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

I'm Dan Moulthrop, Chief Executive here, and also a proud member.

Today's April 23rd, you're with a virtual City Club Forum.

Today we're live back at the City Club itself.

Big thanks to our production partners at ideastream, for helping us bring the forum back to the City Club today.

Joe Marinucci is with us, he's no stranger to the City Club stage.

He is present every year for our annual state of downtown forum.

A tradition that began 10 years ago under his leadership.

And he's a frequent audience member and a City Club member himself.

But today he's here for the final time representing the Downtown Cleveland Alliance.

Next week, he retires from the Alliance after serving as President and CEO since its inception 16 years ago.

Born in Italy, Mr. Marinucci and his family immigrated to the US as a child, but if you ask him, he's always considered Cleveland home.

His resume certainly reflects that he spent the better part of four decades working to improve the Downtown Business District and neighborhoods.

He led the Alliance's predecessor organization, the Downtown Cleveland Partnership.

Served as Vice President of Real Estate Development for the Playhouse Square Foundation, and was also a member of Mayor Mike White's cabinet serving as Economic Development Director in the early 1990s.

During his time with the Downtown Cleveland Alliance, Mr. Marinucci has played a leadership role in many downtown milestones.

The city center is now home to 20,000 residents as a newly designed public square as witnessed the rebirth of the Flats, served as host to the 2016 Republican National Convention the NBA Finals, a World Series, and next week and NFL Draft.

He helped bring $7.3 billion of investment to downtown and formed the Downtown Recovery Response Fund that helps small businesses deal with the effects of last year's civil unrest in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Today, Joe Marinucci joins us for a look back at his career and at the inflection points that have shaped downtown.

And we'll also talk about what's next for the city especially when the pandemic ends, I'm being optimistic here.

If you have questions for Joe Marinucci or comments or a memory you wanna share, perhaps text your questions or your comments to 330-541-5794 that's 330-541-5794.

You can also tweet it @thecityclub, if you're on Twitter, we will do our best to work them all in.

Joe Marinucci, welcome back to the City Club, Joe.

- Thank you, Dan.

- It is so good to see you.

- It's great to see you.

It's great to be here in person.

- In person we were both vaccinated we're here.

We're not hugging though.

We're not masked up entirely we were before.

And I know it's weird that no audience here but if there was an audience, Joe, I assure you it would have been a sold out house.

- Well, thank you.

And again, thanks for inviting me to join you.

It is kind of odd being here although I love the fact that we're live and we're talking and again, we're mask less.

I do miss the audience.

It obviously that's one of the great attributes of the City Club is people getting together and networking and obviously conversing on some of the issues that we face as a community so.

- I think you miss the audience?

- Yeah, I'm sure you do as well.

- Just a little bit.

But Joe, I wanna start kind of at the beginning or at a beginning, when you began with Mayor Mike White's administration running economic development back in 1990, 31 years ago.

Paint us a picture of downtown in 1990.

- Well, if you think back to that period, I was actually living in Columbus at the time but was working for Dick Celeste who was the governor to State of Ohio doing a business development and community development work for the state.

And when I started a dialogue with Mike White about coming back into downtown if you think about it, we had the, the old municipal stadium and the issues surrounding some of the challenges of the Indians at the time and their facility and keeping them here in the city.

The Cavaliers were out in Richfield.

They were very, very happy out there and very successful.

We didn't have some of the investment that occurred in the early part of the 1990s.

Key Tower, Fifth Third Center, all of those types of.

- Key Tower had not been built.

- Key Tower had not been built yet.

And there were still, it was under construction when I joined the team.

And there was still a lot of dialogue about the old Ameritrust Tower, if you think back to that time.

So, there was a lot of things that we now take for granted as a community.

We had an antiquated public square at that time, you mentioned the new opening, obviously the investments that we've made, but again, a much, much different community.

And by the way, very few residents in Downtown Cleveland.

- That's hardly any.

- And hardly any at the time.

So the reality was, it was a much quieter downtown.

Yes, we did have a significant job base, but the amenity package that we've created, I think over the last 31 years as a community, the energy that's been generated by a lot of the investment that's occurred, including the housing has really transformed downtown in many, many ways.

- Prior to the construction of the gateway project which you alluded to with the, sort of unresolved questions around municipal stadium and the Cavs being in Richfield, that whole area to the south of like the center of downtown was just a sea of empty surface parking lots.

- Yeah, if you think about it, it was the central market site.

There was one building in the center of a sea of parking.

The site had been assembled.

If you recall earlier in the decade of the 80s and there were all kind of project that Dome Stadium Corporation and other efforts.

And, obviously one of the things that not only the civic leadership at the time but the political leadership came together and said we really have to create a comprehensive strategy of not only building a new facility for the Indians but also enticing the Cavaliers back into the core.

And that became part of what ultimately became a two facility strategy.

One, obviously building the ballpark for the Indians and the other, creating an opportunity to bring the Cavaliers back.

And by the way, all of the activities surrounding an arena the entertainment and all the other types of things that animate the arenas across the country, we were able to bring back into downtown.

- Jacob's Field, then called Jacobs Field now.

- I've got to be careful yet.

- I know we're having a historic conversation.

So we can talk about Jacobs Field and going to arena.

That's such a such a long time ago to think about yet the, the politics around major, particularly sports projects, right.

Those haven't changed a whole lot, right it's still a very fraught endeavor in this public pride with what sort of you euphemistically referred to as a public private partnership with others refer to as public subsidy.

Those challenges haven't really changed at all.

And, you know, they continue to be these important assets that have to be invested by both the public and sports ownership.

When you look back at those deals and thinking about the way in which our community talks about public investment in sort of privately owned facilities like that, or they're publicly owned I'm struggling with the language because it's so confusing.

But when you think about those deals that you were instrumental in putting together and how they've played out over the years, do you ever wish that you'd had more leverage or been able to do things any differently?

- Well, I think by any discernible measure, and again, those were tough discussions as you remember.

Tough discussions, because as I said, creating a modern ballpark for the Indians again, convincing the Cavaliers to come back downtown.

All of that was part of the public private dialogue at the time.

And if you remember, the referendum was actually razor thin.

Although if you ask people now, whether they voted for the syntax that created gateway I think there was massive difference of perceptions that it passed by a wide margin.

But the reality, it wasn't, it was, as you say the acrimonious debate.

And in essence, it was very hotly contested.

But think about downtown that we now have, and think about how those assets, the infrastructure that you just mentioned have built upon and created opportunities for us over the years.

We're one of the few downtowns across America where someone can live and work in the downtown and walk to see the browns, walk to see the Indians, walk to see the Cavaliers.

Those are assets that bring young professionals into downtown.

When we contemplated the economic leverage that the gateway complex would have created.

I'll be honest.

We didn't quite think through how it might impact long-term housing development in downtown.

And that's been one of the, I think the surprises from my perspective that boy, we did in fact do that, we did.

- In 1990 or while you were in the mayor's office 90-94.

Did you imagine that downtown would become a residential neighborhood the way it has?

Because I feel like in the late part of the 20th century, whether it's Cleveland or Los Angeles downtowns were the places for office work and commercial real estate.

- You're absolutely right, that was the primary focus and to a limited extent, retail, and as you know Downtown Cleveland had lost its retail base significantly.

But to your point, I don't think we fully understood the dynamic in terms of the ability to attract housing.

We knew we had to make those infrastructure investments to keep those assets.

We didn't know that those would translate into things like if we didn't have a state-of-the-art arena we would not have gotten the RNC.

We would not be hosting the NBA All-Star Game next year.

And the economic consequences of that.

I think we understood that we would attract a lot of restaurant tours, which we did, and ultimately the whole adaptive reuse strategy that became the underpinning of our opportunity to bring the housing into the thing.

We've made some good strategic decisions.

For example, we said we're not gonna allow a whole bunch of our historic building structure to be torn down because we made the gateway investments.

We were able, again to take that historic fabric reinvest in it and obviously that we see the fruits of those decisions now.

- If you're just joining us, you were at the City Club Friday forum, we're talking with Joe Marinucci.

He's retiring next week.

It's hard to believe that Joe Marinucci is retiring next week.

He runs a Downtown Cleveland Alliance and has for 16 years since its inception.

And if you have a question for Joe Marinucci you can text it to (330) 541-5794 or tweet it @thecityclub, and we will work it into the program.

Joe, you mentioned historic tax credits and state and federal historic tax credits have been, I mean it's this weird sort of wonky kind of policy piece that legislation created it at different levels.

Without historic tax credits, Downtown would be a very different place.

- It would, very, very much be a much different place.

And if you think back historically, Dan, one of the things we were able to do as an Alliance, as a community with our collaboration with other partners is we'd recognize the historic fabric that we had.

We built upon the fact that we had these federal tax incentives.

And if you think about what does historic preservation mean?

It means one, investing in that historic infrastructure but secondly, it creates additional equity to allow some of these older buildings to be created.

And then we worked real hard to get state to create a companion historic preservation grant program that would match the federal program.

And right about the point we were coming out of the recession was the point that all of this began to galvanize in terms of creating an opportunity for developers to take advantage of both the federal programs, the state programs, obviously contributions from the local governments as well through additional support.

And low and behold, we were able to really accelerate the pace of those adaptive reuse strategies.

- It's really something to think about.

I moved here in 2005, which, you think about like 2005 through 2008/9/10, right.

It was kind of a valley, right, especially for downtown.

And I remember I was working at ideastream which was a big deal project, right.

To a big deal asset for Playhouse Square to create the idea center.

And I wanna talk to you about the Playhouse Square foundation in a second.

But when I think about, I used to walk down Euclid all the time.

Sometimes over here to the City Club for an event, sometimes down to public square.

And it was just empty.

I mean, you could walk out of any building at Playhouse Square and walk across the street and not even look in either direction because there were no cars, there was no traffic, there was no bodies.

And then the Greater Cleveland Film Commission brought that Spider-Man movie.

- I remember that, that was exciting time.

- It was very exciting.

It was so funny 'cause I walked out they were shooting a chase scene on Euclid and I remember walking out of the Idea Center and looking around there were all of these people, it was packed with people.

They were all dressed in, like, they seem like every one of them was wearing black but it was sort of like extra, all the extras.

And I remember thinking, oh right this is what it feels like to live in a city that has population density.

And, I have to imagine that there were moments in those years where you were, 'cause there were so many empty storefronts so many empty buildings entirely empty buildings between particularly between East Ninth and Playhouse Square.

And none of it is stuff you could do on your own, right.

- Was all based on collaboration yeah.

- You were a facilitator.

Like you were just trying to put these deals together and trying to find developers who had the capacity and the vision.

There must have been some depressing moments there, where you thought, I'm never gonna be able to do it.

- Well, I would say Dan they were challenging moments.

- Okay challenging moments.

- But yeah I mean, your memories of Euclid in many ways are illustrative of the type of downtown I think we're in the process of creating 'cause you're right.

Think of Euclid Avenue Well we had a lot of disinvestment up and down Euclid.

We had the loss of the department stores.

A lot of the commercial office base essentially moved slightly north and towards the square with some of the new investment that occurred in the 90s with Key Tower, Fifth Third, some of those investments.

And in essence, what we knew was that having said that we did have this beautiful architecture up and down the street.

So again, we created the Euclid Avenue historic tax district a federally designated district that was kind of step one.

We built upon them the use of those credits that we talked about a moment ago to entice developer interest.

We had a bump in the road in the recession.

In fact at one point the 668 Building which got in the.

- I thought that you referred to the receptionist - There's a bump in the road.

- There's a bump in the road.

It was a big bump.

- At a time it was extensional.

- It was, it really, really was.

But if you think about it 668 with the Candy Group they got their financing in right at the edge of the recession.

They were able to get that project up and operational.

You overlay the Euclid corner transportation project and suddenly we had a rebuild street, we had a transportation connection between public square and university circle and suddenly the momentum began to build to a point now where if you look at Euclid Avenue we have over 4,000 people that live on Euclid Avenue from the Park building on a public square to the edge at 18th in Euclid.

We have five.

- Where the DiLumen just gone off.

- Right we are just one block east of the DiLumen.

And we have essentially five historical tales on Euclid.

So think about that transformation and the energy that's been created as a result of those investments.

- It is phenomenal to think about.

And, but of course, it's not exactly like one step forward and two steps back, it's more like three or four steps forward and a couple of steps back.

I mean the 95 building which is the sort of centerpiece, the Centennial project that the Millennial Companies is working on.

It looks like it's going to come together and that's very exciting, but there's still these sort of empty, like teeth missing in the smile.

- But you are actually absolutely right.

And that's one of our challenges downtown.

It is the missing teeth in the, in that fabric.

That experience, if you think about.

That's one of the reasons the Sherwin-Williams project is so important, because it's going up on those surface parking lots that you mentioned a few minutes ago.

- Parking lots.

- And if you think about it, it will create that connective tissue if you will, from Playhouse Square, through Euclid.

And by the way, the fact that now you can walk down Euclid you'll see the Euclid grant is kind of completed that physical restoration of the space.

We still have challenges on a retail basis but you can walk down now all the way to the square and in essence see investment up and down the entire street, which is exactly what we wanna see.

- You look back at these three plus decades.

There's so much that you've done.

And we haven't even talked about North Coast Harbor.

And obviously when I say you've done you've been involved right in all this, nobody did any of this by themselves.

But North Coast Harbor, we mentioned public square.

We haven't even talked about sort of the death and rebirth of the Flats or what I refer to as the strange life cycle of the Terminal Tower.

But there must be somethings that are out there, Joe, that are sorta like your white whale like the things you always wanted to do but were never able to do.

For me if I'd been in your position, it would have been like the removal of a coin operated parking meters.

(laughing) - We may get there soon, but that's another story.

- Well, from your lips to the mayor's ears, but what was your white whale?

What was the thing that you always wished you could have accomplished?

- Well Dan, I think really you mentioned the Lakefront and in some ways I think of the lakefront as that opportunity that, again the community is now re-engaging in but for a long time, do you think about it, we made the investment under the Voinovich years in terms of creating North Coast Harbor, creating that harbor.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame came, the science museum came, the investment in first energy stadium occurred.

And subsequent to that although we've done a lot to animate some elements of North Coast Harbor, the reality is we have not seen the type of leverage, that we fully envisioned.

And in some ways that I feel that that's my for lack of a better, we were put my white whale.

And I wish we could have accelerated.

I wish we could have had more opportunities to create that land bridge that now is being very actively talked about once a week, which is great.

But again, we didn't really see the investments.

If you think about all of the public private partnerships that were created in that harbor and the vision of the harbor we didn't quite get there.

Although again, I think the underpinnings are there and by the way, one of the neat opportunities being created by the NFL Draft and the NFL Draft Experience down there and if you've been down there is those old warehouses on the docks are now gone.

And once the NFL has a great week, next week we now have more of a pristine site to market from an investment perspective.

So I'm optimistic that it will be regenerated.

But for me, the lakefront is kinda one of those things that I wish we could have accelerated that during my tenure in this position.

- Well, there is renewed interest and it's interesting that you bring that up.

It has been such, I remember, I don't know maybe it was 10 or 12 years ago.

There was a design competition around that Mike Kristoff and the UIA.

I forget what the association of international architects or something like that.

Put on to reimagine how we could do to reimagine that or address that challenge, that particular challenge of connectivity between downtown and the harbor because we have the highway and the train tracks and it is such an enormous challenge.

And I remember when the group plan commission moved from, was sort of moving from the work public square to contemplating the bridge, the design, once you started contemplating the design I mean, the span is enormous.

It's like a half mile or something, whatever.

- Yeah, and actually to get over the railroad tracks had to be like a 900 foot span in addition to all the additional work that.

- That's not a half-mile I exaggerated.

(laughing) But thank you.

Somebody, please fact check them all through a piece off the rails.

- But you're absolutely right.

As you know, at one point, there was state dollars allocated to that project, there were county dollars, there were city dollars and unfortunately that initial bridge concept did not come together.

But having said that, I think we now have a renewed opportunity to reengage.

And I think we might create on a long-term basis a better solution than simply an iconic bridge.

I think what we can do is better connected.

So again, would we in the future bring events like the NFL Draft, there's more of a seamless ability for downtown to expand into the lakefront.

And again, if we do that and we don't get more investment at the lakefront, that would not be success either.

We need to get more mixed use development especially north of first energy stadium.

- Yeah, when there was a plan within the last five years, that kind of stalled.

And I know that Dick Pace Organization Cumberland Development was really leading the charge on that and had development rights there.

But for whatever reason, I mean it's very complicated project, very complicated.

- It is very complicated.

And unfortunately that did not reach fruition but again, hopefully with this new discussion about some federal funding that hopefully we take advantage of, we might, again resurrect not only the land bridge strategy, but again attract the developer of substance.

- Joe is you've been doing this work over the years and you served on the International Economic Development Council.

And I think you were chair, right?

- Right.

- The chair of the council.

That gave you an opportunity to look at cities around the world, and what they were doing, and look at sort of similarly situated cities in particular whether it's Pittsburgh or an industrial city in Italy or Spain or Germany.

What are the cities that have really like stuck with you as models that you have, where you've taken lessons and tried to try to bring the learnings back here?

- Well, historically Dan, we've always looked both in terms of my IEDC experience and in terms of my downtown related experience.

Philadelphia, in many ways was our our model.

Center City, Philadelphia.

Again, very, very dynamic organization.

They've done a great job by the way, one of their strategies was, how do we aggressively get more housing into Center City?

And they've been successful in doing that.

And they saw again, as they grew that population-based retail come back into Center City in a way that historically has hadn't happened.

So one, I think they've done a great job.

We've been very close and watched closely some of the strategies in Denver.

Downtown Denver has done a really nice job.

And you mentioned some of our regional counterparts.

We work very closely and watch what's happening in Pittsburgh in Columbus in Indianapolis, both in terms of, kind of our competitive set here in the Midwest.

So, but I would say in terms of kind of thinking through that stretch goal if you will, Philadelphia, in many ways has been that for us.

And I know in Cleveland we always like to compare ourselves to Chicago.

(laughing) - Either one is kind of it's a little bit, I mean and I'm not gonna I think absurd is not the right word.

It's not the wrong word either.

I mean, Philly and Chicago are both like huge metropolis.

- They're much bigger, but again, in terms of some of the policy decisions we saw, for example in Philadelphia, we modeled it.

For example, they used residential tax abatement as a strategy to induce additional investment in Center City.

We did the same thing here, coupled that with our historic preservation strategies and that worked very, very well for us.

- Joe, I was in a conversation on Twitter earlier today talking about this event happening, and noting that you'd been involved in so many of these economic development projects that had been really pivotal to what our city has become.

And I was implying that you'd been a part of economic growth and somebody asked, have we really been experienced economic growth?

And I know it's sort of a mixed bag.

And part of it is the whole state, part of it is Cleveland but how do you see it?

- Well, I see it as, as you know, the part that downtown plays in that equation.

And from our perspective we know that we can't have a successful region unless we have a successful downtown.

It's part of the ability of the region to coalesce.

If you think about it, again where's the NFL Draft going to broadcast from?

It's gonna broadcast from downtown Cleveland.

Where did the major league baseball all-star game broadcast?

It broadcast from downtown Cleveland.

So in many ways, the ability to create a vibrant downtown where we're attracting investment, I know has repercussions and leverages the rest of the region.

I would agree with you that we haven't seen enough of that, especially in terms of the rest of the city of Cleveland.

But we know that if we can continue to work collaboratively with our neighborhood based partners with the city and with the region, we can continue, I think to build the economy that we would all like to see in terms of Northeast Ohio.

- I suppose there's sort of this other like alternate timeline in which like none of these projects that we talked about happened and like the city just went further into disrepair or something like, I mean, you just don't know, I guess.

- Well I think about, Dan I'll share this with you.

We built a Key Tower.

And you remember there was a lot of dialogue about the companion tower, the Ameritrust Tower at the time.

And after a lot of public debate that project actually was approved by the community.

The project was demolished, but because of the recession that occurred at the end of the 1990s, excuse me, '80s and beginning of 1990s, the whole thing collapsed.

- So that's actually not something I'm familiar with because I only got here in 2005.

So explain 'cause there's gonna be people who are like, "Wait what are we talking about?"

- Well, what I'm saying is, that project didn't go forward.

- Where was that supposed to be?

- That was on the warehouse district parking lots.

Now the Sherwin-Williams project is gonna go on.

So if you think about it there's an example of something that did not happen.

And again, Key Tower, again, a lot of people argued about whether we should provide tax abatement to the Dick Jacobs, when he built the tower and his brother, David.

But the reality is that's been on the tax duplicate now for 10 years.

And paying it's appropriate share of support for the community.

Correspondingly, the adjacent site, which had a 60-storey tower that was going to house the Ameritrust Bank and a Hyatt Hotel never got built.

And here it's taken us all this time to figure out a strategy where we convinced Sherwin-Williams that was the appropriate location for the headquarter facilities.

- It's a real challenge though looking to the future as Sherwin-Williams vacates the its current property to move into that.

What's gonna, I mean, it's sort of, there's a fear that it's just sort of deck chairs being moved around, right.

- Well one, we solidify their headquarter facility in Cleveland in long, long time.

- And that's a big win, no doubt, yeah.

- So when we keep those jobs, they're adding jobs at the headquarter facility and those are assets, the buildings that they're vacating that we know as a community, we know how to reuse.

So if you think about it, those become assets that we can continue to reinvest maybe with another developer, maybe with Sherwin-Williams.

But the reality is.

- You think the future is probably residential for them?

- Either residential or mixed use, but the answer is yes.

- And the great views of the river.

- Great great views of the river and that the river valley for you think about it.

And the reality is that those buildings, by the way the reason some of those buildings worked so well for housing, but not necessarily for a modern commercial use are two things.

One is they were built with enough window capacity to have fresh air because there were no air conditioning units.

And second was, that was before the invention of fluorescent lighting.

So they needed the light and the air movement.

And that's another way of saying, the building is essentially a U or an E with a lot of nooks and crannies that will create great housing opportunities.

- Sure much like the building we're in right now which is not being turned into housing right now but would be similarly like similar.

And so we're talking with Joe Marinucci today.

He is the president and CEO of the Downtown Cleveland Alliance an organization that he helped to found 16 years ago.

Came out of the Downtown Cleveland Partnership and all sorts of other things that were going on at the time.

Joe is retiring next week.

So this is kind of an exit interview and we're getting to the portion of the program that involves your exit interview questions for him.

If you have a question for Joe, please text it to (330)-541-5794.

That's 330-541-5794.

If you're on Twitter, tweet it @thecityclub we'll work them into the program.

Joe, here's a first question from our audience.

And you got to imagine that it's like, who would you like to imagine is asking this question, raising your hand having a mic in their face, we'll say maybe this one's from Mayor Bruce, who called me earlier to say he really wanted to watch.

Were there any downtown architectural losses that occurred during your tenure that you regret or wish that they were still around?

Wish that you'd handled the deal differently?

- Well, there were probably some controversial losses the Columbia building, for example, on prospect that was demolished for, what ultimately became the casinos north garage investments.

And that was, those were tough decisions.

I fully appreciate.

And as you know, a lot of historic preservation is wanted to save that building and I understood that.

But at that point we had to make a decision in terms of creating the parking capacity that was needed for the casino and recognized that the casino also was helping to ensure the long-term reinvestment in an asset in the Hippee Building.

And so those types of things are difficult.

There also, I think we underestimate the fact that and again, I wasn't necessarily involved with, some of the early discussions with Playhouse Square but if you think about the fact that we were able to save those theaters as a community and they were reinvested in the last 30 years to make them even more viable that is really a tremendous accomplishment as a community.

And if you think about it, the site right next to the City Club was the site of the Hippodrome Theater.

- Yes.

- Which was not saved.

And obviously we lost that in terms of the historic fabric of the community.

And by the way, it was a 6,000-seat venue very similar to the Fox Theater in Downtown Detroit.

So we lost in essence an opportunity to have mid-level shows in a theater like a entertainment venue.

And unfortunately, that was lost.

And that predated me to be honest with you, but still very, very important loss for the community.

- It's amazing when you think about what was able to be saved through the Playhouse Square Foundation.

I'm sure there's questions about that coming up.

But here's another one I'd like to hear about efforts to get and keep black owned businesses and women owned businesses in downtown, historically, and in the future.

- Well, one of the things obviously that we learned in some of the events that occurred last year, Dan, is the fact that we have to be more involved in social equity issues.

We have to be more involved in racial equity and inclusion related strategies.

So from our perspective, going forward one of the things that, that we are going to concentrate on is exactly that.

There were very few black owned businesses in downtown.

There very few black owned restaurants in downtown.

We've learned that, that there are opportunities and again some of the retail spaces, that have not been fully renovated presents some great opportunities.

So from our perspective, we're going to galvanize outreach and see if we can attract those entrepreneurs, black entrepreneurs, both in the traditional retail sector, the office sector as well as the culinary sector and really see if we can make a significant impact in terms of the diversity of the business space in Downtown Cleveland.

- Could you talk about your views on Biden's infrastructure bill?

This is a very City Club sort of question.

Random somebody who's very curious but about and how, but specifically how you feel it could affect Cleveland's future upsides and any downsides.

- Well, it's interesting that you noted that, 'cause we've actually just put together a list of priorities for downtown.

- Oh good, given that we're about to receive $580 million or something like that.

- Don't forget the county also is gonna receive about 250 million give or take so that it can build these streets.

- It's a huge amount of money.

- But if you think about it let's go back to the Lakefront discussion.

If some of those dollars can end up being part of that land-bridge strategy and we can put significant number whatever the number might be, 25 million, 50 million suddenly you can jumpstart that discussion.

The Flats, Flats are a great opportunity.

One of the challenges in the flats for example, is on the Peninsulas, all of them have bulkhead related issues that are very expensive to deal with, if you think about that.

If we can get some federal dollars to help us fix those bulkheads and relieve the private investor from that obligation which right now they have.

That again, is gonna win entice additional investment in the Flats.

So there are great opportunities for us to kinda galvanize that and use those dollars proactively to help really, again, move the needle.

- Those are the priorities that DCA has identified?

- There's a couple of them.

And remember too, that we can accelerate some of the green space investments that I think we can accelerate.

Whether it's things to kinda complete the valley investments, the metro parks that are involved with, the Towpath now based in park.

All of those types of things I think could potentially benefit from this type of investment.

So, yeah, I think we have a unique opportunity as a community to take advantage of those.

And by the way remember, we have a hometown person in Marcia Fudge, who now is the secretary of housing and urban development, very influential.

And that represents another opportunity for us to maybe bring some assets into Cleveland.

- Not as random a question as I had thought.

- No.

- Thank you.

No, thank you for that.

And I apologize for characterizing it that way.

As you retiring, who do you see as the next generation of leaders?

Are there specific leaders that you're excited to see them like take charge?

And what initiatives do you expect them to champion or do you hope they'll champion?

- Well obviously I think we're at an inflection point from that perspective, as you know,.

I'm stepping down a number of other people in other civic organizations, Joe Roman stepped down, there's been some transition over obviously with Tanya taken over for Joel Ratner.

So again.

- He will never progress.

- He will never progress.

So we're at a point where we are seeing some transition.

And again, I think that's clear.

I think those of us that have been around for 30 plus years, have had an opportunity, I think to work on some of the initiatives that we've already talked about.

But I think again, if you think about, the young professionals, the Generation Xers who I think are represented, the next leadership wave really do have unique opportunities.

And you couple that with a potential obviously Mariel change this floor you have a lot of things coming together where there's potentially being new civic leadership and new public leadership to kind of help us guide guide us through the next phase of investment for the community in general.

And obviously in particular for downtown.

- I won't ask you which mayoral candidate you think should be the next mayor.

- Thank you.

- But if you choose to answer that question or if you have a point of view on it, we're certainly open to hearing it.

But I'm curious what you think ought to be, the specific agenda items or what should these candidates in these campaigns be focused on?

- Well, I think, again, putting the entire community and looking at Dan from that perspective, things like internet accessibility, those types of issues are very, very important for the entire community.

And obviously downtown was probably better connected than other parts of Cleveland.

We know the impact it's had on the rest of Cleveland especially the East side.

We talked a little bit about the, again, racial equity and inclusion related issues.

We know we have to do much, much better in terms of creating opportunities and working to ensure that the safety net.

In fact, provides the type of benefits that we see.

We know downtown, for example, we need to reflect the community.

We need to be a more diverse location.

We need more housing, for example, that's accessible to a wider range of individuals in terms of the community.

So, I think those keys are, how do we make investment work and make it accountable for some of the goals that we're trying to achieve.

And I think that's gonna be the big discussion in the mayoral campaign this summer, when I think as you know the field, I think it's set on June 16th to be exact.

- To be exact that's when we know.

Another question from our audience, a lot of people were excited to see phase one of the casino but phase two never came to fruition.

This causes increased skepticism when it comes to public support, given to deep-pocketed private interests who make public promises but don't deliver.

Should the public continue to be skeptical of large scale capital projects that are over promised and under delivered such as the Medical Mart or the phase two of the casino?

- Well, I think, let's differentiate a couple of things because I think what's important here is, and we talked about a few minutes ago, the important investment we made as a community maybe to the last part of that question the convention center.

We had by all discernible definitions a terrible historic convention center.

And if we hadn't done what we did in terms of making the investments in the convention center and by the way, the global center was to be honest the icing on the cake, the cake was the most important thing creating a modern convention center that allowed us to get back into the convention world.

It allowed us to re-enter that market.

It allowed us to build the Hilton hotel.

We don't build a Hilton hotel, we don't get the RNC.

So we've got to think in terms of how do these assets, how did these things create infrastructure that we can build upon?

And yes, we can go back and we can say, well, the investment of the casinos was a failure 'cause they didn't build phase two.

I look at it differently.

The casino investments have become an important part of our visitor destination strategy.

Why, because people who visit Cleveland want that entertainment option.

You may disagree with it, but they want that entertainment option.

And that I think is the strength of that investment.

And we have to think in those terms, but 'cause one of the economic models we've created for this community.

And again, evidenced by the NFL Draft is that's one of the underpinnings we need now to feed the opportunity to bring more conventions into the city and to bring more major events, which bring us the, not only the notoriety, but the direct economic input that we've created for ourselves.

So I look at it a little differently than, yes I would have loved to have phase two to built but the reality is, the casino group still owns that land.

There's still an opportunity to convince them to create some additional investments.

And by the way, if you look at the vision of the valley that the city is working on in terms of a creative a master plan for the Flats, that's gonna be a critical location in terms of mixed use development going forward.

- So I guess just to ask you though, I mean, how do you think the public should engage with these ideas though?

That's the question, right?

Like, should they be skeptical?

There are so many times when promises are made you and I talked about the original studies regarding gateway that it would create 23,000 jobs.

- 26.

- 26,000, thank you.

- I was the author of the study.

- You are the author of that study so you know, and it probably didn't do that exactly, but, and you know, so how should the public, I mean from my point of view, right, as a former journalist and it's like I feel like the public should be as skeptical as the public wants to be, right.

And and people in leadership roles should be held accountable, for you know.

- I don't disagree with that Dan.

I think it is good to be skeptical, but it's also it's important to understand, again, we have overused in some ways the term public private partnership over the years.

But it is important for us to know that, that again, we do need to work collaboratively to entice private investment and a public role in that is very, very important in terms of that process.

And again, think through as I said, the infrastructure we're creating that generates additional economic activity.

Everybody loves the fact, for example, we're a foodie town.

We celebrate it.

You don't do gateway.

We're not a foodie town.

And we need to think in terms of longer term opportunities that are generated and our result of some of the investments.

But I welcome the open dialogue about whether this is a good investment or a bad investment.

That's part of what all of us in the community want to see.

'Cause if you don't have that active discussion, you're not gonna get, I think, the type of constructive results that you're looking for.

- Here's another question for you.

In 2014, James Corner of Field Operations.

Field Operations?

Field Operations Architects, Landscape Architects came to the City Club to discuss the redesigned public square.

The renderings they show, in the renderings there were buses using superior but it also showed bollards at either end of the square.

It wasn't built with bollards.

And today instead we have these Jersey barriers that the our audience member says are ugly and could be easily circumvented by a determined driver with ill intent.

How can public square be fixed?

And more importantly, how can we prevent another situation like the Jersey barriers on public square from happening again?

- Well, I think, the questioner obviously knows the square very well and I appreciate that.

If you think about it again, what happened after the original design was put in place and we were preparing, if you remember, to help the host of the RNC.

Decision was made to keep the square closed during that period.

And then remember - Close to traffic.

- Close the traffic.

- Open to pedestrians.

- Open to pedestrians.

- Was built for humans.

- But also remember that what happened was pairs.

Where a big truck essentially navigated into a major plaza, a lot of unfortunate deaths occurred as a result of it.

So the protective issues then unfortunately weren't addressed in the original design.

Like how do we create maybe hydraulic systems?

That could in fact be put in place.

That got way late, unfortunately, because we jumped into the Jersey barrier scenario.

But if you think about it, those types of hydraulic bollard in fact, they have it at the gateway complex.

If you know, they're underground capacity the browns have them in their facilities, very durable, very appropriate for this climate, by the way that's the type of investment that I think the group plan commission is looking towards the future, as one of the strategies to remove those Jersey barriers, create again, these hydraulic bollards that can protect the square when we have major events and still allow buses to be part of the fabric when we're not moving in that direction so.

- You and I were a part of many of the conversations from the very beginning when field operations was first engaged and came with multiple ideas that they presented to the public.

- Remember some of the bridges.

- The bridges there was a giant mound and tunnels, and it was it was really exciting but I've always been a little dismayed by the fact that, the square has never been allowed to function as it was designed.

There was never a moment where the powers that decides such thing said let's just give it a few months of letting it function as designed and see if it works.

- You're absolutely right.

I mean, again the powers that be that made a decision that they wanted the Jersey barriers, and they weren't at that point, ready to consider to your point.

We spend a lot of time arguing and thinking through, and designing what we thought would be a system one that would embrace public transportation as part of that strategy.

As you know, that's very, very important.

The reality is we have a train station right there, and the reality is the square is always going to be a connective point to that train station.

So, but you're right.

that was back-burnered.

And essentially the Jersey barriers became part of the short term stop gap measure.

And here we are now what, four or five years later and we still had the Jersey barrier.

So that's a challenge.

- It's a challenge.

- Yes.

- But there's a mayoral election this year and perhaps that'll be a challenge that will be met.

If you're just joining us or just tuning in.

We're talking with Joe Marinucci of the Downtown Cleveland Alliance today at your City Club Friday forum.

Joe is retiring after 16 years at the DCA an organization that he helped to found.

And after more than three decades in public service to Cleveland and the state of Ohio.

If you have a question for Joe, 330 541-5794 is the number to text your question to.

That's 330 541-5794 or if you're on Twitter, please tweet it @thecityclub and we'll work it into the program.

Joe, how do you think downtown will evolve post pandemic?

Given that many workers will remain remote.

People will be hesitant to participate in large gathering, at least in the foreseeable future, even if they're permitted and it might be harder to attract residents given the rising rent costs and the perceived lack of amenities and vibrancy in this current moment.

And aren't you glad that somebody else has headache?

(laughing) - Well, Dan, one, I think let's start with the office market.

I think the jury's still out in terms of the really the long-term impact to the office market.

Will there be an impact?

I think there will be.

Will there be more strategies where employees can in fact work from home on an incremental basis?

I think that's the case.

Will company servers, for example in Cleveland, take the position that, no, we don't need a headquarter facility and we're gonna work remotely?

I'm not sure that that's really the case.

Now having said that even if 10% of the workforce essentially works from home on any given day that means if you think about it, we had a 105,000 people commuting into downtown Cleveland every day before the pandemic.

That's 10,000 people.

So does that have an impact?

Yes.

But again, how big an impact I think is yet to be determined.

On the housing side I mean.

- It means, you know, fewer people driving.

- Fewer people driving but again what happens in terms of the rest of the system?

And that's a little bit unclear.

I feel a lot worse right now if this was 10 years ago and we don't have the housing base that we have now.

We've shown that the base is strong.

We know the vibrancy that housing creates.

There's still plenty of developers that are very interested in making investments.

The City Club apartments right next door to you here where you anticipate they'll begin construction shortly.

The Centennial - The Centennial project I mean.

Speaking of the prices, I mean the Centennial project is over 800 affordable, affordable units.

- Affordable units, right.

Now, again, to that point we know we have to diversify.

We know we have to make more product available at a better price.

That's gonna allow people working in downtown across a broad spectrum to make a decision that they wanna live here.

If they do that, obviously there's less reliance on cars.

There's more reliance on maybe other types of accessibility, mobility strategies, how do we harness scooters in the future which look like they're gonna be with us for a long time, right, and make them work.

How do we reinvest in some of the green spaces?

And again, remember green space is important not only in the core and by the way there's very little land in the core but how do we connect to again, the Centennial trail?

How do we connect to the Towpath?

How do we connect to whiskey Island?

Those are the types of things that I think we can in fact invest in.

And I think that will allow people to continue to make decisions.

The good news is millennials as well as Generation Zers, if I could say that, continue to show that they want to live in dense urban environments, even with the pandemic.

So, that remains kind of the underpinning.

And I think, again, we have opportunities.

Does that mean we can't be very very intentional in terms of our strategies?

Unquestionably we have to be, but I think we can, in fact come back and some national people like Richard Florida have said, you know what, the cities survived the 1918 pandemic and we're gonna survive these as well.

- Cities have kind of endured through human history.

- Exactly.

- People like other people, as it turns out.

Another question for you, walkability has significantly improved over the years in Downtown Cleveland.

How can future city planners respond to the desires of private developers who want skywalks, for example, when they may run counter to the two advocates opinions who want to see more people on sidewalks, not fewer?

- Well, I looked back in at a couple of things we could because I think the implication in the question is that skywalks are bad and having people on streets are good.

Conceptually, I agree with that.

But there are opportunities where again a skywalk may make some sense, but the more important thing is how do we animate the public experience or that sidewalk experience.

And that means we have to have a good - Make sidewalk more compelling.

- More compelling way for again from an investment perspective like we've done on Euclid Avenue we've got to invest in additional sidewalk infrastructure that makes sense.

How do we make the walking down the street that by attracting retail into the empty storefronts.

Nothing makes people feel better than to see retail as they walked down the street.

Those types of things are gonna make you feel safer and make you feel more comfortable in terms of that walking experience.

So it's a combination of those things that I think are gonna be very important for us going forward.

- Another question what's next for Tower City?

- Well, Tower City is obviously a very interesting challenge.

And as you know, the Bedrock team out of Detroit controls that asset.

I think they are now looking at what type of opportunities exist for the avenue and for Tower City.

And as you remember, we talked about Tower City is kind of this monolithic thing but the reality is, the Candy Group bought a major investment and brought residents there.

The Renaissance Hotel is in the process of doing a full renovation.

And the avenue really is, I think one of the things that people think about.

But I know that.

- Then there's also the Ritz right behind there.

Like reconnected everything, I mean.

- And by the way Ritz Building are obviously fully animated and Rocket Mortgage obviously bringing 700 more employees to that complex.

- And by the way, another conversation about moving the Amtrak back.

- I noted that, yeah, I noted that.

So the bottom line is Bedrock indicates to us that they are really looking to re-engage.

As you know, a couple of years ago there was a proposal by Bernie Marino some of his team in terms of the city block project.

- Is that a candidate, Bernie Marino, is that one of the candidates?

- What I can share with you is that, I think concept is still being talked about but more importantly I think now Bedrock has created a team.

And then as you know, they brought a new Cleveland experienced a developer to their table, a Kofi Bonner.

We used to be with the browns years ago, who knows Cleveland.

He's now the CEO of Bedrock Real Estate.

- I did not know that.

- Yeah, and he, I think is regalvanizing the discussion about the evidence.

So I think in talking about opportunities in the future, that's one of the opportunities I think for downtown that I hopefully with private developers, we can rethink and reimagine that.

- Well, Joe, we're about out of time and I know you're probably like, thank God.

I just wanna get through this next week and then put my feet up for awhile.

But I just wanna take a moment and say, you know on behalf of really of myself but other people who have come to love Downtown Cleveland, thank you for all the work that you have done for the city.

We have only barely touched on it.

It's like the top of the iceberg and you have been involved quietly in so much of what we now think of as the major assets the building and construction of the major assets in our built environment downtown.

And I know that many times it has felt like a thankless task.

So I want to say thank you for your work, for your service, and for joining us here today.

- Well, thank you.

I've greatly enjoyed my work here in Cleveland and obviously my work in downtown.

And by the way I'm gonna greatly enjoy my last week because the NFL Draft is gonna be here next week and we're gonna throw a big party.

And I think people are gonna enjoy it and have people from not only Northeast, Ohio but across the country, enjoy it.

So I'm looking forward to that last week of being the president and CEO of Downtown Cleveland Alliance.

- Joe Marinucci is retiring at the end of next week from the Downtown Cleveland Alliance.

Joe, thank you so much for joining us for this a little exit interview.

- Thank you, Dan, I appreciate it.

- It's been great having you with us.

And I wanna thank you as well for joining us for our Friday forum with Joe Marinucci.

As I said, the outgoing president of the Downtown Cleveland Alliance.

Our forum today is the Margaret W. Wong Endowed Forum on Foreign Born Individuals of Distinction.

Joe is one such individual of distinction.

Months before her birth, Ms. Wong's Chinese parents fled political repression and civil war caused by the communist takeover in China.

She's an important leader in our community and we're grateful for her partnership.

We have three important conversations of consequence coming up next week.

Please be sure to check them out on our website at cityclub.org, we'll be talking about mental health, about lead safe housing.

And on Friday, we're back here at the City Club, talking with Peter Kirsanow, our partner at Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff, and also a member of the US Commission on Civil Rights.

That's our Law Day Forum next week, you can find out more at cityclub.org.

I'm Dan Moulthrop, stay strong and stay healthy my friends, our forum is now adjourned.

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