Willoughby Bookstore Confronts Google AI Error: CLE Daily

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⚾ Denzel Ward Is Now a Guardians Investor: Browns cornerback Denzel Ward has joined the Cleveland Guardians as an investor, the team announced Wednesday. The five-time Pro Bowler, a Nordonia and Ohio State product drafted by Cleveland in 2018, recently signed a Browns extension through 2029. "Cleveland is my hometown, and being part of the Guardians organization means everything to me," Ward says. The team will celebrate his investment at Progressive Field Sept. 15 against the Chicago White Sox.

🚁 UH Parma Plans $6M ER Overhaul, New Helipad: UH Parma Medical Center is adding a helipad and 25% more capacity in a $6 million emergency department renovation. The ER treated more than 38,000 patients in 2024, over 10,000 by ambulance. The Parma Hospital Health Care Foundation is matching donations up to $1 million.  

ICYMI: Travis Kelce bought a minority stake in the Guardians back in May, citing his childhood love of '90s Cleveland baseball. Ward's hometown investment just joined his 

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Today's Trivia

What restaurant, which closed in 2018, spent a century on East 4th Street before moving to Playhouse Square for its final 14 years?

Business: A Willoughby bookstore spent its summer fighting Google's AI, which kept telling searchers it had closed for good.

By Abbey Weitzenkamp

Chanel Bush opened The Viridian Bookshop in Downtown Willoughby in October 2025. In mid-July, a customer told her something strange: Google's AI Overview said the shop had permanently closed, listing an address a few doors down from her real storefront.

• A Fruitless Argument: Bush had claimed her Google Business Profile, but the AI summary topped search results anyway, driving away customers during what should've been a strong summer. "It took weeks; it would fix itself, and then it would go back to saying permanently closed," Bush says. "Then it was saying that we never even existed."

• Not a Search Engine: Asked where it got its bad information, the AI named a different source every time. Eventually it explained itself: "It is not a search engine; it is a language generator. So it focuses not on giving correct information, but on giving just an answer, any answer."

• Not the Only One: Other small businesses have told Bush the same thing happened to them. She now calls ahead to any business Google lists as permanently closed.

• The Community Showed Up: Followers left reviews, argued with the chatbot, bought extra items to offset lost sales and switched on phone location while shopping to register an open store. "It truly warms my heart, because the community, they've really shown how much they want us here," she says.

Worth Noting: The Viridian Bookshop, at 4081 Erie St. in Willoughby, is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Read the full story.

Talk of the Town

A 1970s school building is coming down for green space in Coventry Village. Heights Libraries plans to demolish the former Coventry School this fall, clearing room to expand PEACE Park by 2027. The library acquired the six-acre campus from the Cleveland Heights-University Heights school district for $1 in 2018. 

Erie County banked $8.5 million in lodging taxes last year, and now it can spend that money differently. A new Ohio law lets qualifying counties put hotel-tax revenue toward public safety, infrastructure and economic development, not just tourism marketing, as long as projects still connect to tourism. The county still owes $35.1 million in bond payments tied to Cedar Point Sports Force Park through 2038.

Kent State is opening up "precision psychiatry" research tonight. The university's Brain Health Research Institute hosts a free public talk, "Brains on Tap," at 6 p.m. at Bell Tower Brewing Co. in Kent, exploring how smartphones and other devices could tailor mental health treatment to the individual.

Medina County just launched a free path into nursing for young adults. The Medina County Career Center's new tuition-free, 11-month LPN program targets Medina County school graduates ages 18 to 24, with the first cohort capped at 25 students. Director of nursing Tina Myers says the program has been two years in the making.

A Mount Pleasant beekeeper treats his hives, and his neighbors, like family. Trey Williams runs Hood Honey, a community beekeeping operation on his late grandmother's land that doubles as informal mental-health therapy for the neighborhood, now in its sixth year with five hives across three east side sites.

Music: Wu-Tang Clan and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony impressed at Blossom Music Center.

By Annie Nickoloff

When Wu-Tang Clan gets inducted into Cleveland’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame later this year, it’ll be a momentous occasion for the 34-year-old hip-hop collective. “What made it happen,” band member RZA said from the Blossom Music Center stage on Wednesday night, “is the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame figured out what we knew all along: Wu-Tang Clan ain’t nothing to f*** with!" The hip-hop group was joined by Cleveland's own Bone Thugs-N-Harmony in a concert that celebrated many facets of '90s hip-hop last night.

Read our review.

Development: Facing a court-ordered auction, the owner of the former Union Trust Bank Building is scrapping its residential plan for a tech hub instead.

By Ken Prendergast, NEOTrans

Millennia Companies and founder Frank Sinito are pitching new plans for 925 Euclid Ave., the 1924-built former Union Trust Bank Building Downtown, shifting from the residential-focused Centennial project toward tech and artificial intelligence infrastructure. The pivot comes as the building's ownership entity, HH Cleveland Huntington, faces a Nov. 3 court-ordered auction.

• Default and Deadline: HH Cleveland Huntington is in default on a $33.4 million Deutsche Bank loan and a $5 million Cuyahoga County loan, plus $1.7 million in back property taxes. A judge denied its request for a second extension, and the court-appointed receiver wants Sinito to submit a stalking horse bid by Sept. 15 to set a floor price before the auction.

• New Vision: A spokeswoman described the redevelopment as "a mixed-use, integrated technology campus," with 200-plus residential units, roughly 420,000 square feet of office space, retail, a hotel and a restored bank hall doubling as convention space. The tech component is pitched as an innovation and research and development facility built around an unnamed anchor tenant.

• A Trail to Follow: Court filings included an Aug. 28 letter from Citizens Business Bank exploring up to $50 million in financing, but it was addressed not to Millennia, but to Kevin Carr of Hyperscape Digital, an AI infrastructure developer that lists an unnamed Ohio site, "The Opal," among its campuses.

Worth Noting: Cleveland City Council passed a three-month moratorium in July on new data centers while it reviews zoning rules. The project's contractor has also changed from Gilbane and Marous Brothers to Mayfield-based Panzica Construction, sources told NEOtrans.

Read the full story.

Yesterday's Trivia Answer 

What Cleveland engineering company, still in existence today, became renowned for its work in stadium construction in the early 1900s? Osborn Engineering

Check back tomorrow for the answer to today's question.

From the Editor

Denzel Ward joining the Guardians' ownership group this week got me thinking about how normal this has become. A pro athlete buying a piece of a franchise used to be a Magic Johnson or Mario Lemieux story, rare enough to make headlines on its own.

Now it feels like a weekly occurrence: Travis Kelce with the Guardians in May, Tom Brady with the Las Vegas Raiders, JJ Watt and Serena Williams with soccer clubs, Lionel Messi as a stakeholder in Inter Miami's ownership group. I couldn't find one clean number tracking every athlete who's bought into a team, but the shift behind it is real.

The NFL opened the door to institutional investors in 2024, and the NBA loosened its own rules again this year, both moves born from the same math: franchises have gotten too expensive for almost anyone but private equity funds and the ultra-wealthy to buy outright. Athletes, with money and name recognition that banks want in the room, are getting a lane in as minority partners. Steph Curry made the case last year that players deserve real equity, not just salary, given how much their play drives a team's value.

Whatever you think of that argument, Ward's move fits a pattern that's only accelerating. Cleveland just got a small piece of it. It's worth watching how many more hometown names end up on an ownership ledger next.

— Ron Ledgard, Managing Editor

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