Can Nick J. Mileti Make the Coliseum Go?

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From Cleveland Magazine, October 1974

Nck J. Mileti, 43, a man of Sicilian heritage, indomitable spirit and voracious financial appetite, had the Continental moving down 1-77 as if it were on the last 1,000 feet of runway and he was expecting lift-off at any moment. The only things in the car turning over faster than the odometer were the cliches.

They were coming in droves: proverbs, quips, quotes, an occassional malapropism - taken from such diverse sources as Winston Churchill and Joe Zingale and transformed into Miletisms that are highly collectable items in places like the Pewter Mug and the Theatrical Grill. For a time his "A deal is not a deal until it is a deal" Was much quoted in those places.

Today he was answering questions With those cliches, using them as a fencer would his foil to ward off hostile thrusts. "Nick, there are still a lot of people around town who are skeptical about the success of the Coliseum. Do you hear much of that?"

Mileti fiddles with a power window, sending it gently purring up and down, and the ntaking his eyes from the Interstate traffic, turns to face his inquisitor, who is immediately aware that the car is now temporarily guided by fate.

"The tide goes out and the tide comes in," Nick says with a shrug of his shoulder, which this day is clothed in a tan suede jacket, part of a matching leisure suit, a somewhat modest ensemble when you remember that the man is capable of breaking out from his wardrobe things in purple or canary shades, velour and mink. And the colors accent just about everything from jumpsuits to jodhpurs.

With Mileti's eyes back on the road and the Continental once again on a reasonably safe course, his inquisitor risks-the ebb and flow of the tide not quite what he needs to know about Mileti's feelings-another question.

"Do you get the feeling that people in Cleveland still resent you for not putting the Coliseum downtown?

"My ax to grind is Northeast Ohio," he says, his eyes on the road this time. "I can't worry about small subdivisions. But you have to remember, too, the old Sicilian saying: 'Never curse the bridge that carried you across.' "

Another deftly executed parry. Mileti makes an elusive interview subject-evasive, circumspect and wary. In short, he has changed. When it all started he had gotten great press, even the adulation of the media and then, well, he had learned what all politicians eventually come to know: The press giveth and the press taketh away.

The inquisitor tries another tactic, veering away from Mileti's critics and boring straight for the ego. Trying to cut through the cliches to the heart of the man.

"Nick, in the face of these difficulties, the pressures, the court actions, you seemed never to have wavered in your intent to build the Coliseum and put it in Richfield Township. What kept you going?"

"Well, nothing great has ever been achieved without enthusiasm," Mileti says, only half turning this time, knowing he is winning.

"Ralph - what-the-hell -is -his - name?-Emerson. I read him all the time."

employs them during every working hour of his day. Maybe he even dreams them. The inquisitor's notebook is full of quotes and quips by Mileti that mean everything and nothing. Things like "The bottom line is America"; "Sports is the great common denominator of man, it transcends even broads"; "How you come into the world is the way you go out"; "The stripes you earn are the ones you wear the proudest."

Mileti points the nose of the Continental towards Richfield Township where they are building his Coliseum, a dream that will undoubtedly cost $25 million before it is totally completed, about $8 million more than had originally been calculated. The fact that it Is being built is an achievement in itself and a tribute to Mileti's talent for promotion and to his optimistic perseverance. No one can deny the importance of this feat.

But the key to Mileti's financial future rests not so much with the fortunes of the sports teams he operates as with the Coliseum he chose to set amidst the Summit County farm lands between Cleveland and Akron. All roads lead to the Coliseum, Mileti's theory goes, but the question his critics raise is: Will people travel those distant roads to the Coliseum? The answer to that, of course, will not be known for some time. Maybe in two years, maybe in 20 years. At least for now, Mileti has been afforded a slight respite in which to smile at the critics and point simply to the building as a symbol of his success. Most never thought he would even break ground.

Part of the skepticism directed toward Mileti is a reaction to his meteoric rise, which was initially spectacular, more recently controversial as well. He appeared on the public scene relatively unheralded, a man who, exuded charm and spirit and an apparent willingness to take, chances and achieve successes where those who had gone before had dared not or had met with failure. But then, as with all bright comets, his image began to flicker and fade.

To understand part of Nick Mileti's success it is necessary to understand his city, for the two play to each other's strengths and idiosyncrasies. It is questionable whether he could have enjoyed such a rise and achieved as much elsewhere. To understand Mileti's sudden rise to public acclaim is to know the bleakness of the city, its uncertainty, its civic cynicism and its inferiority complex wrought largely by the poor performance of those institutions charged with leadership.

The media, frustrated by its own inability to lead, has learned to react with hunger to each new selfproclaimed savior of the city, first promoting his special vision unrealistically, and then attacking him when he has failed to meet the over-inflated expectations.

Into this atmosphere plunged Nick Mileti at exactly 6:10 p.m. on September 27, 1968, when he signed the necessary papers for the purchase of the Cleveland Arena and the Cleveland Barons hockey team. At that moment, he seemed the antithesis of the town-dynamic, ebullient and always positive. He radiated a high-profile charm. When others had evacuated the town by six in the evening, Mileti was downtown at the Grill or the Mug and he was saying all the right things, all the cliches that the town desperately needed to hear. Maybe the hip come-ons and the colorful jumpsuits and swinging pendants were a little bit much for the Union Club set, but Nick was at least doing something while virtually everyone else was wringing their hands. Nick indeed came on hard as a doer: "Between every dream and reality there are 200,000 nuts and bolts."

In a matter of a few short years Mileti, the great Sicilian hope of Cleveland, had managed to make the transition from a consultant in housing for the elderly to a sports magnet flamboyant in speech, dress and business acquisition. He put together the money to establish professional basketball and hockey teams and came, like some knighterrant, to the rescue of the financially enfeebled Indians.

Although his emergence as a public figure appeared sudden and dramatic, Mileti protests that it was not, "I worked 29 years to become an overnight hit on Broadway." He was enjoying every moment of it, moving from bar to bar, shouting hellos and granting audiences to sports fans. It was terrific stuff for the ego, and Mileti was never one to shy away from ink and adulation.

The son of Sicilian immigrant parents who settled on the city's southeast side, Mileti is a product of an age and a background in which the work ethic was extolled as not only a virtue, but the key to American success. ("I have always worked hard. That is the strength of America. if you work hard, you can get ahead.")

Before he was 10, Nick was working in a drugstore for 50 cents a week. Later he delivered the Press, jerked sodas, pumped gas, and sold door-to-door, sometimes working several jobs back-to-back -all while attending John Adams High School.

The leatherette cover of the 1949 John Adams High School yearbook is yellowed now. Inside, Nick Mileti's skinny, street-hustler face grins a crooked grin on page 26.

Mileti, Nick (Moe): Cheerleader, 12A Athletic Chairman, Distinction Day Committee, 12B Dance Committee, 12B Prom Committee, Student Council, Corridor Patrol, Intramurals, Merit Roll.

This, obviously, was a kid who dabbled. But if you take another look at that list, you will see that there is only one area of public endeavor where Nick J. Mileti was on his own, away from the group, out of the ranks, operating purely on his adrenalin and God-given abilities. Cheerleader.

In that environment, Nick cheered. God against him, he cavorted in the rain, flip-flopping in front of the bored and pessimistic masses in the stands, trying to convince them that if only they would yell, smile, show some enthusiasm, it would be all right.

The solemn class history at the back of the yearbook says that, as freshmen, "Frank DiBlasi, Eddie Linhart and Nick Mileti sat huddled together in a remote corner of the auditorium marveling at the antics of the acrobatic cheerleaders as they led the school cheers."

Nick's name isn't mentioned in the class prophecy, but then who could have predicted Mileti would be cheerleading still, 25 years later. But it is the others who marvel now. Marvel and mutter and grumble and fret as Nick goes on and on, somersaulting in the sports pages and the news columns while the faithless sit and watch and wonder what makes him go.

Mileti went on to Bowling Green State University, where again he held a string of jobs, including working as a busboy in a sorority house and as a promotion man for a band. After graduation, he put in a hitch in the Army and, if nothing else, came away with the friendship of a young public information specialist named Leo McKenna, a former Dartmouth quarterback and a guy that hit it right off with Nick.

Mileti, who was handling base personnel at Ft. Hamilton in Brooklyn, New York, saw to it that McKenna got the right job, and years later McKenna would see to it that Mileti got the needed financial backing from C. F. Kettering, Inc. of Dayton. Kettering is a private investment corporation established by the late Eugene W. Kettering, son of Charles F. Kettering, the man who invented the automobile starter. McKenna is a director of the Kettering fund and Mileti likes to quote old C. F., noting that Charlie has a special place in the pantheon of his personal heroes.

In the meantime, Mileti piggybacked jobs, finished law school at Ohio State, borrowed $500 and opened a law office in the Standard Building where, in between court appearances as the Lakewood city prosecutor at $7,500 annually, he handled a modest practice of probate and divorce cases.

As president of the Lakewood Jaycees, Mileti took on a major project that would ultimately provide his livelihood over the next few years. In order for an elderly housing project to get the necessary federal funding, the venture had to have an on-going community sponsor, and Mileti and the Jaycees volunteered their services.

When the project, known as the Westerly, hit a snag, the board turned to Mileti and hired him to straighten out some difficult legal problems, a task he performed after another lawyer, who submitted a large bill, had failed.

In time, Nick became manager of the Westerly and gained a reputation as one of the nation's leading consultants on the construction and maintenance of elderly housing projects. He testified several times before congressional committees studying the subject.

In 1963, Mileti and former Lakewood Mayor Frank Celeste formed a consulting firm based on their experience with the Westerly and did well until Mileti, who friends say felt he was carrying the bulk of the work load, broke away two years later to start his own business, Senior Consultants, Inc. In the meantime, he continued to run the Westerly and service clients in New England and the Midwest and, never very far from his first love, promoted a Bowling Green basketball game in the Cleveland Arena.'

Mileti noticed how barren the Arena's scheduling calendar was, and the thought struck him that he certainly could do much better, especially after he drew a gate of 11,000 for his game.

Meanwhile, through a business deal involving a radio station in White Plains, New York, Mileti met a lawyer, James T. Lynn, from the influential law firm of Jones Day Cockley and Reavis. Lynn would later go on to become Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Nixon and Ford administrations. Lynn, in turn, introduced Mileti to another lawyer in the firm, Theodore M. Garver, a tax expert, who was to become a key figure in the financial empire that formed around the enthusiastic Sicilian.

Obsessed with the idea of purchasing the Arena, Mileti and Lynn went to New York to see McKenna with whom Mileti had maintained close ties since their Army days. (Nick is godfather to McKenna's second child.)

Would the Kettering people be interested in a partnership? Mileti asked. Certainly, came the reply. And not only would they buy the Arena, they would purchase the Barons hockey team, too. McKenna says that it was a difficult deal to work out because there were so many stockholders from both the Arena and the hockey team to be dealt with. At times it looked as if the whole thing would fall through. Finally, on that now historic September evening in 1968, the deal was completed and Nick Mileti was on his way with 51 per cent ownership in both the Arena and the hockey team.

As with everything else he owns, Mileti is proud of the radio station and makes a point of noting that it's the only locally owned major media outlet in Cleveland. He says the station will take an aggressive editorial stand on issues. It is going to be vibrant and tough. In fact, he notes, his first editorial stand will be to urge the state legislature to pass an important bill.

"We are coming out heavy for turning right on red," Mileti says as the Continental sweeps by an aging Volkswagen packed with long-haired youths craning their necks to see what kind of important dude is blowing by in the white Continental. His mod sunglasses and styled hair are a tipoff that the driver is not your normal run-of-the-mill Continental pilot. Could be an actor or maybe one of those flashy, high powered financial cats that collect shopping centers like sea shells. Maybe a bit of both, maybe a bit of both.

Now Mileti is talking about the roads and highways that lead to his Coliseum and how they fit into his philosophy that his role in society is to serve the greatest number of people in the best possible way. Which is why, he explains, the Coliseum did not go in downtown Cleveland.

He says that the first site he looked at for his proposed Coliseum was on East 9th Street, where the Gateway project later was proposed to be built. "We were really excited about it at first," Mileti says. "But the more we looked, the more we thought, and the more we analyzed we just concluded that the building should be convenient to the greatest possible number of people. You know, there are two kinds of decisions in life: the ones that you make and the ones that are made for you. This was one of those that was made for us."

Mileti says the whole thing was really very simple: The people were not downtown and would not come downtown and one had to realize that. "Why do you think Tom Vail dropped the word 'Cleveland' from the name of his newspaper? The same reason. Very simple."

The idea for the Coliseum was conceived shortly after the Arena purchase, Both Mileti and McKenna say that when they made that deal they knew they could not stop with the building and the hockey team. That would have meant financial suicide. Mileti, motivated by the fact that the nation's eighth largest marketplace had no major league hockey or basketball, set out immediately to get a National Basketball Association franchise and another in the National Hockey League. If he could get these teams, he knew he had to house them in a larger arena, and the fact that he was planning to build a new Coliseum would play a large part in his obtaining the franchise. The two projects went hand in hand.

Mileti' s decision to build the Coliseum in Richfield caused gasps of painful disbelief among those who were campaigning for the revival of downtown Cleveland. It caused a certain amount of financial grief for Mileti, too, as he faced a battery of law suits that extended all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Construction was delayed by a year and a half during which time building costs escalated by millions.

Although no one connected with the Coliseum will point any fingers, there is a feeling among Mileti, McKenna and tax expert Theodore Garver that some of the problems with getting the building underway were the result of pressure tactics designed to have the arena relocated in Cleveland. Repeated attempts to derail the Coliseum on the basis that it would be an environmental detriment to the Richfield area were overcome in the lengthy legal battles. Mileti says he nearly choked when he heard that the state environmental protection agency found that the treated sewage from the Coliseum that was to run into the upper Cuyahoga River would enhance the quality of water. "What the hell were we in court for?" he asks.

Another area in which Mileti experienced difficulty was the financing of the building. Initially, he had an arrangement with CleveTrust Realty Investors for $2.4 million in financing. After $510,000 had been advanced, the deal was suddenly terminated. A source close to the arrangement says that the investment corporation pulled out when Mileti refused to reveal how many loges he had sold in the Coliseum.

Ted Garver says that CleveTrust Realty imposed what Mileti considered to be impossible conditions in the agreement and it was mutually concluded. He adds that it is the policy of Ohio Sports Center, Inc., the company formed to run the Coliseum, not to reveal the names of those persons and companies that have purchased the loges. Some persons connected with Ohio Sports Center believe that downtown politics were behind the cancellation of the finances.

From the outset, the loges, private suites which ring the Coliseum at a high vantage point, were considered a key source of revenue. The original projections showed that if 124 of these lavish boxes were leased, the revenue would amount to as much as $31 million, almost twice the cost in the initial proposals for the Coliseum. Because the loges were so important financially-progress of the venture could be measured against loge sales-they became a source of controversy.

Each of the loges contains 10 seats with an adjoining entertainment room, full bath and bar. The original asking price was $250,000 per loge for a 10-year lease. This was later amended to an arrangement in which a $10,000 fee is charged for the 10-year period, plus the price of season tickets, plus the cost of maid service and plus a fee for the use of the Coliseum Club facilities. (Nearly $500,000 collected for the private boxes was lent last year to another Mileti venture, the financially anemic Cleveland Cavaliers.)

Garver and Mileti turned elsewhere for financing. Cleveland banks, with the exception of National City Bank and Midwest Bank and Trust, showed little interest in entrusting their money to Mileti because the Coliseum was considered too risky a venture. "I suppose the thinking here was that a banker was much better off taking a risk with, say, somebody in Philadelphia than with someone in Cleveland who might fail and therefore affect the local reputation of the banker," says one Mileti confidant.

If local financiers were somewhat leery, bankers elsewhere were not. An Akron bank acting as a finder brought Chase Manhattan Bank forward with a $12-million loan secured through a mortgage on the 500 acres that had been purchased around the Coliseum site. The Mellon National Mortgage Co. provided an interim loan of $6 million. National City and the First Bank of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, are committed to a long term $6 million loan guaranteed by APCOA, an ITT-owned parking lot company, which secured a 10-year contract to run the Coliseum parking, and by American Canteen, which has a similar contract to handle the concessions. The Kettering share in the Coliseum represents a transfer of its former interest in the Arena, without any new money thrown into the bargain. The Arena was subsequently mortgaged for $950,000, which was used for other Mileti endeavors.

"There it is," Mileti calls, pointing out to the left as he swings the Continental off the Interstate. "There is the Coliseum. See, it sets on the highest point in northeastern Ohio." Formidable gray concrete walls loom high against the placid green landscape that surrounds it, making the building an imposing structure against the bucolic backdrop. The land immediately surrounding the building is scored and torn from construction, and workers in yellow hard hats move about, hampered, somewhat, by ankle-deep mud.

"Doesn't that thing look great? Just look at it," Mileti says, almost unable to believe it himself. Most of his time throughout this summer and fall has been taken up by the Coliseum and trips out to it. He has personally escorted around the construction area, friends, prospective loge buyers and just about anyone who asked. Mileti has approached these pilgrimages with the flush and pride of new ownership. But the Coliseum has got to be more than just a business venture or a dream come true for him. He needs it to restore the credibility that all those endless cliches have slowly eroded over the past few years.

The View From Richfield The man who brought Nick Mileti to Richfield-indeed, the man who is himself the pioneer developer in the area -is 61-year-old Richard Huxtable, president of Briarwood Corporation, a residential development two miles west of the Coliseum on 303. "In March of 1971, 1 heard Nick was looking for property for his proposed Coliseum," says Huxtable. "I took two days to think about it selfishly as to just what effect it would have on the area." Huxtable told Mileti of a verbal agreement he had with the Gulf Oil Company regarding its purchase of a plot of land in the area. Mileti quickly whisked up the option on the 104 acres and commenced plans to put his Coliseum there. Huxtable is truly an American business enigma. He has had seven heart attacks and yet works ceaselessly to complete his personal dream: Briarwood, a townhouse/condominium community that eventually is to be self-sufficient, even to the extent of having its own water filtration system and an artesian well. From his offices in a magnificently restored barn once belonging to the Monegan family (an original owner of the land), Huxtable maintains a paradoxical love for both the past and the future, meaning this condominium village, which will double Richfield Township's population even before the last resident pulls into his garage to take up f1country-style living." In the initial phase Huxtable will build 36 townhouse-condominiums and by completion sometime around 1980 a total of 600 townhouses, 1,024 apartments and 18 single-family homes. His publicity brochures are mini-histories of the area, and the plethora of reading material he dispenses emphasizes that the area "is rich in Nature's Blessings." It all looks as cozy and relaxed as the huge stone, fireplace in his barn-though many local residents are concerned that Huxtable's project may turn out to be a plastic version of "country living." Others give him high marks on style. He attends town meetings regularly and recently hosted a two-day open house in which 450 families showed up to check out his development. Nick Mileti, on the other hand, at least as far as the local citizens are concerned, still seems to be more a name on the sports page than a familiar face around the township. The people will confess they are a little unclear as to what, in fact, Mileti is up to in their neck of the woods. "Nick Mileti is a fine, sincere man. A man who studied law just so he could know how lawyers think," says Huxtable. "I never would have asked him down here if he wasn't going to do exactly what he said he was going to do." Others are a bit more skeptical of the flashy man from the city. "The Mileti people drove up one day and told my father that Mileti was thinking of buying the produce for his Coliseum restaurants from us," says George Duda of Broadview Road in Richfield Village. The Dudas have a fruit and vegetable farm and already service a few local restaurants but getting a piece of the Coliseum's business would be a great financial lift for any family business. They haven't heard anything since. Other townspeople are more openly cynical, believing that Mileti will ship produce in from places where the climate will support yearround crops. "Giving business to people around here would be small potatoes to a big shot like Mileti," says Al Donvito, owner of a catering hall and co-owner of Al and Pete's Sunoco-pumps and bar in the center of the village. The bar, at the crossroads of Broadview and Ohio 303, is frequented by local gentry, serious sports fans and many ex-Clevelanders. "There are a lot of different opinions out here, but most are for the Coliseum," says Donvito, who moved here from Cleveland himself 17 years ago. Of course opposition to the Coliseum comes basically from environmentalists and farmers who want to see Richfield remain somnolent and unpolluted by the ugly hand of "progress." But those in favor of the project see the Coliseum as the catalyst that will bring unparalleled riches to the area. And the final hurdle to opening up Richfield has been cleared: the courts recently ruled, after more than a dozen law suits, that Mileti could tap into the Akron water system. Water, in the eyes of land developers, equals business and industry. Thus the Coliseum is rapidly changing everything in Richfield. The local govemment has weekly battles on zoning, and a proposal to widen Ohio 303 to a four-lane highway will soon go to public hearings. "I just better be compensated," says an irked Donvito, a very active member of the local Democratic party. "People aren't buying that eminent domain stuff anymore." Those in opposition to the Coliseum, including many of the environmental activists, fear droves of unwashed Clevelanders pouring into their tranquil village. Since many of them came to Richfield to escape the problems of the city, they are understandably uneasy in their belief that the city's problems will be brought to Richfield with the Coliseum. "In some cases even the socalled conservation groups are concerned about blacks coming down here," says Bob Herrick, a local resident and employe of the Underground Cafe, an old stagehouse restaurant-tavern. Herrick himself feels such fears are exaggerated and calls the Coliseum "fantastic," noting it will create jobs and tax revenue for schools. Once the Coliseum does open-and people like Huxtable are reluctant to speculate about what sports 12:00 AM EST October 1, 1974 Story: Michael D. 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