By Roldo Bartimole
It was inevitable.
Once again the sale of the historic Cleveland school administration building is front and center.
Why?
There’s big money to be made.
The historic public building sits strategically centered now. The building and open land sits in the prime location for a hotel with the construction of the $400-million medical mart/convention center at its doorstep. Right across the street in fact. With more than adequate parking facilities adjacent.
Perfect for exploitation. And exploitation is a going business in Cleveland, even with Jimmy in jail.
What makes it even more attractive to some developer is that the schools are controlled by the mayor of Cleveland.
Frank Jackson, keep your hands off this historic building!
African-Americans in particular should be outraged that now that the school system is predominately black, this gem, instead of being revived, should be sold to developers. Shameful.
I’ve written about this issue a number of times over the years. Below this column is another written in February 2009 with a bit more history.
The mayoral control of the schools makes a deal politically easier.
Developers have to deal with only one man – Mayor Jackson.
The Cleveland school board is a disgrace. I didn’t hear a peep from the board or any member when Jackson tried to muscle the teacher’s union. They have no power and apparently are content to be a total rubber stamp for Jackson. The board is useless.
Indeed, the entire political establishment here – from Jeff Johnson to Marty Sweeney and all in between – has bowed before Jackson, who continues to make decisions that don’t make sense.
The Plain Dealer had a lot of figures on a deal to sell yesterday on what a sale would mean to the always financially-strapped school system. (See here.)
There was no mention of what would at least earn the schools some badly needed revenue – a lease – not sweetheart sale – of the building and excess land adjacent. At least that would mean the schools would receive annual payments.
For use, you understand, of this prime downtown building site – across from the convention facilities and a stone’s throw from the casino operation. The best parcel of land for a hotel for miles.
It’s a no brainer. Let’s see how the politicians can toss it away in a deal that would make Dimora and Russo look like the pikers they are.
Taking this site would be a steal.
WHERE ARE THE NEWS MEDIA? SILENT AND STUPID, OF COURSE.
THEREBY WORKING WITH THE DEAL-MAKERS AGAINST THE PUBLIC.
Below is the 2009 article:
WILL THEY STEAL CITY SCHOOL HISTORIC BUILDING?
By Roldo Bartimole
Just what I feared.
If the Cleveland Mall site is chosen for the Medical Mart & Convention Center we could expect a raid on the historic Cleveland School headquarter building on E. 6th, across from the present convention center. It sits on valuable land next to the mall underground parking facility in front of the Marriott Hotel.
A letter to the editor today in the Sunday Plain Dealer from Francis M. Coakley of Coakley Real Estate Company, suggests this public building be taken private with, of course, “federal, state, county and city incentives.” Coakley is a member of the Cleveland Historic Restoration Society and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
You’d expect he wouldn’t even think of reverting the building to some private use. He suggests a “five-star hotel” as a “perfect fit” with the proposed convention facility.
It has been tried before. Development of the site as a hotel has tried for the historic six-story public building.
If a new convention facility sits across the street the temptation to steal the public building will be even more enticing than in the past for developers.
Coakley writes, “This hidden jewel must be brought back to its original grandeur.” With this, I totally agreed. But as a PUBLIC building, not some highly-subsidized luxury hotel.
Developer John Ferchill – Foxy Ferchill, I called him – had eyes for the building in the early 1980 and had the cooperation of the School Board president Ted Bonda. Both were part of a group seeking the city’s cable franchise at the time and heavily into political activity.
The school headquarter building is part of the city’s original Group Plan.
Here is what Eric Johannesen in “Cleveland Architecture, 1876-1976” said of it, “Cleveland was the first of a number of cities to make a comprehensive plan for grouping its major public boiling. More important, Cleveland’s Group Plan was the only one which was actually carried out with any degree of completeness.”
Harper’s Weekly in 1904 wrote, “Probably no city in the country, outside the Capitol, has undertaken the systematic development of public architecture and parks on so splendid a scale as has the city of Cleveland.”
So it should be “hands off” any public building in the Group Plan.
Mayor George Voinovich’s administration was offering everything possible – from a $10 million no-interest urban action grant to allowing the city to purchase of the building. The city’s purchase would circumvent state law. State law requires open bidding on such properties. Voinovich was eager to get the public property in the hands of private developers. Typical.
What stopped the raid? Several black elected school board members – Mildred Madison, Ed Young and Stan Tolliver – felt the move a slap at the black community. As black students were becoming the majority in the schools they figured, politicians wanted this historic symbol snatched away.
At the time I wrote four issues of Point of View, my newsletter, on the deal. I called it a “Shabby Affair.”
This possibility also brings up the issue of control of the Cleveland School System. The Cleveland Mayor names board members. They appear relatively unknown and voiceless.
I agree that the school board in the past was hectic and often irresponsible. However, the lack of an elected school board seems to insure a silent democracy. The two – silent and democracy – don’t go together.
So to Cleveland residents – watch out for the snatching of a historic building and a symbol of public education.
Roldo Bartimole celebrates 50 years of news reporting this year. He published and wrote Point of View, a newsletter about Cleveland, for 32 years. He worked for the Plain Dealer and Wall Street Journal in the 1960s.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.]
2 Responses to “ROLDO: Don’t Let Them Steal Our History”
David Eden
Once again, Roldo speaks truth to power. The PD, even without the Machaskee/Larkin team, remains a neutered newspaper. And what about those CLE TV stations? Ha!
Roldo Bartimole
If I weren’t so old, David, I’d say, “Let’s start a newspaper.” That’s a Ha!