Biggar, Jim

Cleveland has a certain effect on lifelong residents. Case in point: Jim Biggar, a Pepper Pike native who never left, who poured personal and professional resources into the city he loved even when some Clevelanders were unsure of its future, who carved a very personal community niche for one of Ohio's top tourist attractions, and who, when he'd finished there, started an entirely new business. 

Growing up on Cleveland's East Side — "We were in Pepper Pike when our neighbor had a Jersey cow and a haystack," he recalls — Biggar grew up to head Nestle USA in Solon, one of the world's largest food companies, and owner of the venerable downtown hotel now aptly named the Renaissance.

When he retired from Nestle in July 1991, Biggar could easily have relocated to a more hospitable climate, one with fewer civic obligations taking up what little time he had. Instead, Biggar formed Beachwood-based Glencairn Development Corp., accepted the chairmanships of the New Cleveland Campaign and the Gateway Economic Development Corp., and headed the business development group Cleveland Tomorrow, where he helped form the Cleveland Development Partnership, the first civic real estate investment program of its kind in the United States. 

That is the effect of Cleveland — it engenders in its natives an apparently insatiable civic drive. 

"Almost every project in town, from Gateway to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to the new stadium, to neighborhood shopping centers, have investments in them from this fund," says Joseph Roman, executive director of the New Cleveland Campaign. "Many, many of these projects would simply not have occurred without that resource." 

At Nestle, Biggar was hailed for maintaining a local profile for an international company. "We were a consumer company, and I think it just makes sense to have a strong profile," Biggar says. "It's not all unselfish, either. We had a hotel here, we had a group of restaurants here. If we can have a strong city, our employees are going to feel better about going to work. I do think it's an obligation." 

Glencairn is also the name of a personal dream — constructing a residential/commercial development on a slice of family-owned land midway between Cleveland and Akron. Although Biggar estimates another eight to 10 years' work ahead, six families have already moved in among the liberally wooded green space and man-made lakes. 

Biggar could have comfortably retired to private life after Nestle. Why, then, did he pile so much more on his plate? "What would I do?" he says. "Let's face it, my golf game isn't that good." 

Roman offers, too, that Biggar's hometown commitment has driven his professional life: "He breathes Cleveland. This is home. This is where his passion is, and everything he does relates to that." 

Since his professional career had been based on marketing, Biggar says it was only natural that he use that experience to market Cleveland - essentially, the raison d'etre of the New Cleveland Campaign and Cleveland Tomorrow. 

"It seemed to me that if there ever was a time for Cleveland to tell its story, this was it," Biggar says. "We'd looked at the city and saw that there were no really good communities that didn't have a good downtown. So how do you get a good downtown? Well, people either live there ... or you attract them there. We didn't have anybody living there and it would take a long time for that to happen. On the other hand, we had the opportunity through some added features to attract people there." 

Biggar — who has lived in the same Pepper Pike home for 40 years — says that now the only big-city necessity Cleveland lacks is at least one true convention-oriented hotel and perhaps another 1,000 hotel rooms. 

The work of selling Cleveland in anticipation of Gateway, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Great Lakes Science Center and, of course, the city's Bicentennial, Biggar says, wasn't too terribly difficult because of what had come before. 

"I think the business community woke up after being asleep for 30 or 40 years," Biggar says. "Realistically, we lived off what had been done 75 years ago and then, about the time ... George Voinovich came in as mayor, that was when the business community got back involved. I think Cleveland's a great city because of what was done before and what's been done recently."