By Roldo Bartimole
You can fool some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time.
Or
There is a sucker born every minute and someone to take him.
The Jacobs and Ratner Families believe in the second wise adage and they are ready to fulfill the role of the taker. I am hoping the first adage will win this time.
Jacobs and Ratner (and do not forget old Sammy Miller) have been taking this city to the cleaners for decades.
They float on the gifts given them by politicians that they keep afloat, including apparently the latest Cleveland mayor, Frank Jackson. Jackson this week took a “gamble,” as the Plain Dealer quaintly put it, blessing this smelly deal to be controlled by Jacobs and Ratner exclusively.
The proponents are so cynical about it that they label their latest money grab “Learn and Earn.” It has little to do with learning but a lot to do with earning by special interests.
This shell game means profits in the hundred of millions of dollars for the two families and racetrack owners.
The proposition would allow a monopoly for casino gambling for a number of racetracks and two special sites. One at the Jacobs’s Nautica Entertainment in the Flats and the Ratners’s Tower City.
It’s a cozy deal to allow these two families to partake of the profits of some $3 billion in expected betting.
For Cleveland, it’s an invitation to more corruption.
If Clevelanders want this, they should also legalize prostitution and 24 hour a day drinking joints. This kind of business is just what downtown Cleveland doesn’t need. They represent a nesting place for corruption and crime.
Can you imagine gambling to be sold on the basis that it will help educate our children? Actually, can you imagine it being sold any other way with the batch of rapacious politicians, business and civic leaders now living off the carcass that once we called the Best Location in the Nation?
That’s how these bottom feeders want to sell us.
Can you imagine after all that has happened in Cleveland in the past several decades that anyone who pays even slight attention to politics and business here would put trust either a Jacobs or a Ratner?
For Jackson it’s a major disappointment in a series of such in his short term as Mayor.
I certainly thought that Jackson was, if not the smartest politician, at least one sensitive enough to the poor of the city to be a hopeful for a city desperately in need of some hope.
We have one great hope. That is that the Columbus counterpart to our corrupt Greater Cleveland Partnership leads the opposition against Learn and Earn. Such opposition in Columbus to a statewide proposition on the November ballot will fall. Greed may rescue us.
Columbus is not in on the deal because it isn’t included in this looting game. Just as you cannot buy Jacobs’s cooperation without buying Ratners’s cooperation, you cannot buy the Columbus establishment’s support by bypassing them with only Cleveland and Cincinnati getting a shot at tapping gambling suckers.
As my old friend, the late Al Grisanti, once the downtown Cleveland Councilman used to say, “We got to organize the confusion.” Yes, if you can get your enemies to kill each other, do it, do it.
It is only when the rich eat the rich that the rest of us possibly get a break.
Jackson’s support means he has no plans or ideas for Cleveland so he has to follow the Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP). GCP’s support of this project reveals that its sleazy representation of business interests.
It also means, if it passes, that Jackson will support a new convention center.
This also is a lead-up to another business desire.
What is gambling without a new convention center? That is the proposition the community will face if this passes. Guess who lead the parade – Jackson as mayor and the Pee Dee as the marching band.
So Learn & Earn will not only NOT help our poor students; it will bankrupt their parents with new taxes to build convention center to further benefit Tower City and the Ratners and Jeff and Dick Jacobs.
Just follow the dots. Gambling, casinos, convention center, hotel/hotels.
Send bill to: Cuyahoga County taxpayers.
“Learn & Earn” or Lose and Lose, as I call it, has NOTHING to do with economic development. It only has to do with taking money from the pockets of some and depositing it in the pockets of pickpockets Jacobs and Ratners.
One could spend several days outlining how these two have taken Cleveland and Cuyahoga County residents – with the help of mayors and county commissioners – to the cleaners for their own self-interests.
Let’s line up a few.
To get it out of the way, Gateway gave Dick Jacobs (I put him here as he’s partners – 50 percent - in� Jacobs Entertainment, Inc., which runs casinos in Nevada with his son Jeff) the ability to sell the Indians, bought at some $45-million and sold at some $325-million. He picked up more that $50 million extra by taking the franchise public then private again.
The stadium cost us $180 million, not counting the bonded debt.
Those are tidy sums.
Ever hear of Dick Jacobs thanking Cleveland?
Let’s just skim along. Jacobs, with the help of then Council President George “Toxic” Forbes and Sen. George “Noxious” Voinovich as Mayor, gave Jacobs some $250-million to build two office-hotel deals on Public Square, and park land behind the downtown library for an underground parking facility, all tax abated for 20 years. ( Jacobs built only one office and hotel; the second site remains a parking lot since 1990.) Jacobs got another $3.45-million for the Galleria.
The same two – Toxic and Noxious – in 1989 secretly put Jacobs into the lead position at the $530-million (likely a billion dollars now) Chagrin Highlands, giving him prime land to speculate with and take profits. Noxious, as Governor, enhanced Chagrin-Highlands land with roadwork and an I-271 worth costing more than $100 million. How sweet it is.
Toxic and Noxious were very generous with taxpayer money. Toxic called Dick Jacobs “the great white father.”
Our Three Blind County Commissioners – Jimmy Dimora, Tim Hagan and Peter Lawson Jones – paid $22 million for property at E. 9th & Euclid from Jacobs. In other words, they took a dead corner property off Jacobs’s hands, asbestos and all. Now they will spend hundreds of millions of dollars for a new county headquarter building by knocking down most of the buildings. How sweeeeet it is.
Jeff the Son also has been at the city’s till, getting subsidies – millions of dollars in low interest loans, for the Hoyt block. The city, via a community development corporation, also loaned $300,000 to buy a parking lot for Jacobs’s venture, and, of course, tossed in a 10-year tax abatement.
But that isn't quite enough. I wrote at the time: “Just how generous the city feels toward people like Jacobs and the Warehouse district can be shown by the fact that after all this, the city even tossed in a $100,000 grant for storefront renovation. If you’re rehabilitating an old building, don’t you usually include the front of the building?” Not when you are one of the chosen.
Jacobs, the Ratners & Sam Miller get gifts wrapped in gifts.
Let’s list a few for the Ratners: Halle Office Building, $7-million loan/grant; Ritz Hotel, $7-million loan/grant & a $34.5-million tax abatement on the luxury hotel. The following loan/grants (all via the Urban Development Action Grants, a federal program through the city): Tower City, retail, $10 million; Tower City III, $2.7-million; Tower City IIIa, $2,036,000; Tower City-Old Post Office building, $9.2 million.
Forest City Enterprises, the Ratner’s business, became the construction manager for RTA’s station in Tower City, then sued RTA for $25-million on the deal, getting a $10-million settlement, and $1-million plus each year for maintenance services and plant operations there. This, however, did not spoil RTA’s feelings for the Ratners. RTA built a walkway from Gateway attractions to Forest City’s Tower City at a cost of some $13 million. RTA pays utility charges for the escalators and walkway to Gateway. RTA also built at some $69 million the Waterfront Line, which delivers its customers to and from Tower City’s door.
Oh, what the hell, it is only your money.
Both Jacobs and the Ratners have been very successful in getting their property taxes reduced on their downtown properties, even on subsidized buildings. As I said, gifts wrapped in gifts.
Of course, the next big bequest is being prepared in the political gift shop. It’s been there for quite a time. However, these people can afford wait.
What’s that? The convention center, of course.
How can we have gambling without a convention center to help attract someone to better toss his or her money away?
It’s a natural.
Another billion or two dollars before we shut the doors on Cleveland.
From Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo Bartimole Roldo@Adelphia.net
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