By Roldo Bartimole
Here are two multi-million Cleveland projects that show that racism is very much alive in this city and cost doesn’t mean a thing when it comes to pursuing it.
Neither project is necessary or an improvement. Just costly.
Opportunity Corridor, a $350 or so million is an escape hatch for some people to travel from west to Cleveland Clinic and University Circle. It will slice through a black neighborhood. Even though there are ordinary city streets that course the same path. Perfectly useable.
Disgusting.
Public Square, a $40-million project, is to get buses and the riff-raff they carry (black people to our leaders) off the square and away from Tower City and the Dan Gilbert’s gambling joint.
Disgusting.
But the lack of political leadership in town and the almost absence of citizen action plus the total sellout of the Plain Dealer and so-called television news means it will happen.
Voices of reason need not apply.
Of course, with Plain Dealer publisher Terry Egger a co-chair you can’t expect anything negative to filter its way into the once daily. Terry’s gained a reputation for hiding news, not publishing it.
I noticed that Ch. 3, WKYC-TV, actually reported the other night that the Browns don’t pay property taxes. And that the Browns pay only $250,000 to rent the stadium.
I wish senior political reporter Tom Beres and Managing Editor Russ Mitchell will begin to do something beyond the mere skimming of the Browns sweetheart deal with the city. And that goes for the investigative teams of the other channels too.
They bend over when “Smiling Jimmy” Haslam (Mr. Nice Guy in press clips) wants $120 million in improvements (mostly to enhance his advertising take), wants to eliminate 3,000 cheap seats and up more revenue by increasing higher priced seats.
All this is being done under the watch of Mr. Sincere Mayor Frank Jackson and his contingent of Council Clowns.
When is anyone in this city going to wake up? Or is everybody dead?
Here’s a link to a protest against the Corridor.
The Opportunity Corridor, so 1984ishly named, is the Tell that every citizen should be able to detect. There’s no civic opportunity involved.
I took a ride last week from the Cleveland Clinic down Euclid Avenue to 55th street over to Quincy. A quick jog up Quincy, a four lane, two-way little used street by my journey, to East 105th Street, right back to the Cleveland Clinic campus, which is a quick ride into all of University Circle. It took minutes.
This vehicle Opportunity is right there.
Cost: $0.
Not even a new street stripe is necessary.
It a totally easy journey from E. 55th (and I-490) from where the misnamed $330 million Opportunity Corridor would move vehicles to University Circle.
But you see a no cost road means no construction money for contractors, no construction jobs for labor, no lawyers, no architects, no bondholders, no insurers, no planners and no bankers or bond counsels.
Why hardly anyone could make a profit on a deal as that.
So in other words, no graft, payoffs, or gifts to friends or opportunities for campaign donations.
So let’s do the stupid thing. Again.
Roldo Bartimole has been reporting since 1959. He came to Cleveland in 1965 to report for the Plain Dealer where he worked twice in the 1960s, left for the Wall Street Journal in 1967. He started publishing his newsletter Point of View in 1968 and ended it in 2000.In 1991 he was awarded the Second Annual Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage in Washington, D.C. He received the Distinguished Service Award of the Society of Professional Journalists, Cleveland chapter, in 2002, and was named to the Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame, 2004. [Photo by Todd Bartimole.]
5 Responses to “ROLDO: Racism Alive & Well and Indulged by Black & White Corporate Leaders & Politicians”
snarky
Roldo,
Great column , though I believe that the entire corporate welfare scene downtown qualifies as extreme racism.
The odd ten thousand millennial mutts and their dogs are heavily white boys and girls , mostly from the outer counties or suburbs.
The fact that so much critical Cleveland tax dollars go to pleasing and appeasing these well healed vertical dwellers at the expense of the remaining odd three hundred eighty thousand citizens that live in Cleveland neighborhoods is downright criminal.
Very , very wrong thinking , and racist as all get up.
The new public square project seems to be as much about Afro American displacement as it is questionable aesthetic gain.
The ” opportunity ” corridor is further welfare for the Cleveland Clinic , UC gang who have already been rewarded many times over by their gluttonous excess when it comes to our collective tax dollars , historic building credits , and safety forces.
The Orwellian vision that is the new downtown Cleveland seems to be all about the public funding the private for the same old usual gang of real estate speculators , builders , and the likes profits.
High time has come for someone to step up and fight back.
I look to Jeffery Johnson and the new Northeast Cleveland triad of politicians to get the ball rolling , and take back our tax dollars and spread them around all neighborhoods for all of citizens well being.
Roldo Bartimole
Bob: Yes there are many ways to get there without spending
$350 million.
Snarky: Maybe you should start writing my stuff for me.
Snarky
Roldo,
Not a chance.
George Forbes is walking back on the local political stage and it is ” déjà vu all over again.”
You stood up to George when he lashed out at your physical form , you Sir are a brave human.
Roldo Bartimole
Snarky: I didn’t have any choice in the matter. Never expected George
to go wild in that moment. I thought he would get security and usher
me and Gary Clark of the PD out of the Bond Court hotel room where
his entire council was meeting on the Sohio Building deal. We had decided
to stay and await security to usher us out, having made the point. But I said
something like “I’m talking to you,” in front of his 32 other members
and he saw red. It was a bad move because cameras were at the door
and both the Press and several TV stations got pictures of him sort
of picking me up with a shove out the door. He was angry with himself
about that and told one PD reporter that it was just what I wanted. Not
so. Never saw it coming.
GM
While I don’t have it in front of me, I do recall an article in the Plain Dealer a while ago that stated there are 18 bus stops in and in direct proximity of Public Square. It seems to me that that’s really overkill. I’m all for cleaning that up and certainly don’t consider it racist. Really, we need 18 bus stops in the same vicinity?? Public Square should not just be Public Transportation. Go to some other cities and see their downtown areas. I don’t see this type of concentration of bus stops in other cities our size and larger. Public Square is analogous to the city’s ‘curb appeal’. There’s definitely room for improvement here.