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May
26
I haven’t blogged in a long time about the Medical Mart/Convention Center project for Cleveland, athough I have been keeping an eye on it as other blogs follow the progress (if you can call it that).
The most recent news is that a public meeting was held this past Thursday to discuss possible locations of the complex. According to the Plain Dealer:
Downtown’s grassy malls emerged as the favorite location for Cleveland’s new convention center and medical mart at a public forum Thursday night.
About 100 people attended the meeting, sponsored by Cuyahoga County. Most who spoke favored renovating and expanding the existing Cleveland Convention Center on and under the malls and building a connected medical mart nearby.
The other option calls for a riverfront center behind Tower City Center connected to a medical mart in the old Higbee’s department store building off Public Square.
Ed Morrison critiques the process at Brewed Fresh Daily:
One conclusion is clear. After ten years of trying, Cleveland’s leadership does not have a clue about how to design and manage a civic process to get a convention center built.
Be sure to read the comments to that post.
I need to re-engage in the process, but not so oddly, it feels as though no amount of time passing changes what’s going on all that much.
Other perspectives on the issue of location:
Listen to and read about WCPN’s Regional News Story by David C. Barnett on the meeting.
Jeremy Borger attended the public meeting and blogs about it here in great detail. He also links to his Twitter stream as he live-tweeted the event (look for tweets on 5/22/08).
Did you go? What do you think, whether you attended the meeting or not? Tower City locale, or the Lakeside Ave. spot at the current Cleveland Convention Center? Or somewhere else entirely?
By Jill Miller Zimon at 3:20 pm May 26th, 2008 in Blogging, Business, Cleveland+, Economy, Government, Media, Ohio, Politics, leadership
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3 Responses to “Mini-meta of Med Mart Convention Center location conversation”
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Dru of TOI Studio wrote a review of the meeting here:
TOI Studio On The Convention Center
Also, Cleveland Design City has a running aggregation of opinions of the issue here:
Cleveland Design City On The Con Center/Med Mart
Ted - thank you so much for those links. I need to get back up to speed but I’m sure many other folks will benefit from the info as well.
it feels as though no amount of time passing changes what’s going on all that much
With that I’d definitely agree. Despite one public meeting on site selection (which only one commissioner reportedly attended), this has been and will continue (I believe) to be a closed process with key decisions made behind closed doors.