this summer.
I’m glad I [00:09:00] got it before this happened. Yeah,
Lisa: there’s a 26% increase in domestic roundtrip ticket fares from Hopkins airport. The average ticket is about $246. Again. 26% from last year, even higher than 2019, uh, cleveland.com and the plain dealer had an analysis done by the hopper travel data company to extract some of this information.
Um, they found that nationally, the average fare is $330. So we’re below the national average, which is, I guess, kind of good news tickets nationally for domestic flights are up 40% just from the beginning of this year. Hopper, uh, spokeswoman. I know I wrote her name down. Uh, Hailey Berg says that these prices are going to continue to go up.
So if you want to buy for spring travel or early summer, you need to buy your tickets now because tickets won’t be coming down any time soon.
Chris: I don’t know. Is there a chance that the [00:10:00] gas prices are going to drop Biden is releasing a huge amount of reserves and will things possibly stabilize as the short
Lisa: term thing?
Uh, yeah, I don’t know. And I have, I have my own opinions about strategic releases from the oil reserves, but anyway, and whether they’re are. But yes, jet fuel prices are a huge issue here. Demand has surged back in the meantime and seat capacity limits are actually down. So they’re actually seeding fewer people by about 8% on these.
Chris: We did report that the parking lots at Hopkins are all full and the remote lots are nearly fallen. So if you want to go somewhere, you might have to have somebody drop you off. So, so far there’s no abating. There’s the highest demand for spring break travel we’ve seen in three years. We’ll have to see if the price has come down.
Yeah. It’s today in Ohio. What do we know about the Texas lawyer who was represented new Browns quarterback, the Sean Watson involving allegations of sexual abuse. Laura, we’re going to keep analyzing this story [00:11:00] because it is the biggest story in Cleveland right now. And all a whole lot of people continue to wonder what the Haslams we’re thinking here.
So we check that the lawyer who has so far kept Deshaun Watson at a criminal.
Laura: Right. His name is rusty harden, and this guy is a total character. He’s 80 years old. And the go-to guy in Houston, if you’re a celebrity or a millionaire or an athlete, trying to get out of trouble, he has seen huge success over his career, which originally.
As a prosecutor and many of the cases have involved white collar crime is state law drunk and driving. He actually re represented the Houston mayor, 17 year old daughter for that. And he attributes. He actually talked to Adam for Reese, our reporter, and he attributes the success to being an average person who grew up in a small town and knowing how to talk to.
Chris: Well, we happened to have somebody on this podcast who actually was in Texas when he was a prosecutor. Right? Lisa? Yes,
Lisa: I was, he was the first assistant district attorney for Harris county in the late eighties and [00:12:00] early nineties. And I was saying to everyone before the podcast, he’s, he’s quite a showman.
I don’t think he he’s a show boater, but he’s a very good attorney. And I watched him prosecute somebody in a capital murder trial of a Houston police officer. And it was the easily, the most dramatic trial I’d ever seen.
Laura: Wow. And he represented in Cleveland. We know that that’s the pilot flying J president, mark Hazelwood and all the.
A corruption investigation into that, which, so this is interesting connection through Jimmy Haslam. Uh, cause he owns pilot flying J uh, his family company, but harden told Adam furries that that was not the connection here. He hadn’t seen Jimmy Haslam in 13 years when he shook his hand in this Deshaun Watson.
Chris: I mentioned that this story just continues to grow. We did publish earlier this week, the complete list of allegations by the twin in the 22 civil suits against Watson. And I continue to hear from [00:13:00] readers saying, okay, okay. I, after reading that, I. See how this should proceed. They’re dead set against, uh, Watson being in Cleveland.
I mean, a whole lot of people have read that and said that Haslam’s made a mistake. And then two days ago, one of the 22 women wrote a letter to the editor of a website laying out her side of this and expressing her outrage. Laura, what did she say?
Laura: Yeah. She, she wrote really eloquently about the process and how disappointed she was with the legal system and with the Browns.
I mean, she called it evil basically to not believe these women and for not charging him. And, uh, she, she put her name on it and it’s out there on the internet. We’re going to have a story on it today and it’s very specific in the.
Chris: Yeah. She was a gas that they, they didn’t file the charges because she says the police and prosecutors told her this is a solid case.
And when people say there’s no evidence, she’s saying the [00:14:00] testimony of 22 women or however many, there are. Is the evidence and, and she really criticized those who are calling these women prostitutes. I mean, she said I’ve been in this career for a long time. I’ve never had this happen. And, and that’s, that’s just an unfair characterization.
This is growing. I think the Haslams thought there’d be one big bout of. Of bad publicity, but this doesn’t show any signs of abating it’s increasing. This is a nightmare for the
Laura: Browns. She takes them on what they said in the press conference, where they got comfortable and she took issue with that phrasing and, and, uh, yep.
I think this is going to keep growing. She did mention that this would be a misdemeanor in Texas, which is what Corey Shaffer. One of our reporters, who’s looking into this to found. So this isn’t a felony in Texas, and I was surprised to find
Chris: that out. Uh, but even, but 22 misdemeanors, I looked at it. It’s a surprise based [00:15:00] on what we now know that he wasn’t charged.
But we also know that when prosecutors don’t want to get charges, they don’t get charges. Th the, the microscope is on these cases. Now I think the prosecutor’s going to be in a hot seat.
Laura: Can I point out one more thing? Um, the, the lawyer representing the 22 women is also very high profile in Houston.
Maybe Lisa knows him as well, but he ran for mayor and has won several multi-million dollar judgements in civil cases. He also represented former Texas governor Rick Perry in the past. So I’m sure this is, these are like the battle of two very well-known lawyers in Texas.
Chris: Okay. You’re only sending to today.
For the third time this week, we are talking about the closing of Dave supermarket in Cleveland’s Collinwood neighborhood. The first two times we thought Dave’s was closing because business had gone bad, but an interview with the landlord offers new perspective, Layla, and it may not be what. Yeah,
Leila: we might [00:16:00] even have another chapter after this who knows.
So the running narrative was that the pandemic had changed shopping habits and that business had slowed at that Dave’s location and required that, that the store close and city councilmen, Mike lamented that closing the store really limits food access for those in his neighborhood who are on fixed income, the elderly and low-income families.
Walking distance of the store who depended on it. And he said, the city should have done more to creatively solve the problems that gave rise to the store’s closure. And he, he condemned the landlord for driving up the rent on the Saltzman family who had run the business there for decades. Then we found out that in fact, mayor Justin bib had actually offered open-ended assistance to the Saltzman.
He said, is there anything the city can do to keep you from closing? And the Saltzman said, no, So it was clear that they were going to close that store no matter what, then Courtney’s, Dolphy got a call yesterday from Kurt Mont lack of Mont lack Realty, which [00:17:00] owns the property. And he said, we had only heard part of the story.
Keep in mind. Also, we’ve not spoken to the Saltzman. They haven’t returned our calls at all. So Motluck. He drove up the wrens because over the last year, only because Dave’s refuse to commit to a long-term lease. He said the Saltzman is in recent years, we’re looking for increasingly shorter term leases, which signaled to Motluck that they were looking to leave.
And Montlake was looking for the security of a long-term tenant, which makes sense, right? Without that he felt he needed to increase the rent. And the lease also required the Saltzman to cover maintenance costs of the facility. That was always part of their terms. But Mont Lex said that that that would have been negotiable.
If they had agreed to a longer term, they were just unwilling to stay for longer than a year at a stretch. He wasn’t going to go pay for the new roof for them, if they weren’t going to stay. So they were kind of at this impasse, but what was really [00:18:00] surprising is that Montlake refuted the suggestion that business was doing poorly there as a condition of the lease.
He had access to their financials because if they brought in more money than they expected, he was entitled to. Uh, bump in rent and Montlake said that they were edging closer to that threshold in recent years. So he says business was actually pretty good at the Collinwood Dave’s and he just suspects that they wanted to abandon that location, to put all of their resources into their other store, a few miles away in Euclid.
That of course is their right to do. Right. But if that’s the case, they should probably just be honest about it and not tell public officials otherwise, because now you’ve got Mike Polin sick insisting that the Saltzman has had been treading water for years. And that the unreasonable terms of model X Lee’s left Collinwood with a food desert.
So we’re still kind of trying to, that’s why I feel like we probably have one more chapter of the story to go because. [00:19:00] We still haven’t heard from the Saltzman. And so I feel like we’re, we are, we are, you know, we still have to bookend this story.
Chris: And Montlake said that their, their revenue had gone up in each of the last few years.
So the trend that was described to Lensic and to the bib administration, isn’t there they’re, they’re not, they haven’t been losing more and more money because people were squeezed and you’re right. And they could just say, look, we have two stores, three miles apart. It doesn’t make sense to us to keep doing that.
It’s hard to find workers
Yeah, but you can’t really mislead the public if that’s in fact what happened. So I’m glad that real there, the landlord called and laid that out because it does put a very different spin. I never would have expected. We would write three stories about the closing of a grocery store in Collingwood, and we’re probably going to have a fourth.
It is today in Ohio. So now that the case for Trevor Elkins is coming to a [00:20:00] close Lisa, where we see the Newburgh Heights mayor, I guess, former new grades Merck. I hates mayor in an orange jumpsuit,
Lisa: not in an orange jumpsuit, but no longer in the. Either Newburgh Heights, mayor Trevor Elkins at first pled not guilty to two counts of attempted election falsification.
And one count of attempted theft in office in a Cuyahoga county court of common pleas, but late breaking last night, he agreed to a plea deal, which means he will step down as Newburgh Heights, mayor as part of that. He will avoid prison time. If you know, each of these charges is carried like six months in jail and a $1,000 fine per the three counts.
So, uh, yeah, so he is, I don’t know when he’s going to resign or if he’s resigned officially, but he will be stepping down. This was all about, um, uh, 2019 audit that found Elkins campaign funds and expenditures didn’t match. He was using a campaign. The card for his own personal expenses to the tune of about [00:21:00] $134,000 and over 650 different transactions, but two in 2015 and 2019, he said he repaid the account, but he didn’t know it was illegal to do that.
Chris: Yeah, which that’s the part that you go, come on. I mean, this was so clearly not legal. I’m surprised this case took this long to finally resolve it was clear he was going to be dealing with the criminal offense at some point. So it just dragged on and on and on. But, but apparently he did finally make the deal and will no longer be mayor.
I wonder if that’s the last we see of him as a politician. In these parts. I don’t know. He’s
Lisa: very active in democratic politics. He, uh, has been Newburgh Heights mayor since 2011. So over 10 years. And he, like I said, very active in local democratic politician circles. So we may not hear the last seven, but you know, he might be a pariah who.
Chris: Are there really any pariahs in the democratic party? I mean, these guys create slush funds for [00:22:00] themselves. You can’t wait. I don’t think there’s anything they can do to become polarized. Jimmy Demora could come back and lead that party again tomorrow. I suspect it’s today. Laura, I’m throwing your curve ball.
I’m going to ask you a question. You didn’t prepare for it. You’ve been excited all week about the possibility of the biggest mural ever in downtown Cleveland. We have a story about it. Why are you excited about this? Well, because
Laura: it’s going to tower over a public square and I think, and there, we don’t know what it’s going to look like.
This is going to be a collaboration with the city of Cleveland, but if, you know, if you’re in public square and you know, Old stone church is this is the building that’s behind it. It’s 21 stories and it has a basic. Just straight, bare back facing it. And I don’t know that I’ve ever really noticed it because it’s just so bland.
But the idea was they always assume there’d be a skyscraper, a tall building on the other side and there never was one. So now we have this opportunity for some really cool public art downtown. [00:23:00] Biggest public art and Cleveland went and we’ll get done.
Chris: Yeah. I mean, there’s nothing that would compare to this.
It’s huge. And they, the, the wall is solid, but like you said, they thought there’d be a building next door and it’s a fire break. If the building next door caught on fire, having the solid wall might protect this building is going to take a year to get to it. Steve Lee has a story about the renowned artist who will be doing it, whose name is hard to pronounce.
Laura: Julie Mehretu. She’s one of the world’s most respected contemporary artists. And this is all part of the front international Cleveland triennial for contemporary art, which is a mouthful in itself.
Chris: Yeah. It will dominate the public square. Vista. They’re just as much as the new Sherwin-Williams building Wells said the public square area, you’re going to get rid of the bollards.
You’re going to have this gigantic mural. You’re going to have the new Sherwin-Williams building. It’s going to be like a whole new place down there.
Laura: I think, I think it’s really cool. And I know that, you know, the big [00:24:00] Sherwin Williams mural that with LeBron, we always made a big deal out about that, but that was just canvas and a poster.
Really? So this is, this is art and you get to have a say in what.
Chris: Checkout Steve story on cleveland.com. Why is nationally known Geraldo Rivera who lives in shaker Heights ending his Geraldo in Cleveland radio show. Lisa, I gave this one to you because you’re the long-time radio person. And so you have a connection.
Geraldo
Lisa: is basically leaving his job because he’s old. No, I’m kidding. The only, only partially. I mean, that was his reasoning, you know, he’s 79 years old. Uh, he is doing co-hosting duties on a Fox news show called the five. And he has to fly to New York city every week to do that show. And he says, that’s just taking too much of a toll on him.
And he’s been a new. For over 50 years. So I’m his last show is actually going on as we’re recording this podcast. His last show on WTAM [00:25:00] 1100 is at nine o’clock on Friday morning. His very last show. He moved to shaker Heights to do this show back in 2017. And it was kind of because of his wife, his wife, Eric allevi is from shaker Heights.
She wanted to return. So he came with her. They are not leaving shaker Heights. He’s just leaving his job at WTAM. And I just love that I had the story because Laura and Layla are too young to remember this, but Chris, do you remember Al Capone’s vault? It was back in 1986 when Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone’s vault on live TV, and it was a frenzy thing and a big buildup, but when they opened the safe, there was like some empty bottles.
That was all it was in there.
Chris: Yeah. It was one of the biggest pop culture moments of the eighties. I mean, there was a shell on, it was so big that there was a popular police show called hill street blues that did a parody of it. It just was, it was one of the best known. I w when they moved to shaker Heights, they also cut some [00:26:00] attention because he and his wife had opposing political signs in the yard at some point on a presidential race.
Right. He’s so he’s been, he’s made himself known here. Uh, and he, you know, he did us the favor when we started this podcast of interviewing me for it and talking about it. And I think it helped us grow how it was going a couple of years ago. So we wish him well it’s today and all that. For west siders, the Pearl Brook park carwash has been a landmark for nearly six decades.
So why is it closing and what will happen to it? Laura? This was a talker for Westsiders yesterday. Everybody felt like they had a connection to it,
Laura: which is really interesting because I knew nothing about.
Chris: The new west side, or you’re not alone time
Laura: with, I have not a long time by cider, but this has been there for 57 years of business and it’s closed it closed on Wednesday.
I don’t think it had a lot of notice that it was closing because it can’t find employees and the owner it’s the original owner from [00:27:00] 1965. He bought it when he was 26 years old, one of the busiest intersections in Cuyahoga county. And at one point they had detailing restoration service. Gas, they sold gas and I, you know, they got to the point, they had the customers in the cars, but didn’t have the help ever since COVID, which I feel like is a familiar referring.
Chris: Yeah. I mean, I, it’s just surprising that, that, uh, a business that old, that people still want to use, he didn’t have any shortage of customers or anything like that. They just can’t make it. Cause they don’t have the people there, but there’s a. Presumably thinks they will find the people, right. That’s going to be the same kind of business.
Well, yeah,
Laura: it’s rain-forest carwash. And then. Locations in Cleveland Heights, Brunswick, Medina, Avon, and one that’s going to open and men are. So you have to think that, you know, there’s economies of scale here that they’ll have more employees. And if they have a shortage of one place, they’ll be able to send somebody from another.
So, yeah, it’s still going to be a carwash, just not the family owned one that people have been so familiar with for so long.
Chris: Yeah, that popped up on the radar and it seemed [00:28:00] like an automatic story. People like love to read about openings and closings. I mean the, the grocery store story and this one, we’re both in our top 10 of readership yesterday.
So people eat this kind of thing up. You’re listening to today in Ohio. I didn’t think we’d get to the Lakewood hospital site, Laura, but we are, there are plans for the Lakewood hospital site.
Laura: Yeah, $90 million project with hundreds of apartments, some retail, a parking garage, and the headquarters of Roundstone insurance, which would move a few blocks east from its current location.
This is a 5.7 acre site at Detroit and bell avenues, right in the center of downtown Lakewood. It’s been the center of a lot of community, fewer for years and years, a huge faction of people never wanted the hospital closed at all. It was a Cleveland clinic hospital, and it’s been mostly vacant since 2016.
When a previous deal fell apart.
Chris: Okay. You’re listening to today in Ohio and that’s going to do it for Friday. You guys all have good plans for this not pleasant coming weekend.
Laura: I’m going [00:29:00] down to the crew game with my kids and like a whole bunch of people from our soccer organizations. Cool idea. Yeah.
Chris: It should be fun.
Lisa: I’m just hitting the thrift stores. Nothing special.
Chris: Lately you’re giggling. So you must have great plans. No,
Leila: I just can’t wait to sleep in tomorrow. Just my husband’s off for the first time in a long time, but I’ve been just fantasizing about sleeping in.
Chris: Okay. Well enjoy that. And we’ll be back on Monday for a, another discussion of the news in Northeast, Ohio, and Ohio.
Thank you for listening.
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