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DECEMBER 21-27, 2015
CLEVELAND BUSINESS
VOL. 36, NO. 51
Big-time planning dominated in 2015 Page 13
Pages 14-18 Lisa Lorek
Entire contents Š 2015 by Crain Communications Inc.
35 years of news & newsmakers
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Small Business Matters i Want more information and resources on this week's topics, ideas and events? Go to www.cose.org/smallbizmatters.
PRESENTED BY
52 TIPS FOR YOUR BUSINESS
Tip #52 - Source a Supply of Interns There are a number of reasons your business should place a high priority on internships. Besides the fact that your company is playing an integral part in training future employees, you are also developing your own pipeline of potential future employees. According to a report from the Northeast Ohio Council on Higher Education, 53% of employers increased their number of student interns in 2014, compared to just 35% who did so in 2013. But what’s the best way to source and utilize these students? First, in my professional experiences as a former YLJY\P[LY [OL ILZ[ ^H` [V Ä UK H Z\WWS` VM interns is through developing partnerships with local colleges or universities. Contact your local career center to understand [OL WYVNYHTZ VɈ LYLK HUK [OLPY WYVJLZZ [V identify interns. At Cuyahoga Community College, we are prepared to meet you at your Vɉ JL [V \UKLYZ[HUK `V\Y [HSLU[ HJX\PZP[PVU plans and how we can supply you with talent through our internship program with resumes of students actively seeking internships. Hiring student interns should be similar to the process and assessment of hiring WYVMLZZPVUHS Z[HɈ [V `V\Y VYNHUPaH[PVU 4VZ[ LTWSV`LYZ PUJS\KL T\S[PWSL Z[HɈ TLTILYZ from the department and cross-functional teams to help represent their area in the selection process. Using this collaborative approach will provide a strong assessment of the student intern’s background and support from the department. Employers need to identify the technical and soft skills necessary to be successful in their KLWHY[TLU[ HUK OV^ [OH[ Z[\KLU[ ^V\SK Ä [ in their organizational culture. Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, concludes before an organization takes their performance to the next level to be truly great you need
[OL YPNO[ Z[HɈ PU WSHJL /PYPUN PU[LYUZOPWZ PZ PTWVY[HU[ [V PKLU[PM` [OL YPNO[ Z[HɈ [V IL VU the right bus and in the right seat.
December 21
Internship program structure Internships are typically part-time throughout the year and are short-term assignments. Employers provide us with feedback during our site visits and consistently are seeking students with strong soft skills and business acumen to work in a business environment. The technical knowledge is important and they are willing to train students VU [OLPY WYVJLZZLZ [V IL LɈ LJ[P]L Highly successful internship programs have a thorough job description that includes productive work assignments related to department and organizational goals. Students are eager to practice what they have learned in the classroom and apply it to their internship. Employers who create a learning environment for students and provide the opportunity to use their skills, knowledge and abilities on projects creates a sense of ownership to make the internship experience a success. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers’ 2015 Co-op survey, most of an intern’s day will be spent doing analytical/problem-solving followed, in order, by: project management; communications; logistics; clerical tasks; and nonessential functions.
usually report to the owner or senior leader in the organization who will train and prep the student to make an immediate impact. Students seeking internships are encouraged to explore working for organizations that can provide them an opportunity to learn regardless of the size in organization. Our students who have participated in a coop position routinely participate in College career center events in order to share their experiences with other students and to advise them that they, too, can receive a Z\JJLZZM\S HUK X\HSP[` PU[LYUZOPW L_WLYPLUJL working for any size organization. The feedback we receive from our students has been overwhelmingly supportive of the on-boarding, guidance and relationships ^P[O [OLPY Z\WLY]PZVY :VTL LTWSV`LYZ VɈ LY a mentoring program to keep students engaged and identify areas of concern before they become an issue. Other successful experiences from our students indicate a high level of support and commitment from the team they worked with during the internship.
Small business advantage The advantage of being a small business can allow students to get more exposure and experience in business operations. They
-VY TVYL PUMVYTH[PVU JVU[HJ[ 1; 5L\Ɉ LY Director, Employer Relations, ,HZ[LYU *HTW\Z H[ QVU UL\Ɉ LY'[YP J LK\ VY
By The Numbers 1; 5L\Ɉ LY Cuyahoga Community College
BIG IDEAS
5 Ways to Boost Cybersecurity at Your Firm By Alicia Hoisington
44% The percentage of employers using their internship program as a proving ground for hiring potential future employees. SOURCE: NORTHEAST OHIO COUNCIL ON HIGHER EDUCATION
Connection Calendar A GLIMPSE INSIDE THE 10,000 SMALL BUSINESSES PROGRAM Interested in learning more about the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program or thinking about applying? This is an opportunity for you to get an inside peek at what the program is about. You will learn about the program, meet lead faculty member Larry Polena, participate in a mini session and engage with a panel of local small business owners who graduated from the program.
JANUARY 14, 2016
According to Kaspersky Lab’s “Damage Establish best practices for payment Control: The Cost of Security Breaches” report, cards: Work with banks or card 90% of businesses in 2015 experienced a processors to ensure you’re using trusted security incident, and 46% of businesses and validated tools as well as anti-fraud lost sensitive data because of an internal ZLY]PJLZ 0M `V\ OH]LU»[ THKL [OL ,4= or external security threat. According to the shift yet, get up to speed on what you report, small businesses spend an average of ULLK [V KV [V \WKH[L `V\Y LX\PWTLU[ $38,000 in direct spend to recover from the attack. Indirect costs from a breach on a small Back up important data and information: business can cost an additional $8,000. Regularly back up data on all your “Small businesses are particularly computers. If possible, back up your data vulnerable to cybersecurity threats and automatically or at least weekly. Store the crime,” says Gil Goldberg, district director JVWPLZ LP[OLY VɈ ZP[L VY VU [OL JSV\K of the Small Business Association Cleveland +PZ[YPJ[ 6ɉ JL ¸.P]LU [OLPY YVSL PU [OL UH[PVU»Z Protect against viruses, spyware Control physical access to computers and other malicious code: Each of supply chain and economy, combined with and networks: For instance, laptops can your business’s computers should be fewer resources than their larger counterparts be easy targets for theft, or can easily be LX\PWWLK ^P[O HU[P]PY\Z ZVM[^HYL HZ ^LSS to secure their information, systems and lost. Ensure laptops are locked when not as antispyware. These should be updated networks, small employers are an attractive in use. regularly. target for cybercriminals.” Goldberg says now is the time to take stock of your business’s cybersecurity health by Use strong passwords and change For more on this topic, them often: Consider implementing securing your information, identifying risk and IL VU [OL SVVRV\[ MVY [OL YLMYLZOLK T\S[PMHJ[VY H\[OLU[PJH[PVU [OH[ YLX\PYLZ learning best practices for guarding against ]LYZPVU VM [OL *6:, <WKH[L THNHaPUL additional information beyond a password cyberthreats. According to the association, ^OPJO ^PSS KLI\[ LHYS` UL_[ `LHY to gain entry. Ä ]L VM [OLZL ILZ[ WYHJ[PJLZ PUJS\KL! CONTENT PROVIDED AND PAID FOR BY THE COUNCIL OF SMALLER ENTERPRISES
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Ultimately, there are only three possible outcomes. The first two are intuitive. Either the docket stays dead and all business-to-business cases continue to be assigned to the full bench of 34 attorneys, or it’s restored under the parameters of the Supreme Court. The county court’s other option is to create what is essentially a special track for business cases. That technically wouldn’t be considered a commercial docket as defined by Ohio’s high court, though.
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Checkpoint Surgical, a Cleveland company that provides surgeons with technology to help protect and repair nerves intra-operatively, announced it closed its first institutional financing round, for $7.5 million. The round was led by First Analysis, a private equity investor based in Chicago. The money “will enable Checkpoint to continue growing in its core market of orthopedic and head and neck procedures, as well as expand into new procedure markets and develop new products,� the Cleveland
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Jumping through hoops
And it couldn’t actually be called a commercial docket. In that case, there would be no direct oversight by the chief justice. It’s not an uncommon process, as that’s the way most other specialty courts are operated, but it would be a special solution in this case. Hamilton and Lucas counties are the only ones in Ohio right now with true commercial dockets. There are some potential downsides to taking that alternative route, particularly in terms of case flow. Bret Crow, director of communications for the Supreme Court of Ohio, explained that under the high court’s commercial docket, a judge on the docket assigned a commercial dispute moves another nonbusiness case to someone else to keep the total workload in check. The timeline for dispositive motions is also automatically reduced. The Supreme Court, naturally, promotes its model to encourage uniformity across the state. So the court itself and Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor have been paying attention to what happens next in Cleveland. The high court, however, declined to comment on its position regarding what the local common pleas court does simply because it’s “premature,� Crow said. Joe Roman, CEO of the Greater Cleveland Partnership, has praised the docket as a positive for the business community. And even though it’s been a year without the commercial docket, which was formally adopted in Cuyahoga County in 2013 following a three-year pilot program, Ciano said it’s not been enough time to determine if it’s truly had a measurably negative impact on clients or business for practitioners. But that doesn’t diminish the lawyers’ efforts, he said. “We want to craft a compromise that makes sense and works for everybody,� Ciano said. “Our hope would be (to resolve this) in 2016, but there will be several hoops to jump through, and this is the first step to getting to something we all agree on at a local level.�
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Next month will mark a year since Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court judges disbanded the generally popular commercial docket, but the movement to restore the specialty business court continues. “It may appear to be dormant, but it’s not dead,� said Bruce Hearey, former president of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association who has been leading the committee of litigators working to see the docket restored. “People should not interpret a lack of news as a lack of activity.� Attorneys are currently finishing a proposal for changes to the docket they expect to submit to judges before year’s end, Hearey said. He declined to speak to what changes could be in there since the proposal isn’t completed yet. A commercial docket’s intent is to resolve business-to-business disputes faster and establish both consistency in the legal process and expertise among judges who would hear those kinds of cases, which include liquidations, trade-secret disputes, noncompete contracts and shareholder disagreements. Hearey was president of the Cleveland bar when the docket was eliminated in January, a decision that followed the disqualification of Judge Cassandra Collier-Williams from the docket by the Ohio Supreme Court’s Commercial Docket Subcommittee, which affirms the appointment of judges to the specialty court in a process unique to the business court. Hearey intends to keep involved with the initiative until the issue is settled. Judges will review potential solutions with the attorneys once the latter group submits its suggestions. The next steps will be considered from there. Administrative and presiding Judge John J. Russo said there’s no hard timeline imposed anywhere in the process, though.
Lawyers simply want to see the docket restored, and they’re pitching solutions they think judges could be open to. Meanwhile, exactly what judges want from the docket remains murky at this point. Russo declined to speak to what judges desire considering where the process currently stands. “We are still looking at what might be feasible and necessary,â€? Russo said. “We have some thoughts ‌ But we are waiting to see what the bar recommends.â€? That proposal-writing process has been slower than expected as members of that subcommittee have been busy in court and because “there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen,â€? said Phillip Ciano, principal at Ciano & Goldwasser who is leading that proposal subcommittee. The last 11 months have been a quiet back-and-forth between judges who seem to want more autonomy over how the commercial docket would operate, including the selection of judges, and lawyers who never wanted the docket to go away. Commercial litigators generally appreciated everything the docket set out to do, which is why they continue to pursue the issue, Ciano said. “I think our main objective is to create a cooperative procedural process that makes sense for the business owners in Cuyahoga County, that makes sense for practitioners and makes sense for the judiciary,â€? he said.
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company said. Existing backers, the NDI Healthcare Fund and several individual investors, along with the JumpStart NEXT Fund, also participated in the round, Checkpoint said. Specific terms were not disclosed. Tracy Marshbanks, managing director of First Analysis, said in a statement, “Intra-operative nerve injury is a significant risk faced by millions of patients every year. Checkpoint has developed unique, effective and simple tools that put control in the surgeon’s hands.�
Volume 36, Number 51 Crain’s Cleveland Business (ISSN 0197-2375) is published weekly at 700 West St. Clair Ave., Suite 310, Cleveland, OH 44113-1230. Copyright Š 2015 by Crain Communications Inc. Periodicals postage paid at Cleveland, Ohio, and at additional mailing offices. Price per copy: $2.00. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Crain’s Cleveland Business, Circulation Department, 1155 Gratiot Avenue, Detroit, Michigan 48207-2912. 1-877-824-9373. REPRINT INFORMATION: 212-210-0750
Len Cosentino, Checkpoint Surgical president and CEO, added that the investment “will enable us to accelerate our mission to provide start-of-the-art solutions for perioperative protection, assessment and repair of neuromuscular function.� Checkpoint last month was named the No. 6 company in the Crain’s 52, a list of the fastest-growing companies in Northeast Ohio. The company, founded in 2009, posted revenue of $2.3 million in 2014. It has 12 employees locally and 18 total. — Scott Suttell
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When the Cleveland Cavaliers drafted LeBron James in 2003, he promised to never forget where he came from. And if you judge by his foundation’s increasing involvement in the community, it appears he’s honoring that promise. The LeBron James Family Foundation has supported Akron’s most underserved students since its inception in 2004 and now is increasing its scope with its recently launched I PROMISE initiative. In 2004, James was only 19 years old and still in his first year in the NBA. The foundation started with the basics: During the first Bikeathon in 2005, the LJFF awarded new bicycles to students who, alongside James, rode the new bikes around Akron. The fledgling foundation also supported Akron’s after-school programs and athletics departments, with James donating everything from hot meals, laptop computers and new uniforms, to a new arena at his alma mater, St. Vincent-St. Mary High School. “He wholeheartedly believes he is where he is today because of people in this community,” said Michele Campbell, LJFF executive director. “His mother, his coaches and teachers, and the extended family that believed in him when he was a child helped him make right choices when he had options to make the wrong choices. He’s never forgotten that.” Even when James went to the Miami Heat in 2010, the same year Campbell took the helm of the LJFF, he remained engaged, she said. “LeBron James never forgot and never stopped giving to those children and those families when he went to Miami,” Campbell said. “The local media just stopped reporting on it.”
Earned, not given Today, with James back in town just over a year, the foundation’s work has evolved and grown, and is based on a long-game strategy that reflects the belief in the power of community. Through local partnerships, the LJFF has developed a multitiered education program designed to offer lasting benefits for Akron’s highestrisk students, their families and the community. The foundation’s main focus is to change Akron’s education numbers, which aren’t good. In Akron’s 2011-12 school year report card, the district’s four-year graduation rate was 75.3% — well below Ohio’s 90% requirement. The district also fell below state requirements in third-through-eighth grade achievement levels in reading, math and sciences. According to retired Akron deputy mayor Dave Lieberth, who serves on one of three LJFF advisory boards, those scores are a result of Akron’s poverty rate, which has been creeping upward and today stands at about 30%. “It’s moving and heartrending to
see families who every day must worry about just existing,” Lieberth said. “Many of these students don’t have a caretaker at home to encourage them to succeed. Many of them don’t have food at home.” So, in 2011, the foundation’s Bikeathon was replaced with Wheels for Education, a robust program designed to keep kids in school, Campbell said.
“Many times youngsters give up on college very early in their academic career because they just don’t see it as a possibility. So we are trying, with the foundation, to erase that loss of hope.” — Lawrence Burns VP of advancement, University of Akron
The LJFF touts the notion of rewards being “earned, not given.” Each year, educators select roughly 200 at-risk third-grade students who, along with a caregiver, must attend a two-week tech camp to qualify for Wheels for Education. Once accepted, students receive support and incentives as long as they stay in the program and work toward graduation. When they enter sixth grade, they’re moved into the “Akron I PROMISE Network,” which has “cooler” interventions geared for older students to keep them motivated through to graduation. Students in the program also are treated to fun events, which are chaperoned by LJFF partners and advisory board members “Most kids would not have these opportunities otherwise,” Lieberth said. Students also receive letters, video messages and prerecorded calls of support directly from James. The robo calls congratulate stu-
dents on good test scores and other achievements, or remind them to go to class and do the work if they’ve fallen behind. A recent big announcement revealed a partnership with the University of Akron, which guarantees a four-year college scholarship to the university for every student in the Akron I PROMISE Network, beginning with those now in the seventh grade. Taking away the financial barrier is vital to this population’s success. “Many times youngsters give up on college very early in their academic career because they just don’t see it as a possibility,” said Lawrence Burns, vice president of advancement at the University of Akron. “So we are trying, with the foundation, to erase that loss of hope.” An estimated 2,300 LJFF students (1,100 current students plus the next four classes that enter the program) are expected to receive the scholarships. Current tuition is about $9,500 per year, which equates to a scholarship commitment of $38,000 per student, or $87.4 million for 2,300 students. According to Campbell, to qualify for a scholarship, students must stay in the I PROMISE Network and meet grade-point average requirements and ACT scores, which are strict but attainable. They also must participate in community service, which is heavily weighted as a requirement. “This lets the kids know they have to work hard, but they can do it,” Campbell said. “The goal is for them to eventually give back to this community.” A scholarship fund has been created at the University of Akron for community contributions. Initiatives with the Cleveland Cavaliers will help raise awareness for the fund throughout the Cavs season, Burns said. The first class of Wheels for Education students will graduate high school in 2021. In keeping with James’ belief in the power of community involvement, the LJFF has established partnerships with many area organizations. One such entity is Akron-based Power Media, which handles the foundation’s promotional and branding materials. Power Media has designed everything from signage for Michelle Obama’s recent appearance with James at the University of Akron’s Rhodes Arena, to creating a 5-foot copy of Dr. Seuss’s book “Oh the Places You’ll Go!” that James read to students. The company also decorated the tree the foundation has donated for the past three years to Akron Children’s Hospital Holiday Tree Festival. Power Media president Jon Erisey appreciates the trust that comes with a LJFF partnership. “There are never orders to follow,” he said. “There are visions to share and plans to execute. They put their trust in us to make it happen, and it just changes the dynamic of the relationship.” Power Media’s partnership with the LJFF formed out of a competitor’s snafu. The night before the
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Foundation sets long-term game plan so, the community 2009 Bikeathon, the foundation’s West Coast partner discovered it had printed incorrect information on one of the event’s most prominent banners. Power Media stepped in to help. The following year, the Akron company was asked to partner with the foundation again. Cedar Point’s partnership with the LJFF also had unusual origins, said Jason McClure, Cedar Point vice president and general manager. One of the foundation’s biggest annual events, the I PROMISE Family Reunion held each August, took place this year at Cedar Point. During James’ free agency, the park had tweeted it would name a coaster after him if he returned to Cleveland. When James came back to the Cavs, the amusement park was prepared to keep its promise, but the LJFF declined. It wanted a partnership instead. “One of the foundation’s goals is to give people experiences, and at Cedar Point that’s what we do better than anybody,” McClure said. So in August, 6,000 I PROMISE students and families rolled up to the gates of Cedar Point for a day of fun, including rides, a picnic and a presentation, in which James unveiled the scholarship program. “The best part was seeing the looks on those kids’ faces and their families,” McClure said. This year, Cedar Point auctioned off first-ride seats on its newest coaster, the Rougarou, which were purchased by LJFF partners for the students. A similar program next year will offer seats for the new ValRavn coaster. “A lot of the kids had never ridden a coaster before,” McClure said. “The foundation does a really nice job of connecting people where their strengths are so it benefits the kids.”
A team of representatives from Power Media and the LeBron James Family Foundation worked on assembling this year’s tree. They are (front, left to right) Nick Lopez, Stephanie Myers Bussan, Michele Campbell, Scotty Wemmer, Erika Mayer, Jon Erisey, (back, left to right) Beth Milkovich, Mike West, Joe Caruso, Bobby Slabaugh and Konstantine Howley.
SPOTLIGHT: POWER MEDIA You don’t see a Christmas tree like this every day. More than 40 hours of work and 150 plastic Coke bottles went into the LeBron James Family Foundation tree at this year’s Akron Children’s Hospital Tree Festival. The theme was “We Are Family.” The Coke bottles that adorned the motorized, illuminated tree featured customized labels and etched designs. Four oversized acrylic bottle caps etched with phrases, such as “We Are Family” and “Share a Coke With Akron,” topped the tree. Each year, the LJFF comes up with the theme and concept, according to a foundation spokeswoman, and Akron-based Power Media works to make it a reality. This year’s process included 15 hours of design work, 15 hours of building and preparing the individual elements and 10 hours for assembly.
With Ohio home to JP Morgan Chase & Co.’s second largest employee population in the U.S., Chase is a LJFF partner with a vested interest in retaining tech talent. Chase recently provided a team of technology professionals to develop software to track the academic progress of the I PROMISE Network students as they advance toward their scholarship goals, said Lois Backon, head of corporate partner marketing at JPMorgan Chase. Additionally, Chase held hackathon-style events, teaming up college students, Chase employees and LJFF students to develop code for tools I PROMISE students can use to track their own progress through the program. At least 10 solid prototypes were developed during the events, she said. “There is a subtle call to action that these kids not only get put on this pathway for success with jobs, but that they come back and they perform those jobs in Akron or in Ohio and that this talent doesn’t leave the state,” Backon said. “If the talent stays, they end up also helping their community.” And between Wheels for Education and the I PROMISE Network, that’s the cycle the LJFF is working to develop.
PHOTOS BY SHANE WYNN
Hackathons spur new technologies
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z DECEMBER 21 - 27, 2015 z CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS
Pop-up biz puts convention-goers at ease BY JAY MILLER jmiller@crain.com @millerjh
The leadership of the Kentucky Republican delegation is looking forward to the Republican National Convention here in July. In addition to the actual convention sessions, its contingent of 200 Kentuckians — 46 delegates, 43 alternates as well as spouses and other guests — will be attending a number of events, including its traditional Bluegrass Reception.
In Tampa in 2012, the reception was held at the waterfront headquarters of the Junior League of Tampa, and the reception and all of the week’s events and logistics all came off without a hitch in large part thanks to GOP Convention Strategies LLC, said Steve Robertson, who in November ended an eight-year run as the state party’s chairman. In a telephone interview, Robertson said the party was so pleased with the work the firm, a sort of traveling road show, did in Tampa that he hired the company, which recreates
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itself every four years, to run the delegation’s activities in Cleveland. “They just took all the headaches out of planning the excursion for our delegation, including dealing with logistics to and from convention sites,” Robertson said. “It’s just a really nice service.” GOP Convention Strategies can best be described as a “pop-up” business, and Cleveland next summer will mark its third run. It’s a kind of highlevel concierge service that has served state delegations, corporations and trade associations at Republican conventions in Minneapolis-St. Paul in 2008 and Tampa in 2012. “We basically say, ‘You let us do everything and we will make sure you have a good time,’ ” said Matt Cox, GOP Convention Strategies’ Ohiobased partner. “We handle housing, transportation, event planning, event execution, restaurant reservations, I mean the whole thing,” he said. “If the vice president of (a client company) comes into town and wants to go to the Rock Hall or a movie, we would manage that also, if that’s what they want.” Cox lives in Avon. He has been and continues to be a Republican lobbyist who is registered to represent John Carroll University, the Harris Corp. (a Florida defense contractor that was headquartered in Cleveland until 1978) and a handful of organizations in Columbus. The Cleveland convention is his first go-round with GOP Convention Strategies. Scott Cottington, though, is a convention veteran. A Republican political consultant in St. Paul, Minn., he co-founded GOP Convention Strategies in 2008 with Washington political pro Darrel Henry in anticipation of the RNC convention in St. Paul. They expanded the business in 2012, serving the Republican convention in Tampa. A separate business, DEM Con-
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vention Strategies LLC, ran the Democratic convention in Charlotte, N.C., and has reappeared in Philadelphia for 2016. It’s run by Democratic political operatives. “We just figured a lot people wouldn’t know what they were doing in St. Paul and Minneapolis because they’d never been there,” he said in an interview in Crain’s office earlier this month. “So we figured we’d try it. We did St. Paul in ’08 and that worked out pretty well, so we did it again in 2012 and now we’re doing it again.” The split Republican-Democratic strategy works because many clients are corporations that want presences at both conventions.
A helping hand For now, the firm is lining up clients and surveying the venue and hospitality landscape. The firm also is talking with representatives of hotels, restaurants and venues to help them with convention-week programming and pricing. Though official committees are making plans on a macro level, individual convention goers or state groups, like any other tourists, have to fend for themselves — unless they have the kind of help GOP Convention Strategies is offering. The official Republican Committee on Arrangements is running everything inside the convention hall, and the local Cleveland 2016 Host Committee is raising the money needed to pull off the convention and getting hoteliers and transportation companies to make broad commitments to serve convention visitors during convention week. GOP Convention Strategies doesn’t work directly with those groups. In an emailed statement, a spokeswoman for the host committee said
her committee is aware of GOP Convention Strategies and is “excited that the convention is providing people with the opportunity to be part of the event and grow their businesses.” Cox and Catlin Layton, GOP Convention Strategies’ director of Cleveland operations, have rented office space in the Hanna Building in Playhouse Square and will be hiring temporary staff. Renee Dabbs, the firm’s chief operating officer, said they are inventorying available event spaces and figuring out clients’ venue and transportation needs. The firm will be fulfilling the needs of state delegations and corporate clients who will be sponsoring many of the 1,200 events likely to occur convention week. Cottington said the California delegation will bring 1,000 people and delegation or corporate events for that many people might mean building out vacant space for events. Dabbs said in Tampa they ended up building a full catering kitchen on a vacant office building floor to handle some events. Kentucky’s Robertson, a longtime convention-goer, said he’s looking forward to the Cleveland convention in part because of GOP Convention Strategies. And not just for throwing parties like the Bluegrass Reception. “In the past, there’s been a low level of satisfaction with the transportation systems at conventions, and one thing that GOP Convention Strategies has helped us do is secure our own buses so that our contingent from Kentucky knows what vehicles they are riding in, they’re always on time and people don’t have to wait at collection points and not be sure what bus they should get on,” he said. “For the overall convention experience, GOP Convention Strategies has helped us deliver for our delegates,” Robertson said.
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Patent ruling gets technical Crackdown on software innovations is changing how some NEO companies protect their ideas BY CHUCK SODER csoder@crain.com @ChuckSoder
It’s a scary time to be a software patent. Judges across the country are striking down software patents in the name of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that is changing how some tech companies protect their ideas. Last year, the Supreme Court angered patent trolls everywhere — as well as some businesses that actually provide real products and services — when it issued its decision in a case called Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International. One key takeaway from the decision: You can’t patent “an abstract idea implemented on a generic computer.” As a result, at least two local companies have had their patents invalidated while trying to stop other companies from infringing on them. Both companies — Mayfield Heights-based Datatrak International, which makes software used to manage clinical trials, and MacroPoint, a freight tracking software company in Independence — are appealing those decisions. Other businesses are thinking twice before they apply for software patents, a few local attorneys said. And those that do have had to adapt. Now, in their patent applications, they’re going out of their way to spell out exactly why their technology is innovative, according to John Biernacki, an intellectual property attorney and partner at Jones Day in Cleveland. “It’s definitely a concern to all of my software clients, both here in Cleveland as well as West Coast, East Coast — everywhere,” Biernacki said. Some companies also appear to be thinking twice about filing lawsuits against those who violate their patents. After skyrocketing over the past decade, the number of new patent infringement lawsuits dropped by 13% in 2014, according to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The report cited Alice as the cause. The Alice decision has influenced Jack Hilton, too. Now, he and other mentors at The Bit Factory business accelerator in Akron are suggesting that entrepreneurs be pickier about what they patent. He’s taking his own advice. A few years ago, he started a company called Quixby with his brother, James, and their friend, Austin Kettner. They applied for a software patent on the idea, which involved using software to help people building custom computers find compatible parts. Today, however, Hilton admits that the idea behind that patent probably wouldn’t pass the standard set by the Alice decision. Thus, they probably won’t apply for a patent for their new startup. Instead, they’re taking another strategy to prevent people from stealing their idea: They’re not telling anyone about it. Of course, once a product without patent protection hits the market, people can try to create something similar. But Jack Hilton noted that he’s not too worried.
“How we do it is what’s unique. … It will be very hard to replicate,” he said.
Data driven Although the Alice decision mostly applies to software companies — Alice Corp. had patented an electronic escrow system — at least one local judge has cited the decision in a lawsuit that involved medical technology. Last month, the Cleveland Clinic and one of its spinoff companies, a medical testing firm called Cleveland HeartLab, sued a company called True Health Diagnostics for allegedly using HeartLab’s flagship blood test, which is patented. But the court refused to grant a restraining order that would have stopped True Health from using the test during the course of the lawsuit. In her reasoning, U.S. District Court Judge Patricia Gaughan cited Alice in an opinion that questioned whether the patent would pass validity standards set by both Alice and a 2012 Supreme Court decision called Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories Inc. However, the patent remains valid, and the lawsuit is still underway. The same judge ruled on the Datatrak and MacroPoint cases. In short, she ruled that the companies were using software do to things that humans have done for ages: Datatrak, she said, was organizing data; MacroPoint was relaying it. Datatrak CEO Laurence P. Birch noted in a news release that the company disagrees with the decision. The release also said the company has other patents and will evaluate its portfolio “with the benefit of this decision and its reasoning.” MacroPoint put out a news release, too. In it, president Bennett Adelson said the Alice decision has hurt patent trolls — companies that make money only by putting legal pressure on businesses that might infringe on their patents. But the decision also “has created confusion in the business community and is now running the risk of not providing clarity of intellectual property rights for innovative companies like MacroPoint that are the original inventors of a credible and viable product,” Adelson stated.
heightened standard. A Federal Circuit Court decision at the end of 2014 narrowed things down to some degree. Companies facing patent challenges are frequently citing that case, DDR Holdings LLC v. Hotels.com L.P. The case — which has nothing to do with DDR Corp., a real estate development firm in Beachwood — states that software can be patented if it invents a way to fix “a problem specifically arising in the realm of computer networks.” Alice Corp.’s electronic escrow patent would’ve fallen short of that standard, given that escrow services were conducted long before computers were invented. Still, the lines remain blurry, according to patent attorney Dan McMullen of Calfee, Halter & Griswold, who is helping represent Datatrak. Future appeals court rulings should clarify things, he added. McMullen said the Alice decision is certainly having a big impact on software companies, but he’s uncer-
tain whether it’s pushing more companies to go the trade secret route. The decision, which was made in June 2014, must not have immediately sent huge numbers of companies down that path: The number of patents granted that year increased by 14%, continuing a five-year trend, according to the Pricewaterhouse Coopers report.
Processing the change Still, Biernacki, of Jones Day, says more of his software clients are going the trade secret route — especially if the software is used to control a process as opposed to, say, a piece of physical equipment, like a robotic arm. Patents designed to protect a financial product or process face a particularly high standard, he said. “There is a feeling that … moving money around is something that the original patent laws aren’t designed to protect,” Biernacki said. Indeed, the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office has not been kind to those so-called business method patents. The America Invents Act of 2012 created a new process for challenging them at the patent office. And Biernacki and other sources suggest that, post Alice, upwards of 90% of patents that endure that process are struck down. PNC Bank and U.S. Bank initiated one such challenge against a Texas company called Secure Axcess LLC, which is “dedicated to monetization and management of Internet security patents,” according to its website. Secure Axcess was in the process of suing the two banks and a long list of other companies for allegedly violating a patent on a technology designed to verify the authenticity of web pages. In September, administrative judges at the patent office struck down the patent, saying that it “would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art.”
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Blurred lines Judges are invalidating patents in other cities, too, and that’s “kind of scary,” according to Christopher Comiskey, a patent attorney at Thompson Hine, which is representing MacroPoint. Though he wouldn’t comment on that case, he noted that judges are making decisions on patent validity without citing outside evidence and expert testimony. That’s “disturbing,” given how much time and money companies put into getting those patents, Comiskey said. He noted that there’s still some ambiguity as to exactly what software is considered patentable. “In anything we do, there’s some abstract idea that you build on top of. So it’s a matter of, how much is the ‘something more’ that will get you over it?” he said, referring to the
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Opinion From the Group Publisher
Focusing on the future during difficult times
Editorial
Time to heal Change is never easy. If you need proof of that, look no further than Lakewood. Turmoil has infected the West Side suburb since the city announced it would shutter Lakewood Hospital in 2016. On Dec. 21, Lakewood City Council will likely approve the closure of the 108-year-old hospital that has served sick citizens at the corner of Belle and Detroit avenues in central Lakewood for generations. The vote, however, is not a cure-all and it is not likely to quiet a city divided since Jan. 15. That’s when the announcement came that the 223-bed hospital owned by the city of Lakewood and run by the Cleveland Clinic since 1997 would close. The hospital would be razed and the Clinic has agreed to erect a $34 million family health center and emergency department on part of the property. The rest of the land would be open for development in a prime area of a business district in the midst of a renaissance. Neighborhood activists have fought diligently against the closure, lining up Monday to urge City Council to vote no. They contend the deal benefits only the Clinic and say city officials should hold the Clinic to the terms of its lease, namely, running a full-fledged hospital there until 2026. A fully functioning hospital is vital to the community, they argue, and say losses incurred by the Clinic are the result of the Clinic’s own actions. Some believe intentionally so. Despite months of acrimony, the hospital’s fate was sealed when voters rejected a measure that would have made it more difficult for the city to agree to a new deal with the Clinic. Voters decided such a deal does not have to come separately to the ballot. So Lakewood’s elected leaders are going to do what they believe is best for Lakewood. And the fact is, this deal is best. If council were to reject the plan, the economic realities would not change and it would still be possible that the Lake-
wood Hospital Association would be faced with a decision to close as losses into the millions mounted. And that would leave the city with an old, vacant and costly building. With this deal, Lakewood will still have a Clinic-run emergency room to deal with acute health issues. It won’t have a 223-bed inpatient hospital, but the need for that has been steadily declining. Half the beds now are regularly empty and there are other hospitals, four within 10 miles, with the capacity to handle patients who must be admitted. It’s a reality that health care delivery continues to shift to outpatient care. We hear a lot these days about “population health,” which basically means preventative and wellness care. Health systems now focus on keeping people healthy – especially those with chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease – rather than waiting until they’re really sick, which costs more to treat. Also, the shift to higher-deductible insurance policies means consumers are looking for lower-cost alternatives to expensive hospital stays. This change gives Lakewood an opportunity to provide for the health needs of its aging, and shrinking, population. It also gives the city a large tract of open land for development, which is rare in this densely populated suburb of 51,000 people covering 6.7 square miles. That makes the deal good for the health of the population and for the health of the local economy. Lakewood’s voters have spoken and its elected leaders are prepared to act, we believe, with the best interest of the community in mind. “It is our job to deal with reality,” said Lakewood Council President Mary Louise Madigan. Reality doesn’t bring with it a perfect prescription. The Clinic deal is not perfect. But it’s time for the community to swallow this pill, however bitter to some, and look to the future. Further discord would just be unhealthy.
ACTING PUBLISHER AND EDITOR: Elizabeth McIntyre (emcintyre@crain.com)
CLEVELAND BUSINESS
MANAGING EDITOR: Scott Suttell (ssuttell@crain.com)
Journalists are used to being the folks who tell the stories; it’s a humbling experience to be part of the story itself. But that’s the recent experience of the reporters, editors and entire team at Crain’s Cleveland Business, which was rocked by revelations that Publisher John Campanelli is facing charges relating to two separate incidents of indecent exposure, both with female victims. When we first learned of the allegations, we posted a story on Crainscleveland.com, our website. As group publisher responsible for our Cleveland operation, I placed John on administrative leave immediately. Other news media outlets have carried details of the allegations. Reading about your boss in such a public way can be demoralizing. The news was stunning, too, to many in the greater Cleveland community who had come to know John as Crain’s publisher — or who knew Mary him in his earlier stint as a reporter, columKramer nist and editor at The Plain Dealer. It is difficult to reconcile the John Campanelli all of us know with the person described in the police reports. There are many victims here, starting with the women allegedly targeted in both incidents, which occurred days apart in November. Next come Crain employees who feel a betrayal of trust from a person who led them through a major leadership change since being named publisher in 2013. We are also concerned about John Campanelli himself. By his own account to police and his initial social media post, he is a victim of a childhood trauma, and though under medically supervised care, he described the incidents as manifestations of that childhood experience. There is much we don’t know. But here’s what we do know: First, John Campanelli is on an indefinite leave while the legal process plays out and he receives professional counseling and therapy. Second, Elizabeth McIntyre, who joined Crain’s Cleveland Business as editor in 2014, has been named to the additional role of acting publisher, effective last Thursday, Dec. 17. Elizabeth is well-known in Cleveland. A native of Youngstown, she was an editor at The Plain Dealer for 20 years. Nicole Mastrangelo continues to lead our sales and marketing team as she has since 2012. Nicole joined the publication nine years ago. We also know that our editors and reporters will continue to deliver the most up-to-date news and business analysis available in Northeast Ohio, in print and online. Our events team will continue to deliver the best content and attendee experience for the 13 major events we have planned in 2016. Our sales and marketing teams will continue to deliver excellent service, helping our clients connect with our readers. Finally, as we come to the close of this publication’s 35th anniversary year, we know this: The men and women of Crain’s Cleveland Business will continue to serve our readership. Mary Kramer, vice president and group publisher, is based in Detroit and has been an executive at Crain Communications for 26 years.
WRITE US: Crain’s welcomes responses from readers. Letters should be as brief as possible and may be edited. Send letters to Crain’s Cleveland Business, 700 West St. Clair Ave., Suite 310, Cleveland, OH 44113, or by emailing letters@crain.com. Please include your complete name and city from which you are writing, and a telephone number for fact-checking purposes.
SOUND OFF: Send a Personal View for the opinion page to emcintyre@crain.com. Please include a telephone number for verification purposes.
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Web Talk Re: Johnny Manziel back at the helm His master’s in professional football begins Sunday, Dec. 20, against the Seattle Seahawks. Will he pass Prof. Sherman’s exam? — hottlink
Re: Growth at Hartland & Co. Growth of 50%+ is a great goal, but size eventually gets in the way. The bigger you get, the more difficult it becomes to add more revenue without systems and processes. I don’t doubt the focus on institutional clients will be a boon toward quick growth as the company continues to expand. A big congrats to all involved on the team and its acquisition of the Lancaster Pollard Investment Advisory Group. — Nate Nead
Re: Startup accelerators in Cleveland Glad to hear that there is some optimism and people like Flashstarts CEO Charles Stack, LaunchHouse CEO Todd Goldstein and Anthony Margida, president of the Bit Factory accelerator in
Akron, will remain leaders and evangalists in the entrepreneurship/accelerator space here in NEO, at least in some form. We need to keep growing and pushing forward the concept of seeding a company here. It will ultimately lead to more talent in the region and more economic gains. Well done, fellas! — Scott Moss
Re: Economic outlook for 2016 “(M)oderate GDP growth and a stable unemployment rate close to 5% in 2016, with similar trends continuing through 2017,” the view from Mark Sniderman, an adjunct professor of economics at Case Western Reserve University Weatherhead School of Management, is bullish??? You’ve got to be kidding. Sniderman said during the 42nd David A. Bowers Economic Forecast Luncheon, “What we’ve seen in the past two years is about what we’ll see in the next two years. There won’t be a return to the high 5 or 6 percent a year growth that we saw prior to 2008.” That’s hardly bullish. That’s an assessment that Northeast Ohio lacks the transportation and transit infrastructure, job training,
educated workers, capital and leadership to grow as strongly as other large states do. It means Ohio’s growth will stumble along about equal to states like Montana. And Northeast Ohio’s growth rate will be half that of Cincinnati and Columbus. — Tim Evanson
Our Community, Our Priority.
Re: Study on connection of money, happiness In his Editor’s Choice blog, Scott Suttell writes that a paper by David Clingingsmith, an economics professor at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management, “adds to the longstanding debate among economists about whether money can buy happiness.” People who say that money can’t buy happiness don’t know where to shop! — Bob Fritz
Re: HealthSpan Physicians medical group to dissolve It’s interesting that HealthSpan waited until after the end of the open enrollment period for Medicare. (Hurting) customers (is) not very Christian. — Stephen
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THE DISH
Startup steps up its platform Gypsy Brewing, a startup launched last year by Justin Carson and Paul Benner of Platform Beer Co., is now set to move into its permanent home. The partners are completing renovation work on a 10,000-square-foot portion of the former Leisy Brewing Co. on Cleveland’s West Side, where they’ll perform contract brewing for other small brewers and expand their own production.
Lee Chilcote Chilcote is a freelance writer and editor who has written for Vanity Fair, Next City, Belt and other publications.He is the cofounder of Literary Cleveland. The new space will allow Platform to dramatically expand the amount of beer they’re making. Carson and Benner plan to brew up to 20,000 barrels here next year, a big jump from just 2,500 barrels in 2015. Gypsy’s contract brewing clients will include brewers that don’t have their own equipment and restaurants that want to create private label beers. The partners behind Gypsy bought the long-vacant, 90,000-square-foot Leisy building last year for $125,000. Over the next five years, they plan to renovate more of the building and create 100 new jobs. The project will allow Platform the opportunity to expand while helping other brewers, too — a collaborative approach that has been at the heart of their business model from the start.
“How often do you see manufacturing jobs coming back to Cleveland?� Carson said. He added, “Our objective is to make good beer and as much beer as possible.� “From the beginning, we’ve been giving back to the home brew community and creating a collaborative brand,� said Benner, citing partnerships with B Spot, Melt Bar and Grilled, and Cleveland Clothing Co. “People are excited about that.� The first startup brewery that has signed on to work with Gypsy is actually considered the oldest craft brewery in the United States. New Albion Brewing Company was only around from 1976-1982, but it had a big impact on the craft beer industry. It was founded by Jack McAuliffe, whose daughter Renee DeLuca decided to revive the brand a few years ago to much fanfare. Gypsy will brew McAuliffe’s original recipes and handle packaging and distribution. Carson and Benner are in talks with others about contract brewing, but are not ready to announce any names yet. “My father traveled in the Navy in the late ’60s, and for a while he was stationed in Scotland, where he learned about brewing and these great European ales,� DeLuca said. “Then he came back home and said, ‘Gee, I can’t find these wonderful beers I used to drink, so I guess I’ll just have to make them myself.’ � New Albion set up shop in Sonoma County, Calif., but when McAuliffe found it difficult to get a loan to expand, he closed the business. DeLuca believes he was ahead of his time. “Still to this day, he has a very big following,� she said. “Everything we’ve been doing has been selling
EXPERIENCE
out like crazy.� By spring of next year, the partners said, Platform beer will be in more Ohio markets. The company already self-distributes beer across Northeast Ohio, but they’re entering Columbus and other cities soon. Self-distribution has been key to their success. “When we send someone in, they’re representing just one brand, and there’s a very high level of customer service,� said Carson. “Most of the time the demand is so high that the beer is dropped off the same day it’s brewed,� added Benner, citing the local beer’s freshness as a competitive advantage. “We don’t have a huge warehouse of beer sitting around.� Platform will offer four seasonal beers in addition to their year-round staples, the New Cleveland Palesner and Speed Merchant White IPA. The seasonals will include the Yamma Jamma Sweet Potato Ale in the fall, the Lawlessness Porter in the winter, and a to-be-named radler or shandy that will be brewed with Old City Soda Co. in the summer. The spring seasonal will be a collaboration with another rapidly expanding Ohio brewery and will also be announced soon, said Benner. The company will also release a special fruit pale ale series called the Cherimoya project. They’ll be using exotic fruits like bergamot oranges on top of a base beer to create fresh new concoctions. The partners behind Gypsy bought the behemoth Leisy property, which is located at 3506 Vega Ave. just south of I-90, because its stout brick walls and concrete floors offered almost unlimited opportuni-
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Justin Carson, left, and Paul Benner see Gypsy Brewing as “a collaborative brand.� (Lauren Pacini) ties for expansion. They also liked the poetic quality of brewing beer on the site of what was once Cleveland’s largest brewery. Leisy pumped out 600,000 barrels of beer a year in its heyday, or three times the current output of Great Lakes Brewing Co. Founded by Isaac Leisy and two of his brothers in 1873, Leisy Brewing Co. was forced to close during Prohibition, but subsequently reopened and continued to make beer until 1959. The building was then occupied by Downing Exhibits, a company that makes trade show displays, before changing hands a number of times. The most recent owners were mostly interested in soaking up revenues from the billboard next to the building. When Gypsy bought the building last year, they allowed the previous owner to retain ownership of the lucrative billboard. Carson and Benner say that when they first walked through it, every surface was covered with graffiti and
the place had been picked clean. “The scrappers had a field day with this place,� Carson said. Yet the building survived looters, brutal winters and the wrecking ball because of its rock solid construction. “The first time we walked in here I was like, ‘Wow, there’s not a stick of wood in this place,’ � said Benner. Gypsy Brewing spent more than a million dollars renovating the place. They added all new HVAC and mechanicals, replaced a portion of the roof, and added new drain spouts, among other improvements. Carson loves the idea of bringing craft beer back to Cleveland, which was once home to more than 30 breweries before Prohibition and is now seeing a fresh wave of brewery startups. “It really feels like it’s coming full circle,� he said. To contact Chilcote, send an email to clbfreelancer@crain.com. You also can follow him on Twitter @leechilcote.
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How unfinished business has been the story of 2015 BY JAY MILLER “… when the Republican presidential nominating convention begins in July.” Since the Republican National Committee selected Cleveland to host its 2016 presidential nominating convention on July 8 last year, that phrase, or some variation of it, has been a large part of the region’s civic conversation. Not who will win the nomination or if the nominee will have a fighting chance to win a four-year stay in the White House. Not even about how the community will raise the $64 million it will cost to put on a political road show for 50,000 delegates, politicians and media crews from July 18 to July 21. Or who will benefit from the upwards of $200 million-plus SEE RNC, NEXT PAGE
Lisa Lorek
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NEWSMAKERS
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the road show will spend at hotels, restaurants and elsewhere. After all, that’s 3% or 4% to a region’s retail income. Rather, for the civic community, the weeklong event is being seen as a chance to close the door on the old Cleveland — the rusted, burning-river Cleveland. It’s a chance to make a game-changing impression on a national stage. The hope is that media will fill convention lulls with local vignettes showcasing how long-term changes, such as the flowering of a downtown Cleveland residential community and a burgeoning medical and biotechnical business complex stretching east from downtown, have made Northeast Ohio an attractive place to live and do business. And maybe those media reports will use as backdrops newly resurfaced streets, refurbished open spaces such as Public Square and lively entertainment districts like East Fourth Street and the Flats that will impress television viewers enough to consider a visit to the North Coast. Perhaps, too, easier to navigate places like a remodeled Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, or new downtown trolleys, will send those 50,000 visitors home with a few good things to say about Northeast Ohio and plans to return for a more leisurely visit. All of these projects large and small were going to happen with or without a political convention. The convention just allows them to be gift wrapped. But for the plan to work, all of this effort has to be completed before the Republican visitors start arriving, and many will be here a week or two ahead of the formal start of the convention July 18. So, how well is that planning going? David Gilbert, president and CEO of the Cleveland 2016 Host Committee, would like to be able to say he was halfway through his checklist of things to accomplish before the Republicans arrive for their convention in July. But it doesn’t work that way. “There are very few things that we can say, ‘Hey, we’ve gotten it done, check the box and we’re on to the next thing,’ ” he said. “You can get largely the way there, but most of these things don’t end until the convention happens.”
The host committee is the local organization charged with raising money and preparing the city for the convention. Among its tasks have been lining up 16,200 hotel rooms and 60-plus venues for parties and other gatherings. To win the convention, the host committee pledged to raise about $64 million to pay for the convention, including supporting financially and administratively the RNC’s Committee on Arrangements. As one observer described it, the committee on arrangements is responsible for everything in the arena and the host committee, everything outside the arena. Both the host committee and the RNC’s Committee on Arrangements were formed earlier this year. The host committee has a small staff under Gilbert, who continues as president and CEO of the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission and Destination Cleveland, which functions as the city’s convention and tourism bureau. The host committee leans on the staffs of those organizations for help. In February, the RNC announced that Jeff Larson would lead its committee as CEO. Larson, a veteran of past Republican conventions, has set up shop and is building a staff on the fourth floor of the Halle Building in Playhouse Square. By the end of October, the committee staff had grown to 14 people. So far, Gilbert said, his group has commitments for $42.5 million, mostly from within Northeast Ohio, and he expects the remainder to come from national corporate sponsors who only now are finding the political conventions on their radar.
“There are very few things that we can say, ‘Hey, we’ve gotten it done, check the box and we’re on to the next thing.’ You can get largely the way there, but most of these things don’t end until the convention happens.” — David Gilbert president and CEO, Cleveland
It’s taking shape The committee is also building an infrastructure to make things move smoothly. It’s seeking 5,000 volunteers who will be assigned to downtown and suburban hotels, the airport and other places visitors will gather to offer assistance. It’s also created a vendor directory for businesses interested in serving the convention crowd. At the beginning of December, 1,280 firms that do everything from catering and equipment rental to dentistry had signed on at https://www.2016cle.com/become-a-supplier.
2016 Host Committee
The next big decision will be hiring a transportation coordinator to manage the fleet of buses to shuttle visitors around the region. The hotel room situation turned out to be the biggest hassle for Gilbert. As part of its bid for the convention, the Cleveland committee had to gather pledges that a certain
number of hotels would hold 90% of their rooms for the RNC. The RNC wants to be able to assign hotel rooms so that, for example, state delegations are housed together in a single hotel. It also wanted price commitments, typically around $150 a night in suburban hotels, for example. So the host committee got signed agreements with hotels for most of that 16,200 goal. But some of the hotels were approached by media companies willing to pay a premium, up to $230 a night, according to a source, and broke their contracts. But Gilbert said most are now back in the fold. “There were a number that disregarded that voluntarily signed agreement,” he said. “But we’ve come to terms with nearly everybody. We’re not 100% there, but nearly.” The other center of convention activity in the months leading up to the convention is Cleveland City Hall. The city has taken on the role of ensuring that the major capital improvement projects — the streets, the airport and Public Square — are all ready on time. It also will be the center of activity for security funding, though the Secret Service will be making key decisions. “So far, so good,” said Valarie McCall, Mayor Frank Jackson’s chief of government affairs and the city’s convention point person. “We’ve done a lot to prepare, but the closer you get to the convention, the more the challenges come.” McCall said the security plan will be the most fluid part of the planning, but that means that the transportation plan — moving people smoothly into and out of whatever security perimeter the Secret Service creates — must be well-planned and flexible. The city got the early Christmas present it was hoping for when Congress included security grants of $50 million each for the presidential nominating conventions that will be held in Cleveland and Philadelphia in the fiscal year 2016 appropriations bill passed before Washington’s Christmas break. Some things, though, are moving ahead. City council and Cuyahoga County Council have received assurances from the developers of six under-construction hotels in Cuyahoga County that their projects will be completed by the time the Republican presidential nominating convention begins in July.
T
he excitement in Cleveland is palpable. The Republican National Convention is coming to town, millions of dollars worth of construction projects are coming online, downtown residential occupancy is almost at capacity and the city has seemingly escaped its label as the mistake on the lake. As Crain’s Cleveland Business celebrates its 35th anniversary, we thought it would be an opportune time to dig through our archives and remind you — our loyal readers — how this narrative unfolded. Over the last 35 years, we’ve seen companies come and go, political scandals unfold and our sports teams continually disappoint. At the same time, Northeast Ohio’s residents and business owners showed impressive resilience. Just chalk it up to a little Midwestern grit. Join us on a trip through the last 35 years of Crain’s headlines, won’t you?
In the grip of its post-default era, Cleveland’s outlook is generally bleak. Mayor George Voinovich haggles with six banks that hold 1980 $10.5 million in city debt. Truck maker White Motor Corp. seeks Chapter 11 protection from its own creditors. Renegade CEO Harry Figgie Jr. packs up his conglomerate, A-T-O Inc., and lights out for Richmond, Va. Over at the Cleveland Press, new publisher Joseph Cole tries to figure out how to save the city’s struggling afternoon newspaper. In this inhospitable environment, a new kid emerges on the block: Crain’s Cleveland Business publishes its first issue in March. Meanwhile, another “kid,” not quite so young, is on the rise, and Cleveland plays a starring role in his ascent. Public Hall is the stage for an October debate between Republican nominee Ronald Reagan and President Jimmy Carter, the man he will defeat the following week. The legendary “Red Right 88” kicks off the new year, abruptly ending the Cleveland Browns’ season on the threshold of the Super Bowl 1981 and extending the city’s sports title drought, which persists to this day. Failure on the gridiron is a metaphor for the economic woes of a recession-plagued Rust Belt town. Local suppliers feel the sting of a slumping auto industry, while Crain’s reports that area lenders will foreclose on more home mortgages in 1981 than in any year since the Great Depression. (Sound familiar?) The Plain Dealer’s purple-tinged attempt to rebrand the city — “New York’s the Big Apple, but Cleveland’s a Plum” — goes bust. But a few entrepreneurial types row against the tide. Cleveland Cavaliers owner Ted Stepien starts Nationwide Cable Advertising to sell a regional all-sports channel to advertisers and cable companies. And Tecmar Inc. founder Marty Alpert gets a rousing reception at a Las Vegas computer trade show for his Beachwood company’s add-on devices for IBM’s newest product, the personal computer.
1982
Like dominoes, a series of iconic Cleveland institutions fall, starting with the venerable Halle Bros. on Euclid Avenue, one of 16 Halle’s department stores (pictured below) shuttered by a new owner. On Lakeside Avenue, the Cleveland Press finally folds. “We gave it our best,” publisher Joe Cole writes in a page one column above a headline all the more striking for its simplicity: “Press Halts Publication.” To the east, General Motors’ Fisher Body plant on Coit Road closes after a 60-year run, idling 1,300 hourly and 400 salaried workers. Fisher Foods announces plans to close 17 Fazio’s stores in 1984. All this economic wreckage finds a dramatic visual in the October implosion of the eight-story Cuyahoga and 16-story Williamson buildings on Public Square. At least their demise signifies progress; they are razed to make room for Standard Oil Co.’s $200 million headquarters tower.
The Cleveland Press Collection (4)
35 YEARS OF NEWS & NEWSMAKERS
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35 YEARS OF NEWS & NEWSMAKERS: 1983-1989 It’s a good year for Cleveland’s Jackie Presser, the eighthgrade dropout elected president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. In fact, it marks the pinnacle of his career. At his death five years later, he is awaiting trial on federal racketeering and embezzlement charges stemming from alleged ties to organized crime. Things work out much better for two other Clevelanders, brothers George and Gordon Gund, who buy the foundering Cleveland Cavaliers from Ted Stepien for $20 million — possibly rescuing pro basketball in their hometown — and own the franchise for the next 22 years. Another Cleveland native who scores big in 1983 is world-renowned architect Philip Johnson, designer of the Cleveland Play House’s expanded theater complex, which opens on East 86th Street and serves for the next 28 years as home to the country’s oldest professional resident theater company. Johnson endures, too, passing away in 2005 at age 98.
1983
Local business executives make power plays — and news. Carl Fazio, ousted CEO of Fisher 1984 Foods, plots a comeback at the company through a proxy fight. CEO Ralph Schey tries to buy Scott & Fetzer for $50 a share, but is rebuffed: The next year, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. acquires the company behind an eclectic product mix including World Book encyclopedias and Kirby vacuum cleaners. In the public sector, Mayor George Voinovich pulls the plug on another kind of power play that would have given Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. all the city’s residential business and left only the municipal buildings to Cleveland Public Power. David Hoag becomes president of LTV Steel Co. en route to the top power position as CEO. Not to be outdone, voters flex their own muscle by trouncing a Cuyahoga County property tax levy to fund a domed stadium downtown. On course toward a shutdown in 1986, troubled Wright Air Lines cuts flights from Burke Lakefront Airport. The debate continues to 1985 this day over whether Burke is the best use of that prime real estate. However, former Cleveland ad man Eddie Spizel floats an idea that will eventually help transform another key piece of the city’s shoreline: Push for Cleveland to become home to the future Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste is down with that quixotic vision and will lobby for it but, in early 1985, he has a more urgent issue on his hands: depositor runs on state-insured S&Ls, triggered by fraud and mismanagement at Home State Savings Bank in Cincinnati. In response, the governor invokes a five-day thrift holiday at 71 Ohio S&Ls. In Cleveland, another S&L is the target of a federal probe as the government sues to recover more than $9 million in payment for delinquent commercial loans owed to the defunct Cleveland Community Savings Co. Cleveland appears to be awakening from a long economic swoon — and suddenly, we’re popular! In addition to landing the Rock Hall, 1986 the city makes a positive impression on United Church of Christ officials, who choose Cleveland over four other cities as home to their 300person headquarters. Plus, the scent of new development is in the air: Forest City Enterprises secures $59 million in private financing to move forward with The Avenue at Tower City Center, a 120-store shopping complex at Terminal Tower. And developer Jeff Jacobs reveals plans for Nautica, a restaurant/office/retail complex in the Flats. At Eaton Corp., CEO and Chairman E. Mandell DeWindt retires, ending a 17-year run. Gov. Richard Celeste’s Statehouse run, though extended four years by re-election, is engulfed in scandal surrounding a job he proposed creating in England for a woman who serves his wife as press secretary.
1987
Throughout downtown Cleveland, new capital projects take shape. Architect I.M. Pei unveils plans for a $25 million, 18-story “glittering 1988 glass tent” for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, intended as part of the emerging Tower City complex. That project firms up another piece: a Ritz-Carlton hotel. On Public Square, brothers Richard and David Jacobs break ground for their 57-story Society Center and 400-room Marriott hotel. Down Euclid Avenue at Playhouse Square, the curtain rises on the restored Palace Theatre, one of the crown jewels in the nation’s second-largest performing arts center. Down on the lakefront, a Coast Guard boat carrying Gov. Richard Celeste and Mayor George Voinovich cruises into the newly developed North Coast Harbor. Alas, an old, albeit less imposing, lakefront landmark will soon face demolition: Captain Frank’s files for bankruptcy after serving its final seafood platter. Also on its last legs: the Force, Cleveland’s pro indoor soccer team, which the Wolstein family folds, citing a poor financial outlook. What’s in a name? BP America retires the familiar red, white and blue “Sohio” signs at gas stations throughout the region in favor of 1989 the BP green and gold. Also consigned to the scrap heap is the “Forest City” name on a chain of lumber and do-it-yourself stores. With a new owner, they will operate under the “Handy Andy” banner until that chain expires in 1996. Step2 Co. is the name of the new company started by plastic toy maven Thomas Murdough, who founded Hudson’s Little Tikes Co. in a barn in 1970, but departed amid differences with parent company Rubbermaid. The “Ameritrust Center” name will never catch on because, although City Council votes $122 million in tax breaks for the 60-story tower proposed by the Jacobs brothers, the Public Square project will later evaporate along with its prime tenant, the bank holding company Ameritrust. Over at Cleveland City Hall, the new name is Michael White, the state senator who surges from obscurity to victory, beating City Council president George Forbes to become mayor.
Curses! Foiled again … The year begins with The Drive, which again bars the Browns from the Super Bowl, followed by the cockamamie Sports Illustrated prediction that the Cleveland Indians will finish first in the American League East. (They’re last.) But Clevelanders hang tough. Just look at Jacob Sapirstein, founder of American Greetings Corp., who notches 102 years before his death in June. Indeed, toughness is the order of the day as a spate of bad business news hits home: 250 jobs gone as Sherwin-Williams Co. sells its Gray Drug Fair unit to Rite Aid Corp.; 115 jobs eliminated as Durkee Famous Foods Inc. moves its headquarters to New Jersey; 4,500 people out of work with the closing of 63 Fisher Foods stores. And the one that deflates Akron: After 87 years there, some 450 jobs lost when Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. heads for Chicago, which just happens to be the hometown of CEO John Nevin. Akron gets a consolation prize of sorts when it is selected as the new home of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, but the hall sputters financially and finally relocates again, this time to Virginia.
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NEWSMAKERS 35 YEARS OF NEWS & NEWSMAKERS: 1990-2001 Proponents of the planned Gateway arena/ballpark complex eke out a narrow win at the ballot box in May, with voters approving a sin tax on alcohol and 1990 tobacco to fund the project. Gateway will rise on the old Central Market site, but doubts fester about the future location of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, which threatens to pull out of the Tower City neighborhood in a dispute over plans for a huge record store at the mall. In Middleburg Heights, CEO Robert Edgell pulls out of the company that bears his name. He will commit suicide on New Year’s Day 1991. Another shakeup occurs at underperforming Ameritrust Corp., where chairman and CEO Jerry Jarrett resigns in the wake of an announcement of 780 layoffs. There’s more downsizing at BP America, where more than 500 corporate headquarters staff positions are axed. However, one large company sees potential in the Cleveland market. Crain’s reports the pending entry of the nation’s No. 3 retailer: Hello, Walmart.
With President Bill Clinton in attendance, the Indians open their new ballpark, Jacobs Field, on a sunsplashed April day that banishes memories of the 1994 previous January, when the thermometer plunged to 20 degrees below zero — still the coldest day in recorded weather history in Cleveland. In October, the Cavaliers officially relocate downtown with the opening of Gund Arena, the second piece of the $425 million Gateway project. But shiny new venues can’t hide the fact that Cuyahoga County is cash strapped, in part because of faulty investment practices that drain the SAFE investment fund run by Treasurer Frank Gaul. There’s turmoil, too, at the Council of Smaller Enterprises, where executive director John Polk suddenly resigns, one week after Carole Hoover is installed as head of COSE’s parent, the Greater Cleveland Growth Association. But it’s all smiles in Beachwood, where Seattle-based Nordstrom plans to enter the market as the anchor of an expansion at posh Beachwood Place mall.
Two men, each a local legend in his own right, pass from the scene: Ben Stefanski Sr., founder of Third Federal Savings and Loan Association, and Paul 1991 Brown, founding coach of the Browns and the Cincinnati Bengals. But a new face appears at Browns’ headquarters when owner Art Modell announces the signing of rookie head coach Bill Belichick. As the team struggles to rebound from a dismal season, Higbee Co. grapples with its own issues, prompting President H. Gene Nau to meet with staff to deny rumors that the chain will be sold or renamed Dillard’s after its 50% owner, Dillard Department Stores. Higbee’s maintains a Public Square presence for the moment, but fast-growing auto insurer Progressive Corp. dashes hopes of a move downtown. Its CEO, Peter Lewis, abandons his dream of a $400 million lakefront headquarters designed by architect Frank Gehry and opts to expand in suburban Mayfield Village. The outlook is brighter for a new federal courthouse, but it will be more than a decade before the Carl B. Stokes U.S. Courthouse opens on West Superior Ave.
The economy is booming, with vacant industrial space at a premium and factories reporting their biggest job gains in five years. Civic spirits are high, 1995 with the Indians playing to sold-out crowds as they streak to their first World Series appearance in 41 years. The good times roll as more than 10,000 people flock to North Coast Harbor for the September dedication of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Ohio Gov. George Voinovich and Mayor Michael White join a celebrity throng that includes John Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono. The next night, Bruce Springsteen and Chuck Berry kick off a celebratory concert at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. What’s to become of the obsolete arena after the music fades? Local architects Thomas Zung and Richard Bowen envision a combined stadium/outlet sports mart. Meanwhile, a Wisconsin-based real estate developer plans to renovate the National Terminals building near the Warehouse District for apartments. It’s such a feel-good era that nobody sees the blow coming in November: Art Modell will move the Browns to Baltimore. Happy Thanksgiving.
The Cleveland Press Collection
1992
“Consolidation” is the new buzzword in health care, where Cleveland Clinic takes its first step toward 1993 forming a hospital network, signing an affiliation agreement with the two-hospital Health Cleveland system that comprises Fairview General Hospital and Lutheran Medical Center. It’s much the same story in banking, where Cleveland’s Society Corp. enters a so-called “merger of equals” with KeyCorp of Albany, N.Y. Society Chairman Robert Gillespie emerges as head of KeyCorp, the nation’s 10th largest bank, which will now make its home in Cleveland. In other industries, notably manufacturing, a growing shortage of skilled workers threatens to hamper production, despite a regional unemployment rate of 7%, as Crain’s documents. The skills gap becomes a cause célèbre in local sports, with Browns head coach Bill Belichick citing “diminishing skills” as his reason for sacking popular quarterback Bernie Kosar. We’ll never know the full extent of promising Indians pitcher Steve Olin’s skills. He and pitcher Tim Crews are killed in a March boating accident near the team’s spring training home in Winter Haven, Fla.
Build it and they will come? Not so fast. Yes, Cleveland will house the future Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, but that doesn’t mean we’ll host the annual induction ceremonies. Still, there’s hope when New York’s hammerlock on the event is broken. The next year, it will be in … Los Angeles. Controversy stirs at the municipal level, too, when Brook Park Mayor Thomas Coyne attacks the proposed $500 million expansion of Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, claiming it will hurt nearby development and endanger the adjacent I-X Center. BP America’s 3,500 Cleveland area employees are feeling pretty endangered themselves when they learn that 600 local jobs will be cut and that Robert Horton, former CEO of the U.S. unit, has resigned as head of parent BP. Across Euclid Avenue from the BP building, the landmark May Co. building goes on the block at a $40 million asking price, but the store will soon close, following Halle Bros. and other downtown department stores into the history books.
Cleveland’s year-long bicentennial celebration culminates in a three-day bash that draws more than 1 1996 million people to the Flats. Moses Cleaveland and his surveying party couldn’t help but notice a few changes if they made a return visit to the town they laid out 200 years earlier. True to form, change is the only constant. Take area codes, which were once sacrosanct. Now, as electronic gizmos like cellphones and fax machines gobble up telephone numbers, Northeast Ohio’s 216 area code is cleaved with the creation of 330 for points south. Merger, not separation, is the name of the game in the electric utility field, where giants Ohio Edison and Centerior Energy unite in a $1.5 billion deal to create FirstEnergy Corp. When the Federal Trade Commission refuses to approve the proposed merger of drugstore heavyweights Rite Aid Corp. and Revco, Rite Aid walks and Revco flies to the arms of CVS Corp. Meanwhile, federal Judge Robert Krupansky ends two decades of court-enforced busing to desegregate the Cleveland public schools.
Civic Vision 2000, an update of Cleveland’s master plan, calls for major waterfront projects, including a 1997 convention center, aquarium, visitors center and the Euclid Beach carousel at North Coast Harbor, as well as a revamped Shoreway in the mold of Chicago’s Lakeshore Drive. The wish list doesn’t mention a World Series title, but the Indians come close before dropping Game 7 in extra innings. With that, veteran Tribe announcer Herb Score signs off for the last time. Baseball writers get plenty of Cleveland exposure as the city also hosts the All-Star Game, where hometown hero Sandy Alomar Jr. is named MVP. Over at Gund Arena, the Cleveland Rockers debut, bringing women’s professional basketball to Cleveland. But it’s not all fun and games. Ford plans to cut 1,800 jobs at its Lorain plant when the automaker decides to discontinue production of the Ford Thunderbird and Mercury Cougar models. At Playhouse Square, Ray Shepardson, the catalyst behind the area’s redevelopment, fails in his attempt to revive the Hanna Theatre with a cabaret. Comings and goings: Mayor White taps New York City schools administrator Barbara Byrd-Bennett to lead the Cleveland public schools. With the 1998 pending arrival of a new Browns franchise, MBNA Corp.’s Al Lerner emerges as the owner, agreeing to pony up $530 million for the team. A new public company debuts as owner Dick Jacobs offers shares in Cleveland Indians Baseball Co. Cleveland suffers losses, too, with the deaths of billionaire Swagelok Co. founder Fred Lennon, 92, who started the supplier of industrial valves and fittings with $500 from his wife’s uncle, and polka legend Frankie Yankovic, 83. The British bid Cleveland “ta-ta” as BP’s purchase of Amoco shifts the company’s U.S. headquarters to Chicago, with a loss of roughly 1,000 local jobs. Then, the redcoats double down by closing the U.K. consulate here. And newly formed FirstEnergy concludes a workforce review by slashing 1,300 jobs. The Browns are back after a four-year hiatus, but fans at new Cleveland Browns Stadium find little to cheer as the team posts a 2-14 record in its first 1999 season. To the south, another arena reaches the end of the line: The Coliseum, site of the 1976 Cavaliers’ playoff run known as the “Miracle of Richfield,” is razed. Also doomed is the decade-old Cleveland Health Quality Choice Program, which folds when nine Cleveland Clinic hospitals refuse to submit data intended to document their quality of care. Churn persists in the local health care market as University Hospitals buys a half-interest in four Catholic hospitals owned by Columbia/HCA Healthcare, which then exits Cleveland. Another looming transaction has people talking: Dick Jacobs, whose Indians went to two World Series, puts the team up for sale. Investors led by local attorney Larry Dolan will purchase the ballclub the following year. Yet another deal sets off municipal fireworks as Cleveland, with future airport expansion in mind, agrees to purchase the I-X Center from Park Corp. Brook Park responds by going to court. The nation’s Y2K jitters quickly vanishas people realize the world will not end after all. The Cleveland 2000 Orchestra reopens its renovated home, Severance Hall, showcasing a concert hall worthy of one of the world’s great musical ensembles. Cleveland State University’s Convocation Center is the setting for March Madness as the NCAA men’s basketball tournament comes to town for the first time. On a somber note, cash flow problems force Mt. Sinai Medical Center to close its doors after nearly a century of service. East 9th Street sinks, too, as 25 million gallons of water from a broken main gush onto the major downtown artery and surrounding streets, just in time for evening rush hour. City crews, laboring in the January cold, will need four days to make repairs and shore up East 9th. In Westlake, real estate developer Robert Stark and partner John Carney look to be on shaky ground as a mostly hostile audience critiques their plans for the mixed-use Crocker Park. But the development goes forward, opening in phases, and it stands as the suburb’s centerpiece today. “We’ll never be the same because of this.” Jim Clark, managing partner of a local security management firm, makes that accurate prophecy as 2001 Cleveland businesses react to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Companies schedule more evacuation drills and reassess videoconferencing versus travel, while investors seek safe havens for their money. Even before the disaster, the burst of the dot-com bubble has venture capitalists and other tech investors tightening their purse strings. Cleveland’s bubble, too, seems to be deflating. Census figures show the city’s population dropping below 500,000. Albert Ratner, co-chairman of Forest City Enterprises Inc., voices a growing sentiment that the vaunted Cleveland comeback of the 1990s is losing steam. Ditto the Indians’ sellout streak, which comes to an end April 4 after 455 consecutive games, then a major-league record. Despite the nationwide angst, the machinery of government grinds on, and Jane Campbell defeats Raymond Pierce to become Cleveland’s first female mayor.
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Marc Golub
2003
With a presidential election looming, Cleveland again takes center stage. The October “Race at Case” pits incumbent Dick Cheney against Sen. John Ed2004 wards in the campaign’s only vice presidential debate, hosted by Case Western Reserve University. There’s no debate that Cleveland Clinic heart surgeon Delos (Toby) Cosgrove is a worthy successor to the Clinic’s retiring chairman and CEO, Dr. Floyd Loop. In philanthropy, the void left by the death of developer Bart Wolstein is filled by his widow, Iris, with a $6.25 million gift to Cleveland State University. Just as people come and go, so, too, do organizations. The Greater Cleveland Growth Association, Cleveland Tomorrow and Greater Cleveland Roundtable merge under the banner of the new Greater Cleveland Partnership, to be headed by Eaton Corp. chairman and CEO Alexander Cutler. And the new Fund for Our Economic Future debuts, pooling money and expertise from 56 corporations and philanthropic organizations intent on improving the regional economy. Of course, there are a million other stories in the naked city, and one of them unfolds in June, when some 2,800 people answer the call to pose au naturel in photographer Spencer Tunick’s large-scale nude shoot at the East 9th Street Pier. Is it art? That’s debatable. In Brook Park, Dr. Julius Earls announces he’ll retire as director of NASA Glenn Research Center, which is temporarily threatened with the loss of 700 jobs. 2005 There’s better news at another federal agency: With a huge assist from U.S. Rep. Steve LaTourette, who doesn’t even represent Cleveland, a commission reverses a Defense Department decision to close the Defense Finance and Accounting Service’s downtown office. Not only are 1,100 jobs saved; the DFAS office is scheduled to add jobs by the end of 2008. Other big-time winners include Cleveland City Council president Frank Jackson, who unseats one-term Mayor Jane Campbell, and Quicken Loans founder and chairman Dan Gilbert, who buys the Cavaliers from Gordon Gund and promptly reveals he’ll rename Gund Arena. Cue The Q! Two developers score big, too: Mitchell Schneider, CEO of First Interstate Properties Ltd., overcomes strident opposition to a planned Walmart supercenter to rescue his proposed Steelyard Commons shopping center project. And Scott Wolstein moves forward with his $230 million residential/office/retail project to restore life to the dormant East Bank of the Flats. Meanwhile, the father-and-son team of Rick and Ari Maron, having transformed once-moribund East 4th Street with restaurants, clubs and housing, trains its sights on a few ramshackle buildings around the corner on Euclid Avenue.
Seeing through the smoke screen of a rival ballot issue that would have guaranteed the right to smoke in some public places, Ohio voters pass a statewide 2006 public smoking ban by a healthy margin. Almost 60% support the measure, which affects every workplace in the state. Locally, there’s an airing-out in many a Csuite. At Case Western Reserve University, the revolving door to the president’s office spins again as Dr. Edward Hundert resigns less than two weeks after losing a no-confidence vote by the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences. Stability will come in 2007 with the hiring of Ohio State University provost Barbara Snyder. The beleaguered Cleveland public schools tap Toledo schools superintendent Eugene Sanders as the new CEO. He succeeds Barbara Byrd-Bennett. There’s turnover, too, in economic development ranks: Tom Waltermire takes the helm at Team NEO and Frederick Nance steps up as chairman of the Greater Cleveland Partnership. Amid all these leadership shuffles, it’s refreshing to honor a paragon of consistency — and longevity. Cleveland artist and industrial designer Viktor Schreckengost turns 100 in June, and more than 120 venues across the country salute him by showcasing his work.
A long drama ends as biopharmaceutical darling Athersys Inc. — pursued at one time by three out-of-state suitors — opts to stay in Cleveland. In the “old” economy, International Steel Group, buyer of the idled steelmaking assets of bankrupt LTV Corp., is creating jobs and producing steel in a remarkable turnaround. The Northeast Ohio business and civic leaders who launch Team NEO aim for additional success stories, though their goal of economic development through regional cooperation has always been a tough sell locally. The organization names as its first president Robert Farley, former executive vice president of the Forth Worth Chamber of Commerce. Civic boosters are powerless to help when an Aug. 14 blackout darkens parts of the Northeast, Midwest and Ontario, Canada, prompting questions about FirstEnergy Corp.’s reliability and its apparent role in the historic outage. On a brighter note, newcomers take the reins at two local anchors: Thomas Zenty III, president and CEO of University Hospitals Health System, and Ronn Richard, successor to Steven Minter in the top job at the Cleveland Foundation. But a recent high school graduate from Akron steals the show: LeBron James, the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft, is now a Cleveland Cavalier.
A subprime mortgage meltdown begets a wave of foreclosures that radiates from Cleveland to tony 2007 suburbs like Solon. The resulting credit crunch spreads from residential to commercial real estate. But Beachwood real estate developer Chris Semarjian and his partner, Stuart Lichter, chairman of Californiabased Industrial Realty Group, find plenty of demand for industrial spaces like the vacant Ford Motor Co. Assembly Plant in Lorain, one of several properties they purchase and redevelop for leasing. Another dynamo is new Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann, who earns national headlines for, among other things, filing lawsuits related to the subprime mortgage imbroglio. Dann will resign in 2008 after just 17 scandal-plagued months in office. In county government, the commissioners vote 2-1 to hike the county’s sales tax from 7.50% to 7.75% to pay for a new convention center — even as that vision expands to incorporate a medical mart. No medicine can ease fans’ pain as the San Antonio Spurs sweep all four games to spoil the Cavaliers’ first appearance in the NBA Finals and the Indians fall one game short of a World Series appearance. Small wonder that liquor sales in Ohio have increased for eight straight years.
PNC Financial Services Group Inc. of Pittsburgh wins the fire sale for Cleveland’s once-proud National City Corp. As the world financial system teeters on the 2008 brink, National City — unable to surmount a recent history of toxic subprime loans — yields to its fate. The merged bank will go forward without National City CEO Peter Raskind, who will later try to right another foundering ship: the Cleveland schools. Two other newsmakers have a very trying year. County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora and Auditor Frank Russo emerge as primary targets of federal investigators, who swam county offices and officials’ homes in a massive public corruption probe. Ultimately, both men will wind up behind bars. Conversely, two local pols leave positive legacies: Cleveland City Council’s Fannie Lewis, the heroine of Hough, and U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones pass away. It’s not all gloom and doom, though. The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s $200 million HealthLine begins running on Euclid Avenue, fanning hopes of a brighter future for the neighborhoods that line its route from Public Square to University Circle. The Cleveland Museum of Art reopens its renovated 1916 building, marking the end of the first phase of its ambitious $350 million expansion and renovation project. A week after the museum’s new East Wing opens a year later, Director Timothy Rub will resign to lead the Philadelphia Museum of Art. As the economic downturn drags on, a wave of layoffs and pay cuts sweeps through local workplaces. Another hangover, this one from the ongoing coun2009 ty corruption investigation, prompts voters to approve a government reform issue touted by the business community. Greater Cleveland Partnership president and CEO Joe Roman is among the most vocal advocates of the proposal to replace the three commissioners with an elected county executive and an 11-member county council. Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert also scores at the ballot box as voters adopt a constitutional amendment that will allow him and his partner, Penn National Gaming Inc., to develop a casino in Cleveland. Despite the glut of discouraging headlines, talented people see opportunity here: Ronald Berkman, a high-ranking administrator at Florida International University, is named president of Cleveland State University. And a national search culminates in the choice of Pennsylvania economic development official Rebecca Bagley as president of the technology advocacy organization NorTech. Even President Obama drops by, albeit not for long. He’s here to laud the Cleveland Clinic model as the fight for health care reform gears up. Can you say “image problem”? In what one columnist calls “the Rushmore of basketball hubris and narcissism,” LeBron James announces in an ESPN special 2010 that he will leave the Cavaliers and join the Miami Heat. All will be forgiven when the region’s prodigal son humbly returns home in 2014. Going the opposite way is Ed FitzGerald, who wins election as Cuyahoga County’s first executive, only to crash and burn in 2014 when, amid a welter of unsavory allegations, he loses the governor’s race to incumbent John Kasich. With the LeBron free agency drama ended, Cleveland has a new source of angst in the planned union of its dominant airline, Continental, with United Airlines. Mayor Frank Jackson vows to protect the city’s interests, but there’s not much he, the business community or frequent fliers can do four years later when the merged airline de-hubs Cleveland. Over on the lakefront, William Friedman is tapped as the new head of the ClevelandCuyahoga County Port Authority. He succeeds Adam Wasserman, who resigned under a cloud of concerns about the authority’s financing and expansion plans. Retiring CEO Robert Keegan makes a smoother exit in Akron, where he’s credited with reviving Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. during his seven years in the top job.
Getty Images
After a decade at the helm, University Hospitals Health System president and CEO Farah Walters an2002 nounces her unexpected retirement, prompting civic soul-searching about the dearth of women in high-profile leadership positions. As Walters begins packing, Dr. Edward Hundert arrives to assume the presidency of Case Western Reserve University. His tenure will end less than four years later. The president who succeeds Claire Van Ummersen at Cleveland State University is both new and familiar: Michael Schwartz led Kent State University for nine years before trading the Flashes’ blue and gold for the Vikings’ green and white. Off campus, proponents push for a new convention center for Cleveland. There’s more progress in University Circle, where a coalition led by former Steris Corp. chairman and CEO Bill Sanford is driving creation of BioEnterprise Corp. to grow area health care companies and commercialize bioscience technologies. At Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, the long-awaited second runway finally opens. The extreme-sports Gravity Games bring more high flyers to North Coast Harbor, with a $25 million economic impact. Games officials are so thrilled with their reception, they announce the event will return in 2003.
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NEWSMAKERS 35 YEARS OF NEWS & NEWSMAKERS: 2011-2015
First there are eight, then six, then four, then two. Ultimately, Cleveland is the sole survivor in the mul2014 ticity frenzy to land the 2016 Republican National Convention. The July announcement sparks a race against the clock as civic planners scramble to complete ambitious projects such as the redesign of Public Square and construction of the Hilton Cleveland Downtown before an estimated 50,000 convention goers descend. More immediately, Cleveland and Akron jointly host Gay Games 9. Thomas Nobbe, Cleveland-based executive director for the event, is thrilled by the bottom line: 20,000 visitors, a $52 million economic impact and an invaluable amount of goodwill. In Brownstown, Johnny Manziel mania rekindles hopes and fills cash registers, but the rookie quarterback has a baptism by fire both on and off the field. Still, Cuyahoga County voters extend the sin tax for 20 years to pay for renovations and upkeep at Cleveland’s three pro sports palaces. Not to be overshadowed, the Playhouse Square Foundation fires up the world’s largest permanent outdoor chandelier above East 14th Street and Euclid Avenue. Beyond the footlights, Armond Budish is elected Cuyahoga County executive. And Sandra Pianalto retires as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and is succeeded by Loretta Mester from the Philadelphia Fed.
Affirming that The Plain Dealer has seen the future and it is digital, publisher Terrence Egger announces 2013 the newspaper will scale back home delivery and drive readers to its online edition. New Browns owner Jimmy Haslam reclaims his job as CEO of his family’s Knoxville, Tenn.-based business, Pilot Flying J. He may have second thoughts when the FBI raids the truck stop chain on tips it defrauded commercial customers of rebates. Other executives have a better year. At Cuyahoga Community College, Dr. Jerry Sue Thornton’s retirement caps 21 years at the helm; Dr. Alex Johnson, former head of the college’s Metropolitan Campus, succeeds her. In its quest for a CEO to replace Mark Moran, the MetroHealth System stumbles out of the gate, announcing a successor who then backs out. The hospital system regroups with the appointment of Dr. Akram Boutros, who plunges head first into the job with ideas for an overhaul of MetroHealth’s aging main campus. And the spanking-new Cleveland Convention Center and adjacent Global Center for Health Innovation — quite a mouthful, that new name for the medical mart — opens.
Horseshoe Casino Cleveland general manager Marcus Glover reports that nearly 500,000 guests came through the doors in the new venue’s first 2012 month. Ironworkers top off the Ernst & Young Tower on the Flats East Bank. The Greater Cleveland Aquarium opens in the Powerhouse on the West Bank. The former county commissioners’ fishy purchase of the Ameritrust complex in 2005 has County Executive Ed FitzGerald eager to sell the white elephant, as well as other properties, and consolidate scattered county offices in a single location. The new county administrative headquarters, developed by Geis Cos., will open at Euclid and Prospect avenues in 2014. Less flashy, but even more significant, is Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson’s plan to transform the city’s schools, in part by expanding the number of high-performing district and charter schools, closing failing schools, and loosening inflexible rules on teacher tenure and seniority. GOP Gov. John Kasich embraces the Democratic mayor’s plan and, with an assist from the Greater Cleveland Partnership, the General Assembly passes enabling legislation. Cleveland Teachers Union president David Quolke buys in and voters approve a 15-mill school levy in November.
Buckeye State voters didn’t like the idea of limiting the cultivation of legal marijuana to 10 growers, so they soundly rejected Issue 3, which would have legalized the growing and sale of marijuana for medicinal and recreational uses. On the na2015 tional front, the country mourns the passing of an icon as former U.S. Rep. Louis Stokes dies at 90. Almost two weeks before Stokes’ passing, Cleveland warms up for next year’s Republican National Convention by hosting the first GOP presidential candidates’ debate. Among the 10 hopefuls onstage at Quicken Loans Arena is Gov. John Kasich, a late enlistee in this cavalry charge. The city shines, though deplorable road conditions and orange barrels worry locals. The Jackson administration fasttracks road improvements, but there’s no chance of completing the planned pedestrian bridge from the Mall to the lakefront in time for the big GOP fest. Still, the move to the waterfront continues, led by diverse elements such as the rowing community and the Cleveland Metroparks. On terra firma, brothers Jeff and Tom Heinen deviate from their suburban pattern to open their much-anticipated grocery store in the rotunda of the historic building at East 9th Street and Euclid Avenue that once housed Cleveland Trust Co. The new Heinen’s is part of a flashy hotel and apartment complex, The 9, developed by another brother duo: Fred and Greg Geis. The resurgent LeBron James-led Cavaliers don’t fare quite as well. Decimated by injuries, they lose the NBA Finals to the Golden State Warriors.
Getty Images
With ground broken on the Mall for Cleveland’s convention center/medical merchandise mart, Mayor Frank Jackson tells Crain’s the benefits from such 2011 projects will be short-lived if the community fails to deal with its struggling school systems. In the Cleveland schools, there’s turnover at the top again as CEO Eugene Sanders announces his retirement. The district names its chief academic officer, Eric Gordon, its new CEO. In the private sector, the corner office at KeyCorp passes from Henry Meyer III to Beth Mooney, the first woman CEO of a top-20 U.S. bank. Forest City Enterprises Inc. also departs from tradition, elevating David LaRue to president and CEO; he’s the first non-member of its founding family to head the company. East of those downtown C-suites, Cleveland Clinic’s decision to shutter Huron Hospital triggers condemnation from U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge and other local politicians. To the west, American Greetings Corp. announces that Westlake is the winner in the derby for the company’s world headquarters, to be built at Crocker Park. Send a sympathy card to Brooklyn, AG’s corporate home for 50 years.
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The Week
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Security funding for the Republican and Democratic presidential nominating conventions — $50 million each — will be included in the fiscal year 2016 appropriations bill expected to clear Congress and to be signed by President Barack Obama before Washington’s Christmas break. The federal funds help the host communities cover the cost of additional security hardware and overtime pay for local law enforcement that will be required to protect the gatherings of politicians and the delegates. Congress has awarded the grants to the conventions since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The Ohio Development Services Agency awarded $37.8 million in Ohio Historic Preservation Tax Credits to 34 applicants planning to rehabilitate 55 historic buildings. Among projects under the $5 million cap for tax credits, four Cleveland projects received state OKs. Among them was the Cleveland Athletic Club, which earned $5 million in tax credits for a rehabilitation into 175 apartments over a first-floor restaurant. Downtown’s Union Trust Building at 925 Euclid won a tax credit aimed at “catalytic” projects, earning $25 million.
A BRIGHTER FUTURE Congress is poised to pass a major spending bill that would include full funding for a NASA program that funds major programs at NASA Glenn Research Center. The Senate version of the bill had targeted that program for significant cuts. If those provisions had passed, NASA Glenn could have faced a $60 million budget cut — which would have amounted to about 10% of its annual budget. The Senate version of the omnibus spending bill would have cut NASA’s Space Technology program to fund another NASA program based in Maryland. Had the Space Technology program been cut, Glenn would have had to scale back its Solar Electric Propulsion program, which has been a major focus for Glenn in recent years.
JUMP TO IT JumpStart Inc. once again has money to invest in high-tech startup companies. With $12.5 million in fresh state funding, the nonprofit is bringing back its original investment fund, which has been out of cash for a few years now. It’s also ready to launch another fund that will target tech startups led by women and minorities throughout Ohio — as well as those willing to move to the state. Those funds both will receive $5 million through the Ohio Third Frontier economic development program. The Third Frontier Commission also awarded $2.5 million to help JumpStart launch a new for-profit investment fund that will target more mature tech startups.
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Business of Life TRANSITIONS: Jeff and Lori Kolenich Crain’s occasional look at people who are forging a new path. Tell us about your story: clevedit@crain.com
Getting up to speed on being their own boss BY CHUCK SODER They weren’t graphic designers. And they’d never started a business before. But Jeff and Lori Kolenich took the plunge anyway. After all, what did they have to lose? Well, OK, they did put their retirement savings on the line when they opened the Westlake branch of SpeedPro Imaging — a company that makes giant graphics. You know, like the huge slot machine image that adorns the Horseshoe Casino Cleveland parking garage (which is right across from the LeBron James mural). But the opportunity cost of starting a business started dropping dramatically after the stock market crashed in 2008. In December of that year, Lori was laid off from a project management position at American Greetings. She got another job, but within a year she fell victim to another round of staff cuts. Jeff knows her pain. He was laid off from a marketing position at American Greetings in January 2011. Sure, they could’ve kept looking for new jobs, but potential employers suggested that they’d probably have to take a pay cut to get them. So why not become one of those employers? Jeff had been interested in starting a company since his days at Bowling Green State University. He was one of the first employees at a long-standing cheese steak restaurant called Mr. Spots, and he originally wanted to open another Mr. Spots location in the Cleveland area after graduating in 1987. But he had bills to pay. So he got a job. Lori said that she and Jeff liked the idea of being their own bosses and building something that was their own. A few of their former colleagues had started franchises, which seemed like a smart way to go for a couple with no experience starting businesses. So they met with a franchise consultant from FranNet who introduced them to SpeedPro Imaging. SpeedPro, which is based in the Denver area, didn’t care that they weren’t graphic designers, but the company liked the fact that they both had relevant business experience. In turn, Jeff said the idea of “bringing people’s brands to life in a large way” sounded like fun. And SpeedPro would train them and provide all the necessary equipment to get started — including their office furniture. So, the Koleniches, who are in their 50s, took a chance. With money from their 401(k) plans, they started the company in April 2011. “The business is now our retirement account,” Jeff said. “We’re banking on ourselves if you will.” So far, things have gone pretty well. They’ve hired three employees, including two graphic designers, and they’ve regularly exceeded their sales goals. Of course, it helped that they were able to quickly land a few big clients, like the casino and the Greater Cleveland Aquarium (if you’ve seen the mural of the squid-like Kraken sea monster, you’ve seen their work). It may be a while before they’re bringing home as much money as they used to. They’re still paying off the costs involved in starting the business, and they’re reinvesting their profits. But they’re OK with being patient, Jeff said. “It’s got to be a different mindset than when you’re in the corporate world,” he said.
Above, Jeff and Lori Kolenich. At right and above right, two of the projects that Jeff and Lori have taken on through SpeedPro Imaging. (Contributed photos)
EMPOWERING NORTHEAST OHIO BU
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WWW.CRAINSCLEVELAND.COM
FACEBOOK.COM /CRAINSCLEVELAND “The business is now our retirement account. We’re banking on ourselves if you will.” — Jeff Kolenich
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USINESS FOR MORE THAN 35 YEARS.
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BUSINESS OF LIFE
Source Lunch Anne Owings Ford is a veteran of the legal industry. Her résumé includes time with major law firms including McDonald Hopkins and Jones Day, in addition to work as a judicial law clerk at both state appellate and federal trial levels. Today, Ford serves as president of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association, a position she was elected to by the nonprofit group in June. She spends much of her time assisting fellow lawyers and furthering goals of the bar association, which includes nearly 6,000 members. Considering her leadership role with the bar during a continued period of flux and general consolidation in the overall legal industry — and the fact she’s no longer beholden to a specific firm — I decided to meet with Ford to discuss changes in the field and some of the challenges facing both law firms and young attorneys in today’s competitive market. — Jeremy Nobile
Anne Owings Ford LAW
Companies have dialed back legal budgets in the long wake of the recession. Is there a new model for how corporate clients approach legal services? Corporate clients are already purchasing legal services in very different ways from the law firm billable hour model of the past few decades, and in-house legal departments are increasingly growing to include niche specialists the company might have a need for. Another model I’ve seen involves the distribution of legal projects to small firm or solo practitioners who complete similar work at a substantially lower cost. There is no question that larger law firms, particularly those that increase their billing flexibility and work to provide unusual value for clients’ money, will have plenty of work to do. But the diversity of options that companies and even individuals are now exercising is fresh, new and exciting for many.
Speaking of having enough work, how can the industry better prepare tomorrow’s lawyers at a time in which firms aren’t hiring new grads like they used to? Providing real-world training to recent law school graduates is going to require creativity and substantial effort. Law schools, bar associations and legal employers must work together to provide either real world, pro bono legal services or drills using a hypothetical case, so that new graduates can experience the practical skills of the law. The (Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association’s) New Lawyer Boot Camp is a major step in this direction. It seems clear that adding practical skills to today’s law school curriculum is impracticable, because the Ohio bar examination tests substantive knowledge of the law. We will have to develop a program to provide practical and procedural training shortly after licensure, or risk losing an entire generation of lawyers.
Although hiring has been scaled back, diversity has been a longstanding issue in the legal industry. What can be done to realize more diversity in the ranks? Start earlier. We have seen that vying to offer positions to diverse candidates upon graduation from law school is a “too little, too late” proposition. The proportion of students who are not “typical” lawyer material entering law school and passing the bar is far too small, and legal employers are fighting one another over these candidates in an effort to demonstrate their commitment to diversity. The CMBA has addressed this problem by pushing the recruiting effort back all the way into middle school. The goal is to increase the total number of diverse students with a vision of themselves in higher education, and then in a career in law, by nurturing and supporting these students along the way.
Considering the challenges facing recent grads, what other advice do you give young lawyers trying to gain experience? Get experience in your field — even though that isn’t easy because so many law firms are paring back on the number of new lawyers they hire. Take on pro bono representations, if only so that you can truthfully say you’ve appeared in court or drafted incorporation documents. It doesn’t have to be full-time. Between the Cleveland bar association and the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, you have a good chance of identifying a pro bono opportunity that will be relevant for you. It sounds like pro bono work is something you advocate all lawyers seeking out then, yes? Yes. We must sometimes practice law on behalf of those who can’t pay for it lest we become the antithesis of this country’s ideal: a profession whose services are available only to the rich. If that ever happens, we must give up our monopoly on the law. In Cleveland, between the CMBA and Legal Aid, lawyers have numerous opportunities to serve the needy in our community. Whether a lawyer wants to provide incorporation advice to a nonprofit, represent a tenant in housing court or help with expungement of an eligible offense, there is an opportunity to do precisely that and more. Further, stretching one’s legal wings to work in an unfamiliar field can be energizing.
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ADVERTISING
Crain’s has moved its complete list of appointments and promotions to www.crainscleveland.com/peopleonthemove. Showcasing Northeast Ohio job changes and board appointments. These paid People on the Move listings, publication is guaranteed in print, online and in a weekly e-newsletter.
ACCOUNTING Paul Weisinger, CPA/ABV, CVA
Kathryn Stiwald, CPA, QuickBooks ProAdvisor
Executive Board Member/Treasurer, Autism Society of Greater Cleveland
Board of Directors, Easter Seals Northern Ohio Walthall CPAs
Walthall CPAs "We are thrilled to have Paul as part of the Executive Board,” stated Eileen Hawkins, president of ASGC. “Having dedicated people like Paul will continue to help us grow and serve the autism community,” she concluded. A graduate of Cleveland State University, Weisinger is a member of the AICPA, The OSCPA, and the National Association for Certified Valuator and Analysts. He belongs to The Union Club of Cleveland and sits on the Advisory Board of the Academic Support Center for Students with Learning Differences at Notre Dame College. He heads Walthall’s business valuation niche.
Judith Mondry, CPA, CVA Chapter Director - Community Outreach Committee, CREW Cleveland Walthall CPAs
Easter Seals helps individuals with disabilities and special needs, and their families, live better lives. Stiwald will help develop policies and goals for the organization, as well as be active in the programs, performance, and fundraising. A graduate of Kent State University, Stiwald earned a BBA. She is a member of the AICPA and The OSCPA. Stiwald also belongs to Main Street Amherst, the Lorain County Chamber of Commerce, and the Mercy Foundation of Lorain County Planned Giving Advisory Council. She also serves as the chairperson for the Amherst Rotary Club?s Youth Exchange Program.
ARCHITECTURE Anne M. Hartman, RA Director of Operations, Cleveland Moody Nolan
As community outreach director, Mondry will be responsible for fostering good relations within the Greater Cleveland Community, promoting further name recognition for CREW Cleveland, creating fundraising and hands on learning experiences for community service and scholarship, and mentoring young women interested in careers in the commercial real estate field. Mondry is a certified valuation analyst and heads Walthall?s real estate niche. She also belongs to the AICPA, The OSCPA, and the U.S. Green Building Council. Mondry earned her BSBA from John Carroll University.
Moody Nolan welcomes Anne Hartman as the new Director of Operations for the Moody Nolan Cleveland office. In addition to her new leadership role in Cleveland, Anne will continue to oversee numerous education projects throughout Northeast Ohio, including the New JFK High School and Charles Eliot K-8 School, the Cleveland Heights-University Heights City School District, the Monticello and Roxboro Middle Schools and the new Cleveland School of the Arts.
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We make it our business to know your business. That’s why these local organizations recently chose FirstMerit.
Stafast Products, Inc.
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Oberlin College Taxable Term Loan Financing
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Libertytown Residential, LLC Libertytown Residential, LLC Prestwick Ridge One, LLC
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Multi-Family Acquisition, and FirstMerit-led Syndicated Construction Financing
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Crescent View Apartments VA, LLC
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Nerone & Sons, Inc.
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Allfasteners USA, LLC Working Capital, Equipment and Real Estate Financing
Burton Scot Contractors, LLC Working Capital and Equipment Financing
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firstmerit.com
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VOL. 36, NO. 51
DECEMBER 21-27, 2015
Philanthropy LeBron James Family Foundation investing
THE AKRON EDITION
in Akron’s young students P. 6
Business of Life Career transitions Husband and wife are betting on themselves
Arts
P. 20-21
ArtsNow is boosting Akron’s culture scene P. A1
Voices
Technology
CLEVELAND BUSINESS
Squawqr is making some noise P. A3
Entrepreneurship is not a solo endeavor P. A6
East End Residencies might be tip of iceberg More buildings await reinvention at former Goodyear complex BY STAN BULLARD sbullard@crain.com @CrainRltyWriter
The lights are back on at the former Goodyear Hall in Akron — and may even snap on and off more at night than in the past. That’s because people are living in the six-story building at 1220 East Market St., which has been repurposed from former offices to the East End Residences. The apartment building is the second project in Downey, Calif.-based Industrial Realty Group’s massive remake of the former corporate headquarters of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. The first addition was a Hilton Garden Inn that opened in 2014 on East Market, a year after IRG finished a new global headquarters for the tire maker at 200 Innovation Way. Although both the apartments and hotel are multimillion-dollar projects, they are the appetizers before the main course. On the south side of East Market from Goodyear Hall are four more buildings with a total of 1.4 million square feet of space that is waiting to be reinvented and repopulated in what is forecast as a $167 million development. However, the residential aspect of the development is the most trailblazing part of the project. Goodyear’s stomping grounds for the past century are primarily a business environment for the rubber maker and others. Single-family homes in the nearby Goodyear Heights neighborhood were developed to house workers at the company’s former tire and rubber plants. There’s been no residential project of scale there in decades. The plethora of student housing and construction the past half-decade in downtown Akron are blocks away in the
Big-time planning dominated in 2015 Page 13
SEE GOODYEAR, PAGE A4 Entire contents © 2015 by Crain Communications Inc.
Pages 14-18
Lisa Lorek
35 years of news & newsmakers
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Turning Akron into Art Town BY DAN SHINGLER dshingler@crain.com @DanShingler
New ArtsNow group is helping steer the city’s cultural revival Rubber City? How about Art Town? Because while Akron doesn’t have many people making tires these days, it’s sure got artists. And lately, at least, it’s also got its arts organizations working hard to engage more residents. While no one thinks the arts will ever replace the tire industry’s historic employment, backers are hoping a strong arts and culture scene will retain and attract talent and bolster economic development. The city’s in an artistic renaissance that started two years ago, when Akron’s GAR and John S. and James L. Knight foundations took stock of the city’s arts and cultural assets and how they were working. They found an arts scene in need of work and, more importantly, leadership. Their January 2014 report was both a wake-up call and a launch party for Akron arts, even though the report described a city with plenty of art, artists and individual institutions. “In our research, we counted 608 artist and artsoriented organizations,” said GAR Foundation pres-
ident Christine Mayer. “But there was little in the way of cohesiveness, coordination or communications with broad audiences.” Or as the foundations put it in their report: “There’s a disconnect between arts and culture sector perceptions of itself and the public’s perception. ... Providers of arts and culture see offerings as deep and varied, but the market doesn’t necessarily agree. African Americans don’t see what’s there for them, and many potential consumers don’t participate, both high income ‘power types’ and the population at large. Outsiders to the sector see it as disorganized and not unified — that is, not a sector but rather distinct organizations. The sector does not seem to have great awareness of its own ‘big picture.’ ” “We found out that things weren’t quite as good as we were hoping,” said Nicole Mullet, who at the time of the report was an educator working at the University of Akron. “The community as a whole was not really aware of what we had . . . We know that we have SEE ARTS, PAGE A8
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Sewer project could bring vibrant neighborhoods BY DAN SHINGLER dshingler@crain.com @DanShingler
Dig this: In the not-too-distant future, Akron will no longer dump its toilets into the rivers that bless the city — the Cuyahoga and smaller, aptly named Little Cuyahoga. That’s what has typically taken place when there was a hard rain that strained the city’s antiquated combined sewer system. And dig this, too: That will not only help clean up the rivers as they send their waters winding their way to Lake Erie, but it will also clean up some waterways of Akron neighborhoods, some of which are beautifully situated along the Towpath Trail and a short walk from downtown. Akron officials hope those areas will become some of the city’s best neighborhoods in the future. Today, they’re fairly undeveloped, relative to the surrounding area. But before anyone can dig any of that, the city has some work to do — the construction of more than a billion dollars’ worth of new pipes, separation racks, basins and tunnels. Much of it is built or well under construction — and Akron’s sewer rates have gone up by 269% over the past decade. But to finish the job the city has to drill one heck of a hole. It’s probably the biggest and most impressive hole ever dug in Ohio, unless you count the canal that first made Akron into a major city. At a cost of more than $300 million, the milelong tunnel construction project is Akron’s biggest ever, by at least a factor of five or six, said city public service director John Moore. It and the rest of Akron’s comprehensive sewer overhaul stems from a federal mandate that Akron clean up the overflows into the Cuyahoga and Little Cuyahoga rivers. The cost is still not firm because work will go on for many years. Also, the city is hoping the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will allow it to replace some expensive portions of the project with less-expensive alternatives that could amount to some smaller savings. But the whole project is ultimately expected to cost up to $1.4 billion. The EPA recently gave the city some hope. On Dec. 14, the feds approved three alternative wastewater separation facilities that are part of the city’s “integrated plan.” If approved in its entirety, the plan would knock about $300 million off the project’s total cost and bring it down to about $1.1 billion, city officials said. The EPA has not done that, but talks between it and the city continue. And the changes the EPA has approved will save the city millions of dollars, said Moore. Akron has never addressed its sewer problem before, largely because of the cost. At $1.4 billion, the project’s price tag amounts to more than $7,000 for every man, woman and child in the city of just under 200,000 people. The 27-feet-wide Ohio Canal In-
Akron officials break ground on work for the city’s massive tunnel. (Contributed photo) ceptor Tunnel will be dug by a huge machine that will more or less eat its way from a bluff near Howard Street and the Towpath Trail to an access in the middle of downtown. Like a giant bug – a system similar to the one used to dig the famous Chunnel between Britain and France – the machine will turn a giant drill bit and slowly grind through dirt, rock and pretty much anything else that gets in its way. At one point, beneath Exchange Street, the tunnel will be 160 feet underground, and all along its route, it will be well beneath the city’s existing infrastructure. “Most people won’t even know it’s going on,” Moore predicted. The city has not yet signed a contract for the machine to drill the tunnel, but once it does, it will take about a year for it to be built specifically for the conditions it will find beneath Akron, said city spokeswoman Michelle DiFiore. A joint venture of Illinois-based Kenny Construction Co. and Tokyobased Obayashi Corp. will head up the work on the tunnel. On Nov. 6, the city broke ground at the site on the banks of the Little Cuyahoga to begin the prep work. Once the drill is built, it will bore into a bluff near Hickory Street by the intersection of the Little Cuyahoga River and the Ohio Canal before plunging beneath the city to an exit shaft downtown, right near the Canal Park stadium.
New life for area It will likely mean some noise and commotion on Hickory, but it will leave behind a neighborhood along the river free of toilet paper and other signs of sewage, Moore said. It’s a neighborhood Moore thinks will take off once the sewage problem is solved – especially if the city can get the EPA to sign off on some changes to the current plans. The city would like to replace five basins called for in the current plan with green solutions like wetlands
and smaller separation facilities. That would leave more green space and more of the river valley available for living space once it’s cleaned up, Moore said. “You’ve got land that has huge potential, in my mind, for future development,” he said. “Having a large basin in the middle of development is not the greatest thing, so by doing sewer separation and a green alternative, we wouldn’t have to build that. “So we’d have acres of land that can be developed with new housing or mixed use that’s right along the river. “It’s a beautiful area … you see deer all the time and you’re half a mile from downtown Akron. At some point in time, it’s going to be an incredible neighborhood.” But in terms of major disruptions this year, or when the tunnel is actually dug in 2017, city engineer Patrick Gsellman said there won’t be much – especially considering the amount of work that will take place. In fact, he said, the past year was probably far more disruptive in terms of sewer projects. “We just completed 260 sewer repair projects that we completed in a year, so people have been seeing our signs everywhere,” Gsellman said. The city previously spent money on other projects that would have the biggest impact – and corrected a lot of its problems with about $20 million in fixes over the past seven years or so, said mayor-elect Dan Horrigan. The current fixes, though they’ll be expensive and increase residents’ sewer bills, will still be beneficial, according to Horrigan. “It’s a project we need to get done. We have to, but there are also longterm effects,” he said. He agreed with Moore that once the work is done, the city will have some vital new neighborhoods ripe for development. “There could be a few spots like that along that river – water is attractive and people like that,” Horrigan said.
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Squawqr cloud apps see big growth BY BETH THOMAS HERTZ As a veteran marketer, Sue Grabowski knows that businesses want to get information to their customers where and how they want to receive it. Digital communication is, of course, a crucial part of that, but websites can be costly to build and difficult to update. The use of apps has grown in recent years, but apps can eat up valuable storage space on a phone and require the user to regularly download updates. While the payoff can be complex functionality, such as gaming, Grabowski finds most of her clients just want a mobile way to share information that is affordable and can be easily updated. About two years ago, a colleague showed her some mobile technology he was developing, and she knew she had found a solution to her clients’ problems. Rob Kemmer is now her partner in a business venture they started in January and have named Squawqr. Uniontown-based Squawqr creates apps that are based in the cloud. They appear on any device but retrieve data only when needed, therefore they don’t take up storage space or require updates. “They are designed primarily for the way we use mobile, which is different than the way we use a computer,” Grabowski said. “We use our thumbs. We like vertical formats. We like action. We like to be able to thumb-tap and call someone or thumb-tap and get to a map. We don’t want to have to use our forefinger and thumb to zoom in on things we cannot read.” The apps are accessible from a URL or a QR code. In fact, QR codes are such an important aspect of the app that the letters are incorporated into the company’s name. “I believe QR codes were very misused early on,” Grabowski said. “People put them on things thinking they were cool, but when you scanned them in, you didn’t land somewhere that brought you the information that you wanted. When you are actually using them the way that they should be used, they’re incredibly powerful.” Squawqr lets users change QR code on the fly. For example, when a salesperson shares a catalog with a client, he or she can give them a unique QR code. Anytime the code is used to search the directory, the user obtains valuable marketing metrics.
Origins Kemmer said he first became interested in mobile technology in 2005 when he was with a Fortune 500 company. “It was a wide-open field that was only being addressed by native apps,” he said. “I felt that a webbased solution would meet businesses’ needs better by offering a more consistent presentation across multiple platforms.” He has since seen “mobile first” technology move to “mobile only.” He asks business owners that if 90% of customers are reaching them on mobile devices, why are they spending a lot of money developing websites as a primary access point? “Attack mobile first – almost to the
point of exclusivity,” Kemmer advised. Squawqr’s technology platform is patent-pending. While others are building apps that reside in the cloud, Squawqr’s tabular structure makes it unique, Grabowski said.
Ease of use, cost Squawqr app content is managed via Google Docs, so clients own the content and they can make changes to it instantly.
“There’s no content management system. If they can edit a Word document, they can edit their own content, and they can do it from their phones,” Grabowski said. The apps also facilitate shared content management. For example, if one person is responsible for a schedule and another person is responsible for a directory, they can both have access to those documents. “There doesn’t have to be one point person or IT person,” she said.
The ease of updating the app improves quality, Kemmer said, because it allows the person who is closest to the content to be the one updating it. Squawqr’s standard slate of features — which include spreadsheets, text, videos, contact information, blogs and links to social media — start at about $2,500, plus an annual hosting fee. “That is way less than what I could build a traditional website for, and our clients can have them in their
hands within two to three weeks instead of, say, two to three months,” Grabowski said.
Diverse uses Grabowski said she and Kemmer have found themselves developing apps for a wide variety of uses. For example, Aultman Medical Group uses a Squawqr app for a physician directory. Brittany White, director of prac-
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city’s traditional business district. Stuart Lichter, IRG CEO, said the lack of new housing was striking as his team studied the area. “You have all these people working there, but no one has built residentially there for years. So do it,” Lichter said in a recent phone interview. The idea has evolved so the East End — the all-encompassing name for the Goodyear complex makeover — incorporates the almost-commonplace mantra nationally for redevelopment: a place to live, work and play. A combination of factors led to making Goodyear Hall, which dates from 1918, into the residential component. Lichter said the floors were the right size to create a hallway lined with apartments. The building also incorporates elements that will allow the structure to become a mixed-use project in its own right. A white-columned former bank at one end of the building may serve as a restaurant. Facilities that once served plant workers can be repurposed into amenities for tenants and house businesses serving the community, from retailers to a 1,500-seat theater. Walk through the four floors of apartments, and there is no clue they were formerly office space. Carol Smith, IRG vice president, said the floors were “cubicles wall to wall,” so they gave IRG a blank slate with which to work. Inside the suites, the massive windows offer wide views of the city. There are 30 different designs of suites arranged in one-, two- and three-bedroom formats. The apartments, which opened in April, are 74% rented, Smith said, and one-bedrooms have leased faster than the larger, more expensive two- and three-bedroom units. If the project were being redesigned today, the developer would boost the number of one-bedrooms, she said.
A diverse mix However, when East End was in the planning stages, residents of the Goodyear Heights neighborhood worried about East End Residences becoming additional housing for University of Akron students. As a solution, IRG added many two- and three-bedrooms to the mix. Today, the building has a handful of students, according to Jacqueline Vari, East End property manager, but is primarily home to people working at nearby hospitals, businesses and Goodyear. “We wound up with a wide range of age groups and backgrounds,” she said, “with residents who are 20, and the oldest is 70.” She said the diversity of tenants has enriched her culinary experience; residents have shared with her everything from Middle Eastern tea cakes to Turkish tea. Among the tenants are Dannette Cardwell and her husband, Dr. Michael Cardwell, who moved in last summer from Bloomington, Ill., when he took a job nearby at Summa Health System. Dannette Card-
well said the couple has houses in other locations but wanted something easier to maintain than another single-family home. Her daughter found East End Residences for them on the Internet. “It’s new. And it’s convenient,” Caldwell said, and noted she likes the cleanliness of the fitness center — all 3,000 square feet of it. The couple wanted to be close to the hospital, especially for the winter, because her husband gets called out at night frequently in his work as a maternal and fetal specialist. The former Goodyear headquarters may also spawn additional housing. Lichter said portions of at least another two of five buildings in the complex may be converted to apartments. Smith said one of the buildings on the opposite side of East Market could accommodate housing on two upper floors and another building south of East Market could go residential. A key building across East Market is dedicated to office use because it has massive floors of 1.5 acres in size. Smith said floors of such size are desirable for large tenants who want to be on one floor. Similarly, she said, such floors are too large to efficiently repurpose as apartment suites. Long-term, Smith said, IRG hopes the complex can be catalytic in getting other former industrial buildings in the neighborhood converted to housing.
A plan for place-making Completing the menu at Goodyear Hall alone, however, will take some other property types besides multifamily. A second floor is being retained for office use. First-floor space in the building will be offered for retail use, such as a coffee shop. Plans call for the width of East Market to be reduced through the East End project to add more onstreet parking and create an environment friendlier to pedestrians and retailers. The former headquarters complex is sprawling — some 400 acres in all — so it also includes an 80-acre parcel that could house build-to-suite structures for additional companies. IRG’s long-term plan for placemaking suits the city plan for the area, said Samuel DeShazior, Akron deputy mayor for economic development. “East End lends itself to creative living spaces,” DeShazior said. “If you create a market for yourself (with housing), other things will occur, such as grocers and entertainment and services so people don’t have to leave the area on a daily basis.” When Vari started managing East End Residences three months ago, she worried about how she would meet the many residents who had already moved in. Her solution: She makes it a point to be near the entrances at the end of the day. Many of the residents work nearby, she said, so close they walk to and from work, including at Goodyear’s current headquarters.
At the East End Residencies at the former Goodyear complex, elements of the past remain, such as the rooftop Goodyear sign. The units, right, come in one-, two and three-bedroom layouts. A main lobby, below left, greets residents as they enter, and amenities such as a large gym, below right, and a 1,500-seat theater, bottom, are part of the complex. (SHANE WYNN PHOTOS)
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Wherever I go, I always talk about being from Akron. Without those five letters, I wouldn’t be who I am today. That’s why the LeBron James Family Foundation has partnered with The University of Akron to give everyone who graduates from our program the chance to get a full scholarship to attend UA. That’s our dream. Whatever your dream is, whatever your passion is, you can accomplish it. But it’s earned. Not given. Every day can’t be a bed of roses. You’re going to have ups and downs. Keep getting back up. At The University of Akron, you can be sure you’re not by yourself on this journey. Are you out there? Join us.
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AKRON ENTREPRENEURSHIP: Tobin Buckner
Achieving success with a startup is a team sport Tobin Buckner is JumpStart’s Akron entrepreneurial community manager and contributes a monthly blog about entrepreneurship in the region.
I have spent the majority of my life participating in athletics. One of my greatest joys has been learning about how I interact with and lead others to complete a particular task that requires mental and physical preparation and, ultimately, execution. As a youngster, I played it all, from tennis and volleyball to wrestling and soccer. I had a natural aptitude for athletics, so I enjoyed at least some success in most sports. But I found my true calling in football, the
game I believe to be the greatest team sport of them all. It’s not because the sport is so physically (and mentally) demanding, or a necessary rite of passage – or even because there is glory to be had. It’s because 11 individuals are asked to do several different jobs or tasks on any given play in order to achieve a desired outcome. Whether it’s scoring a touchdown or blocking a field goal, 11 individuals – with different skill sets and body types – are
asked to take their training and deliver the desired outcomes of their coaches. There is an intrinsic and direct correlation between football and entrepreneurship in that a team approach is often necessary for success. Mentors can be the difference between running in sand and running on concrete – they can get you to where you are going faster than you could alone. Peer networks can help galvanize ideas and help you to
Davey Tree launches worker scholarships
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“see the possible,” because as entrepreneurs, network members already have “traversed the tundra” or traveled through the wilderness in which you now find yourself stuck. And, like the 11 members of a football team, talented employees are the ultimate key to success in business. No matter how skilled you are as an individual, you will not win without others who are willing to help block and tackle. Look for the best talent possible – attorneys, accountants, salespeople and others that will represent your brand and your standard of excellence through everything they do. And, remember, raw talent is nothing without heart and desire. Character comes first; the rest is teachable. With the right support structure, you can stop worrying about doing every single job that needs to be done and focus on taking your own game to the next level to help your team win. “Your goal as a leader is really to design yourself out of a job – to build a team that’s so good they don’t need you,” said Jeff Hoffman, founding executive director of the Experiential Learning Center for Entrepreneurship & Civic Engagement at the University of Akron. “But that doesn’t mean you go home or retire. It means you’re free again. To dream. To envision. To plan the future of the company and steer the ship.” Remember, you cannot clap with just one hand. No one does this thing called entrepreneurship alone. Teams, strong teams, win the day.
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Expert tree care requires more than just knowing how to use a chain saw. That’s why Kent-based Davey Tree Expert Co. wants its employees to go to college to learn about environmental management – and it’s paying most of the cost of that education at Kent State University. “The Davey Foundation will pay 80 percent of the tuition cost each time an employee registers and is accepted into Kent State’s online program. Employees who continue working for Davey two years upon graduation qualify to receive the additional 20 percent of tuition reimbursement from the Foundation,” the company announced Dec. 16. As one of the oldest tree-care companies in the world, Davey knows a thing or two about how to care for trees. It worked with Kent to develop the university’s two-year associate degree program in environmental management in 2009. The program includes 34 credit hours of online classes through Kent State and 27 credit hours of documented on-the-job training. To complete the latter, Davey employees can participate in the company’s month-long Davey Institute of Tree Sciences. For Kent State, the arrangement aligns it with a major employer, along with the scholarship program. One of the region’s largest employers, Davey Tree employs more than 8,000 people in the U.S. and Canada.
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tice support, said the group needs often to update the list of doctors to whom other providers can refer patients and printed directories are out of date almost as soon as they are published. While getting the most current information, users can see photos of the physicians, learn what services they provide, verify that they are accepting new patients and access contact information. White said the ease of access alone has made the cost worthwhile. “Everyone is on their phones anyway, so it’s a great way to reach our members,” she said. Tim Bryan, vice president of marketing and communications and chief of staff at Malone University, became interested in Squawqr because he wanted a better way to reach parents, as emails and regular mail often get overlooked. Now, the app (maloneparents.squawqr.com) is the go-to place for parents to find campus news, schedules, care package options, social media links and more. “We fill it with content we are creating anyway and meeting parents’ communications needs at the same time,” Bryan says. The first app was such a success that Malone created another one that Bryan calls “even more exciting.” It is an overview of all the majors the university offers, with short stories highlighting what a Malone graduate is doing with each degree. The idea behind the app (malonemajors.squawqr.com) is that anyone discussing Malone with a prospective student, such as a coach, has accurate “talking points” about academics readily available. Malone has created several other apps with Squawqr. “They let everyone be on the same page at a cost that is much lower than many other marketing expenses we face,” Bryan said. Robin Doerschuk, founder of the Women’s Leadership Conference of Northeast Ohio, used a Squawqr app (www.wlcneo.com) to help keep the 330 attendees, 22 exhibitors and 12 speakers at her debut meeting in October informed about schedule changes, room assignments and activities. “Squawqr did what no website could,” she said. “I could make changes on it in seconds.” The app allowed participants to rate each session very quickly, greatly increasing the amount of feedback from the rates seen when people have to do it afterward with pen and paper, Doerschuk said.
Not only was the trial a success but it also offered a valuable lesson. Analytics showed that about 90% of the traffic that night came from mobile devices, but of that, 50% came via Wi-Fi, which typically means there are computers in the same locations. “The fact that people chose to use their mobile device instead of their computer was very interesting and shows that we were giving them information where and how they wanted to receive it,” Grabowski said. For now, Squawqr is a staff of two
— Kemmer and Grabowski — but it has authorized a number of resellers of the technology, including in New England, Cleveland, Columbus and Arizona. Grabowski expects that number to grow. “We expect to be hiring next year,” she said. Since January, the company has created about 125 apps and has many more in the queue. “We continue to add functionality and features, but most clients are pleased with the baseline features that we have now,” she said.
“I think it’s going to be an amazing year of growth for us in 2016. We have big plans, and we are talking to some very big players that also want to do mobile smart, and that’s what we’re attempting to do. We welcome folks who want to sell and who are interested in becoming developers for us.” Kemmer also is excited about Squawqr’s success but said it is a little overwhelming. “We have gotten eye-poppingly big,” he said. “We need to decide whether to pursue venture capital to help it expand even more.”
Sue Grabowski
Believe in a better you.
Test run A big recent success for Squawqr occurred in November on Election Night at the Stark County Board of Elections when it set out to do a “proof of concept” for sharing election results. The board typically releases results on a PDF on its website and has an “Interactive Results Page.” The plan was for Squawqr to be a third vehicle of information, but on election night, the server went down at the board of elections. Because the Squawqr app was not tied to that server, it became the only source available for real-time data.
SHANE WYNN
SQUAWKR
Get the personal attention you deserve from your health insurance partner. Contact your independent insurance agent or visit www.summacare.com.
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a ton going on in Summit County, but if we’re not telling that story, we’re missing an opportunity.” Mullet is now one of the people making sure that story gets told. She’s executive director of ArtsNow, an organization that started in July specifically because of the GAR/Knight report, and is aimed at addressing some of the shortcomings the report found. Initial funding for ArtsNow is coming from the GAR, Knight, Akron Community, Burton D. Morgan, and Mary S. and David C. Corbin foundations. One of Mullet’s first initiatives, launched in October, is already the talk of Art Town. Summit Live 365 (summitlive365.com) has quickly become a sort of Craigslist and Facebook of Arts-in-Akron. It’s a site where anyone can announce just about anything in terms of an arts event. “From a hip-hop artist to anything else – we have one guy who is making things out of (shipping) pallets. Anyone making anything can be on the site, and it’s completely free,” Mullet said. “As of yesterday, I think we had over 400 events!” And yes, she really is excited. The website is also a tool for ArtsNow’s larger effort – broadening the arts community by connecting more artists with each other and, more importantly, connecting residents with the arts scene as a whole. That sometimes means getting artists to become more broadly involved with other aspects of the community, including business groups, to broaden their audiences. That approach seems to work, too, said Benjamin Rexroad, who with partner Kyle Joza is behind the twoman theater troupe Wandering Aesthetics – which, of course, you can find on Summit Live 365. “I’m a member of the Young Professionals of Akron, and I just recently got accepted into the Torchbearers class of 2016. So I have business affiliations, and I’m one of the few artists really involved in these organizations,” Rexroad said. “So the business community has been supportive in terms of coming out to our events. In fact, sometimes more supportive than other artists. They’ve been very supportive about promoting what we do, encouraging people to come see us and helping us discover sources.”
An expanding arts scene Other aspects of the arts scene are opening up to more Akronites as well. The town’s vaunted and muchloved Akron Civic Theatre, for example, taps local acts and performers for about 85% of its programming, said executive director Howard Parr. It’s a trend the Civic started even before ArtsNow existed. Parr, who will soon be raising about $4 million to finish the 1929 theater’s restoration, said he sees a big resurgence of energy around the arts in Akron, and he’s glad. “What’s going on with ArtsNow is really a game-changer,” Parr said. “What has come out of this whole process and what ArtsNow is all about is — for the first time in the 20 years that I’ve been here — instead of what can the community do to support arts and culture, now it’s
The Akron Art Museum -- with its various spaces, including a performance area and atrium, and programs, such as Inside | Out, below right -- has seen a 20% rise in attendance in the past year. The museum also saw a bump in first-time visitors. (Contributed photos)
what can arts and culture do to support the community.” Even the big boys are in on the act. The Akron Art Museum took its art, or at least replicas of 30 of its best works, and installed them in various neighborhoods around the city in 2015, said museum executive director Mark Masuoka. The Inside | Out program worked well enough that this year the museum will up that number to 40. “Everyone deserves a quality art experience – everyone,” said Masuoka. “We’re going from six communities to eight communities and adding 10 new works.” Masuoka said he’s already seen the efforts pay off. The outside exhibits, along with “Free Thursdays” at the museum – thanks to a sponsorship from the Orrville-based J.M. Smucker Co. – already has resulted in a lot more people coming to the museum, according to Masuoka. “We’ve seen a rise in attendance at the museum – over 20% in one year. We’re seeing a huge rise in our audience, especially on Thursdays, of first-time visitors,” he said. “And I’m not talking about first time to Akron. I’m talking about it’s the first time they’ve ever been in any art museum.” Does it all mean the city will enjoy
economic success overall? Not likely because of the arts alone. But Masuoka said he certainly believes his museum plays a big role in making Akron a more attractive place for professionals, along with everyone else, to live. Parr said he knows that when the town’s big hospitals recruit doctors, they show them the Civic and the clouds wafting over the ceiling of its starlit main auditorium, along with other local arts attractions. Akron’s mayor-elect, Dan Horrigan, is also a believer – both in the positive impact of the arts on the city and new energy represented by ArtsNow and other efforts. “The ArtsNow effort is fantastic,” said Horrigan, who said the city provides the arts community with at least a million dollars a year in grants, performance and exhibit spaces, and other services. He said doing so is a good investment, because it helps improve the local quality of life and that helps attract and retain residents. “That’s low hanging fruit – those are easy things to support and get behind,” Horrigan said. “You want the arts to be in the neighborhoods and in the communities where they don’t get to experience it as much … it makes for a better community and a more well-rounded person.”