ROLDO: How Can We Help Our Billionaires More

By Roldo Bartimole

I don’t get around much these days. But I have had recent occasion to ride by Progressive Field at night. I saw it all brightly lit up.

I didn’t think the Indians were in town. I don’t even believe Spring Training has started yet. Has it?

Then I remembered. Oh, yeah.

The Indians run a winter-time extravaganza on the baseball field. They even put up a full hockey rink on the baseball infield. 150 tons of snow, they say. Must be good for second base.

Progressive Field is turned into a winter profit place with everything from snow tubing, ice skating, even a snow maze in the outfield. And it was the site this year for the Ohio State/University of Michigan hockey game.

Of course, they say they don’t make a dime. Do you believe them? Neither do I. The winter charges ranged from $10 to $25 a person and $100 a family. Food and drinks extra, of course. At fancy digs built by taxpayer bucks.

Larry Dolan and family can use the stadium we paid for – ANY WAY THEY WANT. The Dolans are billionaires.

Isn’t that the privilege of wealth? Doesn’t our system work that way now? Why of course it does. We see it all around us.

Do they pay Gateway – the non-profit set up to operate the stadium and arena – anything for use of the summer-time baseball stadium, anything for the extra use in the winter? Like rent?

No, says Gateway.

Gateway says the Indians do pay for any repairs, maintenance and prepping the site associated with the winter use. Gee, thanks.

That hardly pays for the cost of the stadium, 88 percent paid for by you and me. A minor point, to be sure.

All this brought back how well the public treated Dick Jacobs, the owner of the Indians when the baseball field was built. Some interesting history turns up. History not ever told by the mainstream media. But I’ll share.

I watched Gateway very closely in the early 1990s. I revealed how helpful our politicians were to the richest people in town.

It was hard for me to believe the treatment would be so sweet. And that the public wasn’t outraged. Well, part of the reason is because the public didn’t know. The news media were rah, rah, rather than truthful. Surprising, huh?

The unfairness is shocking. But who’s watching?

For example, the politicians – Tim Hagan, Jim Petro, Mary Boyle, along with Mike White and others – were very generous – actually built an office building on the site for Dick Jacobs. Didn’t charge a dime.

Here’s what I wrote in July 1993:

“How would you like to get 57,000 square feet of brand new office space free? Oh, we’ll toss in furniture, some of it custom made, too, at no extra cost.”

The deal had all the elements of special gifts from politicians to business men. But neither the FBI nor any other law enforcement paid a bit of attention.

The separate office building cost $7 million, including $900,000 in furnishings. All at no cost to the Indians. They still use it.

When I questioned Gateway executive boss Tom Chema back then he suggested that the building was necessary to hide an unsightly ramp into the stadium. An office building wasn’t even in the lease. I wondered whether he thought of shrubbery perhaps. Could that hide an unsightly ramp?

The furnishings included 13 Arpeggio leather lounge chairs at $1,500 each; 400 chairs with upholstered seats and backs at about $100,000; a team museum at $35,000; an atrium reception area with skylights costing $22,000. Why buy your own furniture?

But the item that most irritated me at the time was specifications for a special conference table. It was to be 18-feet long and 5-foot wide, boat shaped of ash veneer (like baseball bats). It had to have a logo of Chief Wahoo along with inlaid wood resembling stitching of a baseball. How cute. I checked with a firm that produced custom wood products. It priced such a table at about $10,000. Cost was no problem.

Nothing was too good for our corporate princes in the 1990s. As it is today.

Jacobs demanded Italian marble for his loge tables. He got 132 at $2,500 each. The cost: $330,000. They broke, as the Italian company had told Gateway they would. But Jacobs wanted marble.

Oh, nothing was too good for Dick.

While you are at Progressive Field you can dine at the Terrace Club. A club you also paid to build. And boy, did you pay for it. (Oh, by the way if you’d like to enjoy the Terrace Club on game days, you pay extra. To be a member, it costs about $900 a year. Ordinary people can’t eat at the restaurant on game days.)

The 900-seat, double-decker restaurant cost $5,155,893. It became the largest restaurant in downtown Cleveland. A big free and fancy restaurant for the team owners. With an $111,000 glazing cost for the glass that allows diners to watch the ball game. That from a former Councilwoman’s business.

The Terrace club still competes with private businesses. It bites into the non-profit business, too. Many charities hold events at this publicly financed restaurant instead of privately owned ones.

Here’s what I wrote in March 1994 in the Free Times about the costs at the Terrace Club:

“Tile for kitchen, $48,000; Tile for the restaurant, $28,000; tile for the bar, $24,000. Stone for the restaurant, $26,550. Carpeting for the restaurant, $22,250; carpeting for the bar, $21.205. Lighting fixtures $76,600.

“Numerous chairs at various costs. For example, 16 Bernhardt chairs at $295 each for $4,720… 207 dining room chairs with arms at $150 each for $31,050 and fabric, 272 yards at $54 a yard, for $14,688.” Not too shabby.

To make a long description short: Other chairs and barroom stools: $47,262.

The pols threw in a circular stairway at $35,759; carpentry work in the dining area at $70,000 and in the kitchen at $80,000 and at the bar, $49,000; millwork in the kitchen, $28,000, in the bar $48,320, and in the restaurant $67,500.

I know Jimmy Dimora is a big eater.

But on opening day I didn’t notice his name on the brunch list. It included Mayor White, Commissioners Hagan, Boyle and Petro, all City Council members, state legislators (who relieved the restaurant and stadium of property taxes) led by people like Pat Sweeney, Jane Campbell, Ron Suster and C. J. Prentiss. Courtesy of Dick Jacobs.

At the Terrace Club, of course.

Taxpayers, courtesy of the same crew, gave the arena, now profit-enjoyed by Dan Gilbert, a luxury restaurant at a cost of $2,370,134.

All this didn’t suffice. Concession stands and grills costing from $62,000 to $132,000 totaled $1,038,350 at the stadium. And the subservient press? Well, they got a banquet kitchen a $121,050. These costs don’t include beer ($200,000 alone), ice cream, and liquor facilities also built for the exclusive profit use of the Jacobses then and the Dolans now.

All, of course you understand, property tax free.

I never heard Dick Feagler or his buddy Brent Larkin complain. So much for our independent news heroes.

But, of course, as always the reason the taxpayer shells out hundreds of millions of dollars for this is JOBS. Some may remember the promise was for 28,000 jobs, some 16,000 “good paying and full-time jobs.” The promise was made by promoters of the sin taxes to pay for all this.

When the first job report came to City Council about out on how many jobs were produced for Clevelanders, many were disappointed. To say the least.

Mayor Frank Jackson, then Councilman from a ward a stone’s throw from Gateway, was deeply disappointed. Number of jobs for his ward: one. ONE.

Two east side wards, then held by Roosevelt Coats and Mike Polensek, got six and seven jobs respectively. The farthest west ward got six jobs, five of them off-duty police officers doing part-time security work.

“It’s sad,” said one of the Council members.

It sure is. For hundreds of millions of tax subsidies. And free of property taxes forever!

There’s no shame among the owners for what they take and don’t give. They just want more.

You may have noticed that Browns owner Randy Lerner wants the city, which built the $300-million plus football stadium for his dad, now to dig into the city treasury to fork over $5.8 million early to make repairs to the stadium.

Lerner takes all the profit from the stadium and all the restaurant and food outlets built by taxpayers, and puts up none of the $850,000 a year the city must provide for capital repairs, but wants early payment of even more. That’s gratitude for you. From another billionaire.

Thanks to hot shot Squire-Sanders lawyer Fred Nance, who sat at the City Council table many times, telling Council members and the public: This was a great deal for the city. A lie a minute.

Nance now works for Lerner and the Browns and he’s out propagandizing again how the city needs to meet Lerner’s needs. And the news media gives him opportunity to spread his propaganda. The PD, of course, editorially already has told us to ante up for Lerner. No bothering with the dirty deal the city made for Lerner. No questioning of any details. What do you expect, honesty?

It would be a shame that a sports owner had to pay any cost of providing a place for his workers to perform. It would be a shame to ask our elected leaders to ask for a fair deal. Never happens.

What a shitty bunch of public and private leaders we have.

 

He was a 2004 Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame recipient and won the national Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage in 1991. [Photo by Todd Bartimole.]

Post categories:

• News
• Roldo Bartimole
• Civic Affairs
• Commentary
• Politics