- [Narrator] Production and distribution of City Club forums on Ideastream public media are made possible by PNC, and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.

(upbeat music) (bell ringing) - Good afternoon, and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, February 11th, and I'm Kristen Baird Adams, president of the City Club board of directors, and chief of staff of PNC's national regional president's organization.

Today's forum is part of our local heroes series, which spotlight champions here in Northeast Ohio whose hard work changes the way we view ourselves and the community.

So it's certainly fitting that we welcome Greater Cleveland Partnership president and CEO, Baiju Shaw, who is leading the organization's charge to regain Greater Cleveland's standing as a great region in the Great lakes.

Greater Cleveland Partnership of course, is the region's leading economic development organization and the largest metropolitan chamber of commerce in the nation with more than 12,000 members.

In his first year at the helm of GCP, Mr. Shaw's leadership comes at a pivotal time.

One in which we are undergoing an extraordinary period of transition and opportunity, while continuing to face long standing economic challenges, including persistent poverty, inequities, and unequal access to economic opportunity.

As detailed in its recently unveiled all in strategic plan, Greater Cleveland Partnership has embarked on an ambitious effort to accelerate growth and prosperity, with the vision of a thriving region for all businesses and individuals.

All in focuses on collaboration with private, civic, and public partners who together are harnessing the opportunity to grow a region built on dynamic businesses, innovation, abundant talent, and inclusive opportunities.

We've invited Mr. Shaw here today to share with us additional details on this important effort, the partnership and collaboration that are critical to its success and progress to date.

Mr. Shaw, appointed to his current role in the spring of 2021, is just the second person to lead the Greater Cleveland Partnership since its founding in 2004.

Prior to leading the Greater Cleveland Partnership, Mr. Shaw served as the senior fellow for innovation at the Cleveland Foundation.

And as president and CEO of BioMotiv and co-leader of the Harrington project for development and discovery.

He also served as the co-founder and CEO of Bioenterprise.

He has a JD from Harvard and a BA from Yale and serves on a number of for-profit and nonprofit boards locally and nationally.

As in every City Club forum, you can participate with your questions.

Text them to 330-541-5794.

That's 330-541-5794.

You can also tweet them to @TheCityClub, and we'll try to work them into the program.

Members, guests, and friends of the City Club of Cleveland, please join me in welcoming Greater Cleveland Partnership president and CEO Baiju Shaw.

(audience clapping) - Thank you, Kristen, for that kind introduction.

The one part that she left out is that I am a Clevelander by birth and a Clevelander forever.

It's an honor to be invited to speak at the City Club, and it's an honor to be here in front of so many friends, team members, board members, and partners, and I wanna thank you for being here in the room today.

And of course, to my wife Koyen, who has always supported me being all in in Cleveland, all of the time.

This afternoon, my aim is to share with you an inspired vision for the region.

And more importantly to share with you how with the right mindset, spirit, and values, we are working in unity to bring that vision to full fruition.

Now, if you were inspired by that opening video, the vision of Cleveland becoming once again, one of the great regions in the Great Lakes, all in is where it starts.

All in is what it will take.

And all in is what the civic system is already doing to get us there.

All in, two words, five letters.

It's a simple idea with the potential to absolutely transform our region.

We're gonna cover a lot of ground here today.

So if you don't remember anything else from these sets of remarks, other than Dan's comments about the baby gorilla.

(audience laughing) Just remember all in, those two simple words.

Now as Kristen said nine months ago, I had the privilege of becoming the president and CEO of the Greater Cleveland Partnership.

We are the region's chamber of commerce, and as she noted, the largest metropolitan chamber of commerce in the country.

Our mission is to accelerate growth and prosperity in the region.

And the strength of our organization is the leadership of our board and our members, which enables us to serve as a catalyst, a convener, and a connector among private, nonprofit, and public organizations.

All engaging directly, all working, and as our organization's name says, in partnerships towards an even greater Cleveland.

From the outset, we established three primary objectives.

Three objectives that continue to be our focus today.

First and foremost, to restore the civic system, the foundation in which private, public, and non-profit partnerships can really power our community.

Second with our board, our team, and our partners to refresh the vision and the plans for a greater Cleveland.

And third, to renew our focus on execution and outcomes with milestones and targets.

On the first, restoring the civic system, all in is where it starts.

When we are at our best as a community, whether it's navigating this pandemic, creating opportunities, hosting global events, and even winning championships, we are at our best because we are all in.

Those words describe our mindset and our spirit in those great moments, where each individual and each organization is contributing towards a common aspiration that transcends and transforms our community.

We have chosen all in to summarize the mindset, spirit, and values that we and the civic system must have to power us towards an even greater Cleveland.

And to define that spirit, working with partners such as the Cleveland Foundation, JumpStart, Team NEO, The Fund for Economic Future, and many others, we developed a set of all in values to guide our approach.

Seven values, all starting with the word in.

It begins with being inspired.

Setting ambitious goals, supported by a dedication to execution.

Being innovative.

Thinking creatively, embracing risk, and adapting to change.

Inclusive, involved, and interconnected.

Working with integrity, and always working in unity.

For our community, not caring about who leads, who supports, but most importantly, not caring about who gets credit.

Always in unity for community impact and outcomes.

In communities just like in organizations, culture is critical and foundational for success.

And to achieve our mission and our vision, we need all of us and all of you to be all in.

And it's only from that foundation that we're able to pursue our second objective, our all in plan for Greater Cleveland to become once again, one of the great regions in the Great Lakes.

Now, our planning process began, as most planning processes do, with a clear eyed assessment of the situation.

We benchmarked Greater Cleveland's performance across a range of important economic indicators.

Business growth, jobs growth, income growth.

And we compared ourselves to a peer set of Midwest metro regions.

Over the last decade, Greater Cleveland has been at best in the middle of that pack.

We ranked eighth in jobs growth, eighth in business growth, and fifth in income growth compared to our peer set.

Looking at many other indicators, whether it was productivity and innovation, educational attainment, minority-majority wage ratios and population growth, same findings.

But we also then took a look at our assets.

And if you look at our assets across this region, we have many, many strengths.

We have notable gaps, but most importantly, we have significant opportunities.

And we recognize that we can and must do better.

So over this period of time, working with the board, the team, and many of our partners, we've developed a vision and plans with benchmarks and goals.

And we've set an aspiration to once again, become one of the great regions in the Great Lakes by 2030.

To be among the top tier of the Midwest regions in business growth, jobs growth, and income growth.

Now to achieve that aspiration, the all in plan has five priorities.

All interlinked, all essential for moving the region forward.

The first is dynamic businesses.

Great regions are powered by dynamic businesses, businesses that are thriving and growing by innovating in their products, services, and operations.

Our focus is on boosting productivity and innovation through technology for businesses, expanding their connections to research institutions and fostering broader innovation investment.

An example of this work are the strategies being pursued today to promote smart manufacturing, one of the critical growth sectors for the region's economy.

The strategies have been summarized in the document called the blueprint by MAGNET, one of our partners.

Examples of that strategy in action include new institutes at Case Western and Cleveland State, the opening of new corporate innovation centers at places such as Swagelock, Sherwin-Williams, and the new Ernst and Young Nottingham Spirk Global Innovation Hub in the health tech corridor.

Recently, the US Department of Commerce announced a national competition called the Build Back Better challenge where up to $75 million could be won by a region for an initiative that boosts both innovation, but inclusive economic development.

They shared that success would require not only a compelling strategy and a proposal, but success would require a demonstration that the region's private sector, nonprofit sector, and public sector stood united in their support for a region's proposal.

When that competition was announced, we quickly gathered as a civic system and together we determined that smart manufacturing was our strongest opportunity to win this competition.

And that MAGNET should lead the effort with support from many of its partners.

So working with MAGNET, a grant application was developed with supporting letters from over 150 organizations throughout the Greater Cleveland Area.

Manufacturing companies, every chamber of commerce.

Every foundation, the Cleveland Foundation, JumpStart, Team NEO, Fund for Economic Future.

the urban leagues throughout our region, Hispanic business chambers.

Case Western, Cleveland State, Tri-C.

In every single county in the region, over 150 letters of support went in to demonstrate that as a region we were unified.

The result?

Our application from the Greater Cleveland Area was one of only 50 selected out of more than 600 to advance to the next round.

That's all in.

But prioritizing dynamic business is also about scaling our research institutions.

Two weeks ago at this Friday forum, we heard from NASA Glenn director, Marla Perez-Davis.

NASA Glenn is a treasured resource.

Everyone, everyone dreams about space.

But NASA Glenn is also a major asset in this region.

And we believe NASA Glenn can be even more for this region.

So working with our federal delegation, state and local officials, Jobs Ohio, the Ohio Aerospace Institute, and many members of our business community, we've initiated an advocacy strategy for expanding NASA Glenn's role in leadership in critical areas such as electric aircraft propulsion, communication services, and hypersonic testing.

All of which have space, but also commercial applications and all of which could lead to greater economic development around NASA Glenn and throughout our region.

That's all in for dynamic businesses.

Now, of course, for dynamic businesses and research institutions to grow, they need talent.

And that's our second priority is all about abundant talent.

Talent at every skill and experience level.

This is not just an acute issue in this region due to the constrained labor supply.

This is a long term challenge for our region to truly thrive.

Today, according to our partners at Team NEO, 47% of our graduates from higher education institutions remain in the region upon graduation.

The benchmark across the Midwest is 55%.

That change would result in thousands of additional individuals each year, staying, helping power those dynamic businesses and continue to grow in Greater Cleveland.

Our focus in this strategy is significantly expanding the connection between dynamic businesses, especially in in-demand sectors, and the educational and workforce systems, encouraging and supporting businesses to significantly increase internships, co-ops, and apprenticeships so that students get practical learning and employers get access to emerging talent.

And as students complete degree programs or certificate programs, they also come out with a job offer that makes them much more likely to stay in Greater Cleveland upon graduation.

So one example of expanding this connections is Eaton, who has been working with many others on our IT sector partnership.

Eaton recently shared that they've identified through that work, not only new talent pipelines and programs that have enabled them to meet their hiring goals, but they've also exceeded their diversity goals for tech talent because of the work of the IT sector partnership.

These sector partnerships are launched by the county and PACE, a similar program launched by CMSD, brings together employers, financial companies, banks, IT firms, healthcare organizations, manufacturers, and the work force and educational system throughout our community.

Together over 100 companies are working with workforce educations, organizations, educational institutions, and nonprofits today, collaborating and launching new initiatives, such as Ohio to Work for manufacturing employment.

Apprenti, a new tech apprenticeship program, and many more.

Again, that's an example of what it means to be all in for abundant talent.

But for us to have truly abundant talent, we must have our third priority, which is inclusive opportunity.

Our region's workforce, our executives, our boards, and our business owners need to reflect our region's demographics.

50% of our region are women.

20% is black.

6% is Hispanic.

And 7% is foreign born.

To have dynamic businesses and abundant talent, we need to ensure individuals of all backgrounds participate in this region's growth and prosperity.

Our focus here is on scaling more job creating and wealth creating minority based enterprises, increasing diverse talent development and hiring by reducing barriers and continuing our efforts to ensure every resident is digitally connected for learning, earning, and living.

Now those of you that know me know that I'm a huge sports fan.

And right now the Cleveland Cavaliers are not only preparing to host the world here for the NBA All Star weekend, but they're also emerging as one of the best teams in the league.

I love the Cavaliers, not only for their team and what they do on the court, but I love them for what they do as an organization, and their dedication to community and to inclusion.

The cavalier are a part of CommitCLE, a program in which 22 large companies in our region, and more growing, are committed to supplier diversity, creating more opportunities throughout our community for minority owned businesses.

Connecting that commitment to our new minority business center enables minority businesses we support to access customer opportunities, and also access advice and support from a network of business service firms and organizations that can assist in their growth.

Similarly, the Cleveland Guardians, our baseball team, tapped one of those center's businesses recently to support their plan to exceed all of their inclusion and diversity targets for their upcoming ballpark renovations and operations.

That's all in for inclusive opportunity.

Now, dynamic businesses and talented individuals have the advantage that they can live anywhere.

Especially in a technologically interconnected world.

So thus our fourth priority is about ensuring that we have an appealing community.

We must continually focus on improving our community and our amenities, especially with an eye to what future generations are looking for in places to live.

And that's a bit about that as physical development.

The opening video presented a future view of our city with many of the announced projects in place, a downtown reconnected to its waterfronts, and accessible and inclusive green spaces and public plazas throughout.

A completed public square with the Sherwin-Williams headquarters.

The renewed baseball stadium, neighboring developments, all connected in an updated vision for how downtown, which is our friends at the Downtown Cleveland Alliance say is both the front door and the living room for our region.

But an appealing community is more than just a vibrant downtown.

It's also about thriving neighborhoods, innovation corridors, and recreational amenities.

It's looking at our community through the eyes of the next generation and recognizing the importance of our parks and trails, our world class arts and culture community, and our restaurants and entertainment.

And while we're blessed with what we already have here, and we must preserve that.

We also have to recognize what we are missing and build more of it.

More bike trails, more waterfront access, more diverse arts and cultural organizations and more live music every night of the week.

Our work here involves being included as a convener, a catalyst and a coordinator, aligning public and private resources, participating in real estate financing through our real estate group, the Cleveland Development Advisors and serving as advocate for these initiatives.

And we do this again in partnership, in close partnership with the city of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, our many public agency partners, federal partners, the private sectors, and many nonprofits.

That's all in for an appealing community.

Those four priorities are critical.

But for accelerated and sustained success, we have a fifth priority that is equally critical and an accelerant to each of those four.

And that's confidence.

Confidence in the region is our fifth priority.

We must have our leaders, private, public, and nonprofit, be ambassadors for our region.

As a community, we lack collective confidence that Greater Cleveland is a great place to build businesses and build careers.

When you ask Clevelanders about business success, too often in this community, people look backwards.

They bring up old firms, TRW, BP.

They talk about Rockefeller, MA Hanna and so on.

And when we dwell in our past, we miss seeing the present, and we miss seeing our future.

Greater Cleveland's history provides us a legacy, not just in companies, institutions, and philanthropy, but a legacy of traits in embedded in this region's DNA.

Traits such as enterprise, ambition, and innovation that are once again being expressed and powering our region today.

So I'm gonna pause here and I'm gonna play one of my favorite parlor games.

And this is, do you know.

The question here is, do you know about this company, just raise your hand if you are aware of this company.

Overdrive.

Okay, many hands have gone up, Overdrive, great company.

Tech company, over 400 employees, 75 more being added.

$400 million in revenues.

Let's try again, Park Place Technologies.

Okay, fewer hands.

Park Place Technologies, another company that started in the 1990s.

Over 2200 employees today, 150 countries that they're selling in.

MRI Software.

Fewer hands.

Over 2,700 employees globally.

Nearly 600 here in soul and headquartered one of the real estate software leaders in the world.

SPR therapeutics.

Many fewer hands.

Spin out out of Case Western.

Led by Maria Bennett, closed another nearly $40 million in financing last year to bring her product to market.

How about Within3?

Okay, even fewer.

Within3, a health IT services firm, raised $100 million in their last financing run led by Lance hill.

Wonderful entrepreneur who happens to also be black.

Sentara.

Okay.

Sentara, a healthcare innovator company led by Michael Peters.

the midst of this pandemic in November of 2020, Sentara went public.

It's market capitalization today, $6 billion.

Sitting down the road.

Peak Nanosystems.

Very few hands.

$25 million raised just in the last three months.

It's got leading edge technology for optical lenses and capacitors.

How about Splash Financial?

Okay, Splash Financial.

Building here, if you've heard of a company called SoFi that does student lending, Splash Financial does exactly that for graduate student lending.

Raised $45 million last year and is growing.

It's more than just tech businesses.

It's Cross Country Mortgage, Union Home Mortgage, Rocket Mortgage, all of which have announced expansions, it's Progressive.

Progressive, not only the Level 20 group located here in downtown, that's got 60 people and growing, but it's the fact that Progressive last year announced that they're hiring 6,400 people.

6,400 people.

And it's Cleveland-Cliffs.

More than $20 billion in revenue and growing.

And so many more.

My question to you is if you haven't heard of these companies and their successes, knowing more about them, has that changed your perception of Greater Cleveland as a great place to do businesses?

'Cause that's just a glimpse.

It's a glimpse of what's happening around us.

There are many, many other businesses that are thriving and innovating here in Greater Cleveland in the 21st century.

we have to recognize and celebrate these 21st century businesses and leaders.

And through that recognition and celebration build our confidence.

Confidence that is anchored on these thriving enterprises.

Confidence that we can convey.

Because projecting that confidence is gonna embolden others.

It's gonna attract investment, attract talent, attract businesses, all of which accelerates our vision.

To realize that vision though requires our third objective, renewing our focus on execution and outcomes.

As the saying goes, vision without execution is just hallucination.

For each of these priorities that we've outlined, we have targeted initiatives.

With plans, partnerships, and goals.

Goals not only for 2030, but goals with annual milestones and metrics to track progress because we need to do this with urgency.

We cannot miss this moment.

It's not just about the leadership transition, we cannot miss this moment where we have an unprecedented time where market demand across every single sector is growing, and private and public funding is flowing.

In this moment, we can dramatically transform and advance our region.

Some of the examples shared today just earlier are glimpses of moving these strategies and priorities into action through partnerships and with urgency.

Transforming this region requires translating the all in mindset, spirit, and values to all in execution towards community outcomes.

What I've shared with you today is the vision, work, and commitment of our board, our members, our team, and many additional partners in the private, nonprofit, and public sectors.

Hundreds of individuals that today are working together.

We recognize that success requires those sectors, our civic system, as we call it, to be connected and committed, collaborating and coordinating towards this common vision.

More important than sectors and organizations though, it's about individuals.

It's about individual agency, individual ownership, individual trust, and individual partnerships towards an even greater Cleveland.

Let me close by reminding you that we have done this before.

We have navigated this pandemic.

We've renewed our city.

We've created broader opportunity.

We've hosted global events.

And yes, Cleveland, we have even won championships.

And we are doing it again.

We are doing this together, all in towards a great region on a Great Lake.

Thank you.

And I look forward to our discussion.

(audience clapping) - We're about to begin the audience Q&A.

We welcome questions from everyone.

City Club members, guests, students, all of you joining us via our live stream or the radio broadcast on 90.3 Ideastream Public Media.

If you'd like to tweet a question, please tweet it, @TheCityClub.

you can also text them to 330-541-5794.

That's 330-541-5794, And our staff will do their best to work them into the program.

May we have the first question please?

- Good afternoon.

My name is Meryl Johnson, I'm on the state board of education.

And one of the things that we're very concerned about are the bills that are pending now, in the house committee, the state and local government committee, which would restrict education in the classroom by not allowing teachers to teach about race and sexism and so forth.

A number of businesses in the state have come out against those bills because we recognize that as students aren't able to discuss these things in their classroom, that it really takes away to mention the word that you mentioned, it takes away their confidence to be able to be citizens who advocate for a better society.

So my question to you is, has the Greater Cleveland Partnership taken a stand on these two bills?

And if not, why not?

- Sure.

So we are monitoring both of those bills that you've referenced.

And we recognize that in an election year, many times legislation gets introduced that is not really gonna have a chance of being advanced.

We recognize that legislation is often introduced to send signals, in particular in primary elections.

What we're focusing in on with the state of Ohio as it relates to education is really focusing on ensuring that the students that are coming through our higher ed, or our high school systems, as well as our higher ed systems have access to career exposure, career internships, so that we ensure that they're participating in pathways that get them to success upon graduation.

Thank you.

- Good afternoon, Mr. Shaw, I appreciate your comments, your vision for Cleveland for the future.

I think it's insightful.

One of the questions and concerns that I do have, however, is being one of the oldest demographic areas in the country.

How are we going to mill together some of these outlooks and opportunities so that it can actually become tangible for the broader community?

So a lot of conversations been had about what can happen for those up and coming and for those that are yet to get here, but how are we going to work with those that exist and those that pretty much because they don't have the resources, are where they are?

- Yeah, so there's a couple of parts to that question.

I think the first part was, you know, how do we convince a region with an older demographic to really pay attention to what's important for the younger demographics?

Am I understanding the question correctly?

Okay.

So I think from my perspective on that, it's demonstrating this with data.

We can easily show them through comparisons with other geographies what the trajectory of communities look like when you invest in those things that matter to the next two generations, versus communities that have chosen not to make those investments.

Those examples will persuade the older demographics, along with collective will, again, this is not GCP alone, it's GCP with all of our partners, both inside of our organization, our private sector, but also our public and nonprofit partners pushing that vision, that agenda.

I think that's how we overcome the demographic divide, and we recognize for the demographically, the older part of our demographic population, that there is benefit to them for having a more vibrant region as well.

Yeah.

- Good afternoon.

Thank you for those really strong remarks.

Makes it an exciting time to be here in Cleveland.

You just spoke about the next couple generations.

I'm gonna bring up the climate change issue, which is probably the most important for the next several generations.

We just heard from Jon Mittelhauser a couple weeks ago at a City Club forum, talking about how Ohio as a state, if it were independent country, would be the 26th larger greenhouse emitter in the world.

What can GCP do as the largest metropolitan chamber of commerce in encouraging further decarbonization in the manufacturing sector?

- Yeah, so there's a couple parts to that.

So there's a lot that's happening at the federal level that's encouraging and incentivizing the decarbonization of not only the manufacturing but other industries, and we wanna make sure that our region participates.

So as one example, within the Build Back Better grant, there are initiatives within there that are really more focused on sustainability oriented manufacturing as a part of the technology that we wanna make sure we nurture within this region.

Another big part of that is encouraging our businesses to support them in making that migration.

So for many of our largest companies, especially those that are publicly traded, the pressure is on from investors globally about environmental sustainability and governance measures.

What we try to do as an organization is support those companies in identifying resources locally that can be used to help support them in making their journey towards a more green operating enterprise, whether it's through renewable energy or renewable materials use in different types of production.

- The catchment basin for talent is the world.

And it's no surprise that we're hearing the word global, the word international, in much of what you say.

My impression is that Cleveland is doing a good job of welcoming people from every place.

And indeed, especially our healthcare institutions have many people from other countries.

Do you feel this is one of our strengths or is there more you'd like to see us do to make sure our welcome mat is out?

- Thanks.

So as you may know, I'm the founder and founding chairman of Global Cleveland.

Table's here and our current chairman, David Fleshler is here as well, so this is near and dear to my heart.

We have to do a better job as Greater Cleveland of welcoming newcomers of all types into our region.

We're not nearly doing enough.

One great example is we have international students at all of our institutions of higher education.

We still have barriers among many of our companies in considering these international students for internships or employment upon their graduation.

And that's a missed opportunity.

It's that leakage that we talked about that Team NEO has measured.

We need to do a much better job of helping local employers understand not only the benefits, but the easy pathways by which they can employ international individuals that have arrived to Cleveland already, our temporary residents.

At the same time, I think we need to do a much better job of welcoming international newcomers that are coming that are not coming for higher education.

And I think there, the work of Global Cleveland led by Joe Cimperman is setting the stage, but more can be done.

- How big a detriment is Cleveland's airport and limited direct flights to bringing new big corporate projects to the region?

What will the partnership do to advance proposed improvements?

- Great question.

So there's a couple things as it relates to Cleveland's airport.

The question was all about, where are we in terms of number of direct flights?

So this is exactly one of our strategies about expanding air services, and we've got a specific target of what we are looking to do.

At our peak, in 2019, we had 147 daily nonstops from Greater Cleveland.

In 2021 that had restored, dropped down to as low as the mid-50s in the midst of the pandemic, it went back to 98.

And this year our aim is to get that back up to 125, to sort of get it to almost 90% of where it was.

Having direct nonstops throughout the country.

Domestic nonstops, especially to gateway airports in this country is a critical issue.

And it is an issue that will fluctuate based on market demand, it's something that we will certainly support as the Greater Cleveland Partnership.

An example of was the partnership we had with Team NEO, Jobs Ohio, Destination Cleveland, the county, and the city last year to bring Alaska Airlines as a new carrier to Cleveland Hopkins and to establish direct daily service to Seattle starting this summer.

So we're gonna continue to push on air services because it is critical for businesses.

But we also wanna see airport improvements, improvements that really address the passenger experience at the airport, to enhance that so that as visitors arrive to Cleveland or as all of us, you know, transit from Cleveland, that we're getting a world class experience going through our airport.

And so that's an important ambition for us as well.

- Afternoon, Baiju.

- Chris.

- You reference that we need to be all in to take advantage of this opportunity that's in front of us.

Being all in requires the all to trust each other.

And I was just curious if you would share some examples of how you and GCP have worked in the nine months that you've been at the helm to build more trust with different players and different sectors here in greater Cleveland.

- Sure.

So the trust is built through the work.

It's not enough to say these words.

And so all of the examples, whether it's around the Build Back Better grant and smart manufacturing, or it's sector partnerships, or it's CommitCLE in the minority business center or the work we're doing in physical development with the City of Cleveland and many partners.

It's reestablishing that trust through the actual work, project by project, and living the values that we espouse.

There's no other way to get there, other than to continue to demonstrate.

And to demonstrate as GCP that sometimes we'll lead, but sometimes we're happy to be supporters, and other times we'll just be cheerleaders.

We don't have to be in the leadership role.

It's not about, again, who's in the lead, who supports, or most importantly, it's not about who gets credit.

It's about getting the work done.

- Is there an opportunity for Cleveland to benefit from the new semiconductor factory that is being built around Columbus, and what is the Greater Cleveland Partnership doing in connection with that?

- Yeah, we're very excited about Intel's big announcement to establish this new or two new fabs down in the Greater Columbus Area.

A number of Intel suppliers are already located throughout Northeast Ohio.

So for those companies, this is gonna be a huge win and huge lift.

We're also connecting companies that are interested into Intel's information chain, so far it's information.

Remember the plant won't open for another four years.

And we're also approaching Intel to ask them about, in the meantime, while we're doing construction, are there opportunities for some of our construction related firms to potentially bid for, to be a part of these projects as well?

So there is a huge opportunity for our Greater Cleveland companies to participate, given the proximity that we have, as well as the expertise in smart manufacturing that many of our companies already have in the supply chain for Intel.

- Good afternoon, Baiju, and thank you so much for your remarks today.

I wanna ask you about something that's actually in the all in plan, as I was reading it.

On page 12, you specifically call out advocating for funding for multimodal transit.

And you also mentioned how you would like to see economic development align with existing assets like public transportation.

As a followup to that question, one of the byproducts of the infrastructure bill was the expansion of Amtrak across the country.

I'm wondering if the Greater Cleveland Partnership has supported or will support expansion of Amtrak here in the state of Ohio.

- So one of the exciting visions that we've seen for Amtrak in the state of Ohio is plans that Amtrak has to better connect, not only throughout the state, but connecting east-west, you know, through the Detroit, to the Detroit airport, as well as over to Chicago, as well as down to Pittsburgh.

So we're excited about what Amtrak has got proposed, and we're excited about sort of the idea of more frequent service in particular to those markets where we can access the international airport that Detroit has and the flights that they have out in that direction.

A lot remains to be seen in terms of how that money is actually gonna flow from Washington as it relates to Amtrak and also what it means for station renovations here in downtown Cleveland for Amtrak's current location on the north coast here.

- We have another Twitter question.

Gerrymanders and state house bills that undermine voting rights are bad for democracy.

Good for corruption and bad for business.

Will GCP take a strong stand now to stand up for fair districts and against voter suppression bills?

- You know, we're supportive of the constitutional amendment that went through that created a new process and a new standard by which districts both at the state house level as well as the congressional level have to be drawn by the state legislature.

So we recognize that there's a political process that's going on right now among the legislatures to define new maps, and we're waiting to see where the legislators, the Supreme Court of Ohio, as well as the redistricting commission come out on all of that.

- Baiju, there's another question from Twitter here, about the Fight for 15.

After that Fight for 15 campaign, GCP successfully lobbied state legislature to preempt local policy attempts to improve job quality.

With renewed commitment on abundant talent, inclusion, and income growth, will GCP be working to repeal this legislation?

- You know, right now our focus honestly is around finding workers.

It would be, $15 an hour is no longer a, it's not even a standard, everyone's offering much, much more than that for trying to find individuals to show up for any type of work that's there, whether it's service firms or production firms.

I don't know enough about the specific legislation as it predates me in terms of local control versus state control, but we wanna make sure that our businesses in the Greater Cleveland area and particularly in localities in Greater Cleveland are not at a competitive disadvantage relative to other regions around the state.

- There's another question that came via text, and I'll just mention the number for our radio audience, if they want to text a question to 330-541-5794.

How will new leadership at city hall and in county government enhance the partnership's ability to promote and improve the region's economic assets?

- So we can speak about new leadership at city hall in particular, since that transition has already occurred, and I would say that with the new mayor and his team, there's a very tight and very productive partnership across a range of these issues.

We're working in close concert with the chief and the director that are here with us today, as well as many other members of the administration and a number of the priorities that we've outlined in the all-in plan.

- We have another text question.

Cleveland is the nation's poorest big city and 25% of us don't have access to a car.

On top of that, less than one third of Northeast Ohio jobs are transit accessible.

We've lost 30% of service in just 15 years.

This isn't a micro problem, it won't be solved with micro transit pilot programs.

- Right, so there's a couple elements of transit that we are strongly for.

Transit oriented development first and foremost, we would love to see more development occur where jobs are accessible to individuals based on transit service that's already existing, whether that's train or bus, and we've been big advocates at the state house, ensuring that we have strong transit funding in the most recent transportation bill, as well as on an ongoing basis.

That's one of the solutions.

And then the second is the micro transits to support in particular areas that are disconnected from existing transit routes.

So how we create more creative transit connections with RTA and other public transit partners is something we would certainly be open to supporting.

- Baiju, is GCP satisfied with the process by which replacement or rebuilding of the Justice Center is being pursued, and what changes would you like to see in that process before we spend a billion dollars?

- So that's an area that we have not been involved as it relates to the Justice Center renovation at this point, so I would have to just say, I'll get back to you on that.

We have not yet been asked for an opinion on anything related to the Justice Center proposals.

- Hi, Baiju.

You mentioned the survey set of Midwest towns, a little bigger, little smaller than Cleveland.

And somewhere in the middle.

You talked about fifth, eighth.

Number one, curious what the number was, and the second part of that from areas near and dear to your heart and all our hearts, especially, eds and meds, where do we rank?

- Yeah, so we looked at the 11 major metro areas in the Midwest, not including Chicago, Chicago was sort of differently situated than the other 11.

And I think your question is where do we rank?

- [Audience Member] Wonder how many were, so it's 11.

- It's 11, 11 total metro areas across the Midwest that we looked at and the 11 that you would expect, and I think you can see them on our website as well in terms of what those 11 are, but we ranked again, eighth out of 11, business growth, eighth in jobs growth, fifth in income growth over the last decade.

And then we looked at a whole host of other measures as well.

As it relates to eds and meds.

We have an amazing array of higher education, not only institutions, but students and degree graduates each year.

We don't have a singular flagship institution, the way that a Columbus would.

We have many, many others, but if you add the collection of all of those institutions together and the talent that that produces, that's an enormous resource for our region that again, we are under utilizing in terms of retaining them upon their graduation.

So that is an opportunity for us, for sure.

And then in the med sector, make no mistake that Cleveland is recognized as one of the leading places, not just in the Midwest, but in the world in healthcare.

It's the reason why people travel from around the country, around the world to come for their clinical care, it's because of the quality of the healthcare professionals and the healthcare innovators that we have in our midst, and that is a huge strength that stands out and one which we are gonna continue to build as a region.

- We have another text question.

Does the partnership support the proposal to spend millions of dollars more to upgrade the unused former medical mart to make it part of the convention center, or does it favor finding another use?

- With all these questions, I feel like Marty McGann should be up here, instead of me.

(audience laughing) So I'm just gonna keep looking at Marty until you tell me when I'm saying the wrong thing.

(audience laughing) But in particular for the renovation of the Global Center.

What I would say is that we appreciate, and we've heard certainly from Destination Cleveland, one of our partners, that there is a shortage of meeting space and that shortage of meeting space constrains our ability to compete for different types of meetings and conventions.

The specific proposal, the $46 million or so to both put in the escalators, put in more meeting rooms, expand the ballrooms.

We haven't seen the detail on that specific proposal, but the general concept is something we would support and we would wanna see more analysis to be done about whether that proposal is the right proposal and also how does that renovation connect to city assets such as public hall, and what are we doing to make sure that the public hall asset is connected better into the convention center, as well as some of our hotel assets, such as the Marriott across the street.

So we'd wanna understand that proposal in more detail.

- Yeah, thank you.

It seems to me that the American Recovery Act is presenting us with a great opportunity that might have a short window.

As I understand it, there's what 510 million to the city and another 240 or 50 to the county.

What role does your organization play, if any, in the recommendation for the allocation of that money?

- So the prior city administration under Mayor Jackson asked the Greater Cleveland Partnership to work with the city administration to convene a series of partners, to explore opportunities to leverage those dollars, those one time dollars as you noted.

So we convened nine of our banking partners, many of whom are here today, as well as foundations throughout our community, as well as a couple of financial funds to explore opportunities to create new products and tools that would not only invest in the city's goals.

And this is the city's leadership, it's the city's determination.

Their goals were around neighborhood development and around small business.

But that would leverage their dollars, the public dollars with private or philanthropic dollars on top of that.

Those proposals continue to be out there.

They were not pursued any further, just given the transition, but it is a conversation we will continue certainly with the new administration of the city.

Similarly, we have been talking to the county about the dollars that they have, and ideas that we could see on how those dollars could be amplified through public-private partnerships.

The county's proposals, I think, will be forthcoming from both county council, as well as the county executive in short order.

- Good afternoon.

I want a quick question about the Cleveland Innovation Project, something I participated in a couple years ago.

There were all these industry clusters, and one that kind of evolved from it was water innovation, something that hadn't really been a flag that we've planted in the community, even though we sit on this glorious Great Lake.

So curious as how that is evolving, how the work of the Cleveland Water Alliance is being more integrated into the work of the GCP, what are some of the advocacy potentials, and how can we really make water an actual industry standard for our community like eds and meds and others?

- Thank you for asking that question.

So by pure coincidence and you had no idea of this, but we just had our Cleveland Innovation Project steering committee earlier today, where we reported out to the steering committee our 2021 results against targets that were set and our new 2022 targets, and we'll be sharing that more publicly shortly as well.

Water tech was one of the three sectors identified as a part of the Cleveland Innovation Project.

And for those of you that are not familiar with that effort, that was an effort that was really started by the Partnership, JumpStart, Team NEO, the Cleveland Foundation, and the Fund for Economic Future as an effort to bring together a cohesive regional strategy to focus on the innovation and tech sectors, and how do we sort of position Greater Cleveland, once again, to be among the leaders in the Midwest.

Three sectors emerged.

Two that were obvious.

Smart manufacturing and healthcare.

We've talked about our strengths in those areas.

The one that was the surprise throughout this entire process as we looked at all the other technology sectors that we could consider as areas that could be distinctive, where we could have unique access, and that actually met a market need was water.

And it's water, not because of just that wonderful natural resource to the north of Lake Erie, but it was water because we have a range of companies throughout Greater Cleveland, companies, such as Marlin and Oatey, and many others, Kinetico, that are experts in managing the flow of water, monitoring the quality of water, treating and remediating water.

All of those companies, their products are in huge demand because of the water stresses, not in our region, but the water stresses throughout the rest of the country and throughout the rest of the world.

So that effort is still very much alive and well, the Cleveland Water Alliance has been the spearhead on that much like MAGNET on manufacturing, and we've been building water test beds.

We've been recognized again by the Department of Commerce with Blue Economy grants.

And these test beds are attracting firms from around the world to test their products, and then also to explore commercial partnerships and operations here in the Greater Cleveland Area.

So that's a huge opportunity for us from a business perspective is the water tech sector.

Correlated to that though is also water as a natural resource.

And water as a natural resource not only for the types of companies that are water intensive in their use and sort of the ability for us to have access to clean water and surplus water is still unique, and it's a asset that we want to attract businesses around.

But it's also water as a recreational asset for us.

So those are important parts of the vision as we go forward.

- This is a final question that came via text, and it's gotta be a quick one, unfortunately, but the recent research has suggested that Cleveland is one of the worst cities in the nation for black women.

What is the GCP going to do to address this issue and turn the city into a place where black women can more easily start successful businesses and thrive?

- Great.

So our focus again is on inclusive opportunity for people of all backgrounds.

And so it's about ensuring that individuals who, whether they're black women or others, have access to the ability to participate in growing sectors, whether that's as talent or as business owners.

And giving them the support that they need, and also reducing the barriers to hiring and reducing the barriers to training that may exist and providing the wraparound supports to ensure that individuals can access the training and development programs that are there, in addition to supporting their businesses if they are entrepreneurs.

(audience clapping) - Today at the City Club, we have been listening to a forum featuring Baiju Shaw, president and CEO of the Greater Cleveland Partnership.

It is part of our local heroes series in partnership with Citizens Bank and Dominion Energy.

We would like to also welcome guests at tables hosted by Cuyahoga County Community College, Downtown Cleveland Alliance, Global Cleveland, JumpStart, Greater Cleveland Partnership and PNC bank.

We're happy to have all of you here.

We have two great forums at the City Club next week.

On Thursday, February 17th, we will hear from council president Blaine Griffin and Felton Thomas, executive director and CEO of the Cleveland Public Library, as part of the library founder's day forum.

And on Friday, February 18th, we will celebrate the start of NBA All Star week here in Cleveland.

We will welcome two time NBA All Star and former Cleveland Cavalier Baron Davis.

He'll be in conversation with Mayor Justin Bibb, talking about leadership, entrepreneurship, and black excellence.

You can purchase tickets and learn more about other forums at cityclub.org.

And that brings us to the end of today's forum.

Thank you Baiju Shaw, and thank you, members and friends of the City Club.

This forum is now adjourned.

(audience clapping) (bell dinging) - [Narrator] For information on upcoming speakers, or for podcasts of the City Club, go to cityclub.org.

(futuristic music) - [Narrator] Production and distribution of City Club forums on Ideastream Public Media are made possible by PNC, and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.