- [Narrator] The historic Shaker Square Shopping Center facing a sheriff's sale, could be rescued and kept under local ownership.

The deal to spend public money to renovate Progressive Field and extend the Cleveland Guardians lease gets a push by Cuyahoga County Council.

But some members worry that the county will be on the hook if revenue streams dry up.

And as the general election draws near, school board races become crowded.

As a big number of newcomers jump in choosing sides in a new kind of culture wars.

Ideas is next.

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- Hello, and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Cleveland plans to use American Rescue Plan Act money to help buy historic Shaker Square, taking it out of foreclosure and preserving it as a community institution.

The Progressive Field renovation and Guardians lease extension deal, which will require a huge commitment of public dollars passes through the first step on Cuyahoga county council.

And the launch of Ohio's first new license plate design since 2013 hits turbulence once it enters social media's airspace.

We'll talk about those stories and more on the reporters round table today.

Joining me this week Idea stream public media education reporter Jenny Hamel also from Idea stream, multiple media producer, Gabriel Kramer and State House News bureau chief, Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to round table.

Gabe, this deal is being hailed as something that local leaders and business owners really need.

I mean, Shaker Square is iconic.

- Absolutely.

I think when you think of east side of Cleveland, Shaker Square certainly seems like a very important piece to that history and to what you would go to see on the side.

So the support is tremendous.

I think you're going to think of businesses struggling since COVID-19 the pandemic started and this lifeline is certainly there.

The two council people you are going to hear from, so sheriff Sarah sits in ward four.

So interim council person, excuse me.

Right.

So no, Marion Anita Gardner interim, sorry.

This is the word for, you know, - I'm all mixed up as well.

- You know, for her, this is really important because what this deal would do, it was, it would keep management and ownership local.

So you're going to have someone who understands the market, understands the history of Shaker Square and understands the character of what Shaker Square is meant to be.

And there's you know, it's been controversy in discussions about what to do with the RTA line that runs through there, the pedestrian ways run through there.

And then also a ward six Councilman, Blaine Griffin, who is charge of parts of Buckeye Shaker including Larchmere which is just a stone's throw.

And residents that are affected by the Shaker Square district.

You know, he's someone who is very much in support of this.

Anyway, when you think about, you know, the people who are utilizing the square, it's his constituents.

So this is getting a lot support from council.

And it does need to prove by a city council as a whole.

But I imagine this would get approval.

If those who are on board, the rest council should be on board too.

- It's not just, you mentioned how it's a destination.

It is for people to say, Hey, we're going to go to Shaker Square from anywhere.

You know, in the Northeast Ohio area, but it's an anchor of a neighborhood too.

- Right?

And so you think about what's there, you have the supermarket, which without it would be a food desert.

You also have these ethnic enclaves of restaurants and, you know, Hungarian restaurants and Japanese restaurants and black owned businesses.

And you also have things like the garlic festival, the annual festival.

So it's businesses.

It's also public park for a lot of people, a gathering space.

So this is a pretty huge thing for east side of Cleveland to get excited about and build around.

So to have this lifeline, people are certainly going to be excited about that.

- But it's seen better days.

And we've been talking about this for some time that if you go to Shaker Square, you'll see things are rundown.

Roofs are leaking.

There's all kinds of work that needs to be to be done.

And Jenny, the shopping center has suffered as a lot of retail locations have from the pandemic.

So this rescue plan money is likely to help keep it in local hands, but it needs some help.

- Yeah, absolutely.

And you've seen businesses shuttered and you've seen the wear and tear.

I mean, we spent, you know, a lot of Saturdays going down to the farmer's market at Shaker Square as a family.

And as Gabe said, you know, and as you have said, this is an anchor of the community an identifiable area that people talk about on the east side of Cleveland, but it has been a victim of the pandemic as many shopping districts throughout the country have been.

And so I think there's a recognition of, wow, piecemeal stores have gone under or struggling to survive.

Restaurants are struggling to survive, but as a whole, this is a place that cannot go down because if it does, the whole character of the east side will lose something large.

And also, you know, my understanding of Shaker Square is also an anchor for other developments.

So, you know, smart use of American rescue plan money, it seemed kind of like a no brainer for mayor Jackson's administration and whether, you know, they can find a long-term fix is really kind of where the questions lie.

- Cuyahoga County Council moved the Progressive Field lease extension and renovation deal forward this week, despite concerns raised by some council members.

The $435 million deal, which would extend the Cleveland Guardians lease 15 years to 2036, will derive the bulk of its funding from the city, county and state.

The chairman of the gateway development corporation, Ken Silliman told counsel that regardless the public would be expected to cover the costs or be in default of the lease agreement.

He said that the public has little power in these types of deals, unless you're willing to lose your team.

This is something that people have talked about a lot, but you don't generally hear that during these kinds of negotiations.

It's usually about what the economic benefits are, and there are plenty I'm sure, but to just basically say, listen, we don't have any power here, Gabe.

- Well, I think it's not something that's discussed, but it's always something that's on the minds of people.

I mean, here in Cleveland, we're no stranger to losing professional sports franchises.

So I think it's always in the backs of at least citizens' minds of, well, this is potentially something could happen in the last decade we've seen renovations to Progressive Field already.

We've seen renovations to First Energy Stadium.

We see renovations to now Rocket Mortgage Arena or Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.

So we're seeing, you know, these tremendous renovations and multi hundred million, more than a hundred million dollar renovations to all these things, and I think the fans are kind of have their hands tied, but it's easy for council to be worried and say, well, what about the rest of us?

What about the rest of the city?

Any way you cut it, Cleveland is going to be viewed as potentially the poorest big city in the entire country.

So we keep developing downtown.

We keep developing downtown.

And we know that these businesses surrounding the arenas and the stadiums are dependent on people coming to these arenas for the sake of the business.

But when you look around the city, and the cities that that's also in the county, that feel the effects of being the poorest big city in the country, it's easy to be concerned about why, why not spend the money elsewhere?

- Karen, this is a debate that's not going on just in Cleveland, but Ohio has many professional sports team, your favorite, the Columbus Blue Jackets, but there are many others.

And this is something the state is contributing to in Cleveland.

But again, this is obviously if you have professional sports, it's going to play out in every arena, in every community.

- Yeah.

I mean, when you start looking at the revenue that each of those teams generates, I mean, the Cleveland Guardians in the last year, $117 million the Browns, $375 million Bengals, $397 million, the Blue Jackets, 106 million, the Calves 211 million.

I mean, these are huge numbers in terms of the revenue they're generating, especially for local businesses.

And so keeping those businesses, having those customers coming in is a big deal.

I mean, nobody wants to see a team leave.

We've already been through that and that really, really sucked.

So then the question becomes, how do you balance that with the amount of investment that you're going to put in from taxpayers, from local taxpayers or from state taxpayers.

So I think this is a discussion that's going to continue to go on as what's happening at Progressive Field moves forward.

And then you have to look at what's happening down in Cincinnati.

I mean, the stadium that the Bengals play at is 20 years old, the Nationwide Arena where the Blue Jackets play is 20 years old.

You know, there are all these stadiums that are gonna want some kind of investment potentially, if the Guardians get what they want.

- I mean, come on, my house is 50 years old.

And I mean, you know, my parents' house is, I don't know, 80 years old, come on.

- You're not serving a hundred thousand people at a time.

- How much revenue are you generating out of this place?

- Good point.

Obviously not enough.

Wanted to ask too, though, the idea that, you know, for a community, you can make the argument, you need the idea of being a professional, a major league sports team or a sports community.

So you need these teams there and there's the revenue that comes in.

And a lot of the business people who have talked before these council committee meetings, have talked about the money that comes in for hotels and for restaurants and all of those types of things.

But there's also the point that it's a place lot of people can't afford to go to, Gabe.

It's not like, you know, a family of four.

If you're going to a ball game, you gotta save up for that unless you really have a lot of money to spend.

- Right.

And I beat this to death, you know, like I said, one of the poorest, big cities in the country, if not the poorest big city in the country.

People don't have expendable income.

And yes, there's talks in these meetings that the team will bring down prices and have packaged family deals, bringing down the price of youth tickets so that you can have more families and kids come to the game.

But you know, when you talk about concession prices it all adds up and attendance last year was, the attendance for this team has not been great unless they're basically in the playoffs.

21st out of 30 teams last year, averaging less than 15,000 people a game at each game.

You know, the most affordable thing is to just stay home and that's what families are deciding to do.

And it almost doesn't matter how low you bring the prices.

It may not help at the end of the day.

So I don't think it's necessarily a good sell to the community to say, Hey, we're going to renovate these stadiums and these arenas, but we're not necessarily going to, which is going to take away funding to where you potentially live, but we'll still bring down the prices of the games that you're already not going to.

- The deadline to opt in to the city's revamped recycling program is approaching Cleveland, extended it to next week, but there hasn't been much outreach to encourage sign-ups.

A smaller, dedicated group of recyclers might be the best place to start, the city says.

Jenny people are signing up.

And the city says, it's taking bids for a contractor with the goal of resuming recycling by years end.

This has gotta be good news for those diehards, but again, it's going to be a small group to start.

- Yeah.

And I think, you know, it speaks to the fact that, you know, so much mistrust basically, you know, spread around the communities when people realize that what they thought was being recycled, was in fact being thrown out at the landfills.

And it's hard not to empathize with the city a little bit because you know, the whole market bottoming out in China and kind of the ripple effect internationally, that these collapsed recycling markets had on local jurisdictions was just something that these cities weren't expecting and really couldn't deal with.

And then of course the way that the public typically recycles isn't that effective.

So, but at the same time, you know, you spend decades teaching people the habits of recycling and saying, if you do this to the best of your ability, this happens and it's good for the planet.

And then to find out that it's not at all, it's not a shock that people are kind of maybe hesitant to sign up.

But yeah, I think the idea is there are those who are vested and know the implications of recycling and know that at some point the city will be able to find a buyer for these materials and, you know, enter the market again.

And so, maybe they're hoping that these kind of trained people who are a little bit more vested, can spread the word, word of mouth.

So maybe a slow start, you know, starts to become more rapid down the line.

- I know in Cleveland, it's these recycling bins they have in my community, they're big blue bags.

One of my favorite things to do is to walk down the street and find out who's paying the syntax, right?

You can look in the bag and see who's buying what, right.

But what you also see when you do that is the idea, Gabe of wish-cycling people, just sort of saying, Hey, I think I can recycle this, this, and this.

This greasy pizza box and this and that.

That's really what was happening in Cleveland, the contamination of that in addition to what Jenny said about the bottom dropping out of the market, but people weren't doing it right.

So does the city believe that starting it slowly, not giving outreach, which a lot of people said, why aren't you telling us?

I have friends that live in Cleveland and said, I have no idea how to do this.

Like, I'm making the phone call, I want to recycle, but they want people that motivated to start because they figure they won't wish-cycle they'll actually recycle properly.

- Right.

I think that ties in with Jenny's points of empathizing with the city a little bit, because part of the reason that these markets are down and people don't want our recycling anymore is because Clevelanders are bad at recycling.

I mean, we don't know exactly what should and should not be recycled all the time.

And I think an education campaign needs to be put out there.

So I think starting with a small group, as part of that strategy, we're talking about 15,000 people signing up.

That's what, about maybe less than 5% of the city of people who will be recycling?

I think being able to focus on the small group to have an education campaign amongst these people, and these are people who are going to be, if they have a desire to recycle, they might be, have a better knowledge of what can, and can't be recycled or have an idea of how to figure out what can and can't be recycled.

So when I first moved to the city of Cleveland, my address change to Cleveland in 2016, there was no mailer.

There was no information to say, this is what can and can't be recycled, at least given to me.

I had to look it up, - Right - Because I wasn't sure what to put where and what can, and can't be recycled.

And it's, you know, we know how the city of Cleveland website is it's not great.

So it's kind of hard to find, but I'll tell you what I live on a plot of land.

There are seven total residents.

- A plot of land.

(laughter) - I live on the west side.

- What's your acreage?

- It's like little house on the Prairie.

- [Jenny] I know!

- So there's seven residents on seven total residents in five units.

And we share four recycling bins.

And I'll tell you what, it's easy for me to look on those bins and tell you exactly who did not read the recycling guide because so much of it is being recycled poorly.

Now, you know, we haven't been actually recycling for more than a year now because the city hasn't been collecting recycling - Many need to get back in the habit, - Right, but now we have to get back in the habit is it upon me to talk to my neighbor and say, Hey, you know, - Yes it is.

- You can't put things up in plastic bags, right?

Well, I should take it upon myself.

But at what point is it, is the city going to take the responsibility on itself for its residents.

- Some of the most hotly contested races in this year's general election will be for local school board seats.

The Ohio school boards association says more than 2,600 candidates are on ballots this year, a 50% increase from four years ago.

And that increase involves candidates taking sides in a new kind of culture war over vaccines, masks and education about race.

Jenny, you've done a lot of reporting on that.

What is driving some of these complete political newbies to seek office on their school boards?

- These culture wars are essentially about two big things.

And it's about COVID and the mandates that surround.

And it's about, as you said, whether you want to call it the buzzwords, critical race theory, Which, you know, they say is only taught in law school and graduate level classes.

Or if you want to generally say, that's the term they're using for any discussions of race, since, you know, the tragic killing with George Floyd, this has galvanized parents and now candidates to run for office.

In Cuyahoga county, we're seeing some 140 candidates for around 80 seats available.

And you are seeing this proxy war between left and right, you've got slates of conservative candidates.

You've seen my reporting, but they're slates of them with yard signs and different people's lawns of like a whole conservative slate that could really change the personality of a school board.

But people are really fired up over the idea that a school can mandate something as in their eyes, unknown, as vaccines for staff, even though, you know, any conversation of a student mandate has not happened on the K through 12 level.

But they even say masks, you know, like it's unnatural for kids to want to have their faces covered.

Even identifying school districts as being like regimes for making that happen.

Then you've got parents on the other side.

What are you talking about?

We're talking about community wellbeing and protecting kids who aren't vaccinated from a pandemic that's killed what?

Half a million in this country.

So people are really fired up.

A lot of school board heads that I've talked to said, they've never seen this kind of animus before.

- One other aspect of all of this though.

And Karen, I wonder if you can jump into this as we're talking the mask mandates and the vaccinations, but also a lot of these candidates are being motivated by what they believe is being taught in the classrooms and the idea that people shouldn't be, white people shouldn't be made to feel guilty about history, et cetera.

And they're talking about critical race theory, which is not being taught in classrooms, but just the idea that race and awareness is being taught to some, is a bad deal.

So this is another thing that's playing out in school districts, not just here but across the state.

- Yeah.

And every school board member have I've talked to, and I've talked to people who not even for a story about school board members, but who have just casually mentioned that, yeah I'm a school board member, has mentioned that they have gotten some of this blow back.

They've gotten everything from nasty emails to straight up threats.

And it's really becoming an extraordinary situation because school board meetings, I mean, I started out by, in my career covering school board and school board was kind of boring, you know, and that's what school board meetings typically were.

They're kind of boring discussions about what's happening in the schools.

It's important to parents, but not exciting, not, and certainly not vitriolic, which is what we've seen now.

And what's really interesting in some of these races is they're supposed to be nonpartisan.

School board races are not partisan events.

And yet you've got these groups that are running as conservative slates or whatever that are really bringing a lot of politics into races that are supposed to be nonpartisan.

And, you know, we saw a lot of it, a lot of this too, with the state board of education, having a discussion about this anti resolution, this anti-racism resolution, they passed after the George Floyd demonstrations last year, they actually took that resolution back and changed the wording of it.

And it was pretty extraordinary that they had passed it last year, because this is a very strongly Republican group that passed that resolution.

But then after the end of the 2020 elections, suddenly the group kind of changed, the school board kind of changed.

And there was a seems like there's been, and I think it's actually not just seems like, I think it's been pretty direct that there's been discussion among Republicans, that this is an issue that candidates need to really address, even though, as you said, critical race theory is not taught in K through 12 schools.

It's still been seen as an issue that is a winner for Republican candidates who really want to push back on any sort of issue that involves what they consider to be divisive concepts.

- A bill introduced in the Ohio house would prevent those under 18 from receiving hormone treatments, puberty, blockers, or surgery to transition genders, even with parental consent.

The LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Ohio says the bill dubbed safe or save adolescents from experimentation is cruel and goes against the advice of medical organizations.

And it adversely impacts some of the most vulnerable children.

Karen, it's not the first time a measure like this has been introduced in Columbus, What's going on there?

- Now by my count it's about the third time something like this has been introduced.

And some of it comes from a case in 2018.

I believe it was down in Cincinnati, there was a fight over a child that the child wanted to do gender transition.

One parent was okay with it.

Either parents or grandparents were not okay with it.

And so there was a real battle over that.

It's interesting to note that one of the sponsors, representative Gary Klick, he's actually a evangelical pastor and that's really been the side that's been pushing these bills forward.

And of course this one is also in the state legislature that is also considering a bill on trans athletes in high school sports, especially girls sports.

And that in fact, the whole bill just talks about girls sports, not boys sports.

So again, it's the kind of thing that LGBTQ advocates will point to and say that Ohio is really not progressive as governor Mike DeWine had said earlier sometime last year in response to a question about why people are leaving Ohio, this is the kind of thing that, that really upsets advocates who say that there's no business for the legislature to get involved in this, that this is decisions among family members and not something that lawmakers should have anything to do with.

- [Mike] Gabe.

- I think what we're hearing a lot for people who are in support of this bill or who were pushing this bill, or, you know, the experience, these are people who are speaking from their point of view of the experience of transgender youth or transgender people.

And I think what we're neglecting is the actual voice of transgender youth, transgender people, you know, a survey from the Trevor project, a national survey and LGBTQ youth mental health will tell us that 52%, more than half of all transgender youth, considered contemplating suicide in 2020.

So, I mean, those are some things that people should consider when you're thinking about how to handle this bill and not necessarily the experience of a cisgender male in Ohio.

These are some pretty serious numbers.

And this is a survey that's talking to, you know, more than 35,000 LGBTQ youth.

So, you know, those are really the voices that are kind of being neglected here.

- This is the vulnerability that I was talking about that state Senator Nickie Antonio had talked about the idea that these are some of our most vulnerable people and that this is something that is going to hurt them.

- Right.

And to hear from, you know, what seems like we're hearing just from, you know, people in the state house is not nearly enough of the voices we need to be hearing from.

- The Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles ought to stick with cars and trucks.

Planes aren't their thing.

The new sunrise Ohio license plate, includes the iconic Wright Brothers plane at the top of the plate.

But as social media quickly pointed out, the right design was facing the wrong way.

And so people on social media went nuts and the BMV said, it's fixed like within minutes.

So this is the power of social media.

- [Gabe] Absolutely.

- [Mike] Karen.

- So social media actually fixed a problem.

- Exactly.

Right.

For the first time ever.

I mean, it's a little bit embarrassing, but I guess you could see how that could happen.

- Yeah.

I mean, it looks awkward, but when you actually see the Wright brothers plane and you realize that the part that looks like the tail is actually where the driver's head is, the pilot's head is, then that makes the plane backwards in the first original one.

What I think what's interesting is, you know, as social media blew up on this, the governor's office just quietly put out a news release showing, hey, you know, it didn't even mention that, yeah we flipped the plane around, we figured it out, they just put out a new press release with the new picture saying, here it is.

- I thought it was just crashing into the banner.

I thought it was going the wrong way and just crashed instead of pulling it.

- I have been saying that it's just a little busy, that there's a lot going on in this whole license plate.

There's the sunrise, there's city skyline, there's a river, there's a kid with a dog.

There's a lot going on.

- [Mike] Everything - But I do think the state had a really cool opportunity to include a local artist and someone to kind of help create and curate this design that can be used for years and years to come drop the ball on that.

Look, I don't know, you know, this is a state employee who took over this design, but I think it would've been cool.

You know, we think about all the murals we have around town, around the state and public art and all this stuff.

This would have been a cool opportunity to get people actually excited, engaged in this.

And the only engagement we had, was just the backlash on Twitter of the backwards airplane.

- [Mike] And let me ask you, Jenny, it has a bunch of pictures of a skyline that the governor says it's not any particular skyline, but it looked a lot like key tower and terminal tower there, didn't it?

- Yeah.

So a little bit of Cleveland pride going on.

- [Mike] Kind of, I mean, you're a slightly off, but yeah.

- I mean, it looks kind of like a future city to be honest.

And you know, the Twitter banter has been hilarious over this.

I read a tweet that said, Hey, people, that's not corn, that's wheat, like settle down.

People were mad about that as well.

So I get what you're saying.

I mean, it is a little busy, but.

- It's pretty.

- [Mike] Where was Lake Erie Karen asks and good point.

- Yeah where's Lake Erie?

I mean, there's a river, but come on Lake Erie!

- Monday on the Sound of Ideas on 90.3 WCPN we'll bring you the most recent community conversation focused on the Cleveland Police consent decree.

This month, the focus is on youth and policing.

The conversations are convened by the United way of greater Cleveland and the Cleveland NAACP I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you for watching and stay safe.

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