By Roldo Bartimole
NOTE: This article was prepared for the City News but it has dropped the column from its newspaper.
With all the problems Cleveland has why is Mayor Jane Campbell insistent upon taking over a major part of Whiskey Island for a city park?
Apparently, she needs a "project" as other mayors have had to say that she has done something, particularly after former Mayor Michael White stuffed the city with big developments - Gateway, Browns Stadium and the Rock Hall - all drags on the local public economy that subsidizes these endeavors.
City Planning director Chris Ronayne probably signaled that desire for action when he told Council members, "We need momentum in this town." It's as if the administration needs some action to establish legitimacy.
The decision-making has some scratching their heads. Veteran Council member Mike Polensek has a pretty good political sniffer. He complained that something about this deal doesn't smell right. "Something's not right here, I feel it," Polensek testified.
Whatever behind-the-scene schemes, these lakefront moves won't be known until the deals are sealed. There's no question that there are interests that want commercial and luxury housing opportunities on the lakefront. Could it also be that Dock 32, behind Browns Stadium, could be used for the NFL theme park mentioned as part of the Browns Stadium construction? No one really knows but the decision-making doesn't make much sense.
There are disturbing aspects of Campbell's deal with the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, a body that needs serious reform since it acts almost in secret with little regard for the public.
First, the city doesn't have the financial or human resources to operate the parks and playgrounds it has now. There are constant complaints from Council members about neglected facilities. Whiskey Island partner Dan T. Moore testified last week that clearing logs that come off the lake alone would cost some $30,000 a year. Think what the cost of upkeep of some 30-acres of a lakefront park would be.
City officials well recognized this resources problem. During the 1970s and the 1980s, Mayors Ralph Perk and George Voinovich got rid of city parks, shedding the costs.
There was wholesale turn over of parks to the State of Ohio in the 1970-80s periods. The State, with more resources, has poured tens of millions of dollars into those parks since that time.
Indeed, the state runs most of Cleveland's lakefront parks, including Edgewater, some 130 acres; Gordon (not including city part) more than 100 acres; Wildwood, 100 acres; Euclid Beach State Park, more than 50 acres; the adjacent Village Angela, more than 40 acres; and the E. 55th marina, some 35 acres. These figures come from a knowledgeable source.
The kind of investment could never have been done, nor should it, by the city. Nor could the city's parks division, with its patronage demands on city officials, do the job.
Now city officials, particularly led in Council by Matt Zone and Joe Cimperman, young, eager members who apparently don't know the history, think they can circumvent the shortcomings that led to the city's jettisoning park resources it could no longer service.
What could be the reason for the movement for more parks? Could it be that the enticement of parks is really a trick to fool the public, always eager for parks, into subsidizing a plan to open up property to upscale developments?
The second aspect of the deal between the city, supported by Campbell and by Council Ringmaster Frank Jackson, is the movement of port facilities to Whiskey Island. The legislation is being rushed through Council after one planning committee and a finance meeting. Jay Westbrook's aviation and transportation committee relieved the legislation without even a meeting or discussion. Why the rush?
The deal would eventually (three years apparently) require the marina on the western portion of Whiskey Island to be used for port facilities adjacent and contiguous to a park at Whiskey Island, property that might just as well be left alone.
Worse, it means movement of port facilities that would require heavy investment in replacing port space to be given back to the city, which owns much of the property but leases to the Port Authority.
The Port Master Plan calls the removal and repositioning of the port at a cost of $658,726,000. Now this is passed off as a 50-year plan but that's a huge financial investment in year 2000 dollars. So you can start figuring in the inflation factor and the real cost will probably a billion dollars.
There are arguments back and forth about the space needs and the jobs requirements of the Port Authority. We do know that it has contracted to have various non-maritime entities store stone and cement holding silo on port land. It also provides some 3,200 parking spaces for the Cleveland Browns for parking, which are used only some 10 dates a year.
The Port Authority, with its unexamined ability to borrow, has already contributed to the disarray on the lakefront by helping facilitate Rock Hall and the Browns stadium, both taking valuable lakefront property.
Now there's a rush to decision about moves that will affect the city's use of the lakefront for decades, if not a hundred years and little thought as to how these moves will be financed.
PD COMES CLEAN - WELL, NOT QUITE -The Plain Dealer agreed last week to release data on its former polluted property now part of the Whiskey Island deal.
Otherwise, Editor Doug Clifton righteous crusade for public records openness could be called hypocritical. The PD had tied the hands of both the Port Authority and the city and forced them by legal means to agree to keep the hazardous waste records of land formerly owned by the newspaper secret.
The land in question on an inlet to the Cuyahoga River originally was to house the new Plain Dealer building - printing and editorial- back in the mid-1960s. Since the PD has built its printing plant in Brooklyn and a new editorial building in Cleveland.
"The Plain Dealer editorially has pointed out the need for more imaginative and beautiful architecture for Greater Cleveland," the paper wrote in 1965.
"Now the Plain Dealer plans to back up its editorial comments with deeds," thus spoke former publisher-editor Tom Vail in announcing "a plan to give Greater Cleveland a very important building."
Instead, the Plain Dealer gave the city a Superfund major pollution reclamation project.
Now Mayor Campbell and Council President Jackson want to acquire the polluted river property along with a part of Whiskey Island and Dock 32 from the Port Authority. Mayor Campbell names six of the nine board members.
After the PD's building plans went dormant, the newspaper leased the land to a company that used it to store hazardous industrial waste. In 1985, I wrote, "the company stored several thousand 55-galllon drums of pesticides, flammable acids and other chemicals that the EPA considered such a threat to public health that it named the site one of some 100 Superfund targets."
The PD eventually built its printing plant in Brooklyn on a "greenfield," leaving Cleveland with the "brownfield."
By 1991, the PD still hadn't really cleaned up the property and former Councilman Ray Pianka, now the city's housing court judge, complained bitterly about the condition of the property. He wanted it cleaned up for either commercial or park use.
In the early 1980s, a fire on site sent eight people to Lutheran Medical Center for treatment for treatment. Dense fog spread over the area and along the Shoreway after the fire.
The city at the time said that it spent $100,000 for a clean up after the fire. Some $30,000 was spent to demolish fire-damaged property on the site. At the time, I reported that the PD, through its law firm, Baker, Hostetler, sent the city a $13,700 check, absolving itself of further damages.
The EPA said at the time that the clean-up dragged on because neither the company -Chemical and Mineral Reclamation - nor the PD would take responsibility. The cost was $440,000. The PD wasn't named in the suit to collect the cost of the EPA. I wondered why. An EPA lawyer said, "I wouldn't say that that's usual and I wouldn't say that it's unusual."
The feds removed 25,000 gallons of organic liquid, 4,000 gallons of inorganic liquid, six drums of PC Bs? and some 100 drums of grease. The materials included pesticides, flammable acids and other chemicals considered a threat to health and safety.
The chemicals were removed, as was topsoil. However, seepage into the ground remained a cloud over the property, I wrote in a Feb. 28, 1991 article in the defunct Cleveland Edition.
At the time, Plain Dealer publisher Alex Machaskee said of the property wasn't for sale. "The fact of the matter," he said, "is it's not for sale, period." He also said of the article yet to be written about the property would be "bullshit."
The Port bought the property in 1998 for $2 million in order to lease six of the 15 acres to the Great Lakes Towing Co. for $64,800 for each of five years and $100,000 annually for the next 20 years. There must have been other property available to the Port Authority along the river for such a use.
Why the city would want this land without a clear picture of the remedial needs and cost still required to make this land useable, particularly for park or recreational needs, remains a mystery. Or maybe its' just up to the public to clean up the PD's old mess.
By Roldo Bartimole (:divend:)