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MARCH 17 - 23, 2014
CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS
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THEWEEK MARCH 10 – 16 The big story: PolyOne Corp. announced a coming change at the top of the producer of specialty polymers that is based in Avon Lake. PolyOne’s board named Robert M. Patterson, 41, as its president and chief executive officer, effective May 15. Patterson will succeed Stephen D. Newlin, 61, who will retire as president and CEO after more than eight years in the Patterson top job but will remain executive chairman of the PolyOne board. Patterson currently serves as PolyOne’s executive vice president and chief operating officer,
Otto-matic: In a deal that will allow the company to exit Brazil, DDR Corp. agreed to sell its 50% ownership interest in its Brazilian joint venture to its largest shareholder, Alexander Otto, and his affiliates for $343.6 million. The Beachwood-based real estate investment trust that specializes in shopping centers said the portfolio of the joint venture, Sonae Sierra Brasil, consists of 10 regional malls totaling 4.6 million square feet. DDR said its original investment in the joint venture in 2006 was $147.6 million, with an additional $52.6 million financed from 2007 through 2009. New frontiers: Frontier Airlines is growing its Cleveland presence again. The discount airline announced six new nonstop destinations from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, rapidly trying to capture passengers who until now had been flying on United Airlines. The new service will begin June 13 and will take Cleveland passengers to Atlanta; Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Fort Myers, Fla.; Phoenix; Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; and Tampa, Fla.
REPORTERS’ NOTEBOOK BEHIND THE NEWS WITH CRAIN’S WRITERS
MetroHealth looks to get insurance enrollment rolling ■ MetroHealth’s effort to get people to enroll in Medicaid or buy insurance on HealthCare.gov is hitting the road. This week, MetroHealth will unveil its “Enrollment on Wheels” — an RV the health system will parade around Cuyahoga County to encourage people to sign up for coverage. In an interview last month, MetroHealth CEO Dr. Akram Boutros hinted at the effort and said it isn’t a market play designed to pump more paying patients into the health system. Instead, it Boutros will benefit all the county’s health care providers. Unlike its experimental CarePlus Medicaid waiver program, patients who enroll won’t be required to go to MetroHealth for care. “The great thing is this will help all providers,” Boutros said. “These patients won’t have to just go to Metro.” — Timothy Magaw
Ending distribution: The former headquarters of Barnes Distribution North America officially will close on or near Aug. 1, the owner of the operation said in a letter to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. In 2013, the Cleveland-based Barnes business was sold to MSC Industrial Supply Co., a distributor of metalworking and maintenance supplies. MSC last July announced plans to shut the operation at 1301 E. Ninth St. According to the March 3 letter, 97 employees’ jobs will be terminated. The layoffs are expected to take place between May 2 and Aug. 1.
This and that: University Hospitals said it will invest $3.8 million into its 226-bed medical center in Geauga County. UH said the investments will support a revamped Orthopaedic Center, which includes a 12-bed unit on the hospital’s first floor. All the patient rooms will be private. … Materion Corp. received a letter from Gamco Asset Management Inc., a vehicle of well-known investor and money manager Mario Gabelli, stating its intention to nominate two director candidates for Materion’s board at the company’s annual meeting of shareholders, which is set for May 7.
Software lets students put best foot forward online
■ The Cleveland Clinic continues to be the dominating fundraiser in the health care arena in Northeast Ohio. Last year, the health system, which boasts about $6.5 billion in annual operating revenue, brought in a healthy $173 million — a nearly 17% increase over 2012’s total of $148
■ “Answer with Webcam” doesn’t let college officials give prospective students a hearty handshake. However, the software should give those officials a sense of how students speak and carry themselves, even if they can’t meet in person, according to a news release from DecisionDesk. The provider of application management software in Lakewood now offers Answer with Webcam through a partnership with LikeLive of Woodland Hills, Calif. Colleges that use the software create questions that
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Clinic, UH keep raking in the gifts
Excerpts from recent blog entries on CrainsCleveland.com.
In the money: Kent State University’s trustees signed off on a number of measures, including raising room and board rates and a large performance-based bonus for its departing president, Lester Lefton. Lefton’s bonus — $106,538.92, or 25% of his base salary — will be paid July 1, the day after his retirement. With his retirement, Lefton will not be eligible for a longevity bonus. Lefton joined Kent State in July 2006 and will be replaced by Beverly Warren, the current provost at Virginia Commonwealth University. Trustees also approved an overall 3.9% increase in the standard, undergraduate double-room and board rates for next fall. The university said the increases would help offset the rising costs of maintenance, repairs, utilities and food.
million. University Hospitals, the Clinic’s chief rival and the region’s second-largest health system, raised $118 million in 2013. UH is in the midst of a massive fundraising campaign it publicly launched in 2010. The health system had been looking to raise $1 billion but expanded its goal by $500 million in late 2012. The Clinic completed its own major fundraising campaign in 2010 with about $1.41 billion in its coffers. After the campaign, the Clinic’s annual haul declined significantly from its peak of about $180 million in 2008, but it has been climbing since 2010. According to Crain’s research, the Clinic brought in the largest gift among local health systems in 2013. Last March, it received a $10 million gift from an anonymous donor to support its heart and vascular program. — Timothy Magaw
Reinventing Cleveland, and America
COMPANY: TPC Wire & Cable Corp., Macedonia PRODUCT: Super-Trex Heavy-Duty Flex Crane Cable TPC, a supplier of wire, cable and connectors, has expanded its Super-Trex line of cables designed to work in harsh industrial environments. The company says the Super-Trex HeavyDuty Flex Crane Cable was designed specifically for crane and reeling use. Its heavy-duty, dual-pass jacket “contains a reinforcing aramid braid between the layers providing added strength and improving cable resistance to pulling and torsional forces,” according to TPC. The braid provides greater than 1,920 pounds of tensile load capability, which the company says “helps reduce ‘corkscrewing,’ or the twisting that causes a cable to bend abnormally and fail under tension, as well as premature cable failure common to standard multi-conductor cables.” The internal design is constructed with “finely stranded tinned copper conductors which are assembled with low-friction separators and left-hand conductor lay, and laylengths that are optimized for longer flex life and corrosion resistance,” TPC says. Product manager David Sedivy says the new reeling cable was designed “as a direct response to field failures.” He says it’s suitable for use in harsh industrial environments such as steel mills, wood and paper product manufacturing plants, and shipping/container ports. For information, visit www.tpcwire.com.
■ Josh Linkner, CEO of Dan Gilbert’s Detroit Venture Partners, shared some thoughts about the Midwestern economy and its future in a Forbes.com interview ahead of his appearance later this month at the magazine’s Reinventing America Summit in Chicago. Asked to rate his level of optimism about the U.S. economy on a scale of 1 to 5, Linkner told Forbes.com, “I’m at a 3 and 1/2.” Nonetheless, he says he’s “very optimistic that startups and technology will continue to create jobs and drive the economy, especially in non-traditional markets such as Detroit and Cleveland.” In those markets and elsewhere, he said, tech startups — particularly in the health care IT sector, a strong area for Cleveland — need to be the focus of economic development efforts. “We are on the verge on incredible innovation breakthroughs and this is the place to create wealth and opportunity,” Linkner told the website. He said policymakers — from President Barack Obama all the way down to the local level — and monied interests should “support entrepreneurs in every possible way. Provide capital and support to drive small business growth.” But there is one area of the tech sector that doesn’t excite Linkner. “I think social media is over-hyped,” he said.
This beer is the bomb ■ There’s a whiff of 1970s-era Cleveland in a new beer brewed by 3 Stars Brewing Co. of Washington, D.C.
candidates answer while they’re recorded by a computer’s camera. “The resulting video is embedded in the student’s online application, serving as a permanent record of his or her language skills, presentation and demeanor,” the release stated. DecisionDesk clients can license the software by itself or as an additional tool within the Lakewood company’s suite of application management products. — Chuck Soder
From a hot list in D.C. to a hot job in Cleveland ■ A member of National Journal’s “Hill Hot List” in 2012 is the first executive director of the Group Plan Commission, the nonprofit that will implement the plan to make downtown Cleveland a more inviting place to explore. Jeremy Paris, a Shaker Heights native, returned to Cleveland more than a year ago from Washington, D.C., after serving as chief counsel for nominations and oversight for the Senate Judiciary Committee. There, he earned his place on the National Journal’s list of the top 15 attorneys guiding legislation through Congress. But Paris’ heart was in Cleveland, so he returned in 2012 to work as a special assistant to Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald. At the top of Paris’ to-do list is hoping that Gov. John Kasich will include money in the coming state capital budget for a key Group Plan goal — building a pedestrian bridge from the Mall, across railroad tracks and the Shoreway, to the lakefront museums. — Jay Miller
The Washington Post reported that 3 Stars on March 7 introduced Danny Greene Double IPA, a collaboration with Tim Adams of Maine’s Oxbow Brewing. It’s named after Danny Greene, the Cleveland mobster turned FBI informant who was killed by a mafia car bomb in 1977. “It’s something we were talking about while brewing with Tim,” said 3 Stars coowner Dave Coleman, a Cleveland native. “He hadn’t heard the story, and was a bit fascinated.” The Post said the beer uses Azacca, Amarillo and Centennial hops.
C’mon get happy ■ Cleveland might be a factory of sadness, as comedian Mike Polk Jr. says, but the whole state is pretty much in the dumps. The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index since 2008 has looked at 55 measurements of physical and emotional well-being to gauge happiness in all 50 states. There’s a clear pattern for Ohio, which ranked 46th in 2013. In the last five years, the state has ranked no higher than 44th and no lower than 47th. So in short, we’re pretty consistently unhappy. In the latest rankings, Ohio was 48th in “life evaluation,” 44th in “emotional health,” 40th in “work environment,” 42nd in “physical health,” 45th in “healthy behaviors” and 28th in basic access to health care. But at least we’re not West Virginia! That state has ranked 50th in the index for each of the last five years. The five happiest states this year are North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota and Montana.