- Production and distribution of CityClub forums and Ideasstream Public Media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.

(upbeat music) - Good afternoon.

And welcome to this...

Welcome to The City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to conversations of consequence.

I'm Kristen Baird Adams, president of The City Club board of directors and chief of staff for PNC's national office of the regional presidents.

We're here today for the annual state of downtown address in collaboration with Downtown Cleveland Alliance.

As we speak downtowns across the country, continue facing the unprecedented challenges of the last year and a half, including those stemming from the global pandemic.

That certainly is the case here in Cleveland against the backdrop of an extraordinary period of transition and opportunity.

In two months time, we will have elected a new mayor.

Long time businesses in the city have deepened their commitment to downtown and plans are being forged for potentially catalytic development and investments.

Cleveland's comeback story certainly continues to be written.

Among downtown's top concerns are maintaining residential growth, boosting development, filling commercial office space, and of course, supporting small businesses.

And today's speaker plays a critical role in helping address all of them.

Michael Deemer was tapped this summer to serve as president and CEO of Downtown Cleveland Alliance.

After founding president and CEO, Joe Marinucci announced his retirement.

Mr. Deemer joined the Downtown Cleveland Alliance in 2011 as executive vice president of development, a role in which he established the business development center, a single point of contact and go-to resource for Downtown Cleveland Alliances, public and private partners.

Prior to that, Mr. Deemer was economic development policy advisor for the Ohio governor's office, where he was instrumental in forming the Ohio department of development strategic plan and shared implementation of its $1.8 billion biannual budget.

For today's forum.

Mr. Deemer will first provide some remarks on the state of Downtown followed by a conversation with our City Club CEO, Dan Moulthrop.

Guests members, and friends of The City Club.

Please join me in welcoming Downtown Cleveland Alliance, president and CEO, Michael Deemer.

- Thank you, Kristin, for that very kind introduction, thanks to The City Club for the honor and privilege of being here this afternoon.

I'm grateful to the audience that's gathered here.

It is nice to see so many of you live in-person and in 3D, after seeing so many of you on zoom screens over the last year and a half.

I'd like to thank our sponsors today, PNC, not just for supporting The City Club, but the continued partnership that PNC has had over the years with Downtown Cleveland Alliance.

And this event specifically the state of downtown.

I'd like to recognize Melissa Ferchill, our treasurer from the Downtown Cleveland Alliance board of directors.

Who's here representing the board.

Thank you Missy, for being here today.

I'd also like to recognize my predecessor, Joe Marinucci our founding president and CEO, who's has been a terrific mentor to me over the years and has done so much to build this organization and build so much of the momentum that we have in Downtown Cleveland.

Joe, I wanna thank you for your service and thank you for being here today.

I would be remissive if I did not also thank the staff of Downtown Cleveland Alliance, several of whom are here today.

They are modeling the next generation of leadership that is rising in our city.

They have stepped up and taken on more responsibility over the last couple of months and they're the ones really working hand in glove with me in many of you to write the next chapter in the history of the organization, in the history of Downtown Cleveland.

So thanks to the staff of Downtown Cleveland Alliance for being here.

I'd also, speaking of generational change, like the congratulate, Kevin Kelley and Justin Bibb on their victories Tuesday evening in advancing to the next round, the general election.

One of them will become the next mayor of the city of Cleveland.

And regardless of the outcome, it will continue the generational change that is taking place across our civic culture in Cleveland.

And I look forward to working with both of them over the next couple of months in the next several years to continue to build our city.

Now, it is customary and traditional and occasions like this to choose a word or phrase to speak to the state of the subject at hand.

And I don't know about all of you, but doing anything that is customary, traditional or that smacks of getting back to things as normal feels good.

So allow me to begin by saying that the state of Downtown Cleveland is resilient in the face of adversity.

I'm gonna...

I'm gonna talk a little bit this afternoon about resilience and adversity and in doing so, I want to reintroduce you to Downtown Cleveland Alliance.

I'll speak to the pandemic challenges that are well-documented, that we're all familiar with.

I'll also speak to some of the legacy challenges that we faced before the pandemic, that are with us today and will be with us afterwards.

I'll talk about our welcome back to downtown campaign and our efforts over the summer to revitalize Downtown through the pandemic.

I'll talk about the state of the recovery, some of the results that we've achieved.

I'll talk about our action plan to accelerate our recovery over the course of the next year.

And I'll conclude with some remarks about our vision for the future of Downtown Cleveland.

But I'd like to begin by reintroducing you to Downtown Cleveland Alliance.

Everything that you really need to know about our organization, is in the three words of our name.

Downtown, we are the only nonprofit that serves exclusively as the voice in steward of Downtown Cleveland, the largest concentration of jobs and the largest residential downtown in the state of Ohio.

Our mission at its core is to attract people, jobs and investment to the city's core.

Cleveland, although we're focused on downtown, we love our city, we're passionate city builders and we are all about building a welcoming urban core that is inclusive of the entire city and region.

Alliance, we take that word very seriously and Alliance by definition is a collaborative network of strategic partners.

And we don't do our work alone as an organization.

We work with property owners, business leaders, residents, philanthropy, public officials and entrepreneurs to fulfill our mission and advance our vision.

And that's exactly what we've been working on over the last 18 months.

The challenges of the pandemic are familiar to all of us.

You know, what challenges it's posed to downtowns in cities.

And I wanna ask all of you to pause for a minute and just take a second to picture what comes to mind when you think of downtown Cleveland?

I think in your mind's eye, you think of bustling sidewalks, pat sports stadiums, a live music and theater, a thriving foodie scene, busy office towers and all these things over the last year and a half have been in jeopardy.

The streets have been more quiet.

Shops and restaurants have struggled with staffing and food traffic.

There's been uncertainty about the future of office work, events, a more equitable inclusive future and what that looks like.

The very density upon which downtowns thrive has been under attack.

And if you step back and look at it, people across the country and around the world have been writing obituaries for cities for the last 18 months.

And those are just the pandemic challenges.

I mean, in Cleveland, we're a former industrial powerhouse with a proud, but also sometimes problematic history.

We have challenges with highly concentrated poverty, jobs sprawl and the related issues of racial inequity that come with concentrated poverty and jobs sprawl.

We struggle with how to best develop, attract and retain diverse talent.

And at this point you might be wondering why did this guy want this job?

But the answer to that is easy.

I believe in the strength of this organization, I believe in the foundation that we built in Downtown Cleveland, the momentum behind the revival that was taking place in downtown, prior to the pandemic.

And it has really continued throughout.

I believe that building the city's core, better positions our community to meet the new challenges of the pandemic, as well as the legacy challenges that we've faced historically.

And I've been able to draw on my own experience, dealing with times the economic crisis.

As was mentioned in the introduction, I previously worked with governor Ted Strickland and former Lieutenant governor Lee Fisher through the great recession and really stood shoulder to shoulder with them, their cabinet, their senior staff in leading the state through the great recession.

I then came to Downtown Cleveland Alliance to help start up our business development center and work with many of you and our board of directors to lead Downtown Cleveland out of the great recession.

And I'm able to apply those lessons and those experiences as we confront the challenges in front of us today.

And that's exactly what we've been doing over the last couple of months.

We recognize that at the beginning of the summer, coming out of the NFL draft with public health restrictions being lifted with the success of the distribution of the vaccines and the effectiveness of the vaccines, we had an opportunity to really accelerate downtown Cleveland's recovery.

So we launched a welcome back to downtown campaign, an earned media, social media, paid media campaign that focused on the return of events, ball games, theater, all the things that make downtown, what it is.

We focused on the new and old shops and restaurants that were waiting to welcome workers and visitors back to downtown.

We encourage the resumption of staycations and getting out and enjoying our city center all over again.

We also re-embraced our belief that everything good that happens in downtown Cleveland flows from having a clean, safe, and welcoming foundation.

We invested in our clean and safe ambassadors who are on the job 7:00 AM to midnight, seven days a week, making our community safe, clean, and welcoming.

They've been on the job as essential workers throughout.

So we invested them to raise their starting wages to make sure that we had a strong team in place to welcome workers and visitors back to downtown.

As part of that clean, safe, and welcoming strategy, we launched a co responder pilot project with Medworks, where we coupled the ambassadors with mental health specialists to respond to calls about people who are experiencing homelessness or mental health or addiction related crises and making sure that people are being connected with the shelter and services that they need.

We amplified our advocacy voice, getting involved in the civic discussion around the mayor's election in ways that we had not before.

We published a voter education guide, educating downtown residents about how to register to vote, when and where to vote.

We published a public policy agenda as part of that guide to make sure that voters understand the issues that are important from a policy standpoint to downtown.

And we published our very first mayoral questionnaire that was completed by all seven primary candidates for mayor to make sure that voters understand where the candidate stood on the issues that were important to downtown Cleveland.

But we had great results as that campaign was in place throughout the summer.

We saw increasing foot traffic, if you believe it or not compared to the same week in 2020, we've had a 95% increase in foot traffic in downtown.

We see office workers returning.

We see businesses continuing to invest in office space, whether that's Sherwin Williams, moving forward with plans for their corporate headquarters, cross country mortgage, relocating their corporate headquarters into downtown and bringing 600 jobs with them or rocket mortgage adding 600 jobs to their downtown headquarters.

We see business and leisure travel, picking up.

We see new projects getting under construction and new projects being planned.

And very importantly, from our perspective at the Alliance, the residential population continues to grow, where the region's fastest growing neighborhood.

Earlier this year, we surpassed our goal of reaching 20,000 residents in downtown.

And we're now marching towards our new goal of reaching 30,000 residents by 2030.

But we can't assume all of this is going to continue by itself.

We can't sit back and hope that the recovery occurs.

We need to do everything in our power to accelerate downtown's recovery.

And so we've developed a three part plan to really accelerate downtown's recovery over the course of the next year.

Enhancing the quality of life and pedestrian experience, restoring downtown vibrancy and returning to offense when it comes to business attraction.

And I'll elaborate on each of those three elements now.

Enhance quality of life and the pedestrian experience for all.

As I mentioned earlier, downtown's vitality begins with a clean, safe and welcoming foundation.

That's why we're gonna be focusing on increasing the visibility, the mobility and the responsiveness of our ambassadors.

We're gonna build on the success of our correspondent pilot project with Medworks to make sure that downtown is a model for connecting people experiencing homelessness or crises related to mental health or addiction with shelter services treatment in day-long enrichment.

We're gonna restore downtown vibrancy and make it an exciting and beloved place to be.

That begins with bringing office workers back into downtown.

And we're doing everything within our power at Downtown Cleveland Alliance to encourage that.

Whether that's encouraging people to get vaccinated, whether it's working with employers to identify best practices for how to communicate with their teams, to make them want to come back into the office, or sometimes just evangelizing downtown's vibrancy and all of it downtown has to offer.

And reminding folks of that.

We also know that in order to be successful in restoring vibrancy and making it an exciting place, we need to make downtown a place that people love to be.

We need to make it a place that inspires people to choose downtown over dull virtual experiences and two dimensional Zoom fatigue.

How are we gonna do that?

We're gonna animate downtown streets, parks and public spaces with art activities and energy.

Third, we're gonna get back on offense and attracting businesses.

We're gonna collaborate with our strategic partners to communicate the business leaders, entrepreneurs and investors.

Why downtown Cleveland is a great place to build and grow a business.

We're gonna combine data analysis and design into compelling narratives that tell the real story of downtown Cleveland and our city and all that it has to offer.

We're gonna build off pilot projects that we launched this summer.

Over the course of the summer, we collaborated with Team NEO in launching an office attraction marketing project that was focused on the Erieview historic district.

We launched a pilot project of retail attraction that was focused on historic Euclid Avenue.

We're gonna build on those strategies and expand them across downtown, to work with partners, to attract more businesses, more retail growth in the downtown.

That's how we're gonna confront the pandemic.

That's really what we're gonna prioritize over the course of the next 12 months.

But as I mentioned, we have bigger issues to take on as a community and downtown needs to be a participant and a partner in helping to lead the way.

We're a city of great opportunity, of great growth, of great momentum in many ways, but we're also a city and region of great disparities.

We've got to continue to confront the triple threat of concentrated poverty jobs sprawl and resulting racial inequity.

We need to successfully nurture, retain and attract diverse talent.

And I believe that completing downtown's revival is a necessary condition for transforming us from a city and region of great disparities, into a city of great equity.

If we concentrate more jobs in the heart of the city, we're going to create more equitable access to more jobs, for more people.

We're gonna create greater environmental sustainability and we're going to be more successful in nurturing, developing, retaining, and attracting talent.

Our vision for completing downtown's revival is really to make the city's core the inclusive 24/7 hub of a welcoming global city that weaves all of downtown's districts in surrounding neighborhoods into a truly seamless urban fabric.

And what that really means is making downtown Cleveland the kind of place where people of all ages and all backgrounds want to be.

We wanna make it a place that people just can't stay away from.

It means building the downtown neighborhood into the model of what a 15 minute city looks like.

A place where people can walk, bike or bus to work, to meet their needs within a short trip because mobility options are easy, convenient and attractive.

And the retail and recreation options are plentiful.

But to accelerate fulfilling this vision, to really accelerate it, our community needs a strategy to concentrate job growth in the city.

As I mentioned, moments ago, it's inherently more equitable to have jobs concentrated in the city.

Transportation is the second highest expense for most people in most households.

If more people can access more jobs without a car that's advancing equity in our city.

If people can walk, bike or take transit to work, that's building a more sustainable economy.

It's also key to attracting diverse talent as generation Z and the millennial generation are choosing which cities they wanna work in, where they wanna build a life.

These are the kinds of cities that they are looking for and our team stands ready to work with any employer, the ones to expand, relocate, or start a business in downtown.

Seriously, just give us a call.

But we need partners and we need help.

And we need a truly regional strategy to concentrate jobs in the city.

And I think we have an historic opportunity in front of us to do just that.

We have generational leadership change across our civic infrastructure.

We have an absolutely historic federal investment in cities that's taking place.

We will truly, truly unparalleled opportunity to transform our city.

I've long believed that Cleveland needed resources akin to the Marshall plan.

We now have an opportunity to develop a blueprint worthy of the Marshall plan to transform our city into a model of a 15 minute hub of a truly inclusive global Cleveland that leads the way and weaving the entire city into a seamless high density, walkable, transit oriented, urban fabric.

I'm excited to work with all of you, all of our strategic partners to build a downtown into a place that feels good, that people love and want to be in, and want to choose over any other experience that they could find in Northeast Ohio.

I wanna work with you to build a place that's diverse, inclusive, and welcoming.

I think we're all up to the challenge.

I think we've got the momentum and I think we've got the leaders in this community to make it happen.

I wanna conclude by welcoming you all back to The City Club.

Welcome back to downtown Cleveland.

I look forward to collaborating with all of you to continue the work of our city and to continue this discussion this afternoon.

Thank you.

- So if you're listening online or on the radio and you're wondering what's going on at The City Club today, I will remind you on Dan Moulthrop with City Club, you're listening to Michael Deemer.

He's the new president and CEO of Downtown Cleveland Alliance.

Delivering his first state of downtown Cleveland, which is super exciting, not really surprising that you chose the word resilient.

I'm gonna say that, but it is apt.

So congratulations.

Michael, you just sort of ended on this idea of the 15 minutes city, which as the CEO of The City Club, I'm pleased to hear you talk about that.

We had a conversation at a previous Friday forum recently about the idea, the concept of the 15 minute city.

And as you were talking about, I was thinking like 15 minutes, like it only takes about 15 minutes to walk from Brown Stadium to Progressive Field.

And you can do like just about any..

In many ways downtown already is the 15 minute neighborhood, but there's probably a few things missing what's missing.

What do you wanna see if you could wave a magic wand or work diligently over the next two years to make something happen, what's the missing thing that you would provide?

- One, I think I appreciate the kind words Dan and I appreciate the forum that The City Club previously did on the 15 minutes city, because I do think it's a very important concept and plan for leaders in Cleveland to be looking at.

And I think that Downtown Cleveland is in many ways, the model for what a 15 minute city and neighborhood could look like.

I think we probably still have some gaps in our retail.

I think that, you know, what you need to be in order to be a true 15 minute neighborhood or a 15 minute city is to be able to walk to work, walk to meet all of your daily needs and entertainment wants within a 15 minute walk.

And you can do most of that in downtown Cleveland.

We probably still have some gaps in general goods.

You know, we have drug stores and pharmacies, we have grocery stores, but you know, general merchandise, we probably need a little bit more of that.

And it's one of the reasons why we're so focused on retail attraction as part of our strategy over the next 12 months to really create retail experiences that are unique and authentic.

I think what you experienced when you go to Heinen's or when you go to the 5th Street Arcades, those are truly unique Cleveland experiences that we can create up and down Euclid Avenue and in the Warehouse district and ultimately all across downtown.

- Michael, what you described is also connected to what Dan Gilbert's organization has talked about with respect to the future of Tower City.

That's a lot of retail, that's a lot of space to fill.

And so I just, could you talk a little bit about Downtown Cleveland Alliance involvement with that project and really like how much of that do you think can be grown locally, organically, so to speak and how much would require outside, you know, the sort of chain stores that are sometimes anchors for those and occupied a larger footprint?

- No, I appreciate you pulling Tower City into the conversation, because I think when a lot of people think about downtown retail, they tend to think about the history of Euclid Avenue and they think about the history of Tower City Center.

And I think that there's a common theme here.

If you listened to Bedrock's plan for Tower City Center, if you listen to how we talk about the vision for retail in downtown Cleveland, it all centers around experience.

It's about creating experience.

It's not like a strip mall.

It's not like a suburban lifestyle center.

It's something that feels like a global city.

That's unique, authentic to that place in that environment.

And it's those experiences we really need to focus on.

I think in terms of how much retail we have, you know, the vacancy rate in retail for downtown is about 12.7%.

And that's a less vacancy than people realize.

- That's a lot less vacancy than I realized, yes.

- That's the number.

So we need to fill in our storefront vacancies.

We need to work with partners like Bedrock to animate Tower City Center.

I think we're not gonna fill all of the wants and needs overnight.

I think that there's a kind of a symbiotic relationship between the residential population and retail.

At one level, the more retail we have, the more successful we're gonna be in adding to our residential base.

But I think having surpassed 20,000 residents having created a really complete street along Euclid Avenue between Public Square and Playhouse Square.

I think we're very well positioned.

And we've got a great opportunity to really start building the retail base that creates a little bit more of a virtual cycle where we've got more retail, more residents, more retail, more residents.

- I wanna just note that when you say complete street, that's a term of art.

It's not just a descriptor.

And what you're referring to is a roadway that prioritizes in equally public transit, pedestrian mobility alongside cars.

It's not like say like Superior Avenue where you've got, you know, six lanes across that are devoted solely to vehicular traffic.

- Thank you for the lesson in urbanism.

- But why is that?

A lot of people know that a lot of people don't, but why is that so important?

- I think that creating that walkable transit oriented experience, that's what makes cities thrive.

I mean, if you think of any city that you love to go to, that you love to travel to, that you wish your city could be like, you imagine places that aligned with shops and restaurants and cafes that you can walk to, that you can bike to, that you can easily get from one end of town to the other on a bus or train.

And that's exactly what we need to continue to build here in Cleveland.

We've got the bones to do it.

We've got the blueprint to do it.

And in many ways we're getting there.

We just really need to double down on the strategies that have been in place and, you know, continue to focus on enhancing that pedestrian experience, creating more mobility options and have the supporting interesting retail environment that people are looking for.

- You said that the cities that we dream about, that we want Cleveland to be like.

What's... And often this event, the state of downtown we've often brought in folks from other cities, Denver, Pittsburgh, other sort of what we think of as our peer cities or the ones we'd like to think of as our peer cities.

What's the city for you?

I mean, besides Sandusky.

Which I mean, seriously, actually, but... - Inside joke here.

Many folks know that a good friend of ours, Eric Wobser, is the city manager in Sandusky and doing terrific work over there.

So Sandusky certainly on the list, but, you know, I don't think so much in terms of this city or that city.

I think about the vibe and the experience of when I go to a city, if I can go from my house to the airport, to the city of destination and never get in a car, I feel like I've had a great experience.

If I feel like I visit a city in everything I could possibly want or do during my stay there, whether it's for vacation or a conference, it's interesting, it's lively, it's diverse.

And it feels unique to that place.

I think that's the kind of environment that we're all drawn towards.

And that's the kind of experience we wanna create here in downtown Cleveland.

- So more Denver, less Dallas.

- Your words, not mine.

- Well.

I mean Dallas, Los Angeles.

There are cities in America that are very like car oriented, right?

And you're very clearly, despite like, you know, the ways in which Ohio is sort of built itself around and the built environment across the state, it's gonna built around automotive traffic.

I mean, you're very clearly talking about a vision of urban density that embraces all modes of mobility.

- Yeah.

And as we're talking about it, I think a good example of a reach city in downtown for us that we've looked to for a long time is Philadelphia.

It's a much bigger metropolitan area, a more dense city, but a city with a very similar history in terms of its industrial past very similar socioeconomic challenges.

But they've really...

They've done a nice job building a strong residential base, a strong jobs base and a really eclectic mix of retail that as you described it, is a very pedestrian and mobility option oriented.

It's really embracing density and everything that comes along with it.

- Michael, one of the biggest challenges that a lot of downtowns have been facing has to do with unhoused populations and this past summer, it seems as though that issue combined with pandemic restrictions combined with all sorts of things about the economy, that the unhoused population is unhoused individuals, we've seen more of them down in downtown Cleveland.

And that's how anecdotally it appears as somebody who works downtown comes downtown most days of the week, does the data bear that out as well?

And then the follow onto that is like, what's really the plan.

Like how is that work going?

- No, it's a great question.

It's an important question.

I think first it's important to kind of level set and understanding of what's taking place.

We keep very close tabs on what's going on in the streets of downtown Cleveland.

And we actually do not see an increase in the numbers of folks who are unsheltered or that are spending most of their time in the streets.

We are seeing an escalation in some of the behavior that people are engaging in.

And I think because we've had just generally fewer people out and about it often feels like we have more folks who are unsheltered in the streets of downtown Cleveland.

As I mentioned in my remarks, we've tried to adjust how we respond and make sure that our ambassador teams are working with mental health specialists and kind of a co-responder strategy and other urbanist term of art.

But we think those co-responsive strategies of coupling a social service provider or a mental health specialist with a more general intervention is an effective one.

And we're really focused on trying to make sure that we are getting folks connected with shelter, if that's what's needed, with services or treatment, if that's what's needed.

We've had nice success with the pilot project that we launched earlier this summer.

We're going to build on that.

And really what I wanna see happen in downtown is that we build a model that is the kind of thing that the community wants and expects with how social challenges are responded to.

And that becomes a model for other parts of the city and even other cities to utilize.

And I think we're on our way to doing that.

- The commercial vacancy or when I say commercial, there's a commercial vacancy issue.

And then there's also like the downtown worker issue or when downtown workers will return.

Lately, it's felt anecdotally that more returning.

But I also know that some of the banks who are here with us today, haven't brought their entire workforce back yet.

- I'll be talking don't worry about that.

- I know they're here and listening.

And some of the law firms as well.

I mean the financial and legal are the two big drivers downtown, as well as some other industries.

How's that going?

Where do you, I mean, there's so much we can't control about that because it's because of COVID and Delta and various things around that.

And people's resistance to vaccinations and so forth.

But from your point of view, what are you seeing and what are you trying to make happen?

- Well, let me begin by saying, I think that we at the Alliance are big believers in place-based work culture.

That the collaborative innovation, mental health benefits that come from people being together are very important and very real.

So, you know, independent of whether people are productive working remotely.

And I think people generally are productive.

Productivity is a pretty low bar.

I mean, I think most businesses aspire to innovation, leadership, building strong culture and being leaders not merely being productive.

So I start from that foundation, I think in terms of how we're doing in downtown, we've seen a steady increase over the summer.

There's no question that the Delta variant has slowed down the return of office workers.

But I think on any given day and we're talking very closely with property owners and managers across downtown, you know, on any given day, probably a little more than half of the downtown workforce is here, but that's also growing every day.

And I think that what we're anticipating is there's going to be greater flexibility in the future when it comes to whether people work from home or in the office.

But, you know, I'm not anticipating a wholesale, you know, businesses are gonna be completely virtual and, you know, we're gonna have vacant buildings all over cities across the country.

I think it's gonna be much more nuanced than that.

- I have to say that, you know, it's an organization that contributes to the kind of the life and the culture of downtown.

I mean, we felt a duty to figure out a way to reopen and to welcome people back in the doors.

And I know the same is true at Playhouse Square.

I know the same as true Progressive Field and Brown Stadium that it's like, it's part of...

I mean, it's part of what we are supposed to do.

- No, and I appreciate that so much about The City Club.

And I appreciate this... One of the things I appreciate so much about being here in person with all of you today and we've taken the same approach to Downtown Cleveland Alliance.

Means you can imagine we spelt... We felt a special obligation to walk the walk.

So, you know, our team has been in the office on a staggered basis going back to last June.

And then in May of this year, we began to bring everybody back in every day.

And, you know, I think that, as I mentioned a moment ago, everybody was productive working remotely, but there's something different about being together and having this kind of interaction that you just don't get in that remote environment.

And I think that both workers and employers are going to sense that in the coming weeks and months ahead.

- Michael Deemer is president and CEO of the Downtown Cleveland Alliance delivering his first state of downtown Cleveland address.

And we're gonna move to the Q&A, if you're ready.

- Ready when you are.

- All right, give him a round of applause please ladies and gentlemen.

So we're moving to the Q&A now and we welcome questions from everyone, City Club members, guests, those of you joining us via our live stream or radio broadcast on 90.3 Ideasstream Public Media.

If you have a question here in the audience, please raise your hand and our staff will acknowledge you and we're gonna get these microphones moved out so that we can do that.

I'm sure that my staff is around somewhere to do that, but anyway, the microphones are right there and just wait in your seat until they acknowledge you, or I'll be like hustling around.

Oh, there they are there.

They're coming, sorry about that.

I think I surprised them on the timing.

- They were out supporting downtown retail.

- They were supporting downtown retail.

Clearly they ran out for a quick bite at Heinen's.

And anyway, if you would like to tweet a question or if you're listening online or if you prefer not to stand up and ask your question you can tweet your question @thecityclub and our staff will work it in or you can text your question to 330-541-5794 that's 330-541-5794.

It can be an anonymous question.

And that way Joe Marinucci can get in two or three as well.

- I thought Joe wasn't (indistinct).

- So if we're ready for our first question, let's do it.

- Good afternoon.

Erskine Velma from Cleveland Neighborhood Progress.

My question is, do you or how do you engage with adjacent communities central, midtown others so that eventually they can benefit from what's going on in downtown Cleveland?

- Well, first of all, thank you for the question and thank you for being here today.

And Cleveland Neighborhood Progress is one of our terrific partners.

So thank you for your work there as well.

And let me begin by saying that if what we're doing in downtown Cleveland is not positively impacting the adjacent neighborhoods, we're doing it wrong.

And if we're building downtown Cleveland in the way that we should be, we're positively impacting the adjacent neighborhoods in the entire city.

We work with and engage neighborhoods in a number of ways.

Our clean and safe ambassadors work with directly through contracts with a number of the neighborhoods surrounding downtown and really throughout Cuyahoga county.

We have about 10 or 12 contract relationships across the city and the county where our clean and safe ambassadors are deploying the same type of strategy that we have in downtown of making sure that our neighborhood is clean, safe and welcoming for the people who live, work and play there.

I think another way in which we work very closely with the surrounding neighborhoods is in philosophically and from an advocacy standpoint, you know, making sure that we're advocating for policies that are leading to greater density, greater residential density throughout the city.

Because as I said in my remarks, the more residential density we build in the city, the adjoining neighborhoods and beyond that's easy access to the largest jobs in the state of Ohio.

A resident of Midtown or Fairfax or Huffer, Glenville, or Detroit Shoreway has easier access to jobs in downtown or University Circle for that matter than they do to jobs in any other part of the county.

So I really think from an advocacy standpoint, from a planning standpoint and from a service standpoint, those are the key ways that we work with the surrounding neighborhoods.

- Thanks.

- Next question.

- This is a text question from someone in our audience.

The Ohio state budget repeatedly has shortchanged the local government fund for our state cities, including Cleveland.

How big of a barrier is this for the investment of downtown?

- Well, I appreciate the question and, you know, there's I think little question that support for the local government fund and support for cities at the State House has waned over the years.

I think that it is continues to be very important for cities and organizations like ours to be a strong advocate at the State House with our Northeast Ohio delegation for increased resources for cities.

I will say we have a terrific relationship with the Cuyahoga county representatives in the State House.

And when we go to them on specific issues and projects and policies, they're there.

But I think it's no question that, you know, cities have a smaller voice in the State House that the funds supporting cities have diminished.

And that creates very real challenges for us and cities in downtown specifically are really the economic engines of the city, of our metropolitan areas.

And it's something that we need to continue to work to correct with our representatives in Columbus.

- Next question, oh, here we go.

- Getting downtown by public transportation is easy.

Getting from downtown to where most of the jobs are, is almost impossible.

What coordination would you like to see, or what improvements would you like to see from the RTA to enhance the ability of the population to get where the jobs are in this county?

- I appreciate the question and the thought behind the question of wanting to connect residents with jobs.

I would respectfully flip the question and the answer to it where I think we've got the largest concentration of jobs in the state of Ohio in downtown.

We actually have the fourth highest concentration of jobs, just down the road in University Circle.

We need to bring jobs back to the core.

I think it's a wiser, more strategic investment to bring jobs back to the core.

And when I say the core, I mean, the city that is well served by public transit.

I think it's a real financial and logistical burden to put on our public transportation system to try to connect a dense city with disparate and less dense job hubs.

And I know there's a lot of work going into that.

I know there are last mile connections at to figure out how to connect city residents to far-flung suburban jobs, but I don't think that's a real efficient use of very limited resources.

- Other questions?

Because I got a few, but go ahead.

- Ethan Harrison with Allegro Real Et Brokers and Advisors, I thought it was interesting what you said about becoming a 15 minutes city, which I think in a lot of ways we are over one area where I've always felt we are lacking is with green space or activity space for sports and things of that nature something that always differentiates other cities from us.

So I was just wondering your thoughts on adding green space or space to play games and other activities.

- Yeah, no, I appreciate the question and I think it's something that's not talked overtly enough about, but you know, when I think of and talk about creating experiences, having attractive well programmed green space is part and parcel of that.

I think that's part of the city's plan and vision for the lakefront.

It's part of the city's plan and vision for the valley along the riverfront and, you know, great cities, great neighborhoods have great public spaces.

And, you know, we've seen examples of that across our own city and that very much needs to be an important piece of our strategy in downtown, across the city of building that 15 minute concept of having easy access to recreation, as well as things like retail jobs and services.

- So you just mentioned the waterfront and we haven't talked about the waterfront plan that has been proposed.

And I'm sure that the Downtown Cleveland Alliance has a point of view on that.

Please share.

- Well, very grateful to our friends over at Greater Cleveland Partnership in Bedrock for making a big announcement about downtown the same week as a state of Downtown Cleveland.

It's like we planned it.

But we're very excited about it.

And, you know, I've long felt like our riverfront represents every bit as much of an opportunity as the lakefront, if not more so.

And we've got this terrific opportunity here to really develop and connect both of our waterfronts, create that seamless fabric from north to south, running from the lake through downtown to the river and east and west.

And, you know, in the past, we may have said, well, Geeta, that's all gonna cost a lot of money and it is, but we've got this unprecedented federal investment in cities that I think we've got some great plans on the books to help take advantage of.

- So both the waterfront plan that has limits have proposed and the riverfront plan that has been mentioned this week, those are... - Very, excited about both of those looking forward to working with all the partners, to bring them to fruition, and again, create that seamless urban fabric across and throughout downtown that we've always wanted to have.

- That'd be extraordinary.

We have our next question.

- Thank you for the comments.

The recent women's professional tennis tournament went very well and the city looked terrific and there was a lot of buzz, I think, within the players.

Yeah, what can be done to leverage that kind of event for the good of the city?

Thank you.

- Well, I appreciate the question that I had the opportunity to go watch some of the matches.

It was a terrific event for the city of Cleveland, a great way to activate the west bank of the flats.

And I'm pleased that there was a positive buzz among the players.

I mean, that's the kind of literally the kind of PR that money can't buy.

I'm very hopeful that that event will be something that we can bring back and continue and build upon.

I think it was very well received and I'm hopeful that that will continue, and we'll be able to work with the sports commission and other partners to bring more events like that to downtown - Great.

- Would you put to bed the debate that I've had with friends and I think other people have had about there's too many apartments being built downtown, where there's not enough people to fill them.

And yet it seems like there's more apartments, more apartments being built.

What's going on?

- Yes.

I can put that one to bed.

I truly believe we're just scratching the surface in terms of the density, residential density and job density that we can build in downtown Cleveland.

I mean, we're a metropolitan area of over 2 million people and we have only 20,000 people living downtown.

We are really just scratching the surface of what we could be and really what we should be.

And I think we need to continue to build housing because again, from a equity standpoint, the more housing we add supply and demand kicks in, we're gonna have more affordable housing as we add more housing.

And I think that is we create the experiences that we've been talking about here, whether it's the green space, whether it's the pedestrian experience, whether it's the transportation options.

If we do those things, we're gonna be able to accelerate that residential growth.

In fact, before the pandemic, which seems ages ago now we partnered with urban partners in Philadelphia to do a demand study for downtown.

And they projected that with very conservative economic projections.

And given the pandemic, I'm happy to use conservative projections, that we would hit 30,000 residents in downtown by the end of 2030.

We could accelerate that even more by creating more job growth by investing more in transportation, pedestrian and bike infrastructure.

So that's all a long way of saying we're scratching the surface in terms of our residential population.

- 30,000, another 10,000 seems like a lot.

I know of projects that are very close by next door on the surface parking lot on Euclid and diagonally across the street that might bring another thousand or 1200 units to downtown.

But where would the other 9,000 come from?

Do you think?

- I thought I just put this question to rest.

- Not yet.

One more bedtime story.

- Where the additional housing come from?

- Yeah who's doing the other 9,000?

- Well, we still have a number of surface parking lots that are in need of development.

And believe me what it is I look at any surface lot across downtown, I see a development site, like the one next door.

Like the lumen, like the parcels that are being developed for Sherwin Williams headquarters.

But there are development sites on the Sherwin Williams site.

As I mentioned, there are surface lots remaining in the core.

We just heard Bedrock in the city of Cleveland announced a big plan for the vision for the valley that could add another few thousand units there.

We have development opportunities on the lakefront.

So there's lots of places where we could add more housing and 10,000 may sound like a lot.

But once you start adding up all the development sites and the number of apartments that you can add to those, it actually ends up pretty quickly.

- It's good to hear.

It's good to hear.

I'm seeing no other questions.

I'm gonna ask you a question you probably... Do we have another one over here?

Oh, okay.

- Let's see one... - I've got a question you don't want, but... - That's why I'm here.

I'm trying to help.

- That's what you're looking to me.

So what do you anticipate will happen in the city of Cleveland after the NBA all-star game comes here in 2022?

- So the question is what do I anticipate will happen after the all-star game?

Well, first of all, the all-star game is a terrific, another terrific event that I think will serve us in some ways, similar to the NFL draft.

I mean, the NFL draft was a little bit of a coming out party for downtown, as we were just beginning to emerge from the pandemic in terms of the vaccine being widely available and being able to get out and do more big events.

I think the NBA all-star game will be a little bit like that only at a different time when we'll be experiencing more events like theater in live music.

I think that will be a great national spotlight for downtown.

And I think coming out of it, I think 2022 is going to be a big year for downtown Cleveland.

I think it's going to be a big year for the visitor experience, concerts ball games.

I think a lot of the things that we saw beginning to happen in 2021 as the summer began.

That's what we're gonna see in all of 2022.

And I think in a lot of ways, the NBA all-star game is gonna be the kickoff or I guess I should say the tip-off for all of it.

- The catalyst.

- The catalyst.

- If you will.

Another question here.

- A question from Twitter.

Has DCA considered a rent subsidy program for small businesses that could diversify the types of retail for downtown residents.

For example, a hardware store.

- I appreciate the question and we're very much looking at strategies like that because we know that in order to have the type of homegrown retail that creates those types of experiences that people are looking for in order to create opportunities for our local entrepreneurs, we're gonna need strategies like that.

And again, I go back to a great example.

We have right here in our own backyard of the 5th Street Arcades, which is populated entirely with, you know, really unique local retailers and artisans.

And they've been able to create an economic structure there that works for small entrepreneurial retailers.

And I think we need to figure out some strategies, working with a lot of partners in order to do that across downtown.

- There's one more.

No, I don't think so.

- She's been up there for a while.

- The future of Burke Lakefront Airport, you haven't had to address that yet.

And I feel like it's just kind of, you know, baptism by fire to ask you to weigh in there.

- Well, it wouldn't baptize baptism by fire, if it was the first question.

- That's right, that's right.

- I look at our lakefront development opportunities very pragmatically.

We've got probably 25 to 30 acre site immediately north of Brown Stadium that we've been trying to develop as a community for some time, we've got opportunities and a little bit of a development taking place in North Coast Harbor.

I'd really like us as a community to focus on getting those sites done in the connection to the lakefront done in...

If we're successful there, there's a whole conversation around Burke Lakefront Airport to talk about.

But we've got an opportunity right in front of us.

Let's keep our eye on the prize and get it done.

- Michael Deemer, president and CEO of Downtown Cleveland Alliance.

I wanna thank all of you for joining us and mentioned that we welcome guests at tables, hosted by Falls and Company Huntington Bank, the Downtown Cleveland Alliance and PNC.

Be sure to join us next Friday, October 1st for our local heroes series.

That's not next Friday, by the way, that's in two Fridays, our local heroes series, featuring Tim Tramble, president and CEO of the St. Luke's foundation, a new president and CEO right there as well.

He will share how the foundation is working to bring the voices of residents directly into philanthropic decisions while addressing racial equity, health equity and community transformation.

Tickets are still available.

You can find them online at cityclub.org, where you can also access our archives and see what else is coming up.

And there's a ton of great stuff coming up, a bunch of stuff going on the online today, that brings us to the end of our forum.

Michael Deemer, thank you so much.

Ladies and gentlemen members and friends, thank you so much for being with us today.

Our form is adjourned.

- For information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of The City Club, go to cityclub.org.

- Production and distribution of City Club forums and Ideasstream Public Media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fond of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.