On a convention center (See
Smaller is smarter here)
Play to your strengths. Play to your strengths. Play to your strengths. How many times does it need to be said before someone actually listens in this city? Cleveland is a wonderful city with incredibly assets, the largest of which is a huge body of fresh water to the north -- anyone notice the big Lake lately? Lake Erie is also the reason that we will never be a convention town. If I was a convention planner and had the option of choosing to go to Las Vegas in February ( the largest convention market in the country today I believe) or Cleveland, I would certainly choose Las Vegas. The reason is not because Cleveland lacks cultural or entertainment amenities or fine hotels. (Although a casino would be nice.) The reason is out of our control. The weather ranges from terrible to intolerable five months a year. Remove the month of August, not an active convention month because of traditional vacation time, and what do you have left -- a six-month-long period of time to sell our convention center. And six months is optimistic because, so far, this spring hasn't been very pleasant. Six months in not enough. Cleveland simply isn't a year round convention venue. Until we can do something about mother nature, we should spend our civic capital -- fiscal and intellectual -- on a grand new vision that does not rely on hordes of conventioneers braving the 45 mile an hour winds in their trek from a new convention center to the Rock Hall. If the "powers that be" in Cleveland are set on bringing in a new convention center, they need to look at models that use a large percentage of private-sector funds to get the job done. One such example is in the unlikely location of Grand Island Nebraska. The soon to be constructed Heartland Convention Center is a $35 million project and most of the funds have been donated by regional corporations and philanthropic leaders. Public funds factor in but largely as a bed tax that does not impact the average resident. Come on all you corporate and political leaders who seem to think a convention center is the silver bullet for Cleveland, if they figured out how to make it work in the middle of Nebraska, why can't you figure out how to make it work here? from Cool Cleveland reader Laura Lee Martin lmartin@chbentz.com (:divend:)