“It’s really a story of two tomorrows,” says Brad Whitehead, president of the Fund for Our Economic Future. “Over the last dozen years, we have gone from being somewhere in the back of the pack to somewhere in the middle of pack.
“One tomorrow would be a city that still is struggling with a legacy industry mix and an out-migration of jobs. It is a city that is plagued by racial inequities.”
But there is another future in the offing, Whitehead says, one where we take advantage of the digital revolution to develop and attract new companies and industries that can take advantage of the assets our city offers.
How do we know which path is correct? What are the obstacles in our way? Community Leader consulted numerous representatives of the region’s brain trust. Their consensus is that there are five issues we need to address before Cleveland can, once again, move to the upper tier of American cities:
1.) Become Can-Do Cleveland
If our city and its surrounding communities are going to ascend, we need the right attitude.
“One of the things that we have suffered from is having a ‘woe is me’ attitude,” says David Gilbert, president and CEO of Destination Cleveland. “We went through difficult times, as did many other cities in the Great Lakes region. But Cleveland became the ‘mother-in-law joke for cities’ for a couple of generations. That has led to a bad mindset here. But we are coming out of it.
“The key is to not walk away from our past, but to embrace it as being uniquely Cleveland, to define it and
to be proud of it,” Gilbert adds. “There’s a certain grittiness that makes us truly unique.”
Certainly, our city’s recent successes have played a key role in changing our collective consciousness. During the last seven years, there has been a tremendous investment in our travel and tourism infrastructure; from upgrading cultural institutions like the Cleveland Museum of Art, to building a new Convention Center and downtown hotels.
Major events such as the Cleveland Cavaliers’ NBA Championship and Republican National Convention have done much to change the image of
our city around the globe. But we must use those “wins” as a springboard for future success.
“We need to continue to change the perception our locals have about their own communities,” says Gilbert. “And it is changing.”
While five years ago only about a third of people would recommend Cleveland as a place for relatives to visit, almost two-thirds recommend the city today.
“So, we’re starting to look at travel and tourism from the inside out,”
says Gilbert.
This spring, Destination Cleveland will introduce an online tool kit that residents can use to recommend our city to others. It’s the kind of word-of-mouth promotion that can have a halo effect. If people are more willing to see Cleveland as a great place to visit, they also are more likely to see our city as a place to work, live, go to college and invest.
2.) Improve Education and Invest in Culture
Many would argue, and justifiably so, that Cleveland is already a
great city.
“But in order to get back to where we are leading the pack, we need to make sure our education system is leading the pack as well,” says Ronn Richard, president and CEO of the Cleveland Foundation. “We have to improve our high school graduation rates, but I am not just talking about improving education K through 12. We also need to make sure that our institutions of higher learning are thriving.”
“Cleveland is a college town,” says Chris Ronayne, president of University Circle Inc. “We have as many college students here as there are in Boston. They are a little more spread out, but they are here.”
With an eye toward creating even more college students, the Cleveland School District, in cooperation with the Cleveland Foundation, has formed a partnership with Say Yes to Education, a national nonprofit that helps communities give children access to higher education. Through this partnership, the district’s goal is to offer tuition assistance to all of its graduates.
“We have already made great progress and gotten through many of the hurdles,” says Richard. “We are now working to create partnerships that involve all the big companies in our city, and we’re making good headway.”
But technical training is important as well, says Ronayne.
To that end, the Cleveland Metropolitan School District has created new specialty schools during the last 12 years, such as Tech West at Max Hayes, Technology High School at East Tech and the Cleveland School of Science and Medicine at John Hay. Our local technical schools also are teaching our children skills such as computer coding and computer science.
“We also support CMSD’s efforts in closing nonperforming schools and restarting them as high-performing schools,” adds Richard. “And we will continue to champion that transformation every day.”
“And we shouldn’t forget the work
of conduit organizations like JumpStart and NorTech and others who are doing much to educate our workforce,” says Ronayne. “Investing in these kinds of organizations will
do a lot to attract small- to mid-sized businesses.”
While education plays a pivotal role in workforce development, there is a dark side.
“For many people, transportation
is a real issue, as is the fact that
some people simply fail the drug test and don’t receive the services they need to help make a change in their lives,,” Richard acknowledges.
So how do you systemically solve those problems? It starts with education.
“You solve it by getting to kids early and giving them a really wholesome, healthy and high-discipline education that is based on the arts and other after-school enrichment programs,” says Richard. “You need programs to get them on a successful path and keep them there.”
That’s why the Cleveland Foundation is working to infuse, into every neighborhood in Cleveland, high-quality dance and theater, orchestral music classes and digital photography, as well as disciplines such
as museum and library curation,
says Richard.
“We have up to about 2,000 kids involved right now, but we’d like to have about 5,000 kids in these programs,” he says. “Arts are always the first things to be cut in our public schools, but they are really important for brain development. When you have a caring adult who is in your life, in your neighborhood teaching you an artistic discipline — ballet for example — your self-esteem goes up. Your positive attitude goes up. That’s why it is so important to get people interested in arts and culture and learning in general.”
And thanks to our past, we also have some of the finest cultural institutions in the country, including the Cleveland Museum of Art and Cleveland Orchestra, “which are both over 100 years old,” adds Ronayne.
3.) Conserve and Connect Green Spaces
There are many ways to look at what makes a city a world-class destination, but few would argue that quality of life shouldn’t be top of mind. Our city became the “mother-in-law of all city jokes,” because we focused solely on industrial production and turned our collective backs on Mother Nature. While that has been changing over the last 10 years, the conservation of our green space is not a one-time event, but a continuous stewardship.
“When you look at the preservation of more than 23,000 acres, and the access to green space that we are able to provide the residents of Northeast Ohio for hiking, biking and trail experience, I really think that we are second to none in the U.S.,” says Brian Zimmerman, CEO of Cleveland Metroparks, which has been serving our community since 1917. “The next 100 years will be about creating even more access, more connection points and more trails and waterways into our park system.”
The Towpath Trail is continuing to work through Northeast Ohio, while the Cleveland Foundation Centennial Trail will offer cyclists and hikers easier access to Wendy Park on Lake Erie’s shore in the next few years.
“One of the reasons why the Towpath Trail is a critical component regionally it serves as a spine and we are able to branch off of it, linking communities and improving access," adds Zimmerman. “One example of this is the opening the new Warner Hill Trail Connector in 2017 that serves nearby Garfield Heights and Cuyahoga Heights."
The Metroparks also is looking at connecting to other greenways and spaces throughout Northeast Ohio communities.
“We’re working with adjacent Metropark systems and the Cuyahoga Valley National Park and our longterm goal is to create unique connections between park systems, which will enhance the quality of life across our region,” says Zimmerman.
Which, in turn, should attract forward-thinking companies that realize quality-of-life issues have a direct impact on productivity, creativity and profitability.
4.) Resurrect More Neighborhoods
Cleveland has become a collection of communities and neighborhoods during the last decade. Those such as Tremont and Ohio City have spread out to places like Hinge Town, Gordon Square and the West Shoreway, which has exploded into one of the largest neighborhoods in our city.
“One of the first investments our organization made to a neighborhood was to raise corporate dollars to invest through a brand-new federal low-income tax credit program to
save the Gordon Square Arcade,” says Joe Roman, president and CEO of Greater Cleveland Partnership. “Now, 30 years later, we have all seen what has happened to the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood. Our neighborhoods have the distinct characteristics to be great again.”
But we need to see more of that kind of development on the East Side as well, says Roman.
“Whether it is through projects like the Opportunity Corridor or other neighborhood plans for the East Side, we know we can do it,” he says. “For me, making our city great again means not only building in neighborhoods that are already on the way back, but also bringing other neighborhoods into the fold as well.”
Roman sees East Side neighborhoods as an untapped asset.
“We have other untapped assets as well,” says Roman. “I wasn’t going to go there, because I always go there, but clearly our lakefront and waterfront are two major assets.”
Once again, there are some positive signs. The Metroparks’ takeover of Edgewater Park offers much improved access to Lake Erie, “while for-profit ventures such as the Flats East Bank are becoming a major asset on our waterfront,” says Roman. “We need to focus on opportunities on our waterfront, but not opportunities that might have a runway sitting on them. For now, I think we need Burke Lakefront Airport to be an airport.”
5.) Engage in “Placemaking” for the New World Economy
While a lot of people talk about workforce development, it is just one factor companies consider when they evaluate a city as a destination and relocation point.
“We need to embrace the idea of ‘placemaking’ for business expansion,” says Whitehead, from the Fund for Our Economic Future. “We have seen the opportunities within the Health-Tech Corridor and the rise of ‘eds and meds.’
“With the new Opportunity Corridor, we have the chance to do some placemaking to attract companies beyond those industries — companies that can produce and yield family-sustaining jobs for the residents of our neighborhoods.”
So, we shouldn’t just look to Health-Tech for business expansion.
“Manufacturing and production are still largely important to our region,” says Whitehead. “Over the last couple of decades, our area has lost a large number of jobs in manufacturing due to increased productivity, but also through off-shoring. As a result, we have become a little schizophrenic about whether we believe in the potential for manufacturing and production.”
There is a whole new generation of production technologies, whether it’s in digital manufacturing, 3-D printing, systems and controls, advanced materials or artificial intelligence, Whitehead points out.
“We need to get away from the idea that we are in a post-production economy, and come together as a community and say we are going to lead the world in these new advanced manufacturing technologies, just as we are doing with the bio-sciences,” says Whitehead. “Then we need to align our workforce systems and job readiness efforts around that.”
Another challenge to creating a more positive business environment is maintaining and building a transportation and transit infrastructure that gives workers from our region, regardless of whether they own a car, easier access to jobs within the city as well as in outlying job hubs like Solon, Painesville or Avon Lake.
The same is true with transit access to vibrant entertainment districts.
“We have spent the last couple of decades assuming that every working-age member of every household will own an automobile, and that is just out of step with where the economy is going,” says Whitehead. “The sheer economics of owning a car that you need to get you to a far-flung job location in a world where there has been a constant downward pressure on wages, just doesn’t hold. We really need better solutions.”
This brings us to an underlying issue.
“Without a doubt, economic polarization is one of the issues that we face in Cleveland and all of Northeast Ohio,” says Whitehead. “It is a national and global phenomenon, but it is also something that is occurring here in Northeast Ohio, and it’s occurring at a rate that is greater than elsewhere. And there is a huge racial overlay to that, which we must not ignore.
“We must not allow ourselves to become two economies of the haves and have-nots,” Whitehead adds. “We won’t be competitive on a sustained basis if that trend continues.”
“Our city was once a center of industry with a connected infrastructure that made it the best location in the nation,” says Ronayne from University Circle Inc. “That’s what it was. But I see very bright days ahead as our city pivots to a new economy.”
