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10/24/2014
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OCTOBER 27 - NOVEMBER 2, 2014
THE WEEK OCTOBER 20 - 26 The big story: Philips Healthcare once again is making medical imaging machines in Highland Heights. The company voluntarily shut production at the factory in early 2014, soon after federal regulators identified quality control problems. But the shutdown ended in the third quarter: Several CT scanners are “on the line right now,” and should be shipped to customers during the fourth quarter, according to Frans van Houten, CEO of Royal Philips. “Cleveland manufacturing is ramping up as we speak,” he said in an Oct. 20 conference call. The plant is producing small numbers of medical imaging machines — “10s of units,” as van Houten described it — but each one is an expensive piece of equipment.
Gone too soon:
Frank Samuel, a fixture in Northeast Ohio’s economic development community, died in an Oct. 20 car crash in Geauga County. Samuel was president of VentureOhio, which has been pushing for the state of Ohio to renew the Ohio Samuel Capital Fund or provide some other funding source for startups. Samuel founded the Geauga Growth Partnership in 2010 and served as its president until November 2013, when he stepped down to lead VentureOhio. He also helped create the Ohio Third Frontier Project and served as the governor’s science and technology adviser from 2000 to 2007.
Summa shakeup: Three longtime Summa Health System executives, including the head of the SummaCare insurance company, are departing the Akron-based health system. Marty Hauser, SummaCare’s CEO and the health system’s chief government relations officer, will leave at year’s end after about 35 years with the organization. Bill Powel, Summa’s senior vice president, general counsel and secretary, and Patrice Lange, Summa’s senior vice president for planning and corporate support, will leave Nov. 3.
Net results: Medical Mutual of Ohio will provide $1.4 million to Cleveland State University to install a dome over the university’s six tennis courts located at the intersection of East 21st Street and Chester Avenue. In recognition of the gift, the facility, which will be outfitted with mechanical systems that provide heat, air and insulation for year-round play, will be named the Medical Mutual Tennis Pavilion. The facility will be open to Cleveland State’s men’s and women’s varsity tennis teams, the university community and the public.
Made the cut: Akron is one of eight U.S. cities that will get “artist development day labs” over the next three years from the Sundance Institute, the arts nonprofit founded by Robert Redford, as a result of $1 million in new funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Workshops, panels and labs will take place in Akron and the other cities. Over three years, 12 filmmakers from eight cities will be named Sundance | Knight Fellows and will participate in special screenings, panels and professional development opportunities at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
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REPORTERS’ NOTEBOOK BEHIND THE NEWS WITH CRAIN’S WRITERS
Local hospitals step up as leaders on LGBT issues Northeast Ohio’s hospitals are increasingly friendly to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, according to a recent survey from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the educational arm of the country’s largest LGBT civil rights group. The foundation’s Healthcare Equality Index 2014 identified 15 Northeast Ohio hospitals as leaders in LGBT health care equality. To earn the recognition, hospitals must meet the four criteria for LGBT patient-centered care, which includes patient and employee non-discrimination policies that specifically outline sexual orientation and gender identity, a guarantee of equal visitation for same-sex partners and parents, and LGBT health education for staff. Northeast Ohio’s honorees are Summa Health System, UH Ahuja Medical Center, UH Bedford Medical Center, UH Geauga Medical Center, Cleveland Clinic’s main campus, MetroHealth Medical Center, UH Case Medical Center, UH MacDonald Women’s Hospital, UH Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital, UH Seidman Cancer Center, VA Louis Stokes Cleveland Medical Center, UH Elyria Medical Center, UH Geneva Medical Center, UH Parma Medical Center and UH Richmond Medical Center. In all, 26 organizations in Ohio were named leaders. The only states with more recognized institutions are California with 65 and New York with 47. Florida tied Ohio with 26. Countrywide, 426 of the survey’s 507 respondents were named leaders in LGBT health care equality — a 100% increase over last year’s numbers. — Timothy Magaw
WHAT’S NEW
tions, the team president. The third, and most obvious, explanation for the added noise: The Browns have played better at home, winning two of their first three games at FirstEnergy Stadium heading into a matchup against the Oakland Raiders on Sunday, Oct. 26. “I think fans feel like they can affect the outcome of the game,” Scheiner said last week. “Fans know this team can play well at home. — Kevin Kleps
GREGORY SHAMUS/GETTY IMAGES
FirstEnergy Stadium has been noticeably louder this season.
Now hear this: FirstEnergy Stadium is getting loud The first phase of the two-year, $120 million renovation to FirstEnergy Stadium has brought with it some “wow” elements — mainly the 6,900-square-foot video boards in each end zone that are the fourth-largest in the NFL. The work has also produced another benefit — a much more noticeable home-field advantage for the Cleveland Browns’ lakefront stadium. “Phase 1 was really impactful,” Browns president Alec Scheiner said. “I think our stadium is louder, and it’s different.” Scheiner believes there are three reasons for the amped-up noise at the stadium. Increasing the seating capacity in the lower bowls and filling in quite a bit of the open space with the massive new scoreboards has helped, as has the increased fan engagement that has resulted from the renova-
Up to the challenge?
COMPANY: Buyers Products, Cleveland PRODUCT: SaltDogg TGS02 tailgate spreader The company says its new tailgate spreader is designed for both residential and commercial application of ice melt and bagged salt. Buyers Product’s three-cubic-foot capacity tailgate spreader features a frame to fit into a two-inch, Class 4 hitch, which does not require truck bed rail drilling. It is ideal for use on half-ton to 1-ton trucks and SUVs. The new SaltDogg TGS02 tailgate spreader features a horizontal-auger feeder design that gives contractors the flexibility to easily spread ice melt and bagged salt, according to Buyers Products. An optional vibrator can be added for mixing salt and sand. The unit weighs 64 pounds. Dave Zelis, director of sales and marketing at Buyers Products, said it has a 1/3 horsepower, 12volt DC dual-shaft gear motor and offers spread widths from three feet to 20 feet that are “practical for both residential and commercial use.” SaltDogg offers a product line of 12 tailgate spreaders. The company says each spreader is constructed from polyethylene, steel and stainless steel for top performance, durability and longer product life. Visit SaltDogg.com for information.
Kids go wild for a chance to set a world record On Thursday morning, Oct. 30, about 4,000 children from 37 cities, 15 states and Washington, D.C. — including about 175 preschool children served by Catholic Charities and Council for Economic Opportunities in Greater Cleveland — will descend on Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in an attempt to earn a Guinness World Records title for the world’s largest simultaneous vocabulary lesson. The event will feature a reading of Caldecott Medal honoree Peter Brown’s “Mr. Tiger Goes Wild.” The program will be hosted by PNC Bank as part of its “Grow up Great” initiative — a $350 million, multiyear, bilingual program launched in 2004 that aims to help young children up to age 5 with reading to better prepare them for school and life with a focus on the underserved. PNC has donated more than $6 million in grants to Cleveland organizations and local kindergarten readiness initiatives, including the Rock Hall for its Toddler Rock program, Catholic Charities and the Council for Economic Opportunities. — Jeremy Nobile
BEST OF THE BLOGS Excerpts from recent blog entries on CrainsCleveland.com.
Successful shopping trip: A joint venture of Beachwood-based DDR Corp. of Beachwood and Blackstone Real Estate Partners acquired 71 shopping centers owned by American Realty Capital Properties Inc. for $1.93 billion. The portfolio primarily consists of power centers located in Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Washington, D.C., that are occupied by retailers including Costco, Bed Bath & Beyond, Kohl’s, Target and Trader Joe’s. The average base rent per square foot of the portfolio “is 6% below DDR’s current prime average, representing a unique opportunity to drive future growth,” the company said.
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Jerry Jordan, a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, is part of a Cato Institute effort to take on the Federal Reserve. The Wall Street Journal reported that Cato, a libertarian think tank, launched the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives to “challenge the central bank’s policies and explore alternative ways to manage the U.S. money supply, including but not limited to a return to the gold standard.” The paper said the new center “boasts some heavy hitters in the economics world. Its academic advisers include two Nobel laureates, New York University’s Thomas J. Sargent and Chapman University’s Vernon L. Smith, as well as Stanford University economist John B. Taylor and others.” Two former Fed policy makers are involved, too: former St. Louis Fed president William Poole will be a senior fellow, and former Cleveland Fed president Jordan will be an adjunct scholar. Cato has raised about $9 million from “a number of independent contributors” for the center, enough to fund it for five years, said the institute’s president, John Allison. The center’s work will cover monetary and regulatory policy. “The Fed has amazingly good credibility based on its amazingly weak performance,” Allison said. “We want to challenge that credibility.”
It’s ‘just that simple’ U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Cleveland, was quoted in a New York Times story that looked at Democrats’ efforts to get more black voters to the polls for the midterm elections. The story noted that a confidential memo from a former pollster for President Barack
Obama “contained a blunt warning for Democrats” and predicted “crushing Democratic losses across the country” if the party did not do more to get black voters to the polls. “African-American surge voters came out in force in 2008 and 2012, but they are not well positioned to do so again in 2014,” Cornell Belcher, the pollster, wrote in the memo, dated Oct. 1. “In fact, over half aren’t even sure when the midterm elections are taking place.” Fudge, who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, seemed to agree with that assessment. “Anybody who looks at the data realizes that if the black vote, and the brown vote, doesn’t turn out, we can’t win. It’s just that simple,” she said, referring to African-American and Latino voters. “If we don’t turn out, we cannot hold the Senate.”
Stick to your principles A Chronicle of Higher Education story on how Catholic colleges “are promoting their missions in an increasingly secular society” included some insight from Walsh University in North Canton. “When Richard Jusseaume became president in 2002, one of his first goals was to make Walsh more explicitly Catholic,” the story noted. “His reasoning: the stronger the mission, the stronger the college.” He had a prayer garden built, taught incoming faculty about the college’s traditions, opened a campus near Rome and “focused on programs that fit Walsh’s emphasis on service, such as education, nursing and counseling,” according to the story. Enrollment has nearly doubled, to 3,000 from 1,650. A recent student-government president was a Muslim from Afghanistan “A few people advised me to take it easy with the Catholic stuff,” Jusseaume said. “It’s almost as if it’s not cool to identify yourself too much. I’m saying identify yourself and welcome everyone.”