CRAINSCLEVELAND.COM I JULY 1, 2024
Surviving drive-in theaters grapple with tight margins, changing times By Jeremy Nobile
Cooperative Theatres, his movie booking and buying company, there’s a good chance he’s at one of his two Northeast Ohio drivein theaters reviewing the books, performing maintenance or helping with concessions. See THEATERS on Page 16
“Every year we go into, we’re wondering, can we make it this year?” — Tim Sherman, president and third-generation owner of the Aut-O-Rama Twin Drive-In located in North Ridgeville (pictured)
AUT-O-RAMA TWIN DRIVE-IN
Nestled along the Kent and Ravenna border and surrounded by lush green trees is the Midway Twin Drive-In Theater, a fading slice of Americana that helps give John Knepp purpose. “It’s just a business, but it’s a fam-
ily business,” said Knepp, a lifelong cinephile who has run this theater for decades. “And it’s without a doubt a fun business.” Knepp considers himself semiretired, but a passion for what he does means he isn’t sitting still for long. If he’s not working at
Office sublease market is coming back down
City Hall ransomware attack serves as lesson
After pandemic swell, amount of available space has stabilized
What businesses can learn about cybersecurity, staying safe
By Stan Bullard
By Kim Palmer
The big run-up in the volume of Cleveland-Akron office space offered for sublease during the pandemic has dropped back to pre-pandemic levels. “A year ago, the amount of sublease space in Northeast Ohio hit a million square feet,” said Steve Ross, a CBRE Cleveland vice president and office specialist. “It’s 500,000 square feet now. That’s pretty impactful. And it is good news for the office market.” Since subleases are a typical fixture of the office market, Ross said in a phone interview, it’s meaningful to note that the sublease figure was just 400,000 square feet at the end of April 2020. That was before COVID-19 began rewriting the fundamentals of the office market, temporarily for most — but permanently for some.
Subleases swelled as a potential pandemic panacea. Company managers suddenly found themselves looking at vast amounts of empty or unused costly office space. The popularity of working from home posed a potential long-term challenge to their continued use. Subleasing excess or unneeded space at a discount of 30% to 50% below the company’s rent offered a meaningful way to rapidly reduce costs rather than wait years for existing leases to expire. Four years later, the market is starting to revert back to its pre-pandemic state. Several factors are cited for the decline in sublease listings, but the most common cited by Ross and others is the passage of time. Generally, companies want at least two years — and typically four years — of See MARKET on Page 17
VOL. 45, NO. 25 l COPYRIGHT 2024 CRAIN COMMUNICATIONS INC. l ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
City Hall was set to begin a slow return on June 20 when offices re-opened midday after a “cyber incident” crippled the city’s nonessential functions for almost two weeks. Cleveland isn’t alone. In May, both Wichita, Kansas, and Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, experienced similar attacks. And last spring, the city of Dallas, Texas, was also attacked — and wound up paying the ransom. As the city spins back up to full speed, there are still a lot of questions that remain. But there’s also plenty we can learn.
Why Cleveland? The short answer is, most likely, because it’s there. Cleveland is part of a trend of public sector organizations hit
with a ransomware attack, like Wichita and Hamilton. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in partnership with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, even issued an advisory about these dangers at the beginning of the year. Fortunately for Cleveland, city public safety and public utility services were able to function for the most part while data-driven city offices and departments were forced to close. But if the goal was not to cripple the city and create chaos for personal or political reasons, then why were the city’s systems attacked in the first place? “Obviously, there’s a lot going on in the world right now and there is always some activism-type hacking going on and when it’s not about that, often See ATTACK on Page 17
SMALL BUSINESS Ohio’s lack of affordable child care hurts small businesses, surveys find.
REAL ESTATE Marvelous $2.6 million property in Shaker Heights holds a piece of Cleveland history.
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