Cool Cleveland's CIO gets some answers, has more questions

The deadline for this year's Cleveland Executive Fellowship is less then a week away, but that's plenty of time for you to start working on your application. What? You haven't heard of the CEF? Well, until a few weeks ago, I hadn't either. But when a few of my friends suggested I apply for it, I decided to find out more. I contacted Hannah Fritzman, the Program Coordinator, who put me in touch with one of them—Eric Wobser.

George Nemeth: You're the first class, and how many other fellows were there?

Eric Wobser: There's eight total including myself.

George Nemeth: So there are seven other people. Hannah Fritzman sent me bios of everybody. She said, why don't you interview all eight of them? That would have been a lot of work for me and I wanted to get at least one done fairly soon so people could be familiar with the programs. I had a terrible time deciding! All the fellows are interesting people and they've done interesting work in the past year. I think the first thing I want to do is I want to get a bio. Could you give me a minute or two on who Eric is?

Eric Wobser: Absolutely. I grew up in Sandusky, I went to undergrad at Ohio University. I spent a year in Cleveland after OU and City Year, a broad Cleveland program, it's part of AmeriCorps, a service program. Then went to law school at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. I spent a summer with a law firm in Cleveland between my second and third year of law school, had a great time and accepted an offer to go back but then in the midst of my third year the fellowship opportunity presented itself so I went back to Jones Day and said is this something I can do? They were great about it, they postponed my offer and they gave me this year.

George Nemeth: So, in September you're going back to Jones Day?

Eric Wobser: Yes, I'm going back to Jones Day.

George Nemeth: Hannah has told me a little bit about what you guys have done and I'd be interested in hearing about your experience with the Mayor's transition team. Everybody worked on that, right?

Eric Wobser: Yes, we all did. Basically what we did is the Mayor put together this sort of list of community leaders for different departments. I, for example, was assigned to the economic development committee and they brought a number of people from diverse areas from Cleveland whether they be business leaders, civic leaders, and a few leaders from the faith community, and they put us in charge. I'm the staffer for that committee, we actually just wrapped up our recommendations to the Mayor's office but from there the process will go forth and it will probably take some time. That was an incredible experience, I had people like Dan Moore, Brian Hall—I mean just an incredible group. That's what the fellowship has been for me in particular is to get a chance to do real work with so many of the who's who of the Cleveland scene. Ronn Richard, in particular, has been incredibly candid and generous with his time.

George Nemeth: What were you doing? Were you, as far as the economic development, it sounds like you were gathering information?

Eric Wobser: Yeah I did a lot of research for the committee. Whatever the committee wanted.

George Nemeth: How many people did you talk to in general terms? Was it 100 people? 50 people? How long did you talk to them?

Eric Wobser: You mean for applicants for the position or just to getting a sense of...

George Nemeth: It sounds like you were talking to all these community leaders, right? If so, how long did you spend with them? What kind of things did you learn about economic development or where Cleveland is when it comes to job creation and things like that?

Eric Wobser: There were eight people assigned to our committee by the Mayor's transition team and so those would be the leaders, those eight people who were selected by the incoming administration. I worked with them to use their networks to talk to, to get a sense of what the priorities were. That was one of our first sort of things was let's figure out what we're looking for. There was a lot of sense of we need to build on our strengths, but that we need to get more entrepreneurial, we need to eliminate some of the red tape, and let's look at what the economic development department actually does now. Look at where there are strengths we can build on and look at where there are gaps that potentially we could address. So from there we came up with a job description, got that out there and then the resumes started coming in. A lot of what we did was actually not just counting on resumes coming in, but sort of going out and looking at different places where we should be looking for direction, both in and outside of Northeast Ohio.

I'm in the midst of doing my second project. We do three placements, we do a non-profit placement, a public sector placement, and then a private sector placement. In the end we pick our own two month placement where we'll find a partner that we can work up a proposal we'll give to the organization that we're going to work with at the end of that. We're not that far along yet but we're done with our non-profit, I was at Shore Bank Enterprise Group in the Glenville area just south of Bratenahl. I worked with Chris Warren, former economic director of the city of Cleveland, and Nan McIntyre who is their resource development director and it was an incredible experience.

George Nemeth: I'd like to talk about that and find out a little bit more about what you did and what it was like.

Eric Wobser: Are you familiar with ShoreBank and what they do?

George Nemeth: A little bit, but for our readers who aren't why don't you expand on that?

Eric Wobser: Sure! ShoreBank is a community-minded bank, they work from the triple bottom line standpoint of they want all of their investments to make a profit but also to be socially and environmentally conscious as well. What they do is they've targeted specific neighborhoods, predominantly on the east side of Cleveland, that they're targeting for investment. The enterprise group is the non-profit arm of that for-profit bank, and Chris is the president of that group and, like I said, is the resource development director. I think that some of what they're doing is providing financing for other business that want to come to these neighborhoods or entrepreneurs who live in these neighborhoods. Sometimes folks are not quite bankable with some of the larger institutions and that's when they can come in and provide some of that gap financing and make projects that otherwise wouldn't work, work. Chris in particular was fantastic because he lives over in the Detroit Shoreway area, I guess it would be, and I live here in Ohio City and I don't have a car. Actually my wife and I share one car and she does the reverse commute to Solon so I was without a car and 105th and St. Clair is where ShoreBank's enterprise center is. He picked me up here at Talkie's every day so I had 15 minutes with him every morning and in that 15 minutes between here and Glenville I had so many great conversations, I learned so much from him. That's a big part of any program is not only do you get to work on a lot of projects, but you get real significant access to some of these people who you may not otherwise have. Back to the actual projects that I worked on, they have a huge facility—I want to say it's close to 200,000 square feet. It's not quite a business incubator but it's space that they provide to a lot of people that they're actually lending to. It's a very diverse space—an old converted factory, it's gorgeous, that they have got people doing some light manufacturing in there, they've got non-profits in there, they've got a whole wing that are just artists in there, and they provide this space to them at a very affordable cost. What they had was a really detailed lease agreement that was way too big and a little too sophisticated for a lot of people that they're putting in that space. With my legal background, Chris wanted me to get down to something that's 10 pages long that protects their rights but at the same time isn't going to intimidate people and that they're actually going to sit down and read it rather than looking at it and going oh my God, I'm never going to read this and set it down. That was one project, I also helped Nan put together a proposal to create a cluster for construction workers. Construction has been identified as a sector where it's accessible for people in those targeted east-side neighborhoods to grow. It's going to grow region-wide and they want to make sure that people in Cleveland, particularly underrepresented minorities who have been shut out of that process, will have an opportunity to become a part of it, so I worked on setting up that proposal with her and then tons of small things that came up along the way over the three months I was there.

George Nemeth: Do you know what you're going to be working on next because you've done your public sector ...

Eric Wobser: Actually, no, that was something we did in addition to the placements. I'm actually placed with the chief of staff at City Hall right now, Ken Silliman. So I go from Chris Warren and Nan McIntyre, to the chief of staff of the city who's been equally fantastic. I'm getting to spend a good amount of time with him and he's asked for my opinion and it's a super exciting place to work, particularly right now when we're getting ready, the new administration is in place... It's been great to be there!

George Nemeth: Do you have any thoughts on the organization that you get to pick to work with?

Eric Wobser: Yeah, the first placement I didn't. That was sort of what came in the first week and we're told this is where you're going, but I think based on our interests and based on Lynne Algrant, who is the head of our program, her getting to know us, us letting her know what our interests are, was very open in making the second and then hopefully with the third placement as well, trying to find a good match. As far as I know everybody that made a suggestion, I'd like to be here, she does her best to accommodate them.

George Nemeth: That's great. It was interesting because when I asked Hannah for input on who I should interview she said that she really liked your approach to Cleveland. You're excited about the things that are going on in the city, but yet you're not Polly Ann-ish and you're not rah rah, you've got a realistic outlook on the things that are good in Cleveland and the things that are bad. So talk about that a little bit and when you talk about it give me a little bit more background because you're not a Clevelander, right? You grew up in Sandusky, did you come to Cleveland when you were a kid? Begin there and then get into that whole good and bad thing about Cleveland.

Eric Wobser: Sure, I think my love affair with Cleveland did begin at a young age and I guess I'm a testament to the fact that marketing does work. I remember growing up in Sandusky and the sports teams that we were rooting for were always Cleveland. You came to Tower City so you could go Christmas shopping. I was remembering the come back city when I was 14, 15 years old—that was the message that was coming out of Cleveland. I had a great feeling about Cleveland and when I went away to school and started looking at a city I could go to after graduating, Cleveland, I think in a large part because of those connections I made as a child, was the first place I thought as opposed to Columbus or somewhere else in the Midwest or wherever. I came to Cleveland for that year and I think it's incredible. I don't know how much you know about City Year, but during that year that I was here I was making about $175 a week. I had a few roommates but I got by fine on $175 a week here. I think that that is an incredible thing about Cleveland—it's affordability. The other great thing about Cleveland, which is why I think that Cleveland is such a special place, is that not only is it affordable but it is the assets that it has and the cultural, recreational, it has a lot of those big city amenities, things that you can't get. Des Moines may be a lot more affordable than Cleveland and New York obviously is going to have a lot more going on, but I don't think there is a place that provides the medium between those two in a better way than Cleveland does. If you look at something like University Circle and obviously this is what you always hear from people who see the city but it's real. We have the orchestra, the art museums that are some of the best in the world, you look at the fact that we have a great lake sitting on downtown, a national park 15 miles south and this incredible river valley that's connecting the two and the connections are going to get better with things like the Towpath Trail, the scenic railroad. I live right here in Market Square and the quality of life that I have here for the price that I have—it is incredible. I walk downstairs to get coffee to drink, to go to a restaurant, to shop, to get a video, to get my hair cut right over there. I don't have to walk more than a half an hour to do any of it or half a mile to do any of that stuff. My friends from law school, they've sort of spread out to these huge cities like New York, Chicago, L.A., D.C., I brought them in over the summer and I rent an apartment in that building right there and I've got...

George Nemeth: And that's the Fries & Schuele building?

Eric Wobser: Fries & Schuele building. I have a one bedroom apartment for about 1/3 of what they pay for their one bedroom and a two bedroom apartment in those cities. I've got a painter in and view downtown, I've got 13 foot ceilings, and I literally pay 1/3 of what they're paying so I think when you look at the resources that are here that is why Cleveland has so much potential. It's so easy to get around, the traffic is non-existent, in fact it's something I was working on before, a set of areas over one million people metropolitan areas, Clevelanders spend the least amount of time in congested traffic in the country. That's an asset, that's what we have, too often we're trying to follow the trends that are being established in these other cities, but we've got this great infrastructure and these great resources to build off. We can give you so much more quality of life than you can find in those other places but we can give you quality of life in other areas that they can't. You're not going to spend time and stuff in traffic, you can afford the things you want to do, so that's what I love about it. I think the problems, I am realistic about it, are things like when I read in the Plain Dealer today, our education in this state is abysmal. We have the best resource for creating brain gain or even retaining the minds we have—our education system. We're not grasping that, so we've got to do a much better job of getting K-12 kids educated. I think in Northeast Ohio in particular, a big part of that problem is the mindset that for generations we've had—if you're willing to work hard you don't need to be educated to be in the middle class. That is no longer the case, and we're having a hard time with adjusting, and if you look to the places where, you hear so many people talk about what it's going to take to compete in the knowledge economy.

Recreation-wise, like I said, we've got the national park, we've got the lake, we're trying to find better connections to those so that Clevelanders can use those on an everyday basis. Cultural wise I don't think there is a midsize city in the country that could really compete with us. The problem is that we're undereducated compared to places like Austin, Seattle, and if you fix that problem, if we create that knowledge infrastructure, I think the sky is the limit, particularly if you look at the cost of living on the east and west coast, people are going to have to look elsewhere. They're going to look to smaller midsize cities, I really think that, and I really think that midsize cities are where it's at as far as quality of life because, like I said, you provide that combination of everyday quality of life and with the excitement that goes along with being in a metropolitan area, so I think that in 20 years we're going to see midsize cities like Cleveland, like Columbus, and even outside of the Midwest, Charlotte, are really going to be the ones who are competing for people that are going to be forced by choice to flee the coasts. Are we going to be ready? Are we going to leverage our assets in the best way to make that happen?

George Nemeth: Let's talk specifically about Ohio City and the Market Square area for a minute. I'd like you to apply that sort of thinking to your neighborhood because I lived in Ohio City for a while and it's kind of typical of a lot of Cleveland neighborhoods, there's some amenities and there's also some things you would probably want to change like what's going on in Moda or other things. Talk about Ohio City for a little bit.

Eric Wobser: Well, it's a reflection of living in a city is that there are going to be, particularly in Cleveland where we struggle, we have a struggle in regional economy, and you're going to have poverty and the trend is that you're going to find poverty nation-wide in the center city. We're in Cleveland, we're a mile outside of the downtown, we're in the center city. There are things like Moda where shots were fired I think it was last summer, there are things - I think that this is what, this is part of our challenge of what we have to do to make Cleveland the place that it needs to be for people who, not only within the region that choose to live outside the city, but for the aspect of convincing the people outside of this region that Cleveland is a great place to be, we have to work to make Cleveland great for all Clevelanders, not just to present a front that this is a great place to come in on a Friday night or that we're going to wall you off from the rest of the community so that you don't have to see the poverty and you can live in your trendy little neighborhood. Ohio City is an incredible mix of exactly what you said, Market Square in particular with the bus lines running by here, you have people living in high priced condos that walk by, every day on their way to the West Side Market, homeless people that hang out in Market Square. If we're doing our job of making Cleveland a place that offers a great quality of life to all Clevelanders, and that includes doing community and economic development in such a way that it provides affordable housing, provides access to services for all Clevelanders, not just for the desirables that we're trying to attract back in the city, then you're going to see less of the problems with things like the Moda because people are going to have jobs and they're going to be in school and learning, so there's going to be less of a chance of, or, this is a long-term thing and this is something hard to clean up, but it just goes along with what being in a city is.

George Nemeth: It is very much the urban experience.

Eric Wobser: Exactly.

George Nemeth: This is for A & Q with G, I want to give you the opportunity to ask questions of Cool Cleveland readers. People who are reading this interview, if you wanted them to think about certain things and respond to certain things, what would you ask Cool Cleveland readers?

Eric Wobser: My big thing is the branding of Cleveland to the outside world is terrible, with some of the... I don't know how that came to be, well, obviously I know how that came to be. We caught our river on fire, we're a segregated city, we have a lot of problems, but if you look at things, and I'm sure you're familiar with that report that said Cleveland and Pittsburgh are the two most livable cities in the country or whatever, if you look at what we have to offer, why aren't we doing a better job of selling ourselves to not only people outside of the region but even within our region? That's one question, the second question would be how do we best leverage our assets in such a way as to, if we're going to have to do this ourselves without the help of Fortune 500 companies moving in from other regions, how can we best leverage the assets that we have in a way to improve our region? I think that's a big thing is there aren't a whole lot of regions out there that are thriving with the center city, you can't give up on your center city. How do we, you hear a lot of times people say things like shuffling around the furniture on the Titanic when Cleveland takes from the suburb or vice versa, the suburb taking from Cleveland or suburb taking from suburb, but I'm of the opinion that while in most cases that's true, I think that we need to do a better job of projecting Cleveland as the jewel of the region and we need to make sure that Cleveland's thriving because if Cleveland's thriving then the region will thrive. How do we do that? Or if you disagree with that, how do you best propose that we do leverage those assets?

George Nemeth: Great, thank you Eric.

Eric Wobser: Thank you George.

Now, it my turn. If you could take a year "off", be paid $40K, work on several projects that would make Cleveland a better city, would you? If your answer is yes, click here to apply.

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