VOL. 40, NO. 24
JUNE 17 - 23, 2019
Source Lunch
Karen Dethloff, VP of facilities management, MetroHealth Page 23 DEVELOPMENT
Big service expansion is set for Ohio City
Akron
CLEVELAND BUSINESS SPORTS BUSINESS
STATION BREAK?
Binary Defense surges amid cyberthreat awareness. Page 20 MANUFACTURING
The fifth Smucker has made his mark
By Stan Bullard
By Dan Shingler
sbullard@crain.com @CrainRltyWriter
dshingler@crain.com @DanShingler
A jaw-dropping expansion of the Special Improvement District providing clean and safe services in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood will expand its borders far beyond the West Side Market’s immediate vicinity. Approval of the plan by 72% of the affected property owners means the expanded district will stretch south to Detroit Avenue and then west to West 33rd Street and west on Lorain Avenue to West 50th Street, the western edge of the Ohio City Inc. neighborhood development group that is orchestrating the effort. Legislation to expand the district is pending before Cleveland City Council and is backed by Kerry McCormack, the councilman whose Ward 3 includes Ohio City. More than 215 property owners are affected by the plan — and would share its costs. Ashley Shaw, director of neighborhood planning and economic development at Ohio City Inc., said the nonprofit had debated where to put the western boundary of the Lorain expansion as multiple businesses have gone into operation the past few years on the avenue and new developments have opened up. “Do we stop at Fulton Road? Do we stop at West 41st Street? Do we stop at West 50th Street?” Shaw said the petitioners asked themselves about the expansion, which coincides with the renewal of Ohio City’s current SID. “We kept getting calls from people further west asking to be included until we found ourselves at West 50th Street.” A big factor in that, she said, was that St. Ignatius High School and the Urban Community School — which both have large campuses within the expansion area — both bought into the plan.
So far, so good for Smucker 5.0. That would be Mark Smucker, the fifth generation of his clan to serve as CEO of Orrville’s famous J.M. Smucker Co., which has grown from a jelly- and jam-maker into an all-around food giant. Since taking Smucker over three years ago, Smucker has altered the company’s product mix while significantly amping up and reorganizing its marketing efforts. He now says he’s got the company about where he wants it and in a position to grow. “It took three years … but we surprised ourselves with how quickly we were able to do it,” said Smucker, who took over as CEO on May 1, 2016. The company grabbed headlines with some of its transactions, which Smucker said were transformational by design as the company shifted its product mix. In April 2018, Smucker announced it was purchasing Ainsworth Pet Nutrition, a premium pet-food maker with products such as Rachael Ray Nutrish pet foods, in a $1.9 billion transaction. Then, in July 2018, Smucker announced it was selling its baking business to a private equity firm for $375 million. That unloaded some famous legacy brands — including Pillsbury, Martha White and Hungry Jack — and took the company out of a major food category. It’s all about knowing and meeting consumer demand and preferences, Mark Smucker said. “We’re making sure we were in the right categories,” he said. “That’s why we upped the ante in pet and acquired another high-growth brand we can bolt into our pet business. That’s the Rachael Ray Nutrish brand. And the second thing is we divested the baking business, because the consumers were shifting away from baking — doing much, much less of it — and that category was in decline.”
SEE OHIO CITY, PAGE 22
Jim Donovan and Doug Dieken form a popular team on Cleveland Browns radio broadcasts. (WKYC)
With limited number of Cleveland contenders, Browns are entering last year of unique radio deal By Kevin Kleps kkleps@crain.com @KevinKleps
The Cleveland Browns — win or (more often than not) lose; good or (more often than not) bad — are frequently the talk of the town. And for the last six years, team-branded programming has been almost as omnipresent as a quarterback debate or draft-related discussion. That likely won’t change, but the Browns’ radio home could, depending on how things play out in the coming months. The unique radio rights deal that the Browns struck in 2013 with CBS Radio (now Entercom Communications) and Good Karma Brands is set to expire after the 2019 season. At stake are about 1,000 hours of annual programming, including “Cleveland Browns Daily,” a twohour show that has become a key asset for the team. The Browns, according to sources, are still exploring
Entire contents © 2019 by Crain Communications Inc.
their options and haven’t yet solicited proposals for programming that is split by Cleveland’s two all-sportstalk stations: WKNR-AM, 850 and WKRK-FM, 92.3. The 2013 deal produced the NFL’s first game-day triplecast, with WNCX-FM, 98.5 (like WKRK, an Entercom affiliate) joining ESPN Cleveland and The Fan as a flagship station. It also expanded “Cleveland Browns Daily” to two hours, moved the show to an early afternoon time slot (1-3 p.m. on ESPN Cleveland), added a coach’s show and other shoulder programming, and generated a combined six hours of team-affiliated preand postgame shows. By all accounts, the radio deal is team-friendly. The Browns, according to sources, get the vast majority of the advertising revenue. In return, there isn’t a large rights fee, which puts the onus on the club and its partners to sell a product that was coveted during decades of losing and could be nearing an apex with the likes of Baker Mayfield, Odell Beckham Jr. and Myles Garrett. SEE BROWNS, PAGE 19
Focus: Prep and Parochial schools << Teaching
the next entrepreneurs. Page 12 Welsh Academy readies for launch. Page 16
P001_CL_20190617.indd 1
SEE SMUCKER, PAGE 21
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