Cleveland Clinic Delivers Via Drones: CLE Daily

🌦️ 82°; Humid

⚡️ Your electric bill isn't imagining things. Ohio electric bills hit new highs, per state data. 

🏈 Hall Pass: Football is officially back tonight — the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game kicks off at 8 p.m. at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, with the Panthers facing the Cardinals. It's the front end of an Enshrinement Week that runs through Sunday and puts Drew Brees, Larry Fitzgerald, Luke Kuechly, Adam Vinatieri and Roger Craig in gold jackets Saturday at noon. 

🥬 Fresh Take: A pop-up "farm stop" returns to the Kinsman neighborhood Aug. 6–9 at Cornucopia, 7201 Kinsman Road — part farmers market, part grocery, with 25-plus local vendors, produce, dairy, bread, fresh juice and hot food. Cash, card and SNAP accepted, plus free shuttles from nearby apartments and housing developments. 

🐾 Paws and Effect: Fourteen years, 800 petition signatures and roughly $120,000 later, Parma and Parma Heights cut the ribbon Wednesday on Reservoir Paw Park, the two cities' first joint dog park. The one-acre, leash-free spot behind the reservoir off Pearl Road has separate big-dog and small-dog yards, and a "Yappy Hour" fundraiser at Parma Tap House on Aug. 29.

ICYMI: Just 30-some minutes east, Lake County is having a summer moment — Madison's wine country keeps growing with newcomers like Emerita and Fossil Creek wineries, while downtown Willoughby has gained Jeff's Candy Shop (relocated from Cleveland's Waterloo Road) and the Nashville-style Double D's Honky Tonk & Smokehouse. 

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Trivia Question

Lawyer Mike McCormack founded what company, now a sports, media and modeling behemoth, in Cleveland in 1960 by representing golfer Arnold Palmer?

Development: Cleveland Clinic is now delivering prescriptions by drone. 

By Ken Prendergast, NEO Trans

The first medications have already landed. Cleveland Clinic made its first successful drone prescription deliveries last week in and around Beachwood — the start of what the health system says is the first long-term drone drug delivery program run by a U.S. health system. Controlled substances aren't going airborne, at least for now.

The Range: Deliveries are limited to a five-mile radius around the Clinic's Beachwood Administrative Campus, which doubles as the drones' home base. Patients already enrolled in the Clinic's pharmacy home delivery program are the first eligible; the pharmacy team notifies them through MyChart. Opting in is free, and optional.

How It Works: No drone is landing in anybody's yard. A pharmacy technician loads the package into a secure dropbox, an electric drone autonomously picks it up and flies out, then hovers as high as 300 feet while a pod lowers the order to the ground on a tether. The pod climbs back up and the drone returns to its charger. Patients track the whole thing through a MyChart link.

The Partner: Operator Zipline calls itself the world's largest autonomous delivery service and says it has moved tens of millions of medical products since its first flights in 2016. Each drone runs more than 500 safety checks per second in the air, per Zipline U.S. healthcare president Hillary Brendzel.

Bill Peacock, Cleveland Clinic executive vice president and chief of operations: "This drone delivery program is an example of how we can use technology to help patients receive important medications quickly, safely and efficiently."

What's Next: The Clinic plans to add locations and expand what flies — more medications, lab samples, medically tailored meals and supplies. What all that eventually does to real estate and ground transportation around Greater Cleveland is anyone's guess.

Big Picture: Beachwood residents were split when the program was announced — somewhere between "how cool" and "something is buzzing over my house." Now it's real, and the five-mile circle is only going to get bigger.

Read the full story.

Talk of the Town

Tax break dance: Ohio's sales tax holiday runs Friday through Sunday, Aug. 7-9 — clothing $75 or less and school supplies and instructional materials $20 or less come off the tab. Backpacks and sneakers are in; sports gear, phones and anything you'd order at a restaurant are not.

There's $7 million to get the lead out of suburban homes. The Cuyahoga County Board of Health is taking applications for lead-safe repairs — up to $10,000 a home, enough federal money for about 295 of them across 19 suburbs from Lakewood to Euclid. You need a pre-1978 house, a kid 5 or under and an income under 80% of area median (roughly $84,000 for a family of four). It's first-come, first-served, and Cleveland residents aren't eligible; the city runs its own program.

Issue 3 now has its ballot language — and, unusually, nobody's suing over it. The Ohio Ballot Board approved the wording 4-1 on Monday, with a Democrat joining the Republicans after they accepted two of his edits — a quiet session by the standards of Ohio's recent ballot-language brawls. Issue 3 would write the state's existing photo ID requirement into the constitution; it changes nothing immediately and leaves mail voting alone. Arguments for and against are due Aug. 17.

Bobby George is suing the Statehouse. The Cleveland restaurateur's family company filed a federal suit against Senate President Rob McColley, House Speaker Matt Huffman and others over the $3.5 million Flats East Bank grant lawmakers clawed back in 2025 while George faced nine felonies. He later pleaded guilty to attempted strangulation and got probation; the Senate calls the suit "a political stunt." 

Puerto Rican Cleveland is planting a flag — and a garden. A new nonprofit has the go-ahead to build a Puerto Rican Cultural Garden in the Cleveland Cultural Gardens, and organizers describe it less as a monument than a classroom for a community that's been here for generations.

Somebody in Akron is tearing down the Flock cameras. Ward 6 Council Member Brad McKitrick told residents that many of the city's roughly 145 license-plate readers are being damaged by vandals — and that he stands by them anyway. Akron's Flock contract expires next year, and he expects a long fight over renewing it, much like the one Cleveland City Council had this summer.

Music: Meet Norelle, the Cleveland vocalist who sings on the world's biggest stages. 

By Annie Nickoloff

If you’ve watched the Super Bowl, American Idol or Saturday Night Live, you may have seen and heard a Cleveland artist onstage.

Big Credits: Norelle Simpson has sung with some of the biggest musicians of our time, including Pharrell, Kelly Clarkson, Mariah Carey, Rihanna and more.

On Tour: The accomplished vocalist from Cleveland stays intensely busy in the music scene, often on tour or working as a background singer — and occasionally belting out the national anthem at major sporting events.

We talked with the musician in an episode of The CLE Connection, Cleveland Magazine’s podcast that takes a look at Cleveland’s surprising ties to major pop culture moments. 

Norelle: "I had a great community of people who not only believed in me, but just really wanted to see me win, and they put me in position to do so."

Read more and listen to the conversation at clevelandmagazine.com.

Yesterday's Trivia Answer

Cleveland interests built what Las Vegas casino, which was also protected by the Cleveland mob? Desert Inn

Check back tomorrow for the answer to today's question

From the Editor

One short song, with endless impact. In my interview with Norelle for The CLE Connection, we talked about what it's like to sing the national anthem at sporting events — something she earned significant attention for earlier this year at a Pittsburgh Steelers game. There's a lot of pressure around it, and a lot of thought that goes into it.

"Nobody ever sings it the same, and I think people carry a certain pride in that, and that plays a huge part in how they deliver it. So putting myself in there, like my own personal artistry, or whatever the emotion is that I am feeling behind that song in particular, is super important to me," she says. "Maybe that's why it resonated with people the most in this time in particular, because it was an emotional experience for me, because there was a slight inner conflict singing the song and taking into consideration everything that's happening in our world right now."

 — Annie Nickoloff, Senior Editor

Have a story idea? Tell us what we should cover at conversation@clevelandmagazine.com.

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