20110328-NEWS--23-NAT-CCI-CL_--
3/25/2011
2:39 PM
Page 1
MARCH 28 - APRIL 3, 2011
CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS
WWW.CRAINSCLEVELAND.COM
23
THEINSIDER
THEWEEK MARCH 21 - 27 The big story: Interim Cleveland schools CEO Peter Raskind proposed nearly $74 million in cuts to offset the struggling school district’s massive budget shortfall, in a move that could result in the layoffs of hundreds of teachers and the shuttering of several schools. The proposal calls for laying off 835 employees — 650 of whom are teachers — as well as closing seven schools; trimming $2.5 million from the central office’s budget through pay, benefit and staff reductions; and selling unneeded school buildings. The proposed cuts would eliminate the deficit over the next two school years. See story, Page One A longer process: Federal regulators have given Steris Corp.’s System 1 processor another six months to live. The U.S. Food & Drug Administration has given health care providers until Feb. 2, 2012, to replace the processor, which is used to clean endoscopes and other heat-sensitive medical devices. The FDA previously told System 1 users that they had until August to find a substitute for the machine. The agency in December 2009 revoked its approval for the device because Steris had made several changes to the machine that the agency didn’t sanction. With friends like these …: The largest shareholder of Cedar Fair LP called for the resignation of seven board members of the amusement park operator, saying the seven were “involved in mischaracterizing the supposed resignation” last year of Cedar Fair chief operating officer Jack Falfas. Texas hedge fund Q Investments, which owns about 18% of Cedar Fair’s stock, said an arbitration panel “recently upheld Mr. Falfas’ contention that he was wrongfully terminated and ordered the company to reinstate him to his previous position.” Among the board members Q Investments wants to resign is president and CEO Richard Kinzel. Expecting a bounce: Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. outlined performance targets for itself at an investor conference in New York. Goodyear said it is targeting 2013 segment operating income in its North American Tire unit of $450 million and improved segment operating income in its international businesses. In total, Goodyear is targeting record segment operating income of $1.6 billion in 2013. Going forward, the company anticipates making capital investments of between $1.1 billion and $1.3 billion per year in 2012 and 2013, up slightly from an expected $1.1 billion to $1.2 billion in 2011. Trading places: MMPI, the Chicago-based developer of the Cleveland Medical Mart and Convention Center, named a 30-year trade show veteran as the project’s general manager. Brian Casey takes the job effective May 2. He will be responsible for attracting trade show business to the facility and for identifying potential clients and events for the medical mart. Since 2006, he has served as president and CEO of High Point Market Authority, which organizes trade shows for the furniture industry and oversees the downtown marketplace of High Point, N.C.
REPORTERS’ NOTEBOOK BEHIND THE NEWS WITH CRAIN’S WRITERS
So, tell us what you really think, Marc? ■ Who needs Charlie Sheen? Northeast Ohio has its own quote machine in Marc Canter. The Silicon Valley entrepreneur, who moved here in 2009, is one of three entrepreneurs who have been hurling criticisms at JumpStart Inc., which assists and invests in local technology startups. At a March 21 meeting JumpStart organized in response to the complaints, Mr. Canter often made his thoughts known before he was handed the microphone. “This machine kills fascists!” he shouted at the end of the meeting, raising his laptop above his head. Though eccentric, Mr. Canter has made his mark in the tech world. In the 1980s, he co-founded MacroMind, which became Macromedia. The company developed the multimedia player that would become Flash. Today he is CEO of BroadBand Mechanics, which designs interactive web sites for both startups and “old stodgy industrialists,” according to the company’s web site. No one can accuse Mr. Canter of being stodgy. In an email criticizing JumpStart, he describes himself as a “catalyst” who “demands the best” for Northeast Ohio, even when some would rather tune him out. “I put fear and hate into the hearts of others,” he said in the email. He also says on his blog that JumpStart chose a black man to chair its compensation committee so no one would question the salary of JumpStart CEO Ray Leach. When
asked if such comments might hurt his cause, he rephrased the statement slightly: “What I should have said is that the exact reason he’s on the comp committee is to defend the kind of RIDICULOUS comp they’re paying themselves,” he said. — Chuck Soder
Female perspective needed in downtown development ■ You wouldn’t think the best way to revive downtown retailing would be to ignore half the population. But it just might work. “If we design downtowns for women, men will follow,” urban consultant David Feehan told a City Club of Cleveland audience last Wednesday, March 21. Mr. Feehan said women control 51% of the wealth in the United States but do 85% of the retail purchasing. “We have not designed our downtowns accordingly,” he said. “We’ve got men designing downtowns and women are the primary market.” Mr. Feehan, president of Civitas Consultants LLC of Silver Spring, Md., was speaking on a panel examining the state of downtown Cleveland and ways to improve it. Targeting women was one idea he offered to the soldout City Club audience. “Ask your wife, ‘Do you like to park in a downtown parking garage? Are you willing to use a public toilet that is grimy and dirty?’” he asked a reporter after the program. “They don’t want to do it.” — Jay Miller
MILESTONE
BEST OF THE BLOGS
COMPANY: Maloney + Novotny, Cleveland THE OCCASION: Its 80th anniversary
Excerpts from recent blog entries on CrainsCleveland.com.
The regional CPA firm is headquartered downtown but also has large offices in Canton and Elyria. It also has achieved a national profile, as it has been named one of the 100 best accounting firms to work for by Accounting Today. The firm was founded by Herb Hausser and Carl Heintel as Hausser & Heintel. In 1981, it merged with Brubaker, Helfrich & Taylor. In 2008, the firm changed its name to Matthew Maloney + Novotny LLC. Maloney Today, the firm has 18 shareholders and more than 100 employees. “The firm’s founders and prior leaders heavily influenced Maloney + Novotny’s culture and commitment to the business community,” says Matthew J. Maloney, managing shareholder. “I believe the firm has thrived over the years, in part, because of those core values and entrepreneurial culture that run so deeply through the firm and its people.”
Reading this item just might make you a bit sad ■ Gallup’s new Well-Being Index for 188 U.S. metropolitan areas is out, and Northeast Ohio doesn’t fare very well. The index is an average of six sub-indexes, which individually examine life evaluation, emotional health, work environment, physical health, healthy behaviors, and access to basic necessities. The overall score and each of the six sub-index scores are calculated on a scale from 0 to 100, where a score of 100 represents the ideal. Youngstown-Warren-Boardman ranks as the second least-happy area in the country, with a score of 61. Cleveland, at 64, and Akron, at 65, weren’t a whole lot better. You can compare all 188 areas at tinyurl.com/49c4wjs.
Everyone’s a critic — of the orchestra’s in-house critic ■ Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry
weatherhead Learn more about the Weatherhead School of Management’s Part-Time MBA program, ranked #14 in the U.S., and Executive MBA program, ranked #16 nationally, by visiting weatherhead.case.edu. OUR LETTERS CARRY THE STRENGTH OF NUMBERS
A diverse guy in more ways than one ■ The new dean of the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law can identify with students. “Cleveland-Marshall has always been known as a school of opportunity — not just for students of color, but students who come from all sorts of places,” said Craig M. Boise, the law school’s first black dean. “There’s opportunity for folks who’ve come from challenged backgrounds.” Mr. Boise, who was named dean last week, said he has known financial struggle. He studied piano performance in college before halting his education for lack of money. Because police jobs offered a salary and benefits, he joined the police academy and worked as a Kansas City, Mo., police officer. It was in that line of work that he became interested in law. So while Mr. Boise worked full time, he finished an undergraduate degree in political science at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He’d go on to graduate from the University of Chicago Law School in 1994. Mr. Boise begins his deanship July 1. He’s coming from DePaul University College of Law in Chicago, where he’s a professor and director of the graduate tax program. His move will bring him closer to his two youngest children, who live here, and back to the city in which he used to work. Beginning in 1999, he was a tax lawyer for Thompson Hine LLP and later an associate law professor at Case Western Reserve University. Other fun facts: Mr. Boise still plays piano, has sailed a number of places and rides a 2002 Harley Road King. — Michelle Park
Teachout chided the Cleveland Orchestra for its use of a “critic-in-residence” in Miami, where the orchestra has conducted an annual residency since 2007. You can read the work of that critic, Enrique Fernández, at ClevelandOrchestra Miami.com/category/blog. Mr. Teachout argued that Mr. Fernández’s title “points to the great flaw of institutional blogging, which is that it is, well, institutional. “Whatever else he does with ‘his’ blog, you can bet he won’t be saying anything on it that’s even mildly critical of the Cleveland Orchestra,” Mr. Teachout wrote. Here, for instance, is the last sentence of a recent posting about a performance by Giancarlo Guerrero, the principal conductor of the orchestra’s Miami residency: “As my 18year-old jock hip-hopper college freshman would say, ‘What a beast!’” Arts-related blogs caught on, Mr. Teachout argued, because they “frequently offered a sharper, better-informed alternative to the bland arts coverage published in regional newspapers. … It remains to be seen whether any institutional blog will ever pack that kind of punch.”