By Roldo Bartimole
Some 30 years ago when I was producing my newsletter Point of View I’d spend lazy Friday afternoons at the County Recorder’s office. There was no time to waste.
I’d go through the documents that recorded business formations in the county.
The time spent was often rewarding. I’d find who was partnering up with whom. Who was doing business with whom and often why. I’d find politicians in cozy relationships with business leaders.
It was one of these trips on a cold January in 1982 that told me the life of the Cleveland Press was nearing its end. Joe Cole – who had bought the Press to save it – really wanted a valuable piece of downtown real estate. The document revealed more base motives. Ugly motives.
Hard to imagine now but 30 years have passed since the Press slipped away on June 17, 1982.
In the January 30th issue of Point of View – entitled “Press Land Deal” – I pointed out that the idea that Cole bought the Press to give back to the community which helped him become a millionaire was sheer nonsense.
“The more cynical among us,” I wrote then, “said that Cole wanted a valuable piece of property in downtown Cleveland to make more money.” Cole founded Cole National Corp., a Cleveland firm.
The Cleveland Cynics (me surely) were right again.
I wrote what the recorder’s office told me: “Cole has had the real estate property – land and buildings – of the Press Publishing Company, which he heads, transferred to a limited partnership in which he holds controlling interest.” The document made it legal.
He took the most valuable possession of the declining paper – the land. For himself.
Cole owned two-thirds of the limited partnership called Lakeside Associates that I accidentally ran across on that Friday afternoon visit to the Cuyahoga County offices. (In case of interest for more details the issue of POV was Volume 14, Issue 14, Issue 337.)
I ended the article on this note:
“The outlook for the Press isn’t bright and the real estate deal suggests that Cole got the main asset out of the newspaper’s ownership – a warning and message of his real concern.” It turned out to be prophetic.
Cole never intended to keep the Press alive and thriving.
Actually, he obviously was planning the newspaper’s death by his hand.
What a sordid episode it became.
It took a few years to get the hint of how things work in Cleveland.
It became a perfect illustration of how sleazy Cleveland’s leadership has always been.
The death of a newspaper meant nothing to our upstanding citizens.
It took a while for the sleaze to totally unravel.
By early 1987 it seemed all the details of that piece of property at the corner of East 9th Street and Lakeside Ave. had finally shaken out. It was a piece of urban renewal property originally. It was thought that the Press and Louis Seltzer pushed the huge and still unfinished Erieview Urban Renewal plan on Cleveland city hall so that the Press would be built its new facilities at marked-down land prices. It became North Point, a Cole and John Ferchill office deal.
As I continued to watch the machinations, I wrote in January 1987:
“Well, maybe the final chapter has been written on the deal over the land that once housed the Cleveland Press. Remember the afternoon paper that Joe Cole was going to SAVE?”
The law firm of Jones, Day, Cockley & Reavis – now Jones Day – represented Cole in the “sticky legal difficulties of the Press sale.” Jones Day – was the pre-eminent elite law firm here. It ended up, after all the intrigue, as Cole’s main tenant on the old Press site. It must have been preordained.
The sticky details ended up in a federal anti-trust case of the Press’s demise over the payment of some $14 million by the Plain Dealer for the Press’s subscription list. People said the PD paid the $14 million to buy what amounted to the telephone white pages. You know that book comes free.
Anyway, Jones-Day became the major tenant in the building eventually constructed by Cole where the Press once existed. And the major law firm remains there today.
But there was a hitch.
It wasn’t a slam dunk for Jones-Day and Cole, however.
Because another law firm suspiciously also claimed to have the lease on that Cole building. How odd it seemed.
That firm was at the time the preeminent politically-connected law firm known as Climaco, Climaco, Seminatore, Leftkowitz and Garofoli – now known as Climaco, Wilcox, Peca, Tarantino & Garofoli. It had powerful friends both at city hall and the county administrating building.
Now the Climaco firm in those days represented the Teamsters Union. Some believed at the time the Press was going under that the Teamsters might strike the PD. This would give the Press the oxygen it needed to survive.
The Teamsters didn’t oblige.
Did the Climaco firm help the deal?
And how did it happen that two heavy-weight Cleveland law firms claimed rights for the same property? And when both played roles in what happened to the Press in 1982. How does one solve this problem?
Could these two heavy-weight Cleveland law firms been involved in a slimy deal that destroyed one of the city’s two major newspapers? Was power that corruptly wielded by our major law firms? Or was it business as usual.
Well, somehow a deal was worked out on the lease dispute. It ended with the politically prominent Climaco firm receiving a 12 percent interest in the building constructed on the carcass of the old Cleveland Press. Twelve percent for what? It’s a puzzle that invites speculation.
What to do with that property interest? Well, why not sell it back to Joe Cole. And that’s what happened. Climaco sold to Cole. Like an unassisted triple play with the World Series finale at stake. How clever of them.
Cleveland in the 1980s was a political cesspool of intrigue as developers carved up downtown with special gifts from the likes of George Forbes and George Voinovich.
The times were made with enough hidden deals for an intrigue-filled hot book and movie. You could hardly invent this stuff.
At the time I concluded of the Climaco/Jones-Day deal:
“All fixed up, huh?”
Yes, and tied with a 12 percent bow.
At that time the investigation into the demise of the Press by the U. S. Justice Department was still going on.
I wrote:
“Meanwhile, the case against Cole and the Newhouse chain (Pee Dee owners and buyers of that valuable Press subscription list) continues to bumble along with the U. S. Justice Department lawyers most involved have been jettisoned – one promoted, one fired (but not going quietly). Stay tuned.”
I concluded:
“The Cleveland Press lives on. In the hearts of some. And the pockets of others.”
End of that story. But there is more, hopefully for next week.
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.]
5 Responses to “ROLDO: Documents Told Me Cleveland Press Faced Death”
greg stricharchuk
Can it be three decades? You were right on target, as always, Roldo. This brought back lots of memories including covering the Press closing for Cleveland magazine and other pieces for the WSJ…
Roldo Bartimole
Yes, Greg and isn’t it ironic that newspapers as your Chicago Tribune and
so many others are teetering now. What has happened to newspapers
is tragic but so much brought upon themselves. And by uncontrolled events.
Who knew we’d be talking about newspaper as we are today – a dying
industry and the Press was just a hint of what might happen as costs
of delivering the news by paper via vehicles simply couldn’t compete
with clicking on a computer and hitting “send.’ Such low cost.
But how to actually deliver real news remains elusive.
Dick Peery
In 1980 the EW Scripps company announced that if Joe Cole did not buy
the Press, they would close the paper. Granted that Cole’s purchase was
not altruistic, it changed an immediate execution to a dwindling demise
that gave workers two more years before the end.
When Cole ceased publication, he announced that the severance
provisions in the union contacts would be followed. Necessary office
workers would stay on to process the final payments. A few days later, a
laid off Press reporter called me at the Plain Dealer at said she had
heard from one of the office workers that they had been told to stop
working on the paychecks. I reported that to Newspaper Guild executive
secretary Steve Hatch. He and lawyer Bernie Berkman went to the Press
where they were told the checks would be issued in a few weeks, after
accounts receivable had been collected. Berkman said the union would go
to television stations and tell them that Cole was reneging on his
promise. Work on the checks quickly resumed and everyone was paid.
Workers were entitled to two weeks pay for each year of service, up to a
full year of wages. The company did not have such an obligation to
nonunion workers. Dorothy Sain, a former union president who had been a
Guild stalwart for decades, had accepted an offer to fill a management
position a few weeks before the closing. She only received about six
weeks severance instead of the full year she would have been entitled
to. She lamented that leaving the union was the worst decision of her life.
DickPeery
snorky
Yet another chapter in the sacking of Cleveland real estate by the usual gang of suspects and sycophants. Pols , Attorneys , media , and the corporate ghouls they serve.
Erieview was a major crime scene as an urban renewal project , and King Louie B. of the Press it’s main architect.
Though one mid week number of a circa 1960’s Cleveland Press contained an entire weeks worth of copy of the contemporary American newspaper.
Times have changed , and the current version of the American daily newspaper is perfect for swatting at flies or lining a cat litter box and not much more.
RIP then the American daily , sooner than later I fear.
The weekend edition of the WSJ is a nice read and a great bargain at two dollars per copy as an alternative to the six dollar Sunday NYTimes.
Only with the WSJ weekend edition it is a good idea to wrap your fish bones in their op/ ed section prior to reading the remainder of the paper.
Great job as usual Roldo!
Roldo Bartimole
Dick, thanks for your addition. Snorky, you’re too kind but we are
always on the same wave length.