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Upfront
CSU WOLSTEIN CENTER TO SERVE AS FEMA MASS VACCINATION SITE
THE WHITE HOUSE, ALONG WITH
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state and local officials, announced Friday that the Cleveland State University Wolstein Center will be among the large venues nationwide serving as mass vaccination sites operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
When it opens on St. Patrick’s Day, it is expected to administer as many as 6,000 vaccine shots per day, the Biden administration said.
The site was recommended by Ohio officials and selected by FEMA, in part, for its proximity to underserved populations and senior citizens. The new vaccine doses will be in addition to those at other Ohio vaccine distribution centers.
In a press release Friday morning, Gov. Mike DeWine thanked FEMA and said that, with the supply of vaccines increasing, now is the perfect time to launch a mass vaccination site of this kind. He referred to the Wolstein site as a “long-term clinic” and said it would vaccinate more Ohioans than any other site to date, “particularly those in Ohio’s most vulnerable populations.”
The site will operate seven days per week and will be distributing the Pfizer vaccine to all eligible Ohioans for three weeks. Those who receive shots will then be able to get their second shot in the ensuing weeks. Those with transportation challenges can get free RTA passes or subsidized ride share services to the Wolstein Center by calling 2-1-1.
Mayor Frank Jackson, County Executive Armond Budish and CSU President Harlan Sands all thanked Gov. Mike DeWine and FEMA in prepared statements. Sands called the Wolstein site “mission-central” to CSU. The Feds have deployed 25 personnel to assist Ohio with vaccination efforts statewide.
With the Wolstein Center and other additions, there will be at least 18 FEMA-backed mass vaccination sites around the country. Gov. Mike DeWine said that the Wolstein site would be one of 15 mass vaccination sites in the state of Ohio.
Ohio has now entered phase 1C and phase 2 in its vaccination plan, opening availability for Ohioans over the age of 60, those with qualifying health issues, and those who work in certain professions such as law enforcement or in funeral homes. About 940,000 residents are now newly eligible to receive the vaccine.
-Vince Grzegorek
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CMHA Cop Shot Black Teen in the Back, Autopsy Kept Secret for Months
An autopsy released last week revealed that Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA) officer James Griffiths fatally shot 19-yearold Arthur Keith in the back on Nov. 13, 2020 outside the King Kennedy public housing complex in Central.
The autopsy was completed on Dec. 8 but wasn’t released to attorneys representing Keith’s family until last week. For months, requests by attorneys and the media for the autopsy and additional materials were denied. CMHA and the City of Cleveland passed the buck back and forth, refusing to release information beyond the initial police narrative. They have yet to release bodycam footage.
But the autopsy, completed by the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner, corroborates witness statements in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Residents said that Keith, who had been sleeping in a van, was running from the CMHA cop.
The official narrative said that CMHA officers were responding to someone waving a gun and that Keith himself pointed a gun at them before they shot him. They neglected to mention that they shot him in the back.
Keith is former Boys & Girls Club member. An impassioned joint statement from the Boys & Girls Club and the Cleveland Peacemakers Alliance Friday called for additional transparency, accountability and actual solutions to police violence in the wake of Keith’s slaying.
“We need the video from that tragic day,” the statement read. “We need real leadership. We need to have a real assessment, analysis and subsequent plan of action that brings about the change that has been sought for decades. How long do our communities have to wait? We cannot do this solely through grass-roots community efforts and we cannot leave a problem at the feet of our communities that is not their responsibility to solve.” -Sam Allard
DeWine Implores Ohioans to Keep Wearing Masks, Sets Target for Re-Opening
On the one-year anniversary of Ohio’s war with the novel coronaviurs, Gov. Mike DeWine appeared for a statewide press conference and begged Ohioans to continue wearing masks and to get the vaccine as soon as they are able to do so.
Alternating between wartime and distance running analogies, DeWine said that victory was just around the corner. He mourned those who have died this year, and the jobs and businesses that have been lost, but tried to highlight Ohio’s grit and compassion in its handling of the pandemic.
Under advisement from state health officials, DeWine even announced a goal. He said that once the state could sustain 50 cases per
100,000 people for two weeks, all statewide health orders would be lifted.
The goal was well within reach, according to the governor. As of yesterday, Ohio stood at 179 cases per 100,000, down from 445 per 100,000 one month ago and 731 per 100,000 on Dec. 3.
DeWine characterized the current moment as the home stretch. “These are the last few miles of what has been a grueling marathon,” he said. And he promised that if Ohioans dig even deeper by continuing to wear masks and getting the vaccine, normalcy will soon be restored. He painted a picture of a spring with proms and graduation ceremonies and a summer with fairs, festivals, and baseball. The more people who get vaccinated, the higher the capacity will be at event venues, he noted.
“Our way back [to normal] is by continuing forward,” he said.
DeWine’s message stands in contrast to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who last week lifted the state’s mask mandate and ordered that capacity limits at all businesses be restored to 100%.
Currently, more than 1.8 million Ohioans have been vaccinated. DeWine said that 450,000 doses arrived in the state last week, more than any week to date, and that vaccine sites had been set up at 1,200 locations.
“We are now on the offense,” he said, arguing that Ohio’s “most efficient, most effective, and most powerful” weapon was the vaccine. Masks, in his language, were “battletested tools” that have been shown repeatedly to work.
“I can’t tell you when we’ll be able to declare victory,” he said, “but what we do know is: we’re close.”
-Sam Allard
Young Lefty Stefan Knaack Running for City Council in “Forgotten” Ward 11
At 23 years old, Stefan Knaack is far and away the youngest candidate for Cleveland City Council in 2021. The recent Cleveland State University alum and diehard Cleveland sports fan has announced his candidacy in Ward 11, a west side ward that includes the eastern sliver of Jefferson, the western sliver of Cudell and the residential streets off of West Boulevard.
“It also has this weird section [North of Madison]” Knaack told Scene in a recent phone interview, “that was pretty much just created to include [former councilwoman] Dona Brady’s house.”
Knaack currently works as a delivery driver for Jimmy John’s and said his campaign is about elevating residents living on the margins and “forgotten” communities like Ward 11.
“Like a lot of people, I’m disillusioned with the way politics works in Cleveland,” he said. “There’s very much an ‘in-crowd,’ both in terms of politicians and neighborhoods. Ward 11 is not one of them.”
Knaack is not a lifelong resident of the ward. As the child of divorced parents, he spent his youth in a number of western suburbs and graduated from Brookside High School in Sheffield Lake. He went on to study political science and sociology at CSU, where he was active in a number of left-wing student political organizations and with the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign of 2016. He moved to Ward 11 in 2018 with four roommates, to save money on rent.
“I’m running for council because our government leaves too many people behind,” he said. “People have been abandoned for so long that they aren’t even interested in participating any more. My campaign is about fighting for them.”
Knaack told Scene that he’s also explicitly interested in challenging what he views as “political dynasties” in Cleveland, perpetuated by council’s appointment process.
“Nothing against [current councilman] Brian Mooney, but he’s a continuation of the Dona Brady dynasty that’s been in Ward 11 for decades. What has that got us?” He asked. “Not very much.”
Longtime councilwoman Dona Brady appointed Mooney in early 2020. She was reportedly so intent on preserving his (and by extension, her) control in the ward that when former city council president Martin Sweeney threatened to launch a campaign there, though he lived in Ward 16, Brady and her husband Dan helped orchestrate Sweeney’s election to Cuyahoga County Council last month, replacing the outgoing Dan Brady.
Knaack recognized the long odds in taking on political forces such as these. Furthermore, he acknowledged his lack of legislative and professional experience — “I mean Mooney’s a lawyer, I’m not,”— but said he would offer a different perspective for residents who are interested in actual representation.
“The job is to be a representative, right?” Knaack said. “Well, I want to represent them. I’m a renter, just like 63 percent of Ward 11, and I’ve had to deal with many of the same struggles they have. I know how hard it is to have to decide between paying rent or putting food in your stomach.”
As for specific ward projects, Knaack said he’d like to gather more input from residents. But he knows firsthand that they complain about the condition of roads and the regularity of snow plowing relative to adjacent wards. He also said he’d like to use discretionary funds to establish a ward office that he would use as his home base, and which he said would help promote resident engagement and accessibility.
As with other candidates, the pandemic has complicated traditional campaign activities, but Knaack said he still intends to do direct voter outreach and has a small group of committed volunteers to help knock on doors. He is raising funds through ActBlue.
“City council needs youth and a surge of new ideas in every ward,” he said. “Cleveland deserves better.”
-Sam Allard
Who Is “Dick Knoth” and Why Is He Running for Mayor of Cleveland?
Who is Dick Knoth?
Dick Knoth is a partner at the law firm of Baker-Hostetler. Dick Knoth is a father of three and a former board chairman at a number of prominent local organizations. Dick Knoth has had, by his own admission, a very good life. And Dick Knoth would now like to run for Mayor of Cleveland.
Dick Knoth sat for a virtual conversation with the City Club of Cleveland’s Dan Moulthrop late last month as part of an ongoing series featuring prospective mayoral candidates. He has not officially declared his candidacy, but is expected to do so in the coming months.
In a Q&A that covered what is now familiar territory, Moulthrop invited Dick Knoth to weigh in on topics that are likely to be central to this year’s campaign: public safety, economic development, social justice, etc.
Dick Knoth billed himself generally as a skilled and experienced private sector leader with the know-how to turn Cleveland around. Plus, all the partners at Baker-Hostetler are expected to be civically engaged, Dick Knoth said. Running for Mayor was not only the culmination of his personal 38-year career and the least he could do after a life of good fortune; it accorded with the desired public image of his firm.
“I owe it to the city,” Dick Knoth said, when Moulthrop asked why he would seek the ‘toughest job’ in town at this juncture in his life. “We raised an unbelievable family. We’ve been gifted on a lot of fronts. This is not a stepping stone to another position for me. I have a lot to give back.”
Dick Knoth’s beneficent ideas ranged from the sensible, (close Burke Lakefront Airport), to the misguided, (close Burke Lakefront Airport as a top-line antipoverty measure), to the utterly disqualifying, (explore an “Uber model” for public transit). After prodding from Moulthrop, Dick Knoth came around to saying that he supported a $15 minimum wage. His grandest proposal, however, was turning over Hopkins International Airport to a new regional authority and pursuing dramatic upgrades there in order to give visitors a better first impression of the city, a position certain to turn the heads of Chris Quinn and the PD/cleveland.com editorial board. Dick Knoth said he would be the only candidate who dared to make such a change at Hopkins, because it would mean surrendering city control. But he said doing so was in keeping with his prerogative to be innovative.
Like other candidates, Dick Knoth criticized the stagnation and lack of transparency at City Hall. Among other things, he said that if he had been Mayor during the #137shots incident, he would have made immediate top-down changes in the police department. He said he’d be unafraid to make key personnel changes in virtually every city department, if necessary. -Sam Allard
Closed Since 2018, Beloved Dive Venue Pat’s in the Flats Has Now Been Sold
It was a bittersweet farewell for Patricia Hanych as she handed over the keys to legendary live music venue, Pat’s in the Flats, last week, just days before her 81st birthday. Hanych closed up shop and decided to put the building up for sale a couple of years ago due to health reasons. The business had been in her family since her father, William Hanych, purchased it in 1945.
It operated first as Pickles before a name change to Anne’s Lunch in 1951, after Hanych’s mother. Hanych worked there since she was in high school with a brief hiatus when she went to Ohio State University.
In the beginning, the business was a full-service restaurant and bar
tending to the needs of workers at the local incinerator plant and other area industrial workers. Haynch has many treasured memories over the decades from milestones large and small.
On her 21st birthday, “I was down there and the guys that were working at the sewer department brought me cake and then my aunt and uncle came down at lunch time and brought me another cake and then after work that night, there were some more cakes. So that was a busy day, not to mention all the drinks that were involved in-between all those cakes.”
Not all the memories are happy though.
It was a dark day in January of 1969 when her brother William, named after their father, was shot and killed in one of the three hold-ups at the venue over the years. Her father took her mother to Florida to get her out of her “funk,” as Pat describes it, before her father passed away from a heart attack. Pat thinks the grief of the death of her brother was partly to blame for her father’s demise.
“It made me mad about how this had happened to my family. My mother wanted to sell right away as soon as my dad died,” explains Pat. “I said give me five years, I think I deserve that much. So she said okay. We were doing alright, so I said give me another five years.”
Fast forward to 1987 when a local act called Pat’s Hot Knights needed a place to play. Pat allowed them to play there, and before long more bands got wind of the bar being a place for original live music. Thus began the metamorphosis from Anne’s, simply a blue-collar restaurant and shot-and-beer joint, to one of the most fabled underground music venues in Cleveland history, including hosting the White Stripes for one of their first shows outside of their hometown of Detroit.
Among her favorite local bands over the years, she lists the mid2000s Cleveland power pop-darlings Machine Go Boom, because she said she was able to sing along to their songs.
“Pat’s in the Flats was a place I could seek refuge from the boring nightlife and see genuine music played live,” says Michael Baranick, Machine Go Boom’s principal songwriter. “I remember seeing The White Stripes opening a show there when they were still figuring themselves out — the headliner (The Hentchmen) were much better that night. Over the years of playing in bands I was lucky enough to form a bond with Pat. She was always the sweetest person to me and sometimes I wished she was my aunt or something. I’ll always hold that club, and Pat near and dear to my heart.”
New owner Aaron Westerburg says he’s uncertain of the plans for the building, which he closed on for a mere $60,000. Westerburg was born and raised in Cleveland and now lives in Hudson with his wife and kids. He realizes the rich history of the building and is open to investment opportunities or concepts for the property.
“I definitely want to bring this thing back to something that people will enjoy and use in the future for many years to come,” says Westerburg. -Shawn Mishak
Addressing Faculty, Cleveland State University Leadership Admits It Ignored Process in Hiring Douglas Dykes, Defends Decision
Addressing faculty senate members in a virtual meeting last week, Cleveland State University leadership admitted its hiring of Douglas Dykes to a senior VP HR position fell outside of its normal process but defended the decision, saying Dykes was the ideal candidate.
The remarks came after a series of stories by Cleveland.com which revealed that CSU hired Dykes, who at the time was still on probation after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge related
to the ongoing public corruption investigation into Cuyahoga County, despite other candidates being rated as most-qualified and despite the fact he applied just about a year after the university’s application window had closed. CSU’s former chief of HR had taken Dykes’ former job at the county, adding to the speculation of something untoward at work.
In last week’s meeting, Jeanell Hughes, the university’s Vice President of Administration and Chief of Staff, laid out the timeline of the hire.
It started in Oct. 2018, she said, and the search set out because “there was an opportunity to add some additional skill-sets, to transition HR from a reactive and transactional department to a more strategic and consultative organization.”
Candidates were slow to apply, and so Hughes sought out opinions from colleagues, seeking candidates both in and out of state. She built her own shortlist, which included Dykes and two others, none of whom had applied. The position closed in Feb. of last year and Hughes was dissatisfied with the pool.
CSU needed “someone who had worked at a senior level and had experience with higher education, or the public sector,” someone who had experience with the Ohio Retirement Plan and telemanagement.
Dykes had those, she said. She reached out to him and the two others, but again none of them applied.
Then Covid hit and the decision was made not to hire for the position in the midst of the early pandemic. Once, in later summer, CSU decided to go forward, Dykes was again encouraged to submit his application.
“I should have taken the time to repost it and reopen it,” Hughes told the faculty senate. “Instead, I sought to get my shortlist interested, and that’s how it happened. There was no conversation with anyone at the county. I don’t know anyone at the county. But what I do know is that I am pained by the damage of my decision, in my haste to get the right person, into helping HR get to the right place. I made a decision that’s had detrimental effects on the reputation of what you all do. That said, Douglas is the right person, the right partner to achieve our HR vision.”
Cleveland State University president Harlan Sands, who previously addressed the news coverage in a university-wide email and blamed hard application deadlines for the school’s inability to attract talent, again defended the decision, though with less regret than Hughes expressed.
“We believe we hired the person with the right skills,” Sands said. “We never said he was the only qualified candidate, just the right one. There was no quid pro quo with the county. That kind of conjecture is very troubling to us at Cleveland State.”
Attentive readers will remember this isn’t the first time CSU has dealt with irregular processes for hiring top-level positions. As Scene reported in 2018, the search firm employed by CSU to find a replacement for then-president Ronald Berkman likely violated its contract terms. The person hired at the end of that process? Harlan Sands.
-Vince Grzegorek
DIGIT WIDGET
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Number of police chases in East Cleveland over the first 62 days of 2021, on pace for a record year. The woebegone suburb logged 192 total chases in 2020.
1
The Cedar Lee’s ranking, by box office gross, among theaters in the country to open the Russo Brothers’ film Cherry on Feb. 26. The film, which is reviewed later in this issue, debuts on AppleTV+ Friday.
198,000
Square feet of proposed new Greater Cleveland Food Bank facility on Coit Road between Collinwood and Glenville. Construction on the massive new structure could begin as early as next month, with plans to open in 2022.
7,500+
Athletes expected to travel to Cleveland for the 2024 International Masters Games (an Olympics-style event for athletes over 30). The Greater Cleveland Sports Commission announced that Cleveland would host the 2024 event at its awards gala last week.make more than 300 times their media employees.
