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WEEKLY FOCUS: SMALL BUSINESS, Page 10 VOL. 40, NO. 10

MARCH 11 - 17, 2019

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Akron The Rubber City’s office market is on an upswing. Page 17

The List Largest engineering firms in NEO Page 15

CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Suzie Graham, Downtown Akron Partnership Page 19 BANKRUPTCY

Negligible payouts expected for DTV creditors

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Cleveland’s neglected avenue could be the next Midtown hotspot

By Jay Miller

By Stan Bullard

jmiller@crain.com @millerjh

Carnegie Avenue in Cleveland’s Midtown neighborhood may finally become something more than a way for East Side commuters to get to and from work downtown.

The city of Cleveland and MidTown Cleveland Inc., the community development corporation that serves Midtown, have commissioned a study, called “re-incarnegie,” to figure out how to make the hodgepodge corridor of vacant land and empty or underused commercial buildings along the 2-mile stretch between the Innerbelt Freeway and East 79th Street an attractive option for commercial or residential development as the parallel Euclid Avenue corridor has gotten crowded.

At the same time, the city of Cleveland is working with a developer, Pennrose Properties LLC of Philadelphia, to take over the long-vacant Warner & Swasey Co. complex at East 55th Street and Carnegie, for either redevelopment or demolition.

“Our vision and strategy, clearly, is to not just have Carnegie be a passthrough neighborhood,” said MidTown Cleveland chair Stephanie McHenry. “There is a big opportunity to create some north-south flow and create the look and feel of a neighborhood, especially for the residential area” to the south along Cedar Avenue.

CARNEGIE WINS FRIENDS, INFLUENCES DEVELOPMENT

SEE CARNEGIE, PAGE 6

Entire contents © 2019 by Crain Communications Inc.

sbullard@crain.com @CrainRltyWriter

As the bankruptcy proceeding in U.S. District Court of Northern Ohio in Cleveland over Danny Vegh’s, the half-century old retailer of pingpong and pool tables and home furnishings, enters its last rounds, Albert Ratner, former co-chairman and CEO of the former Ratner Forest City Enterprises Inc., has surfaced in a central role.

Ratner, who ran the recently acquired Cleveland-based development firm for decades, is the only secured creditor in the group. Last fall, using the name 50 Public Square LLC, he bought KeyBank’s secured debt against the Danny Vegh’s business for $355,000.

In a court filing, Ratner’s attorney said he bought the debt to help Kathy Hughes, the daughter of Danny Vegh, maintain the 55-year-old family business. Ratner is an investor in Tech Elevator, a coding boot camp operated by Anthony Hughes, Kathy Hughes’ husband, and learned about its descent into bankruptcy from him, but had no other interest in the family business.

However, things apparently became less friendly after Ratner found how little revenue was left in the business and began to push for liquidation, something the Danny Vegh’s business itself agreed to do.

SEE VEGH’S, PAGE 4

INSIDE

The long-vacant Warner & Swasey Co. complex on Carnegie Avenue near East 55th Street may finally be redeveloped — or demolished.

(David Kordalski)

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Browns work to help high school officiating Page 6

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Health care workers face violence ‘epidemic’

By Lydia Coutré

Intentional worker injuries on the rise

lcoutre@crain.com @LydiaCoutre

Health care and social assistance workers experience intentional injuries by another person at far greater rates than the private industry overall. This includes only injuries involving days away from work.

9.1

10

Rate of intential injuries, per 10,000 workers

From verbal abuse to physical assaults, health care workers on a daily basis face threats to their safety as they care for patients.

“There is a very fundamental problem in U.S. health care that very few people speak about, and that’s the violence against health care workers,” said Dr. Tom Mihaljevic, president and CEO of Cleveland Clinic.

“Daily, literally daily, we’re exposed to violent outbursts, in particular in our emergency rooms.”

It’s a problem that happens at far greater rates in the health care sector than it does in the private sector overall, according to federal data. In fact, between 2002 and 2013, incidents of serious workplace violence were four times more common in health care than in private industry on average, according to data from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA counts serious workplace violence as incidents requiring days off.

Mihaljevic highlighted the issue in his annual State of the Clinic speech, calling it a “national epidemic.”

“It is an epidemic, because it is an epidemic that nobody speaks about,” he said in an interview after his speech. “Yet it strains those who are trying to help others. It is very disconcerting to have well-meaning people who dedicated their lives and their careers being put in harm’s way by trying to help others.”

Hospitals have to strike a balance between security concerns and offering easily accessible facilities for patients to seek care and others to visit loved ones.

Health systems have implemented

8 6

Health care and social assistance Retail trade Manufacturing Construction All private industry

4

1.9

2 0

’11

’12

’13

’14

’15

’16

’17

SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

panic buttons, badge access to certain areas, limited guest hours, metal detectors, police presence, security cameras, de-escalation training, emergency preparedness and more.

It’s up to the individual organization to strike the right balance for its own situation. What works in a rural hospital may not make sense in an urban setting, said Gerard Castro, project director for patient safety initiatives at The Joint Commission, an independent nonprofit organization that accredits nearly 21,000 health care organizations across the country on a series of quality and safety standards.

“I think the real key here is to talk to the front-line workers — the nurses and the other clinicians that deal with this on a day-to-day basis,” Castro said. “The organization has to work with them to come up with a plan to mitigate those risks associated with those problems, and it really takes a comprehensive and systematic approach to that particular issue.”

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks incidence rates of nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses involving days away from work, including “intentional injury by other person.” Of the 18,400 such injuries reported in the private industry in 2017, 71% were reported in the health care and social assistance sector. And this only includes incidents that involved days away from work.

Surveys and reports estimate that many incidents go unreported.

“If you think about it from the perspective of a nurse that deals with, you know, patients on a day-to-day basis, it’s like, how often have they been called names or hit or spat on?

And that would fall within the definition of workplace violence,” Castro said. “The thing is, health care workers, they put up with a lot of stuff and they are extremely resilient. And oftentimes they don’t even realize that this is probably something that we should probably report.”

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In 2018, the Clinic confiscated a staggering 30,000 weapons from patients and visitors in its system in the Northeast Ohio region.

That number is largely made up of edged weapons, such as knives, box cutters and razor blades, but also includes things like firearms, screwdrivers, pepper spray, stun guns and more. In the Clinic’s behavioral health settings, such as Lutheran and Marymount, lighters and matches are also confiscated, said David Easthon, chief of police for Cleveland Clinic.

From time to time, weapons are found in the rooms of direct-admit patients, but the vast majority of weapons are confiscated at the metal detectors the Clinic began installing in its emergency departments in 2016. Today, the Clinic has metal detectors in nearly every hospital.

Other hospitals in Cleveland report confiscating far fewer weapons.

University Hospitals, which has no metal detectors but plans to pilot one soon, confiscated 298 weapons across its system last year, a number that includes firearms, pepper spray, knives, brass knuckles, box cutters, etc. Most of those were confiscated during patient intake or examination.

And MetroHealth confiscated 59 weapons in 2018, including guns, knives and box cutters. MetroHealth has had a metal detector in its emergency department since 2016.

The metal detectors are just the first line of defense for the Clinic. Its police force has exterior perimeter control, people posted in the lobbies and points of egress, and technology to monitor the system. The Clinic has implemented panic buttons and provides police escorts for patients and visitors who request it.

The system also has internal education on personal safety and safety

Growth by Design

awareness; an active program of "See something, hear something, say something"; training on de-escalation and how to address difficult situations; and a workplace violence committee with subcommittees at every hospital.

MetroHealth didn’t share specifics of its security measures, but said its system does everything it can to ensure the safety of patients and families.

University Hospitals, too, has trained staff in de-escalation techniques and ways to increase survival, especially in active-shooter situations, said UH chief operating officer Ron Dziedzicki. He highlighted lockdown procedures, emergency preparedness exercises and committees and a mobile app for employees. The app includes a mobile panic button; a “See something, say something” reporting system; and “friend watch” in which a person sets a timer for their walk to the car and if they don’t enter a PIN into the app within that time, a designated person and police department are alerted.

UH is working on implementing a system that will alert staff to patients who were violent or angry at a previous visit to the system. It’s also planning to implement a program currently in place at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital and UH MacDonald Women’s Hospital in which visitors check in and are issued a badge, so staff who see someone without a badge can potentially report it.

“I don’t think hospitals are any different than churches or malls or movie theaters — except for hospitals, we are a provider of care. We save lives,” Dziedzicki said. “So we have to balance the need to be able to have rapid access to care against that balance of safety for employees.”

Northeast Ohio’s economic development engine at work

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The project is expected to ultimately result in the hiring of 250 full-time employees.

LOCAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PARTNERS An economic development team — including the Stark Economic Development Board, the City of Canton, Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce, JobsOhio and Team NEO — worked with Union Metal Industries Corporation to help make this project possible and ensure a smooth transition by providing access to people, information and resources.

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3/8/19 12:46 PM

CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

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Team NEO seeks better data for site selectors

By Jay Miller jmiller@crain.com @millerjh

It’s not that companies aren’t interested in the grants and low-interest loans that state and local governments offer them as they decide where to expand. It’s just that financial incentives are not as important a factor as they once may have been in attracting new businesses and helping existing operations expand here and elsewhere.

Available, skilled talent has become much more important, and Northeast Ohio workforce and economic development organizations are working hard to fill the talent pipeline.

Now, Team Northeast Ohio, the regional economic development nonprofit, is focusing on another important factor, one the region needs to improve upon: ensuring companies that are looking to expand, and their site consultants, have available to them a deeper and better-documented inventory of available development sites and existing, available commercial and industrial space.

This has become increasingly important as the inventory of certain categories of properties has tightened up.

The vacancy rate for industrial space, for example, which for many years was above 10%, is now below 6% in parts of the Northeast Ohio market.

“We need to be more ready to act when someone wants to bring jobs to the area,” said Rico Pietro, a principal with Cleveland’s Cushman & Wakefield/CRESCO Real Estate. “The brokerage community, the development community, the economic development community all know that if they were given something to sell, they could sell it.”

Christine Nelson, Team NEO’s vice president for projects, sites and talent, said it’s difficult to identify all of the properties that are available for sale or lease, evaluate them and then put complete information for each property on the website database of JobsOhio, the statewide development nonprofit. That’s where site selectors look first for available properties in Ohio.

The JobsOhio database, also available through Team NEO, currently lists 624 sites and 1,332 buildings. But no one believes that all of the potential developable land or leasable commercial and industrial space in Northeast Ohio is in the database.

Bethany Dentler, executive director of the Medina County Economic Development Corp., said the only chance the region may have to get on an expanding company’s radar is when the company’s site consultant scans the website.

“Site selectors can access and understand your property even before you know they’re looking. We may be getting eliminated even before we know it,” she said. “So I think it’s critical to have as much detailed information as possible on there. If we don’t have that detailed information out there, we may be missing a shot at some fairly significant projects.”

To a site selector, missing information can be a red flag, a warning sign of a hidden expensive problem. The database may not indicate that an abandoned building has already had an expensive environmental cleanup with asbestos removal and more. Or a listing might not indicate whether a building has updated utility service.

Companies ready to move or expand are likely being wooed by several states or communities, which means they can afford to take the

P003_CL_20190311.indd 3

path of least resistance. An otherwise similar listing on another state’s database can win over a site selector with accurate, detailed information.

Of course, even if a community gets lucky and hears from a company directly, those numbers are still important.

“You’re immediately being downselected because you don’t have the data quickly at your fingertips,” said Bill Koehler, CEO of Team NEO. “If you don’t have the data, you’re spending all your time capturing the data as opposed to positioning the sale.”

Nelson cited the redevelopment of the former Goodyear headquarters in East Akron. Babcock & Wilcox is taking a portion of the old headquarters complex, but Team NEO wanted to do what it could to make the rest of

the property more leasable.

“We know a lot about this property, but what else did we need to know?” she said. “One of the things we found was that there’s great bike trails in Summit County, but the bike trail just goes along the top of the Goodyear property, it doesn’t come down into it. So if you wanted to bike to work, you had these great trails that you could use, but that last mile in was going to be really rough.”

“Part of the strategy in Akron, it’s about bringing millennials downtown,” added Koehler. “The bike path matters. But a lot of people will just forget about it if you don’t start connecting those dots.”

So the bike trail is being extended.

More rural, greenfield sites have different issues. “Where’s the work-

force? How are they going to get here?” Nelson said. “Companies have been burned by finding a great site out in the middle of nowhere and then they can’t get workers.”

Team NEO is working to get more and better information on more sites.

Koehler said he’s looking at giving sites a letter grade, so site selectors, brokers and others can have a better idea of what is appropriate. “A” sites would be the largest sites that can quickly be put to use. “B” sites may need a little cleanup, but the cost is identifiable. “C” and “D” properties would need more work and take a longer time to be readied for construction or occupancy.

He said 30 sites have been classified so far, but couldn’t say how fast the process will move.

“I have a goal of getting this process to a point where it moves at a better pace,” Koehler said. “I want to have a process in every one of our counties.”

Lake County is taking up the challenge.

“I think we’re all working toward better site information as a means of being more responsive to site selectors,” said Mark Rantala, executive director of the Lake County Port and Economic Development Authority.

“As specific sites get more interest, we get more data.”

Rantala said a developer might look at a site and find marshland in a corner.

“Then we learn there is an acre of wetlands, so that additional data gets added, so over time you accumulate more information,” he said.

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Court documents say Danny Vegh’s has about $107,000 in total assets. (Contributed photo)

VEGH’S

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The dispute also is a battle over the remnants.

The proceeding by DTV Inc., the formal name for the company that Kathy Hughes built on the original business of her father, pingpong champion and media personality Danny Vegh, on Jan. 9 was converted to a Chapter 7 liquidation under the U.S. bankruptcy code from a Chapter 11 reorganization by Judge Jessica E. Price Smith.

That move was sought by 50 Public Square LLC after finding, in large part through a forensic accounting examination paid for by the Ratner entity, that DTV had so little revenue and assets besides the separately held building that there was too little left to save.

Court documents state that the company has about $17,000 in cash on hand and total assets of almost $107,000 in the form of business furnishings and samples. Sales during the bankruptcy proceeding were also too small to merit continuing the operation.

The unsecured creditors are owed a total of $1.07 million, according to court filings. They have opposed efforts by Ratner’s 50 Public Square LLC to skip an automatic stay in the case because they want a fuller court-ordered investigation of the company.

A major issue in the case is whether there is a valid claim for DTV creditors against the company’s building at 6505 Mayfield Road in Mayfield Heights. The small retail building is held through Vegh Family LLC, a separate company from DTV. However, a

court filing from Key stated that its debt is collateralized against the 12,000-square-foot building, which is valued at $1.45 million, according to online Cuyahoga County property records.

Kathy Hughes appears to be running a separate business, My Heart

The unsecured creditors are owed a total of $1.07 million, according to court filings. They have opposed efforts by Ratner’s 50 Public Square LLC to skip an automatic stay in the case because they want a fuller courtordered investigation of the company.

Wall LLC, which sells photo wallpaper, from that address, according to that company’s website.

Meantime, the judge has ordered a hearing at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, March 12, at the Howard M. Metzenbaum U.S. Courthouse in downtown Cleveland.

Ratner’s 50 Public Square LLC said that in addition to ruling on a half-dozen other motions, the judge should consider treating it as a final hearing on the bankruptcy rather than on its request to lift an automatic stay as a Chapter 7 liquidation proceeding.

One of the big questions when a

company files for protection under the U.S. bankruptcy code is whether funds are adequate to fully pay professionals in the case, from lawyers to accountants. Attorneys’ and accountants’ fees in this case already total more than $70,000.

Ratner’s attorneys argue that more fees will only further reduce how much of his initial investment he may recoup. And that includes a $30,000 fee for the attorneys for bankruptcy trustee Virgil Brown Jr. Ratner declined to comment on the case or the investment.

He served as CEO of Forest City for 20 years and retired from its board in 2011. It was later converted to a real estate investment trust and renamed Forest City Realty Trust and bought last December by Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management.

Kathy V. Hughes did not respond

by Crain’s deadline last week to an email sent to an address she had responded to earlier, to a phone call to the last operating phone number for Danny Vegh’s, or at her My Heart Wall business.

She had taken over the business from her father, expanded it to multiple locations in the mid-2000s and later consolidated to just the family-owned Mayfield location as an answer to the challenge of online retailing.

One of the closed locations was at Crocker Park in Westlake, which sued DTV for rent for time remaining on her lease.

Hughes said at the time of the original Chapter 11 filing July 8 that Crocker Park developer Stark Enterprises had secured a judgment for $178,000 in rent she disputed. She said she filed for bankruptcy, in part, in order to protect the secured creditor, at that time Key, and later Ratner.

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‘Odds are stacked’ against Keystone, apparel-makers

By Rachel Abbey McCafferty rmccafferty@crain.com @ramccafferty

The imminent closure of Keystone Tailored Manufacturing LLC’s plant highlights some of the issues facing the apparel industry.

In January, the Brooklyn-based maker of menswear filed a WARN letter with the state, notifying it of its intent to close and lay off at least 140 employees. The closure was expected to take place on March 11; the leadership of the company did not respond to recent requests from Crain’s to confirm whether that timeline was still on track.

Keystone entered the market in 2015, taking over the old Hugo Boss plant at 4600 Tiedeman Road in Brooklyn.

President Kenneth Ragland spoke to Crain’s shortly after the state posted the WARN letter notifying it of the layoffs. He said the company had expected to see growth that hadn’t materialized in any lasting way.

Keystone had served as a contractor to W. Diamond Group in the Chicago area, a relationship which is being severed. Though Keystone had some other small contracts, it wasn’t a viable business without the W. Diamond work, Ragland said. Ragland, Keystone’s majority shareholder, is

chief operating officer at W. Diamond but has no equity in it.

As a tailored clothing maker, a company like Keystone would have faced competition both from bespoke tailors and from large retail brands making products for less overseas, said Stephen Lamar, executive vice president for the Washington D.C.-based American Apparel & Footwear Association.

“This is a highly competitive industry,” he said.

That’s not exactly a new story.

The apparel manufacturing sector has never been a big part of the region’s ecosystem, said Jacob Duritsky, vice president for strategy and research for Team Northeast Ohio.

“Personally and professionally, you never want to see people losing jobs in any sector of the economy, but from impact perspective, it is a relatively small piece of the manufacturing picture,” Duritsky said.

And that hasn’t changed much over time. In the five-county Cleveland metro area, which includes Cuyahoga, Lake, Lorain, Geauga and Medina counties, just about 700 people were employed in apparel manufacturing in 2001, he said. That number had fallen to about 580 by 2018.

Part of the issue for the apparel industry is that the support system has shrunk. The necessary machinery and talent have disappeared as the

industry lost market share over time, said Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing in Washington, D.C. “The odds are stacked against a garment-maker who wants to stay in the United States,” Paul said.

And tailored clothing in particular has been facing market pressure from changing consumer preferences, said Julia Hughes, president of the United States Fashion Industry Association. Even in Washington, D.C., where the association is based, there’s been a shift away from tailored clothing for work. And that trend has accelerated in recent years.

The trend now in the U.S. is toward more niche apparel manufacturing: smaller runs and more personalized products, Hughes said.

Lamar said there’s been small but steady growth in the amount of U.Smade apparel in the past decade. Anecdotally, he has seen companies locating in the U.S. to be closer to consumers. The facilities are smaller than those for mass-produced clothes, and the products more customized. The footprint is smaller.

Like many other sectors of manufacturing, Paul said the apparel industry could see more work returning to the U.S. as the processes become more automated, but he doesn’t expect that to be a big job creator.

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3/8/19 12:44 PM

PA G E 6

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Browns, partners aim to aid officiating dilemma

By Kevin Kleps kkleps@crain.com @KevinKleps

Kent Intagliata has been a high school sports official for 21 years.

The 54-year-old Northeast Ohioan, who was a replacement official during the 2012 NFL referee lockout, said he’s seen high school football crews in which the youngest official was 63 or 64 years old.

“They’ll keep reffing because they know they’ll keep getting hired,” Intagliata said. “At some of these Division VI and VII schools, these coaches have to be shaking in their boots (depending on which officials are assigned to their games).”

Nationally, and particularly in Ohio, there are fewer officials, and the group is graying almost as rapidly as a stressed-out NFL head coach.

The Cleveland Browns, in conjunction with the Cleveland Football Officials Association, the Ohio High School Athletic Association and a pair of local universities, are trying to do their part to address a problem that Intagliata said has gotten “really bad.”

The Browns’ official certification course is in its third year at Baldwin Wallace and John Carroll universities. The seven-week class awards college credits — one at John Carroll and two at BW — making it the first of its kind for a partnership between a college and an NFL club.

Intagliata and fellow OHSAA official Mike Dame teach the class, and the Browns have contributed about $9,500, or $275 per student, since the program started in 2017. While

Bebie

Beigie

such dollar figures are a drop in an oversized bucket for an NFL team, being affiliated with the Browns can be a draw for students who take the course, said Bryan Beigie, an instructor in the exercise science, physical education, allied health and sport studies department who organizes John Carroll’s football officiating course.

The Browns said the average age of students who have taken the class is 20 — or about 31 years younger than the state norm for a high school football official. Students who pass the class typically receive a $50 stipend for their officiating uniform, and the team pays $55 for their state permit.

Teaching students the mechanics of officiating a football game is key, said Intagliata, who has officiated at Browns practices since the Eric Mangini era. The same goes for the “vast difference” between the rules of high school football and the NFL. And then there are the typical mistakes made by someone who has never officiated.

“Sometimes they throw a flag and want to stand there and admire the flag,” Intagliata said. “We call that the gotcha moment. Then a guy runs 25 yards past them. Your job is to continue reffing after you’ve thrown the flag.”

Intagliata

Tekancic

'Attrition rate is so bad’ At Baldwin Wallace, the officials certification course is part of the Berea university’s athletic coaching minor.

This year, the course will be held on Tuesday nights beginning June 3, and it’s part of BW’s recently launched Center for Coaching Excellence.

BW assistant professor Kerry Bebie, the area program coordinator for the school’s health and physical education major, said partnerships with organizations such as the Browns can “get kids connected with practical experience in a variety of ways.”

Introducing the officiating course at the college level is also a good way to get female students involved, Bebie added.

“That’s severely lacking (in officiating),” the Baldwin Wallace assistant professor said.

Beigie, a former John Carroll wide receivers coach, credits the work of a team that includes Intagliata and Dame, plus Browns youth football manager Darrell Taylor and St. Ignatius High School football coach Chuck Kyle.

Kyle, who has led the Wildcats to 11 state championships, is a youth football adviser for the Browns.

“It helps when you tell kids, ‘Hey, this is affiliated with the Cleveland

CARNEGIE CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Rico Pietro, managing principal of the local Cushman & Wakefield/ Cresco real estate brokerage, said he believes that developers can put together 3-acre parcels for new construction — along Carnegie and even along Cedar — that don’t exist elsewhere in Cleveland today and that can be attractive for biomedical or laboratory uses. The success of development along Euclid, made possible by the willingness of the city and the nonprofit community and economic development organizations to assist developers, will make Carnegie attractive to national developers and their biomedical or biotechnology clients looking for new sites to move to or expand in Cleveland, he said.

“All these (clients) want to be in Cleveland, to be in close proximity to the major institutions, and they’re willing to spend the money to do groundup construction,” Pietro said. “It’s important that they can see success stories (along the Euclid Corridor).”

The community development corporation has commissioned an $80,000 study by a team of planners led by Nelson/Nygaard Consulting Associates, a San Francisco planning firm that has worked on Public Square and University Circle. The team also includes two Cleveland firms, City Architecture and Guide Studio Inc. Epstein said the study should be complete by the end of the summer.

The planners are charged with figuring out how to identify economically viable land uses that complement the residential uses to the north, on Euclid and Chester Avenue, and south, along Cedar Avenue, that will promote walkability and transit use; identify needed infrastructure

P006_CL_20190311.indd 6

Carnegie’s nascent food scene, including the recently opened Cleveland Bagel Co., has MidTown Cleveland officials considering the return of on-street parking to the avenue. (David Kordalski)

improvements; and project how the traffic flow will change once the Opportunity Corridor — expected to attract traffic headed to University Circle from the west and south that now dumps off the Innerbelt’s Carnegie ramp — is completed in 2022.

Midtown, mostly along the Euclid Corridor, has exploded in the decade since the stretch of Euclid between Cleveland State University and Case Western Reserve University — which importantly includes the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals — was dubbed for marketing purposes the Health-Tech Corridor (HTC). Since 2008, according to the HTC website, the corridor has added 1,800 new jobs, 500,000 square feet of new or renovated office and lab space, and more than $4 billion of investment.

In addition, with new residential developments, Midtown now has more than 2,000 residents. Last summer, Boston-based Vazza Real Estate Group opened One Midtown, a 23-

unit townhome condominium development at East 73rd Street and Euclid, where units start at $409,000.

Last week, a supermarket, Dave’s Market and Eatery, opened at East 61st Street and Chester Avenue, adjacent to the new University Hospital UH Rainbow Center for Women & Children that faces Euclid. Both of those neighborhood attractions mean increased foot and car traffic will be moving north and south across Carnegie.

“With all the activity on Euclid — and feeling like we can almost see the end in terms of getting Euclid developed — it makes sense to look at Carnegie from a couple different perspectives,” said Jeff Epstein, executive director of MidTown Cleveland. “We want to be planful of what we want Carnegie to look and feel like in the future and to really have an inclusive effort that really brings out the community’s voice and vision. We want to have a Carnegie that works better for the community and that we’re really proud of.”

Browns,’ ” Beigie said.

John Carroll had a dozen students take the class in each of the last two years. The 2019 class kicked off Jan. 15, which opened it up to football players and brings with it the option of having aspiring officials help out during Blue Streaks’ spring practices.

Prior to 2019, a total of 33 officials had completed the certification courses at Baldwin Wallace and John Carroll. Intagliata said about half of them are still involved in the game.

“If we can keep it at 50% in five years, that would be ideal,” the veteran official said. “The attrition rate is so bad.”

Beigie said John Carroll is considering expanding the idea to sports such as baseball and basketball.

Even if students decide not to pursue officiating as a career or a side job, the JCU instructor thinks the class can be beneficial for future coaches and athletic administrators.

Those who do stick with it can make an extra few hundred bucks a weekend officiating games, Intagliata said.

“We can get them kids games, freshman and JV games,” he said of students who successfully complete the class.

“We can get them plenty of games.”

The Browns’ youth football efforts have been extensive, and included the refurbishment of seven high school fields since 2016. Advancing the game has been a focus of those efforts, said Jenner Tekancic, the team’s vice president of community relations, and Kyle urged the Browns to turn some of their attention to the need for officials.

The team is now looking to scale

the program beyond Baldwin Wallace and John Carroll, and Tekancic said the Browns are planning to host an officiating program this summer that would be open to the public.

“I think our vision has always been long term,” Tekancic said. “It’s not just the here and now. It’s for the benefit of the future of the game and young athletes who participate. Officials protect the integrity of the game, and parents want the right officials in charge of the game.”

The OHSAA, which counts 1,679 schools at the junior high and high school level as members, said it had 14,060 active officials as of Feb. 4. The total is down 2,569, or 15.4%, from a tally of 16,629 during the 2010-11 school year.

In football, the number of officials has dropped each year in that nineyear span, with one exception: an increase of one official in 2015-16. The OHSAA said it had 3,158 football officials this year. That’s a decrease of 565, or 15.2%, from 2010-11.

The most telling number might be 213 — the OHSAA’s new class of football officials in 2018. Eight years earlier, the state had 422 football officials enter the ranks.

The Browns and their partners are attempting to help fill the void — one that ultimately affects those much younger than the officials who are calling the game.

“We want kids to have that experience, that Friday night lights, that thing that means so much to them,” John Carroll’s Beigie said. “We want them participating for a really long time, and the first impression means a whole lot.”

A key to reinvigorating Carnegie is a decision on the fate of the property that was once the headquarters and manufacturing center of the Warner & Swasey Co., a maker of machine tools, telescopes and other precision instruments. The company occupied the site from the 1880s and from 1904 to 1910 built the 221,727 square feet of one- to five-story buildings that served the company until it shut its doors in 1991.

The city of Cleveland has owned the buildings ever since and in January 2018 sought proposals from developers to either renovate the buildings or tear them down and build something new. Vacant, the property has been vandalized and deteriorated significantly.

The city received several responses to its request for proposals but has not announced a decision. However, the annual report of the city’s economic development department notes that Cleveland has selected Pennrose “to pursue development.”

An emailed statement from David Ebersole, Cleveland’s economic development director, said negotiations with Pennrose are continuing.

“The city is working with Pennrose for a mixed-use redevelopment of the property,” the statement said.

“The project is currently in the due-diligence phase to determine the costs required to repair the structure and to assemble the necessary project financing.”

Pennrose is a subsidiary of the Hunt Cos. Both are known across the country for their multifamily affordable housing and mixed-use development projects developed in partnership with public agencies.

At the eastern end of the Carnegie district, Epstein and others are seeing signs that Carnegie may be able to support some retail operations.

The Cleveland Culinary Launch and

Kitchen, a food hub, has been at East 75th Street and Carnegie for more than four years. It’s home to a number of food-processing startups and one of them, Souper Market, has had a retail operation. Now, another of those processors, Cleveland Bagel Co., has carved out a retail space along Carnegie.

Down the street, at the intersection of Carnegie and East 79th Street, Angie’s Soul Food Café will soon open in the former Hot Sauce Williams space at the northwest corner, and Dunkin’ Donuts is building a new shop on what had been a vacant lot on the southeast corner.

Epstein said the opening of Souper Market and Cleveland Bagel, and the future potential to expand retail there, has his organization even thinking about bringing back on-street parking, which has been absent from the roadway for decades.

For 45 years, until 2005, signs hung at intervals over each of the six lanes of Carnegie. Depending on when and in what direction you were traveling, the signs showed either a green upward-pointing arrow or a red X. That’s because the traffic pattern changed depending on the time of day.

In the morning, four lanes had green arrows indicating they were for westbound traffic between University Circle and East 55th Street. In the evening, though, commuters dashing home to the east had green arrows in all six lanes. And, of course, there was no parking.

“The food hub is creating more interest than we thought,” said Gordon Priemer, a real estate developer and one of the culinary kitchen’s sponsors. “I never though that Carnegie was ready yet for retail, but there is good traffic. It could present some opportunities.”

However, Priemer acknowledged, “It really depends on what happens to Warner & Swasey.”

For the good of the game

3/8/19 12:51 PM

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3/5/19 10:36 AM

PA G E 8

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Opinion From the Editor

Composting idea could help city, residents

Editorial

Beyond talk Gov. Mike DeWine talked a good game last Tuesday, March 5, in his first State of the State speech. Can the governor back it up, with details and plans to pay for the initiatives he proposed?

That’s not yet clear.

On the proposal that has generated the most attention and debate of late — DeWine’s call to raise the state’s gas tax by 18 cents a gallon and peg yearly increases to the Consumer Price Index, as a way to pay for repairs and improvements to roads and bridges — the governor got a fast response from legislators. It just wasn’t exactly what he wanted, as the Ohio House Finance Committee advanced a bill that would increase the gas tax by 10.7 cents a gallon over three years, generating about one-third less revenue per year. (Also under consideration: a 20-cent hike on diesel fuel, a $200 registration fee for electric cars and a $100 fee for hybrids.)

House Bill 62 was expected to get a floor vote last Thursday afternoon, March 7. If it passes the House, it will move to the Senate, where further changes are likely.

DeWine had proposed allocating $40 million to strapped public transit agencies in the state, a paltry sum, but the House is looking to bump that to $100 million.

Action and related issues will come fast, since Ohio’s transportation budget must be signed into law by March 31. Buckle up.

To his credit, DeWine was expansive in outlining his vision for the state. He talked about increasing mental health and addiction services, bolstering early childhood education, improving options for job training and investing more in state parks and natural areas, including Lake Erie. This wasn’t stereotypically Republican fare in 2019, and it stood in contrast to the approach of the man DeWine replaced in the job, John Kasich.

The change in tone was noticeable and welcome.

Oddly, DeWine didn’t spend much time on economic proposals, nor did he address last week’s closure of the General Motors plant in Lordstown. That might be a missed opportunity born out of a sense of contentment as the economy remains in a pretty good place.

Republicans and a lot of Democrats acted favorably to what

DeWine said. But what he didn’t say — how much he wants to spend on his priorities, and where the money will come from — means we’re in for an epic budget cycle. DeWine has much work to do to seal the deal for his vision of Ohio in the next decade.

Class moves

Two areas in which Northeast Ohio needs improvement — developing meaningful partnerships involving key institutions, and offering better access to higher education — have received some well-deserved attention from Cleveland State University.

Cleveland State and Cuyahoga Community College on Feb. 28 announced a program called Degree Link that will help students transition more easily from attending Tri-C to attending CSU by providing stronger support services and more clearly defined academic pathways. The goal is to have the program running by fall.

Last week, the university and Lorain County Community College rolled out UP Express CSU, an initiative that will provide dual admission to LCCC and Cleveland State, and will give students access to events and facilities at both. Cleveland State also said that $5 million of an existing $10 million gift from Parker Hannifin Corp. will establish the Parker Hannifin Learning Community at CSU for graduates of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, providing participating students with two years of free, on-campus housing. Students also will have access to mentoring services and career-preparation activities such as internships and research projects.

Ohio is a laggard when it comes to higher-education attainment, which is a problem for the state’s competitiveness in a technology- and service-driven economy. Leaders of CSU, Tri-C, LCCC and Parker have made a significant contribution to the region by helping to put college within reach of more students, and to strengthen the state’s future workforce.

Publisher and Editor: Elizabeth McIntyre (emcintyre@crain.com)

CLEVELAND BUSINESS

CLEVELAND BUSINESS P008_CL_20190311.indd 8

Managing Editor:

Scott Suttell (ssuttell@crain.com)

Contact Crain’s:

216-522-1383

Read Crain’s online: crainscleveland.com

Benjamin Krutko likes to think of ways to solve problems.

What he really likes is when those solutions also manage to move Cleveland forward.

“The great thing about Cleveland is that we have a really great chance to innovate if we chose to do so,” he told me, a week after he presented his most recent big idea during the annual Accelerate: Citizens Make Change civic pitch competition.

Krutko’s concept was one of 27 civic pitches made during this year’s event, and while he didn’t walk away with the $5,000 top prize, his practical idea captured the attention of the judging panel I sat on for the Community Change category.

The seeds of the young professional’s idea took root in a mundane household Elizabeth task: cleaning out the refrigerator. As he McIntyre was throwing out his tired produce, he realized “all this stuff is compostable, and I’m just tossing it in the trash where it’s going to go to the dump.”

Like his mom and grandparents, the North Royalton native grows his own produce in a home garden. But his place in Lakewood doesn’t have room for a compost pile. And while lack of space can be a barrier, so, too, can be the effort it takes to separate compostable materials. He had a friend who said it was just too hard.

There’s got to be an easier way to do this, Krutko thought, so he began researching. He found cities such as Milwaukee, San Diego, Portland and Fairfax, Va., with successful composting programs. He reached out for advice from Rust Belt Riders, a burgeoning Cleveland-based food-composting company that services commercial businesses and nonprofits and is featured this week in our small business section.

That information led him to create the idea for his Compost Collaborative, an opt-in, public-private composting program for households.

The concept is simple. Krutko would begin with a pilot program of 50 people all living in the same neighborhood. Those who opt-in for the service would get educational materials about composting and an odor-sealed bucket they can fill with compostable items, stuff like fruit and vegetable scraps, egg shells, coffee grounds, even pizza boxes, muffin wrappers and paper plates.

On their regular trash pickup day, participants would put the compost bucket next to their regular trash and recycling cans for curbside pickup. Then, the Compost Collaborative would remove the filled bucket, replace it with a clean container, and deliver the material to a larger compost bin on city property.

Once the material is composted, the city can use it for landscaping parks, mulching community gardens or to sell to other municipalities, reducing costs for waste processing and maintenance of public lands. Interested participants can also receive a share of the composted materials.

“It’s simple: Your organic waste is going to benefit the community you live in,” said Krutko, who works as a Cuyahoga County social services officer.

“People want to do more,” he said. “This is a simple course of action they can take.”

While he didn’t win the Accelerate pitch competition, Krutko is still pitching. He’s talking to city leaders in Lakewood and residents there in hopes of raising $2,500 in seed money for the pilot project to prove the concept will work.

It’s a small investment that could deliver huge economic and environmental benefits.

Write us: Crain’s welcomes responses from readers. Letters should be as brief as possible and may be edited. Send letters to Crain’s Cleveland Business, 700 West St. Clair Ave., Suite 310, Cleveland, OH 44113, or by emailing ClevEdit@crain.com. Please include your complete name and city from which you are writing, and a telephone number for fact-checking purposes.

Sound off: Send a Personal View for the opinion page to emcintyre@crain.com.

Please include a telephone number for verification purposes.

3/7/19 4:27 PM

CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

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M A R C H 11 - 17, 2 019

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PA G E 9

FOR SALE MULTI-FAMILY DEVELOPMENT SITE

Akron, Ohio 44313 

Personal View

Lakewood needs to take a hard look at development proposals



The Jerome Solove Development Inc. firm of Columbus recently announced plans to build three-story apartments on Detroit Avenue in Lakewood.

(Contributed rendering)

By Nora McNamara

A Columbus-based real estate developer recently announced plans to build a second intensive real estate project on the former Steve Barry Buick car dealership on Detroit Avenue in Lakewood. In November, the same developer, Jerome Solove Development Inc., proposed a 275-suite apartment complex for a Detroit Avenue site near Bunts Road.

These two JSDI projects are on top of the mixed-use One Lakewood Place being developed by Carnegie Management & Development Corp. on the former site of Lakewood Hospital.

Every proposal for development is not a good one.

Does Lakewood need any more rental space? What will these big projects do to change the city’s character?

Could at least one of these sites be geared toward housing for people who want to downsize, which would free up potential single-family homes in a tight market?

I suggest creating a small subdivision that adds some green edge along Detroit Avenue with creative cluster homes, one-floor living, or a townhouse look with two separate stacked units, with an elevator, that provides a desirable living option and product that Lakewood does not have.

How many rental products from downtown Cleveland to Lakewood exist for the same market or are planned, in progress or completed, and how is their lease-up and occupancy going?

Many developers insist what they offer is going to save a city or neighborhood. This is not a condemnation of developers, but a call for the city and community to take a hard look and evaluate.

I urge Lakewood to stop, take a deep breath and, where appropriate, say no to this proposal at this location as proposed. Consider your community goals and insist on something that contributes to community stability for

the long haul and is complementary in design and3-11-2019 con- SVN ad.indd figuration to the existing architectural character.

Lakewood has plenty of density already but not much green space, except along the side streets. So, could a new development wrap some of that green around to Detroit Avenue?

In addition, focus on existing rental units with some code enforcement and rehab assistance, otherwise the future may not be great for these buildings. In fact, we should think of how the failure of those apartments would impact areas all over the city.

Lakewood has always been a special community and deserves nothing but the best and should continue to insist on it. I have confidence the city can work with the community to have open, “out in the community” discussions with residents about proposals and make good decisions.

Walking over a site with even a concept site plan and elevations can help residents and reviewers obtain a better sense of context and potential impact on the surrounding community, and ask pertinent questions: How big is the proposed structure and what does that mean or potentially look like within the parameters of the property? Where is the traffic ingress and egress, parking for residents and guests, garbage pickup, where does the snow go, will you destroy the sense of privacy an adjacent neighbor currently enjoys in their yard or through their windows? What about loss of light, noise, hours of activity (24-hour living can be very different from a weekday, 8-5 p.m. business)?

Being a successful community is a big attraction to developers and a big responsibility for the city and residents to be as thoughtful and discerning as possible in evaluating, refining and welcoming new growth.

McNamara is a planning and development professional who lives in Lakewood.

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Other local companies that fit the Lincoln profile are Eaton and Parker-Hannifin. Local companies with the Amazon-like high profile are Goodyear and Sherwin-Williams. Ohio in general, and Northern Ohio specifically, benefit greatly from

P009_CL_20190311.indd 9

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Re: Jeeps piling up on dealer lots They cost too much! That’s why they’re sitting there. Toledo-built Wranglers are great. I have one. But I bought it used for $10,000. Sure, I’d love a new one, but those prices are outrageous.

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Focus

Rust Belt Riders collects commercial food waste and processes it into a nutrient-rich growing medium.

(Photos by Jacob Koestler)

SMALL BUSINESS

A PROMISE TO ‘FEED PEOPLE, NOT LANDFILLS’ Cleveland-based Rust Belt Riders composted 1.3 million pounds of food waste in 2018

By Douglas J. Guth | clbfreelancer@crain.com

W

hen Daniel Brown meets prospective clients of Rust Belt Riders, his Cleveland food-composting company, the pitch for the operation’s services is fairly straightforward: “If you have people who eat at your place of employment, we can capture your food scraps,” said Brown, 30. ¶ The South Euclid native, along with co-founder Michael Robinson, has parlayed this simple concept into a thriving business that composted 1.3 million pounds of food waste in 2018, a figure expected to double by the end of this year. ¶ The company currently services some of Cleveland’s best-known restaurants, grocery stores, businesses and nonprofits, among them Spice Kitchen + Bar, Zagara’s Marketplace, University Hospitals and Quicken Loans Arena. ¶ “We’ve had a 100% growth rate year over year,” said Brown, who founded Rust Belt Riders in 2013. “It’s been like riding a bucking bronco to keep up.”

SEE RUST BELT, PAGE 12

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SMALL BUSINESS

Tax Tips: Peter A. DeMarco

Guidance on claiming 20% rental deduction The Internal Revenue Service recently offered welcome news to some business owners still sorting out the impact of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. One of the key provisions of the tax reform law passed more than a year ago is a 20% deduction of qualified business income from each of a taxpayer’s qualified trades or businesses when operated as a pass-through entity, like a partnership, S corporation or sole proprietorship. As exciting as the deduction sounds, it also produced plenty of questions that the IRS needed to answer to enable people to understand how it would be applied in practice.

One question the IRS recently addressed involved rental income. To qualify for the 20% deduction, income must be generated through a business activity, but rental income can fall into a gray space between business and investment activity.

Consider the difference, for example, between an individual who owns and rents out a single property compared to a large company that owns and operates a group of residential communities. The solo landlord may spend very little time managing that single property, but the business activity to support an entire building full of tenants or sprawling residential complexes can be significant.

Commercial real estate enterprises will employ a staff of people to manage and market properties, collect rents, enforce lease agreements and perform necessary maintenance.

Given those extremes, it’s easy to see how the tax rules might say some rental income can be regarded as business income, but some not.

Along the continuum, there are lots of facts and circumstances to consider to determine whether a specific rental operation meets the definition of a business for tax purposes.

In light of questions around the new deduction, the IRS recently issued new guidance explaining where it will regard rental income as qualifying for the deduction. The guidance gives taxpay-

DeMarco is a senior tax adviser at the accounting and consulting firm of Meaden & Moore.

ers a safe harbor, a way to be more certain they’re entitled to claim the deduction. The IRS laid out conditions that must be present for it to regard rental income as business income.

First, rental income will be regarded as business income if it’s governed by separate books and records maintained to reflect rental income and expenses for each rental real estate enterprise. As another condition, the IRS established a time threshold of 250 hours as the minimum amount a taxpayer would be expected to spend annually providing rental services.

Finally, a taxpayer must maintain “contemporaneous records,” such as time reports, logs or similar documentation, to show the hours of service performed, the nature of those services, the dates of those services and who performed them. The IRS expects to be able to view those reports when requested, although that documentation won’t be expected for tax years beginning before 2019.

While the guidance is helpful, it comes at a cost. In order to rely on the safe harbor, a taxpayer must sign a statement, under penalty of perjury, asserting their compliance. The documentation to support claiming the deduction under the safe harbor must be pristine or a taxpayer could face big problems with the IRS. It’s still possible to claim the deduction relying on existing IRS guidance, where the facts and circumstances of a rental arrangement meet the definition of a business. It will be up to taxpayers to determine where their particular scenarios best fit into the tax requirements and then decide on the most appropriate path forward.

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SMALL BUSINESS

RUST BELT CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10

He attributes some of that momentum to mounting awareness of the challenges presented by food waste. In the U.S. alone, food scraps represent 30%-40% of the total food supply, according to USDA estimates. Growing mountains of trash are major sources of greenhouse emissions, noted Brown, and have far-reaching impacts on food security, resource conservation and climate change.

Rust Belt Riders promises to “feed people, not landfills” by picking up food waste in trucks, sourcing out to a network of partners who process the material into a nutrient-dense growing medium. By diverting food

from landfills, the company is meeting a booming demand for composting services while producing an endless supply of value-added agricultural products, Brown said.

“Many organizations have measurable sustainability goals now, or want to achieve certain waste -eduction benchmarks,” he noted. “A farmto-table restaurant will list all the farms it’s getting its products from. It shows they’re stewards for the waste they generate and how it’s being managed.”

This year, Rust Belt Riders may double the amount of waste it composts.

Environmentalism with a ‘human touch’ The cost of Brown’s service is based on the volume of material collected, with larger producers paying more than organizations generating

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less food waste. Generally, each of Rust Belt Riders' 110 clients pay $100$200 monthly for collection, staff training and comprehensive data tracking that details how their waste is utilized.

Longtime customer Phoenix Coffee is pursuing a renewed commitment to positive environmental impacts, touting to patrons its recyclable coffee sleeves and a new pollution-free roaster. Director of coffee Christopher Feran said partnering with Rust Belt Riders was a natural fit, considering the company offloads about 69,000 pounds of coffee grounds and other waste material annually.

“We’re bringing in product from across the world, and that has a massive impact we have to address locally,” Feran said. “It’s an alignment of values: We’re creating a vision of the world and Rust Belt Riders shares that vision.”

Per a USDA report, food waste is dumped into municipal landfills at a rate that makes it the third-highest source of methane in the country. Applying a “human touch” to mitigation of harmful greenhouse gases is Brown’s mission, one sparked by studying the world’s hunger and environmental challenges while a student at St. Ignatius High School. Service trips for Labre Ministry — a program for students that delivers food to Cleveland’s homeless community — further pushed his interest in advancing local food systems.

After studying ethics at DePaul University, Brown moved on to a live-in teaching gig at Saint Martin de Porres college-preparatory high school, followed by public placemaking work at Land Studio. Next was Cleveland Neighborhood Progress, where financial planning projects and food-access work took up most of his day.

Rust Belt Riders started when he and co-founder Robinson used bicycles to pick up food scraps from businesses, schools and residents in downtown Cleveland and the near West Side. In 2014, Rust Belt Riders took home a $20,000 seed investment from Cleveland’s SEA Change social enterprise accelerator, a cash infusion that allowed Brown to pursue his green-friendly vision full-time.

Now carrying five employees and a projected 2019 revenue of $1 million, company officials said they hope to expand services to residents before year’s end, in addition to introducing their own brand of composted potting soil.

Phoenix Coffee cafés will be used as pickup points for Rust Belt Riders’ forthcoming “Tilth” soil blends. Feran, a former high-school classmate of Brown’s, said the idea of a composting company picking up food waste on bicycles is something people would have laughed at only a few years ago.

If that was the case, nobody’s laughing anymore.

“Daniel had a commitment to his vision and the ability to build the right team around him to execute it,” said Feran. “That kind of dynamic leadership is rare.”

For Brown’s part, he expects Rust Belt Riders to flourish as more businesses invest in responsible business practices.

“Some organizations want to green their operations with LED lights, LEED certifications or carpooling,” Brown said. “What we’re sharing is that handling your solid waste is of equal or greater importance than the light bulbs you’re installing.”

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SMALL BUSINESS

Visual Evidence sweats the details in a digital age

By Douglas J. Guth

Troibner’s team recommend the best visual solution in the 100-plus projects it takes on annually.

“Most of our cases are complex, with details and terminology that most jurors simply don’t understand,” Troibner said. “We break that information down visually so jurors can follow the details and make the right decision when they deliberate.”

clbfreelancer@crain.com

Evidence establishes facts for a legal case going to trial, but that evidence can only be used if it's admissible and relevant, or so any legal expert will tell you. Since 1987, a Valley View legal-support business has provided clients tools and visual materials that allow their evidence to withstand cross-examination in court, offering a suite of services that runs the gamut between physical and digital.

Over the years, Visual Evidence Corp. has provided on-site graphic support, trial consulting and courtroom setup for numerous high-profile cases. While most of its cases are regional, the company also meticulously re-created the Afghanistan watchtower where a soldier named Matthew Warren Brown was found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Built by company co-founder Manfred Troibner’s design team, the full-scale mock-up includes a small bullet-marked window and a wooden bench where Brown allegedly sat at the moment of his death. Such exacting detail is critical in presenting a jury demonstrative evidence that illustrates witness testimony, Visual Evidence officials said.

“What we create is what witnesses would testify to,” said company vice president and senior litigation consultant Linda Weber. “Our role is to help people understand complex expert reports.”

Visual Evidence delivers services in the courtroom as well as for pretrial meetings, mediations and arbitrations. Its work is used in cases involv-

Presenting evidence in a high-tech world

Detailed graphics can help a jury of laypeople better understand the minutiae of a patent case. (Contributed images)

ing white-collar crime, personal injury, business litigation, medical malpractice and patent disputes. In recent years, it's focused on police use-of-force matters with the company representing a municipality.

When working for a criminal defense firm, Visual Evidence becomes part of the trial team, reviewing related photos, documents, pathology reports and even police bodycam videos. Studying this minutiae lets

Visual Evidence consults with doctors and other experts on its cases, including those dealing with medical malpractice.

Courtroom visuals have evolved with the emergence of new technologies. Along with physical charts and graphs, the company creates interactive multimedia presentations that lay out events in sequential order as supported by documentation and other resources.

Animations produced by Visual Evidence are utilized as illustrative evidence, mostly in the courtroom.

Meanwhile, optical motion-capture systems — which transfer a person’s movement to that of a digital character — help the company re-enact homicides or use-of-force cases.

Shaped from dashcams, cellphone footage and police reports, these lifelike animations provide point-ofview and graphical elements sometimes compelling enough to lead to a settlement rather than a trial, Troibner said.

Often, cases will have multiple distinct visual features. A patent case involving a pen required granular accuracy for displaying each pen part, while a medical case relayed the effects of hypothyroidism via a graphical model of the human body. Meeting demanding deadlines is a challenge when working multiple projects that take the team from a

check-kiting scheme one day to a multi-vehicle accident re-creation the next.

“We have experts like doctors we consult with, so everyone has to sign off on our work,” Troibner said.

Attorney Todd Raskin, a 40-year veteran in civil rights and government liability defense, has a yearslong relationship with Visual Evidence. The videos and animations the company creates are a far cry from the blown-up foam boards Raskin remembers from his early days in the courtroom.

“This is an electronic age, where people are using their thumbs to instantly access information,” he said.

“To capture their attention you’ve got to provide a medium consistent to what they use in their ordinary lives.

For me, (Visual Evidence) is a company that will give me the highest-quality work when I call upon them.”

Visual Evidence has grown 190% in the last five years, due in part to its increased focus on municipalities.

The firm also serves as a prime contractor for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, thanks to a five-year, $6.9 million contract inked in 2015.

Troibner, a former Cleveland Institute of Art student and ex-American Greetings artist, staked out his own graphics company during the late 1980s. When a client engaged him for graphics needed in a lawsuit, Troibner recognized an opportunity to broaden his services, leading to three decades in an industry he still finds fascinating and fulfilling.

“I always liked doing art, but I never expected to get into the demonstrative evidence business,” he said.

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SMALL BUSINESS

A matchmaker between couples and vendors

By Rachel Abbey McCafferty rmccafferty@crain.com @ramccafferty

Flutter Social wants to simplify wedding planning.

The website, which is live in the Cleveland and Philadelphia regions, aims to connect couples and vendors based on such factors as style, values and networks.

Co-founders Kaleigh Gallagher and Marcie Reilly met at Cleveland Clinic Innovations, where they were using their skills to help other people launch new products.

Gallagher’s spare time was often wedding-filled, as she was a maid of honor in two weddings.

Wedding planning can seem like a full-time job, Gallagher said. Couples planning their weddings have to locate, hire and manage a number of small businesses — and unless they hire a wedding planner, no one’s getting paid for that work.

“It just became really evident that this is a really overwhelming process, to find and hire the multiple small businesses you need to come together and create a great experience for your wedding,” Gallagher said.

And millennial consumers want personalized experiences and businesses that reflect their values, she added. That takes research.

Gallagher saw her friends spending a lot of time gathering recommendations from their networks, and she and Reilly saw an opportunity to make that process more efficient.

Flutter Social got its start in the Philadelphia area in 2016, building a network of vendors and providing personal recommendations to customers. That process helped build

The Flutter Social app walks couples through all aspects of wedding planning, from finding the right venue to choosing a photographer to booking a band. (Contributed images)

Flutter Social’s smart algorithm, Gallagher said.

Today, couples fill out a form with the vision for their wedding — identifying their budget, the expected size of their guest list and the type of vendors they’re looking for. Flutter Social then connects couples with businesses that fit their needs and wants, and shows them which vendors like to work together.

In addition to the basics of cost and size, couples who fill out a profile on Flutter Social can choose words like “modern,” “romantic” or “elegant” to describe the style they want to see. They can also choose to indicate whether there are particular

business values, such as a commitment to marriage equality or local sourcing, that they want in a vendor.

Beyond the personalized profile couples can fill out, there are also spots on Flutter Social’s site to look through the vendors by category or areas served.

Growing the platform Gallagher said starting in the Philadelphia area, where Reilly is from, made sense because it gave Flutter Social a larger footprint from which to start. A number of the vendors in Philadelphia serve a large area that includes Delaware, New Jersey and

New York. Reilly had already been working remotely from the area, and to get the company off the ground Gallagher moved out there, too.

Flutter Social then came to Northeast Ohio, and Gallagher moved back to the region. Northeast Ohio was the first market to roll out completely online, she said. The algorithm has been live since September of 2018, and the platform opened to couples in the Cleveland market in mid-December.

Gallagher said Cleveland has a “great startup scene” at the moment, and she wanted to be part of it.

There’s a close network and a low cost of living, which lets profits go toward growth.

“Cleveland is very great about supporting Cleveland,” Gallagher said.

Flutter Social is just Gallagher and Reilly right now, with both working remotely. The company is raising a round of pre-seed funding, which will help support the growth of the platform into other geographic markets.

In the future, Gallagher would like to see Flutter Social used for more than just weddings. A wedding is often the first big event a person will plan, she noted, but the platform could be applied to corporate events and other celebrations, as well.

For couples, the platform is free and intuitive. For vendors, there’s a three-tiered subscription model.

As Flutter Social enters new markets, it invites businesses to sign up on an invitation-only basis. Interested companies can request an invitation on Flutter Social’s website. Gallagher said in an email that the company has nearly 200 local vendors signed up as founding members.

Scott Jones, president of the music and entertainment company Cleveland Music Group, likes that the platform is based on networks. Having a team of vendors who are used to working together helps everything run much more smoothly than when a client just pieces a team together, he said.

The personalized, curated nature of the platform appealed to Seneca Wheelock, vice president of operations at Meadow Ridge Events, a venue in Windsor, Ohio.

Reputation is “gold” for Meadow Ridge Events, and the company has grown over the years through wordof-mouth and personal referrals, Wheelock said, adding that she sees Flutter Social as taking that approach and “powering that with technology.”

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PA G E 15

THE LIST

Engineering Firms

Ranked by number of local registered engineers REGISTERED LOCAL ALL LOCAL ENGINEERS ENGINEERS 1-1-2019 1-1-2019

TOTAL LOCAL CORPORATE STAFF HEADQUARTERS 1-1-2019 YEAR FOUNDED

2018 LOCAL ENGINEERING BILLINGS (MILLIONS)

NOTABLE 2018 PROJECTS

TOP LOCAL EXECUTIVE

1

GPD Group 520 S. Main St., Suite 2531, Akron (800) 955-4731/gpdgroup.com

175

270

580

Akron 1961

$96.0

Monterey Avenue in Euclid, East 185th Street relief sewer in Cleveland, general engineering services for the city of Cleveland, Akron Transitway

Darrin Kotecki, president

2

AECOM 1300 E. 9th St., Suite 500, Cleveland (216) 622-2300/aecom.com

77

139

245

Los Angeles 1990

$157.0

NA

Molly E. Page, vice president

3

Osborn Engineering 1100 Superior Ave., Suite 300, Cleveland (216) 861-2020/osborn-eng.com

53

101

130

Cleveland 1892

$21.2

MetroHealth executive engineer, Cedar Fair sports park, TriC Eastern Campus renovation, NEORSD Easterly and Westerly electrical equipment replacement

Gary F. Hribar, CEO

4

Middough Inc. 1901 E. 13th St., Suite 400, Cleveland (216) 367-6000/middough.com

51

106

164

Cleveland 1950

$22.3

Projects for confidential clients valued at $60 million, $16 million, $4.2 million and $3.9 million

Ronald R. Ledin, chairman, CEO

5

CT Consultants Inc. 8150 Sterling Court, Mentor (440) 951-9000/ctconsultants.com

44

57

144

Mentor 1922

$21.7

Berea Coe Lake Park improvements, Trumbull County Mosquito Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant improvements, Ohio Turnpike pavement replacement

Dave Wiles, president

6

Thorson Baker and Associates Inc. 3030 W. Streetsboro Road, Richfield (330) 659-6688/thorsonbaker.com

35

95

127

Richfield 1993

NA

One University Circle

Donald J. Schehl, Nathaniel J. Kobb, principals

7

HWH Architects Engineers Planners Inc. 600 Superior Ave. E., Cleveland (216) 875-4000/hwhaep.com

30

48

68

Cleveland 1908

$10.5

Manufacturing facilities and R&D centers

Peter P. Jancar, chairman

8

ms consultants 600 Superior Ave. E., Suite 1300, Cleveland (216) 522-1926/msconsultants.com

26

33

83

Columbus 1963

$11.3

NA

Jeanne Mosure, vice president of public affairs

9

DLZ 614 W. Superior Ave., Suite 1000, Cleveland (216) 771-1090/dlz.com

24

30

60

Columbus 1916

$12.0

Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District - Morgana Run Relief Sewer

Vickie Wildeman, vice president

10

Karpinski Engineering 3135 Euclid Ave., Cleveland (216) 391-3700/karpinskieng.com

23

86

97

Cleveland 1983

$13.6

Lakewood Family Health Center, MetroHealth hospital replacement, Cleveland Heights High School, Tri-C Metro Campus, Cleveland State main classroom building

James T. Cicero, president

11

E2G|The Equity Engineering Group Inc. 20600 Chagrin Blvd., Suite 1200, Shaker Heights (216) 283-9519/E2G.com

22

46

97

Shaker Heights 2002

NA

NA

David A. Osage, president, CEO

12

Michael Baker International 1111 Superior Ave., Cleveland (216) 664-6493/mbakerintl.com

21

34

52

Pittsburgh 1940

NA

Opportunity Corridor Phase 3, Towpath Trail Stage 3, Harrison County Airport Runway rehabilitation, Irishtown Bend planning study

Paul Gluck, vice president, Ohio office executive

13

Environmental Design Group 450 Grant St., Akron (330) 375-1390/envdesigngroup.com

19

24

59

Akron 1984

$7.0

Akron Children's Considine Building expansion, city of Akron Aqueduct Street - green and complete street improvements, Sandusky Landing Park trail

Dwayne Groll, president Lu Ann Unrue, chief strategy officer

13

Mannik & Smith Group Inc. 20600 Chagrin Blvd., Suite 500, Shaker Heights (216) 378-1490/manniksmithgroup.com

19

30

38

Maumee 1955

$4.5

Reconstruction of U.S. 62 in Stark County for ODOT, Painesville new raw water intake and crib, McDonald's restaurant renovation program

Mark A. Smoley, senior vice president, director, principal

15

HDR 1100 Superior Ave. E., Suite 650, Cleveland (216) 912-4240/hdrinc.com

18

26

28

Omaha, Neb. 1917

NA

NA

Richard G. Atoulikian, VP, Northeast client service manager; Joanne Shaner, bridge section manager

16

Chagrin Valley Engineering Ltd. 22999 Forbes Road, Suite B, Oakwood Village (440) 439-1999/cvelimited.com

16

23

39

Oakwood Village 1996

NA

Macedonia citywide pavement rehabilitation

Donald F. Sheehy, president

16

DLR Group|Westlake Reed Leskosky 1422 Euclid Ave., Suite 300, Cleveland (216) 522-1350/dlrgroup.com

16

23

96

Decentralized 1966

$8.6

Cleveland Clinic/CWRU Health Education Campus, The Ohio State University Arts District, Case Western Reserve Maltz Performing Arts Center, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

Paul E. Westlake, global cultural and performing arts leader, senior principal

18

The Austin Co. 6095 Parkland Blvd., Mayfield Heights (440) 544-2600/theaustin.com

15

22

89

Mayfield Heights 1878

$6.8

Pepperidge Farm, AEP, Ferrero, Ingredion, Pfizer, Zoetis, Blue Diamond Growers, Northrop Grumman, AB InBev, Hostess Brands, Lockheed Martin

Michael G. Pierce, president

18

Scheeser Buckley Mayfield LLC 1540 Corporate Woods Parkway, Uniontown (330) 526-2700/sbmce.com

15

24

35

Uniontown 1959

NA

Cleveland Zoo Asian Highlands, Lake High School/Lake Middle School, KSU dining facilities, KSU Bowman Hall, VA Medical Center

James E. Eckman, president

20

Euthenics Inc. 8235 Mohawk Drive, Cleveland (440) 260-1555/euthenics-inc.com

14

16

23

Strongsville 1969

$3.4

Memphis Road bridge replacement, North Main Street high level bridge inspection, state Route 87 landslide repair

Alan R. Piatak, president

20

Mott MacDonald LLC 18013 Cleveland Parkway, Suite 200, Cleveland (216) 535-3640/mottmac.com

14

18

26

Iselin, N.J. 1972

NA

Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, Ohio Department of Transportation

Michael G. Vitale, senior vice president

22

KS Associates Inc. 260 Burns Road, Suite 100, Elyria (440) 365-4730/ksassociates.com

13

14

32

Elyria 1987

NA

Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority - Cleveland Bulk Terminal maritime infrastructure rehabilitation, UH North Ridgeville Health Center

Lynn S. Miggins, president

22

Nexus Engineering Group LLC 1422 Euclid Ave., Suite 1400, Cleveland (216) 404-7867/nexusegroup.com

13

75

116

Cleveland 2005

$18.6

NA

Jeffrey O. Herzog, president Marianne C. Corrao, executive VP Neal Curran, COO

22

Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates Inc. 9655 Sweet Valley Drive, Suite 3, Valley View (216) 642-2300/wje.com

13

13

15

Northbrook, Ill. 1956

$2.3

Erie Insurance new office building, building enclosure consulting services; Cleveland Metroparks Zoo RainForest facility improvement assessment

Mark Churpek, unit manager

25

McHenry & Associates Inc. 25001 Emery Road, Suite 200, Warrensville Hts. (216) 292-4696/mchenryassociates.com

12

20

25

Warrensville Heights 1960

NA

Quicken Loans Arena basketball operations upgrade; Sisters of Notre Dame Senior Living Village; West Virginia University Health Science infrastructure replacement

Michael Bandwen, president

25

R.E. Warner & Associates Inc. 25777 Detroit Road, Suite 200, Westlake (440) 835-9400/rewarner.com

12

19

40

Westlake 1951

NA

NA

Theodore A. Beltavski, president

27

OHM Advisors 6001 Euclid Ave., Suite 130, Cleveland (330) 865-1335/ohm-advisors.com

10

16

37

Livonia, Mich.

1962

$4.5

City of Garfield Heights - multi-street reconstruction, phase III

David Krock, managing director of Ohio

28

PTA Engineering Inc. 275 Springside Drive, Suite 300, Akron (330) 666-3702/ptaengineering.com

9

19

32

Akron 1953

NA

NEOMED Bio-Med Science Academy addition, Bounce Innovation Hub, Akron Fire Station #4

Patrick W. Klanac, Michael J. Casseday, principals

THIS YEAR COMPANY

RESEARCHED BY CHUCK SODER (CSODER@CRAIN.COM)

Get all 36 firms, more executive names and up to 10 years of data. Become a Data Member: CrainsCleveland.com/data Information is supplied by the companies. Send feedback to Chuck Soder: csoder@crain.com.

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AKRON

City plans for new development corporation

By Dan Shingler dshingler@crain.com @DanShingler

Downtown Akron’s got some major new residential and retail developments underway, a major streetscaping and redesign of Main Street in progress and a strong cadre of advocates.

What it never has had is its own community development corporation (CDC) to both shepherd projects to fruition and invest in developments on its own (although, as many will tell you, one has long been proposed).

That looks like it’s about to change.

“My goal is to have a draft business case put together by the end of April,” said James Hardy, chief of staff to Mayor Dan Horrigan.

Hardy said the mayor has charged him with making a case for a CDC that, once approved by the administration, will be presented to local businesses, investors and other downtown stakeholders.

If all goes as planned, he said, the city will get a new economic development driver that also will be a lending arm able to fill financing gaps that downtown projects often face.

That’s because the CDC, as envisioned, also would run its own loan fund and possibly grow to the point that it could invest in or own property directly, though that’s not anticipated at first, Hardy said.

That means Hardy must show that the city not only can raise operational

funds for the new entity, which likely would be a nonprofit, but also can raise money to back a loan fund.

“At the outset, the way we’re contemplating it now, we need to identify a funding source for operations and develop a compelling case for why corporations, philanthropic organizations or private sources (of capital) should and could invest in a loan pool to support downtown,” Hardy said.

The size of the loan fund and operational budget are among the things being worked out, he added.

It’s possible that banks could invest into the fund as a way to satisfy the community reinvestment requirements of federal regulators, and the CDC might be able to issue bonds on its own and seek its own grants.

Hardy said downtown development always has been done “by committee,” with the city and Development Finance Authority of Summit County (DFA) trying to wrangle various stakeholders and capital sources to the table. But Horrigan has come to believe that there needs to be a development corporation focused specifically on downtown, the way others are focused on other neighborhoods in the city, he said.

One thing the city doesn’t want is for the proposed CDC to replicate efforts of existing organizations, such as the Downtown Akron Partnership (DAP) or the DFA, Hardy said.

DAP is focused on keeping downtown clean and safe — “downtown

“At the outset, the way we’re contemplating it now, we need to identify a funding source for operations and develop a compelling case for why corporations, philanthropic organizations or private sources (of capital) should and could invest in a loan pool to support downtown.”

— James Hardy, Akron chief of staff

wellness” is an apt description of its mission, according to president and CEO Suzie Graham — while the DFA works on development-assistance issues, including financing projects across the entire county.

DFA president Chris Burnham was traveling and unable to discuss the proposed CDC. He did acknowledge it via email and said he’d prefer to discuss it when more planning has been done.

Hardy said he’s been working on the project closely with Burnham, who is known for his expertise and creativity in finding financing for area developments.

“I’m working hand in glove with Chris Burnham at the DFA on this," Hardy said. "For one thing, they have existing expertise that we don’t want to replicate but build upon.”

That goes for the DAP as well, he

added. Graham said she would welcome a CDC to downtown.

She said she’s been working with the city as well and hopes that the proposed CDC might co-locate with the DAP downtown, where it will bring a whole new set of tools to the table.

“I like the idea of an organization that wakes up every day thinking about the health and vibrancy of downtown being immediately cohoused with an entity thinking about development projects that help those same things,” Graham said.

Others hope the city can get the proposed CDC up and running. They noted that too many projects take too long to finance downtown, slowing the redevelopment of the city’s core.

The $42 million, six-building, mixeduse Bowery Project being developed on Main Street took years to finance, for example, and officials said it got

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the money it needed just in time to save the site from dilapidation.

Tony Troppe, one of downtown Akron’s key developers, who’s often willing to take on challenging projects in historic buildings, said he loves the idea of a CDC. “It’s a big idea that’s been floated for some time, and I’ll be excited to see it happen,” Troppe said.

Gary Rickel, vice president of the CBRE real estate firm in Akron and a founding board member of DAP, said he would welcome a CDC both as a real estate professional and a downtown advocate.

He sees no conflict with DAP — far from it. He, too, thinks the proposed organization would help DAP and others accelerate downtown’s redevelopment.

“We’ve been pushing for this for five years,” Rickel said.

Nothing’s done yet, Hardy cautioned. But the effort has long been on his boss’ radar and probably has more energy behind it now than ever before.

“It’s definitely getting some legs,” he said. “I think there’s a ways to go to map out a framework that can be shared with decisionmakers and potential investors, but it’s definitely getting legs.”

There’s no set timeline for establishing the entity, Hardy noted, but he expects discussions to start in the spring, as soon as a business case is ready to unveil in late April or May. “At that point, I think we’d start having larger conversations with our corporate entities in the city,” Hardy said.

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AKRON

Area office market shows signs of strength

By Dan Shingler dshingler@crain.com @DanShingler

It’s still tough in certain sectors, but Akron’s commercial real estate market saw a solid second half in 2018 and is showing continued strength, area real estate professionals say.

“It’s as positive as you can make it, but there are still issues with certain parts of town,” said Gary Rickel, a vice president at CBRE in Akron.

Rickel and his firm recently completed a report on the commercial real estate market’s performance in Greater Akron for the past six months of 2018. He shared it with Crain's.

The report found a strong market for Class A office space but little appetite for older, Class B and C space.

Overall, though, rents are up $1 per square foot from 2017, to $16 per square foot recently, the report found.

Downtown, the vacancy rate for Class A space was 9.5%, compared with 27.4% for Class B space and a 50% vacancy rate for older, Class C space, according to CBRE. It was a similar situation in parts of the city between the downtown central business district and the outer-ring suburbs in CBRE’s research.

There, vacancy rates were similar: 16.7% for Class A, 12.7% for Class B and 15.9% for Class C. But unlike downtown, some other parts of the city and close-in suburbs have seen numerous new office buildings come online.

The absorption rate in these areas tells the story, and CBRE’s report shows that tenants in places such as Fairlawn and Akron’s East End development absorbed more than 200,000 square feet of new Class A space and nearly 27,000 square feet of Class B space, but they left a net 3,450 square feet of Class C space newly vacant.

In other words, when businesses come to town or move, they’re buying or leasing modern, new offices and have little to no interest in less fancy digs, real estate professionals say.

Rickel said activity in Akron’s East End development, which landed Babcock & Wilcox as a 180,000-square-foot tenant, drove the absorption rates outside of downtown.

One challenging part of town,

The Cedarwood Valley Office Park in Akron’s Merriman Valley has a high vacancy rate but also has a new owner, LNR Partners of Florida, which plans to invest in the property. (Contributed photo)

Rickel and others said, has been the Merriman Valley neighborhood. The same rugged hills, dramatic drops and lack of highways that make it one of Akron’s most scenic areas also make it a challenge to traverse, especially in winter.

“It’s not an office market because it doesn’t have highway access,” said Susan Lines, a vice president at CBRE. In Merriman Valley, the Cedarwood Valley Office Park had been in receivership for most of the past two years and only about 25% of its five buildings and 84,000 square feet of space are now occupied, said Lorin Schultz, who handles the property for Colliers International in Akron.

But that property came out of receivership in February, Schultz said, with the mortgage servicing company LNR Partners of Florida buying it as an investment. That’s good news for the property and the area around

it, she said.

“We have more money available now for leasing and for tenant improvements. … They felt the property was valuable enough that they wanted to own it. That’s a good sign for the

valley. They know what they’re doing,” Schultz said.

She’s also seen interest pick up in Lock 22, a retail plaza on the other side of Merriman Road from Cedarwood.

“I’ve been consistently showing it and have a letter of intent for part of it, so there’s definitely still interest in the valley,” said Schultz.

Akron’s outer-ring suburbs appear to be having the toughest time, according to CBRE’s report. There, the overall vacancy rate is 30.2%, the report found, compared with 20.3% downtown and 14.6% overall for the city’s neighborhoods and inner-ring suburbs.

The outlying market was buoyed by some strong areas, CBRE found – including Green, with a vacancy rate of 5.1%, and the Fairlawn/Bath area at 10.1%. Green simply has not overbuilt, while Fairlawn has benefited from new offices built for FirstEnergy Corp. and other local companies, Akron’s real estate pros said.

Going forward, they expect to see continued strength and many of the same trends, at least in the near term.

Areas that are hot now will likely remain so, and Class A space that is either vacated or built will likely be snapped up, they predicted.

“Everyone’s telling the same story, that there’s a lack of inventory. If you can come up with a building that’s been built in the last 20 years with more modern features, it’s going to get snapped up by somebody,” said Tom Fox, executive vice president of NAI Pleasant Valley on White Pond Drive.

Those bringing new properties online say they’re having little to no trouble leasing them.

That includes Fairlawn’s John Dellagnese & Associates, which is all but finished leasing its 117,000-squarefoot building at 3800 Embassy Parkway in the Embassy Corporate Park.

It’s now finishing up and leasing another building, with 39,000 square feet of office space above ground and heated parking below next door.

The first building has just one small space left and the new one is nearing completion with a major tenant moving in on May 1, said Lisa Gould, vice president of marketing and leasing. She declined to name the tenant.

“There are some other large tenants that are looking. So, we don’t anticipate that it will be empty for very long,” she said.

Real estate firms don’t expect to see more office space come online downtown, though. That’s now thought of as a residential and retail market, at least in terms of new space despite the low vacancy rate in the city’s core.

“We do not need any more office space in downtown Akron,” said Jerry Fiume, managing director of SVN | Summit Commercial Real Estate Group in Fairlawn.

Fiume and others said that office tenants are less interested in downtown and have little appetite for the construction costs associated with building new Class A space.

Fiume suggested that the low vacancy rates for Class B and C office space indicates the city has more commercial inventory it can convert to residential or retail, where demand downtown is higher.

“Converting this space to other uses, that’s what has to happen downtown,” he said.

Advertising Section

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Advertising Section

PEOPLE ON THE MOVE

To place your listing, visit www.crainscleveland.com/people-on-the-move or for more information, please call Debora Stein at (917) 226-5470 or email dstein@crain.com.

ADVERTISING & MARKETING

ENGINEERING & CONSULTING

LAW

LAW

LAW

PR 20/20

Tec Inc. Engineering & Design

Roetzel & Andress LPA

Brennan Manna & Diamond

Brennan Manna & Diamond

PR 20/20, a marketing consulting and services firm, announced that Jessica Miller has been named VP and managing director.

Jessica joined PR 20/20 in 2011 as a consultant, and has steadily advanced into greater leadership roles within the agency. In her new role, she oversees day-to-day operations in the pursuit of an inspiring and rewarding environment for employees, value creation at a high velocity for clients, and financial strength for the agency.

Timothy Pool was promoted to Executive Vice President of Engineering and Production leading the technical staff for Tec Inc.’s three offices in Eastlake, Columbus and Pittsburgh, after more than 28 years as an employee of Tec Inc. In addition to his impressive resume of engineering projects, he is passionate about leading engineering staff with integrity and accurate engineering services. Tim is a Registered Communications Distribution Designer and Ohio licensed Electrical Safety Inspector.

Roetzel is pleased to welcome attorneys David Woodburn and Steven Roth to the Cleveland office. Mr. Woodburn is a Woodburn shareholder whose practice is focused primarily in the area of estate planning law, with an emphasis on business succession and asset protection planning. Mr. Woodburn also deals with many facets of probate litigation and inheritance controversies, including will contests, trust challenges, undue influence, and fiduciary duty questions.

Mr. Roth joins the firm as an associate and concentrates on corporate and business transactions, Roth real estate, and intellectual property as well as sports, media and entertainment law. In addition, he regularly represents and advises borrowers and lenders in banking and finance transactions.

Brennan Manna & Diamond is pleased to announce Christopher J. Meager (“CJ”) has been named Partner.

CJ’s practice focus includes the areas of corporate, business, real estate, government and public law, and civil litigation matters. He counsels clients in real estate, business and other asset transactions as well as various business and corporate matters, such as entity formation, organization, restructuring and emerging business issues.

Brennan, Manna & Diamond is pleased to announce the election of Amanda L. Waesch as a firm Shareholder and her appointment to the firm’s Management Committee.

Amanda operates a successful national healthcare practice. Her practice focus is primarily healthcare, employment law, corporate law, and healthcare litigation. She advises all types of employers, in particular healthcare providers, including, hospitals and physicians, on various matters.

TECHNOLOGY

TECHNOLOGY

OEC

OEC

OEC congratulates Marc Helmbrecht on his promotion to Vice President, Infrastructure. Marc has leadership responsibility for OEC’s strategy to transform our existing infrastructure to better leverage global multi-cloud, continuous integration & deployment, internal IT, ITSM process maturity and our 24x7 operations center. Marc brings over 20 years’ experience in technology, including leadership roles at KeyCorp & the U.S. Marine Corps. He also serves on the Computer Science Advisory Board for BW.

OEC is pleased to announce John Haluch’s promotion to Vice President, Customer Success. In this role, John leads our global Customer Success function, as well as OEC’s Customer Support and Field Services teams. During his time with OEC, John has developed a deep knowledge of our customers and their needs in the Original Equipment parts space and is an enthusiastic advocate for providing an exceptional experience for all of our customers. John holds a bachelor’s degree from Miami University.

PNC Bank

ENGINEERING & CONSULTING

Tec Inc. Engineering & Design

Jennifer Harlan has joined PNC Bank Wealth Management as a Vice President and Senior Banking Advisor. With 26 years of experience, she provides private banking services, specializing in deposit and lending solutions tailored to high-net worth individuals. She works with experts in investment management, financial and estate planning and trusts to help clients achieve their financial goals. Jennifer has a bachelor’s degree from Rollins College and an MBA from Case Western Reserve University.

Adam Kilbourne has been promoted to Executive Vice President of Business and Administration after more than 20 years at the firm serving as a leader in business and administration roles, most recently as Managing Director.

Adam leads the business and administration of Tec Inc. with a passion for promoting industry best practices while maintaining a people centric employer atmosphere. Adam is a Fellow of the Society for Marketing Professional Services and a member of Society for Human Resources.

EDUCATION

ENGINEERING & CONSULTING

Northeast Ohio Medical University

Tec Inc. Engineering & Design

Northeast Ohio Medical University announced the appointment of Andre Burton, J.D., to vice president for human resources and diversity. Burton had been interim vice president, during which time he added consultative services and implemented a workforce re-engineering process. Burton started at NEOMED in 2012 as director of diversity affairs. He was promoted to executive director of diversity, equity and inclusion in 2014. He received his Juris Doctor from ClevelandMarshall College of Law.

P018_CL_20190311.indd 18

Tec Inc. is pleased to announce that John Milenius, PE, LEED AP, is now a shareholder. John has been promoted to Principal and is the Director of Mechanical Engineering leading projects for public and private institutions.

John has more than 30 years of experience as a mechanical engineer designing building HVAC, plumbing, and fire protection systems. John is a member of the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers and actively mentors junior engineering staff.

REAL ESTATE

Benesch Reed Sirak has joined Benesch as an associate in the firm’s Real Estate & Environmental Practice Group. Reed is an environmental attorney who combines expert analytical, research, writing, consulting and litigation skills to assist clients large and small. He is well versed in e-discovery, motions practice, trial preparation, litigation, mediation and arbitration, as well as counseling clients in the areas of Hazardous Materials Transportation and OSHA compliance and enforcement matters.

MANUFACTURING

Kichler Lighting Kichler Lighting announces the addition of VJ Teenarsipur as chief marketing officer. He will be responsible for the company’s brand, product management, pricing, customer care and eCommerce divisions. VJ most recently served as the vice president of the online business division at Delta Faucet Company, a Masco Corporation. He earned an MBA from Ross School of Business, University of Michigan and his graduate degree from Texas A & M University in mechanical engineering.

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3/6/19 11:09 AM

CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

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PA G E 19

SOURCE LUNCH

Suzie Graham President and CEO,

CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Downtown Akron Partnership Suzie Graham decided to study theater arts at Kent State University because she was attracted to the idea that “in an ideal universe, theater is supposed to be a truly collaborative process,” she said. ¶ While her career has taken her a long way from her design-and-direction theater studies, the idea of collaboration certainly transfers to her job as the head of Downtown Akron Partnership (DAP), whose mission is to promote downtown as a place to work, play and live. ¶ “Our job changes every day. And some days it’s six different jobs in one day. And it is fun. It definitely keeps a fresh perspective,” she said. ¶ Some of those jobs nowadays include working to continue to elevate downtown’s business scene, helping folks navigate the big road construction projects dotting the city and spreading the message that downtown stores and restaurants are worth supporting through the work, and gearing up for an influx of residents the downtown housing boom is expected to bring. Our conversation was edited for length and clarity. — Sue Walton

The Graham file Favorite theater production: Anything by Shakespeare

Date-night spot: Blu Jazz+. “Open jam night with Theron Brown is the best, because he is just most the amazing musician,” Graham said.

Family-time spot: “I love to walk in the F.A. Seiberling Nature Realm and feed the birds.”

Good advice: Back to Shakespeare and a line from “Hamlet”: “The readiness is all.”

Lunch spot Cilantro Thai & Sushi Restaurant 326 South Main Street, Akron 330-434-2876

The meal One had pineapple fried rice with tofu, a salad and a water. The other had chicken fried rice and a soda.

The vibe Cilantro serves up wide selections of Thai and sushi dishes in an elegant and airy dining room with large windows that look out onto Akron’s bustling South Main Street.

The bill $22.41, plus tip

Where did you grow up?

I’m an Akron native. I grew up in Ellet.

Were you always interested in the arts?

My family did a really good job. We were well-rounded kids. My sister did theater. My parents were very supportive of us taking music at school, and I did theater in high school. They were really active in the community.

Your job now has a lot of variety.

What’s your favorite part?

It goes back to the creative process.

Coming up with a creative, collaborative approach to working on something that requires attention.

What was downtown like in 2011, when you started at DAP? Downtown was benefiting from some of the larger investments that were made during the 1990s and the start of the 2000s, like Lock 3 Park and Canal Park. So we were starting to build a stronger visitor population.

We started as a workplace kind of downtown. We had the “work” pillar, and we had the “play” pillar. But the “live” pillar just wasn’t doing anything, and there wasn’t a lot of interest in developing anything other than student housing. Our work at the time was visitor-based and First Night. Those were the two big buckets of our work.

How has DAP’s work evolved?

We did a strategic plan in 2016 that helped define the need for business-development capacity. We really knew that downtown needed someone who could answer the phone and be up to speed on all the

business-assistance programs that are in place to help drive more interest in coming downtown.

How will the creation of a Community Development Corporation in Akron affect DAP? The CDC falls under the Refocusing on the Urban Centers piece of Elevate Akron, and for that we are working with the city. The goal of the CDC is not to replace the Development Finance Authority or Downtown Akron Partnership. It is to identify specifically what capacities are needed in order to have an entity that can acquire property and champion development in downtown exclusively.

How do you feel about the road construction, especially in the business district?

It is an absolute investment. We can’t grow as a neighborhood without fixing that infrastructure. And if you’re going to fix it, fix it. And when you put it all back together, if you put it together in a way that it can be enjoyed by all types of people, that moves the traffic through at a pace where you actually recognize the amazing storefronts that we have, that’s what we’re trying to build. We saw it in Kent. We saw it in Cuyahoga Falls. Yes, Akron is also worthy of having nice things.

Do you think some people think that Akron isn’t worthy?

I worry sometimes that Akron has become a point of access. Even our history along the canal is that we are a place that moves you through. We need to also place value on keeping people here. It shouldn’t always be

the place that’s moving you through.

It’s great to be close to so many things, and to get across town in 20 minutes is fantastic. If it’s 25 minutes, it’s equally fantastic. If it’s 25 minutes and we’re going at a pace where we’re going to bring more people into the city and share the amazing stuff on the inside, it’s definitely worth it.

How is construction affecting businesses?

It is putting stress on the businesses.

I don’t know of any city that has gone through this kind of construction that does not feel those sort of growing pains as part of the process.

What is being done to help?

We’re making sure that the word is out that downtown is open and to make sure there’s sufficient signage to guide folks. Some businesses are looking to diversify their revenue models a little bit. We’re doing as much promotion as we can. We are also working with Door Dash so our businesses can try it, because it’s not just construction. As our society shifts in how we consume things, our small businesses are challenged to try to keep up with that.

What do developments like the Bowery Project and the residents they’ll bring mean for downtown?

Making sure you have a strong “live” pillar helps with how many people are out and about in your public spaces, so it will add to your vibrancy. It will help with your ability to grow and cultivate additional retail. I’m eager to see our business owners strengthen their operations when there are more residents.

700 W. St. Clair Ave., Suite 310 Cleveland, OH 44113-1230 Phone: (216) 522-1383 www.crainscleveland.com Twitter: @CrainsCleveland Publisher/editor Elizabeth McIntyre Group publisher Mary Kramer Managing editor Scott Suttell Sections editor Michael von Glahn Creative director David Kordalski Web editor Damon Sims Associate editor/Akron Sue Walton Assistant editor Kevin Kleps Senior reporter Stan Bullard, Real estate/construction Reporters Jay Miller, Government Dan Shingler, Energy/steel/auto/Akron Rachel McCafferty, Manufacturing/ energy/education Jeremy Nobile, Finance Lydia Coutré, Health care/nonprofits Senior data editor Chuck Soder Cartoonist Rich Williams Events manager Ashley Ramsey Marketing coordinator Megan Lemke Integrated marketing manager Michelle Sustar Managing editor custom/special projects Amy Ann Stoessel Associate publisher/Director of advertising sales Lisa Rudy Senior account executive Dawn Donegan Account executives Laura Kulber Mintz, Loren Breen People on the Move manager Debora Stein Office coordinator Denise Donaldson Pre-press and digital production Craig L. Mackey Media services manager Nicole Spell Billing YahNica Crawford Credit Thomas Hanovich Crain’s Cleveland Business is published by Crain Communications Inc.

Chairman Keith E. Crain Vice chairman Mary Kay Crain President KC Crain Senior executive VP Chris Crain Secretary Lexie Crain Armstrong CFO Robert Recchia G.D. Crain Jr., Founder (1885-1973) Mrs. G.D. Crain Jr., Chairman (1911-1996) Reprints: Laura Picariello, 732-723-0569 or lpicariello@crain.com Customer service and subscriptions: 877-824-9373 Volume 40, Number 10 Crain’s Cleveland Business (ISSN 0197-2375) is published weekly, except for the last week of December, at 700 West St. Clair Ave., Suite 310, Cleveland, OH 44113-1230.

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LIST ANALYSIS

GPD Group, Osborn steadily adding engineers

By Chuck Soder csoder@crain.com @ChuckSoder

On average, the companies on the Crain’s Engineering Firms list haven’t grown much, if at all, over the past three years, judging by data submitted for the list since 2016.

A few companies on the list, however, have grown quite a bit.

The most prominent example is the company at the top of the list: GPD Group of Akron had 175 registered engineers in Northeast Ohio as of Jan. 1, up from 158 last year. That number has climbed every single time we’ve published this list over the past decade.

The number of architects GPD em-

P019_CL_20190311.indd 19

ploys has grown in a similar fashion, according to data the company has submitted for our Architectural Firms list (an updated version of that list is slated to run in our March 25 edition).

Why? Last year, in an interview with Crain’s, GPD president Darrin Kotecki described a company that has taken on a steadily increasing string of large local projects while also branching out in terms of geography and industry focus.

Osborn Engineering has been growing steadily over the years as well, climbing from No. 9 on the 2009 list to No. 3 this year. The Cleveland company posted a particularly big increase over the past year, jumping from 42 registered local engineers in 2018 to 53 this year.

To see which firms on this year’s list have grown and which have shrunk over the past decade, download the Excel version of the list, which includes at least a few years of historical employment data for each company (Excel lists are available exclusively to Crain’s Data Members).

Largest engineering firms: Find the list of Northeast Ohio’s 28 largest firms, ranked by the number of local registered engineers, on Page 15

Spectrum of specialties If you need a civil engineer, it’s not hard to find one in Northeast Ohio.

And if you want a firm that can help you with an offshore wind farm, we’ve got at least one on the full digital list.

Of the 36 companies on the full list, 23 put down civil engineering as one of their top five specialties. Often, it was the first specialty listed.

Of course, civil engineering is a big, broad category that can include lots of other subcategories of engineering, since it involves the design and construction of roads, bridges and other infrastructure. Hence, you’ll see lots of road and sewer work in the “notable 2018 projects” column of the list.

The second-most-common choice

was mechanical engineering, followed by structural engineering.

Those specialties are included in the Excel version of the list, as is another category: rare specialties.

In that category, DLR|Westlake Reed Leskosky (tied for No. 16 on the list) highlighted its experience with theater and audiovisual projects.

Not every company listed a rare specialty, but some of the ones they did list sound particularly rare.

For instance, Equity Engineering Group of Shaker Heights (No. 11 on the list) apparently knows a thing or two about managing the lifecycle of pressurized equipment. NETSCo (No. 35), a Columbia Station firm focused on naval architecture and marine engineering, highlighted its expertise in offshore wind energy.

3/8/19 1:10 PM

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Salma Starlgn hasIte volo officte Agency Russel mpossitatint volut m Thompso Paula fugiaec tibus, sumqui officte volo ndianti hasIte temposa tint volutse et mpossita onserrumende tibus, cus, quaeceres erro fugiaec doles doles temposa sumqui quia volorehendam aut ndianti moloratem cus net aperibus doles doles se etnditis ende onserrum dicta nem ligenda erro quia quaeceres quos cus, endantiaesed doluptur m dam aut molorate volorehen sitatur eproviduste volende nem dicta aperibus net verum cus riatum expel ipicatenis sed endantiae nditisvolupta ligenda doluptatiunt quam, sitatur doluptur quos ommolup tatur?

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Quiaeperi volupta doluptatiunt i auda pa cus in repudionem quamus et tatur? Quiaeper ommolup quamus et emieniet aut velluptam videlic in repudion pa cus ieniet hariam vero cus, audit videlic velluptam aut audit optatquatem expla doluptatur hariam vero cus, doluptatur autatqui dolori ut facepro tem expla optatqua autatqui dolori ut facepro

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Quiaeperi auda ommolup tatur?

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