Who Let The Vultures In? Woof, Woof

By Roldo Bartimole

Back in the late 1980s when his dad, Dick Jacobs, was taking millions in subsidies thanks to George and George, I learned that Jeff wanted to take over Lakeview Terrace, a public housing project overlooking Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River. It fit his Flats plans.

I called one of his aides, James Rusnov, and asked about Jacobs’s interest in the property to expand his Flats developments. Yes, I was told.

A minute later I called Jeff Jacobs. Ah, he denied it.

“We’re neighbors,” Jacobs, the vulture, said coyly.

Nothing’s going on “officially or unofficially,” said Jacobs. A lie.

Lakeview Terrace is a low income housing project was once called “one of the best public housing projects in the country” and “a milestone in American architecture.” Probably not anymore. But strategically located and “notable” for its adaptation of site, according to Eric Johannesen’s “Cleveland architecture - 1876-1976.”

It sits on a sloping area between Lake Erie and the Detroit-Superior

bridge to downtown.

It was, as I reported, a stone’s throw from the Flats where Jeff Jacobs had been developing nightclubs and planned a hotel (familiar?) and other recreational facilities (familiar?)

As I said then, “It’s prime land and sitting on it are poor people. What a shame.”

But what can one expect from the grasping DNA of the Jacobses.

As I wrote back in 1988, Jacobs likely believed he had a “leg up” on the deal. He had friends in convention places.

“The law firm of Jim Carney, named by Forbes to the Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA), represents daddy Jacobs in legal matters pertaining to the Galleria. CMHA controls Lakeview. And when the city leased two prime lots downtown to Daddy Jacobs, he then chose System Parking to operate the lots for parking with Systems represented by Forbes’s law firm on some matters. Carney and Forbes also are business partners,” I wrote in Point of View, my newsletter. It’s Vol. 20, No. 11 at the library if you want the whole disgusting article.

See how the links go. “Friends” in corruption of public decisions.

There’s so much to say.

Of course, the plan suggests that the Jacobs’s casino (let’s not be coy about in whose interest it is) will be on property proposed for the Med Mart & Convention Center.

That means on public land.

Already it has been scheduled for tax exemption. What, ask a Jacobs to pay property taxes? Are you mad?

The Pee Dee quotes Jacobs as this humorous guy thinking about the city and its people. Honesty in the Pee Dee would be like sinfulness in heaven.

Here’s the Pee Dee: “’A dollar-a-year gaming czar. How’s that?’ a laughing Jacobs asked, adding that he could personally introduce local leaders to gambling company executive who would love an opportunity to develop an Ohio casino with little nearby competition.”

And, “I have no economic agenda here.”

“I have an interest in continuing what I have been doing for downtown Cleveland for 25 years and that is to help make it a better place,” the Pee Dee quotes Jacobs saying. Oh, my. Isn’t that wonderful.

They write it straight-faced. Such naiveté. Or is it just inbred dishonesty, no longer even intentional.

The Pee Dee uses a rendering sent out by Jacobs in a press release. Of course, it looks wonderful. Economic development reaches out from the page.

And the Pee Dee conveniently places another piece of propaganda announcing the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association endorsement favoring a change the Ohio Constitution to allow casinos. It is placed right next to the Jacobs’s rendering of a hotel and casino. Helpful, no?

How compliant of the Pee Dee. Little news but lots of propaganda. Free!

Well, Mayor Frank Jackson, did you know that when you sold the old Convention Center property and opened up the Mall for a pittance that you were also giving over property for a casino and hotel, all on public property, all tax free?

Either the Pee Dee knew what it was doing or you were too dumb to protect the citizens of Cleveland. Editors, where are your ethics? Why not some critical comments?

We can also thank the contemptible Tim Hagan. One sees his hand in this move with his slimy workings for MMPI, the Chicago firm of his Kennedy family, now in charge of the development of the Medical Mart.

Medical Mart? Or Casino Mart?

Maybe there will be a floor at the Med Mart for the treatment of the gamblers gone mad. That might be at least amusing to taxpayers now shelling out a $1 billion or more for the project via the 40 year sales tax increase given us by Hagan and Jimmy Dimora.

There will be more as this debacle blooms.

RTA Getting Out of the Transit Business- Really

The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority is planning to drop “Transit” from its name. You can tell that because it keeps eliminating transportation for people. In fact, it can change its name to the Greater Cleveland Downtown Pleasing Authority.

At least that’s the way it seems to me as Joe Calabrese, general manager, becomes a leading excuse maker and weaker executive than we now need.

How hard is it to NOT provide transportation if you’re a transit operation? Apparently, not hard at all.

RTA will cut all circulators in a few weeks and will cut back on services on 16 bus routes.

AND will raise the price of a ride by 25 cents.

That’s a solution to dropping ridership? That’s a recipe for fewer and fewer riders.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. RTA management didn’t say NO to the downtown gang when it needed some $200 million to beautify Euclid Avenue from Public Square to University Circle. I’d like to know how much money RTA is now losing on that operation.

RTA management didn’t say NO when it paid some $69 million for the useless Waterfront Line. Totally from local RTA funds. The downtown cabal forced it to forgo federal funds for the line because it wanted the line pronto for the city’s Bicentennial and the opening of the Rock Hall.

When it comes to the ordinary riders Calabrese and his RTA board finds it easy to say, “No, we can’t do it.” When it comes to the downtown crowd, “ain’t nothing we can’t do.”

When I asked for figures on ridership on the Waterfront Line, RTA couldn’t come up with figures. Don’t keep those figures, I was told. But you noticed the Pee Dee used detailed figures on the circulators and the supposed decline. (Does the decline come as a result of RTA’s performance and desire to curtail this service? And don’t tell me that the figures are true actual counts either because I don’t believe you.)

The Waterfront Line should be stopped and put out of business before the circulators are, if cost is a problem.

RTA management didn’t say NO to the $13 million or so walkway to Gateway from Sam Miller’s Tower City. If Gateway felt it needed that help, it should have paid for it and it should pay for the use of that property and its maintenance costs now.

I don’t want to hear that sales tax revenue is down. Should have thought of that a long time ago.

Unload some of the heavy executive staff. Cut that downtown free downtown trolley service. That should go first.

It’s time that RTA took its job seriously and started fighting for more money, too.

If we can think about spending $350 million on a so-called Opportunity Corridor, pushed by the downtown Greater Cleveland Partnership, along with PD publisher Terry Egger, its co-chairman, we can think about getting some more money for transit dependent people. Those who don’t have cars to get to their jobs, to their medical appointments, even to get downtown.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo Bartimole roldoATroadrunner.com (:divend:)