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“THIS IS ALL SORT OF MY VISION FOR THE NEIGHBORHOOD, THAT MUSIC SAVES THE NEIGHBORHOOD MUCH LIKE THEATER SAVED GORDON SQUARE.”

e times have certainly changed for the global maker of medical equipment, which once was revered as a leading innovator for products such as its powered wheelchairs, among other things.

Mixed-use project to ll Slovenian Workmen’s Home on East Sidehill to climb for medical manufacturerequipment

Invacare investors look to chart a turnaround

BY JEREMY NOBILE

“ is is all sort of my vision for the neighborhood, that music saves the neighborhood much like theater saved Gordon Square,” said Barber, referring to the impact of the Cleveland Public eatre on the Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood across town.

Owners aim to jazz up historic complex

BY MICHELLE JARBOE

Before it was the target of a federal consent decree, before it posted repeated nancial losses and before its stock tanked to less than $1, Invacare Corp. was a powerhouse in its highly regulated and potentially lucrative eld.

In May, the 2-acre property at 15335 Waterloo Road changed hands for $700,000. e buyer is a company owned by ve investors, including Cindy Barber, co-owner of the Beachland Ballroom, a venerable music club that occupies a former Croatian social hall down the street.

See JAZZ on Page 20 See INVACARE on Page 23

For 90 years, the Slovenian Workmen’s Home in Cleveland’s North Collinwood was a gathering place, a cultural center where families dined, bowled and played balinca, or bocce.

But there is a steep hill to climb to reach that point.

The Slovenian Workmen’s Home opened in 1927 and was owned by members of the Slovenian community until 2017. Now it’s the subject of a redevelopment e ort led by investors including Beachland Ballroom co-owner Cindy Barber and booking agent Eric Hanson. MICHELLE JARBOE/CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

VOL. 43, NO. 34 l COPYRIGHT 2022 CRAIN COMMUNICATIONS INC. l ALL RIGHTS RESERVED NEWSPAPER CRAINSCLEVELAND.COM I SEPTEMBER 19, 2022 CRAIN’S LIST Hospitals dominate Physician Groups list. PAGE 18 BUY NOW, BYE LATER : Cleveland’s athletes tend to rent rather than buy homes. PAGE 2 BUSINESSCLEVELANDCRAIN’SFORCHANGUS

Ohio investment rm Azurite Management, are trying to restore the Elyria-based manufacturer to its former heyday.

Now, activist investors, led by an

According to quarterly lings, through the rst half of 2022, Invacare has reported $390 million in sales (a 7.5% decrease compared to midyear 2021) but a net loss of $46 million (an 86% increase over midyear“No2021).matter how much they restructure or consolidate or how much they drop o products that are not pro table, they just can’t seem to make any money,” said Matt Mishan, an equity research

—Cindy Barber, co-owner of the Beachland Ballroom and the Slovenian Workmen’s Home

Now an eclectic group of investors aims to bring life back to the largely empty complex, which occupies the largest contiguous site in the Waterloo Arts District. ey’re tuning up plans for a mixeduse project centered on a jazz club that will ll the hall’s historic auditorium.

Northeast Ohio struggles to nd regional solutions PAGE 12

Steep

JOE SCALZO

In Manziel’s case, the Avon house was part of an attempt to clean up his life and resurrect his career. After a di

BUY NOW, BYE LATER

contract (extension) and think you have all that money right now.

“So many players move to Texas, Florida and California because they’re so accustomed to constant pretty weather,” Carly said. “We’re used to the four seasons, so we weren’t majorly shocked (by the winters), but we travel in February, Cleveland’stoo.”biggest asset? Its cost. In June 2021, ESPN ran a story about the sticker shock that awaits 49ers draft picks, with an average 1,800-squarefoot house in Santa Clara going for just under $2 million. e same house in Green Bay goes for $231,000. Cleve land’s housing costs are on the lower end of NFL markets, although the pan demic did make it harder for the Tellers to nd something they loved.

While it’s tempting for rich young athletes to customize their houses — OBJ’s home had a shoe closet straight out of Foot Locker — those touches rarely boost the resale value, and of ten drag it down, Kaufman said. Michael Jordan’s Chicago house has been on the market for 10 years, in large part because it was designed with him in mind, not the next buyer. People buy houses because they like the house, not because they like the athlete who used to own the house, Kaufman said.

“I keep this place so nice,” Carly said. “We’re going to make money o it one day. at’s the goal. It’s a perk that Wyatt Teller lived here — look at me, I’m already trying to sell it — but we didn’t add a lot of Wyatt Teller to it. Anything we added, it added value.”

“He signed the dart board wall in the basement,” Dobroka said. “We jokingly say it’s the most valuable piece of the house.”

e NBA o ers a little more securi ty. ompson bought his lakefront house in Bratenahl for $1.9 million in 2015 after signing a ve-year exten sion. ( e home, which was often fea tured on E!’s “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” was sold for $2.5 mil lion shortly after it was listed.)

e Tellers realize that, which is why they’re not, say, installing a swimming pool shaped like Wyatt’s head. Outside of a few jerseys on the wall, there aren’t many indications that an athlete lives at the house, Carly said.

Former Cleveland Browns quarterback Johnny Manziel brie y lived in a three-bedroom colonial in Avon. | HOWARD HANNA

Wyatt and Carly Teller | COURTESY

Manziel took the same approach, although he didn’t have much time to make a footprint with his size 15s. at said, the man who made the “money sign” famous did leave one sign that he lived there.

Hot tub or country club?

Before Wyatt Teller emerged as an All-Pro guard for the Browns, he was just a fth-round pick trying to make the team in Bu alo. After getting drafted out of Virginia Tech in 2018, he signed a four-year deal worth $2.7 million with a $250,000 signing bo nus. He moved into an apartment in Hamburg, New York, about 10 minutes away from the practice facility in Orchard Park, and seemed poised to stick with the Bills, starting the sea son’s nal seven games. en, 10 days before the 2019 season started, he got traded to the Browns.

in a $1.25 million house he bought in 2015 and could sell once his contract ends after this season. Current Cava liers such as Darius Garland, Jarrett Allen, Evan Mobley and Donovan Mitchell are all signed for at least four more seasons on guaranteed con tracts, making buying more practical, but few stick around long-term. An derson Varejao still lives in Cleveland, and LeBron James has a mansion in Bath that he’ll one day have to take a bath on, but most former Cavaliers move to warmer climates after their careers are over.

Teller, “I was so focused on learning the playbook, I didn’t have time to look for an apartment. She was like, ‘What can I do for you?’ So I punted it to her.”

at’s not a problem for Beckham, who has made $82 million during his NFL career and who signed a veyear, $29 million deal with Nike in 2017. But the average player can’t af ford to own houses in multiple cities.

The ‘pro athlete e ect’

“We almost didn’t look at it,” Dobro ka said. “I don’t think we were turned o by the (Manziel) association. We just assumed that if the house was good for a 23-year-old Heisman win ner who partied too much, it didn’t make sense for two 30-year-olds with a 1-year-old boy. But when we stepped inside, it was a nice, quiet house. It showed a lot better because the bar was low. It wasn’t like there was a bunch of Natural Light cans.”

It’s just a nice house in a nice neighborhood that just happened to once belong to Johnny Manziel, and now belongs to a nice young couple with two children.

“It’s not like we were redoing the sink and found just over a kilo of co caine underneath,” said Ryan Dobro ka, a wealth adviser for Elios Financial Group and the house’s current owner, laughing. “I wish I could give you some colorful stories that we heard from the neighbors, but everyone said he was a gentleman. Quiet. No parties. e polar opposite of what you’d think, which might be why he needed to get out and go to Vegas.

While the Tellers aren’t looking to leave Cleveland anytime soon — “We love it here,” Carly said — they expect to move back to Virginia when Wyatt’s career is over. at’s pretty typical for the city’s pro athletes, who love Cleve land in the summer, late spring and early fall and … that’s it.

It does not have a grotto, ala Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion.

“While there is cachet to an athlete’s house, people aren’t willing to overpay for them,” he said. “It doesn’t add to the value. And if the athlete has personal ized it too much, that’s a problem. For the buyer, that might actually be a plus because you might end up with a lot of amenities, but you’re still only paying market value. e athlete might have spent all that money, and they’re not getting that money back, because it has no upside to the buyer.”

e NFL is a haven for renters, since the average career lasts 3.3 years, near ly two-thirds of a team’s roster turns over after two years, and few contracts are fully guaranteed outside of De shaun Watson’s ve-year, $230 million deal with the Browns. Most of the Browns live on the West Side in places like Westlake, Strongsville, Avon and Columbia Station, where Jarvis Landry and Odell Beckham Jr. both owned houses. OBJ’s house went on the mar ket in April for $3.3 million and was sold for $2,655,000 on Aug. 31.

Former Browns wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. lived in this house in Columbia Station during his Cleveland tenure. KELLER WILLIAMS

Former Cleveland Cavalier Tristan Thompson sold his Bratenahl mansion for $2.5 million in 2021. | CHESTNUT HILL REALTY

“Unfortunately, there are very few athletes with large, substantial homes in Cleveland,” said Adam Kaufman, a real estate agent with Howard Hanna who has worked with many of the city’s professional ath letes. “With the way sports work now — and it’s really changed in the last 10 years — they tend to invest in resi dences outside the city.

“It’s funny, but a lot of my friends think as soon as you’re drafted, you’re a millionaire,” said Teller, who signed a four-year, $56.8 million extension last November. “It took me three years to become a millionaire. ey see that

e Tellers’ story is typical. Cleve land’s sports teams are (understand ably) tight-lipped about their athletes’

Kevin Love also lives in Bratenahl,

Rent rst, buy later

“I was living in Virginia at the time, and neither of us had ever been to Cleveland, so we had no idea where anything was,” said his wife, Carly, who had just started dating Teller at theAddedtime.

sastrous rookie season that almost lit erally served as Manziel’s swan song, he moved out of his apartment at e 9 downtown in May of 2015 and paid $438,400 for the house in Avon.

housing situations, but renting is common, especially with the Browns and the Guardians, MLB’s youngest team. One source with the Guardians said Jose Ramirez might be the only player who owns a house in Cleve land. Manager Terry Francona, who is nishing up his 10th season with the club, famously rents an apartment two blocks from Progressive Field and either walks or rides a scooter to work. Most of the Guardians rent apart ments near Crocker Park, with a few others either downtown or in Trem ont. A lot of them choose to buy hous es in Arizona to be closer to the Guardians’ Goodyear complex.

e answer, as with so much in life: it depends.“Everysport is di erent,” Kaufman said. “But, rst of all, is the athlete sin gle or married? Because that’s the big gest thing. If he’s single, he wants to have fun. If he’s married, he wants to be in a neighborhood. With single ath letes, they often have people making their decisions, like agents or business managers or, a lot of the time, it’s the mom. If he’s married, the wife is driv ing the bus. It’s totally di erent.”

“NFL careers are short. You dream about playing for 10 years or even three years, since that’s when you get your pension. You hope to make money outside of football, but you only have so much time to make money. We’re blessed, but for a lot of guys, it’s tough.”

ere’s no hot tub in the living room.

“ ere was literally nothing to buy,” said Carly, who is due to give birth to their rst child in December. “We literally looked through this house and said, ‘We’ll buy it.’”

“I still don’t hear the end of that,” Carly said. “I still hear about how we’re 20 minutes away now.”

Joe Scalzo: joe.scalzo@crain.com, (216) 771-5256, @JoeScalzo01

Cleveland’s pro athletes more likely to rent than put down roots

“ e perception is that all the athletes sign contracts and buy multi-gazillion-dollar houses, and that’s just not accurate.”

In the spring of 2015, roughly a year after he was photographed swigging champagne atop an in atable swan, the 21st starting quarterback in New Browns history moved into a three-bedroom colonial in Avon that boasts a quarter-acre lot, a three-car garage, a nished basement and ac cess to both the Red Tail Golf Club and Hilliard Lakes Golf Club.

“It’s a pretty boring story.”

“I think I could get in my truck and be in the facility in 10 minutes,” said Teller, who now lives with Carly in a house in Westlake.

2 CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | S E PT EM BER 19, 2022 SPORTS BUSINESS

Manziel could well a ord to buy, having grown up with money before signing a four-year, $8.2 million con tract with the Browns in 2015. But the average NFL player makes much less coming out of college.

Justin Bieber’s guitar isn’t perma nently lodged in one of the walls.

Carly remembers calling the Browns’ o ces and asking, “Where do people live in Cleveland, Ohio?” She quickly found him an apartment in Olmsted Falls, near the practice fa cility in Berea. Most of Teller’s neighbors were of retirement age.

It’s also a pretty common story, at least in Cleveland. While the multi million-dollar houses owned by the likes of Tristan ompson and Odell Beckham Jr. have grabbed TMZ headlines in recent years, those are the exceptions in a town where pro athletes are more likely to put down security deposits than roots.

So, when it comes to the city’s pro athletes, what’s truth and what’s c tion? Who rents and who buys? East Side or West Side? City or suburbs?

Alas, little changed as Manziel boosted to every club in Cleveland except the Browns, who stunk during the season (they went 3-13) and cleaned house afterward. Manziel got his release in March. He listed the Avon house for $489,000 that spring and quickly sold it for $480,000. Two years later, Dobroka and his wife bought it for $457,000.

e emailed responses below have been edited for clarity and length.

e relationship between the busi ness community and the district has been part of the “DNA” since Gordon arrived, he said, but it has grown stron ger during his tenure as CEO, thanks to programs like PACE. Gordon, who joined the district in 2007 and became

“We need the new CEO to have the same dedication and child- rst focus as Eric, but with a greater focus on vocational education and hands-on technical training.” — Moore

this important work.” — Miller

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“In the 10-plus years that Eric has been leading the important work at CMSD, we’ve been fortunate to have collaborated with him on many ini tiatives to support the students in the district as we jointly prepared them for success in college and beyond. We have worked side by side in this e ort. I’m proud of the work that our teams have accomplished on behalf of CMSD students. e progress can be attributed to his collaborative na ture and absolute focus on improving the lives of his students and their families.”

“Eric is one of the most genuinely engaged, empathetic and forward ing-thinking leaders I’ve worked with. His passion for his ‘children’ is evident each time you hear him speak on their behalf. He has been a true partner in

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What has he been like to work with?

“Continue to be a thought partner, particularly with CSU 2.0, where we merged units across the campus to cre ate the College of Education and Public A airs. Here are more opportunities to bring collaborative thinking to solve ongoing challenges.” — Zachariah

“Very easy to work with. He has no airs about himself. at humility goes such a long way. We regularly met for breakfast, so that he had some time to give me, before his day started. He always responded imme diately to my text messages. He is such a great thinker, so it was such a wonderful time for both of us to think about future opportunities for col laborations — we are after all an aca-

How has the relationship between your company or institution and the district changed while Gordon has been leading CMSD?

What does your company or institution need from the next CEO?

“I hope that the next leader will un derstand the importance of maintain ing and furthering the special rela tionship between Tri-C and CMSD. Our long history of genuine collabora tion is critical to securing the educa tional opportunities all students need, the economic mobility advancement they deserve, and the community vi tality that we all are working hard to promote. Our values and missions are inextricably aligned, and I will do all that I can to be as helpful as I can to my current partner and the next lead er through this transition.” — Michael Baston, president of Cuyahoga Com munity College

Gordon said, when he arrived in Cleveland, that he realized the city and its business community were unique. Businesses in the city knew the educa tion system was a “driver of economic development from day one,” he said. Other cities tend to treat education as just one area to support through philanthropy, alongside other needs like poverty and the elderly. But Cleve land has long recognized that the K-12 education system is more than that; it’s the city’s talent pipeline.

Crain’s asked members of the business and higher education community in Cleveland how their rela tionship with the district has changed in the past decade under Gordon’s leadership, as well as what they need from the district’s next leader.

Rachel Abbey McCa erty: (216) 771-5379, rmcca erty@crain.com

Eric Gordon has accomplished a lot during his time as CEO of the Cleve land Metropolitan School District. But he hasn’t done it alone. In fact, some of the most notable additions to the dis trict’s infrastructure during his tenure have relied on partnerships with the community.inkCleveland’s chapter of Say Yes to Education and the district’s Plan ning and Career Exploration program, both of which aim to prepare students for what comes after their K-12 educa tion and which need partners in the business community to bring the idea of di erent careers to life.

EDUCATION

— Karen Miller, provost of Cuyahoga Community College

CEO in 2011, will step down from that role at the end of the 2022-23 academic year.

“I did not have a signi cant rela tionship with CMSD before Eric Gor-

“In a single word — signi cantly. Today, most of our work in the teacher prepara tion programs involve CMSD given our primary focus on urban education. is hap pened only because Eric has played an important partnership role in the rela tionship with the college. Neither party came to the table with an agenda or preconceived ideas, but we tried to pro duce solutions together. ere are many examples of existing work that have been developed due to this think ing. Today CMSD’s relationship with CSU spans programs across the entire campus. One important reason is that the leadership in both organizations (Eric in particular) understand the im portance each of us play in the larger contexts of economic development for our region and its impact on the day-today work of its citizens.” — Sajit Zacha riah, vice provost and dean of CSU On line at Cleveland State University

Gordon

don’s tenure as CEO of the district.” — Dan Moore, president and CEO of the Dan T. Moore Co.

“Eric has been a dedicated, hard-working, child-focused leader, speci cally successful at providing a college opportunity to a greater per centage of CMSD students. Our com pany and our nonpro t entity, Work room Program Alliance, have been focused on encouraging vocational education, providing technical-based training to both prepare students for a successful career and also help source talent for the voracious appetite of a manufacturing community in dire need for new, technically trained em ployees. In some areas of Cleveland, the unemployment rate is between 30% and 50% for our younger citizens, while at the same time there has never been a larger demand for well-trained employees. is is a problem for many metropolitan areas, but is more im pactful in Cleveland because such a large component of our economy is manufacturing-based.” — Moore

demic enterprise!” — Zachariah

Partnership, collaboration part of Eric Gordon’s mark on CMSD

“ e rm is exploring new locations as it has outgrown its current space, which it has occupied since 2004,” Hyser wrote in the letter to council that Faber-Castell would take about half of a proposed 260,000-square-foot ex building. Flex buildings typically are home to both substantial o ces, as well as warehouse space.

Valley View Mayor Jerry Piasecki said in a phone interview that he was disappointed that Faber-Castell executives did not reach out to him directly to discuss their goals and concerns. He said the city tried to retain the company through working with Faber-Castell’s representatives and developers with property in his city. But the e orts did not bear“We’llresults.besorry to see them leave, if that’s what they do,” Piasecki said.

Hyser declined to comment on the o ered incentives. She said the city does not know the status of negotiations between the company and the proposed developer of the Rio Nero Faber-Castellbuilding.did not reply to ve requests for comment by Crain’s deadline on ursday, Sept. 15.

e building that Faber-Castell might occupy is proposed by Indexo Properties and is pending before the Independence Planning Commission.Faber-Castell is a gem for any city that lands it, as companies typically look at multiple sites, buildings and communities when they weigh a potential property play. Such tactics also might be part of securing a better lease with its existing landlord.

END OF AN ERA: Eric Gordon, who joined the Cleveland Metropolitan School District in 2007 as its chief academic o cer and became CEO in June 2011, announced Monday, Sept. 12, that he would step down from that role at the end of the 202223 school year. Gordon said the school board set three goals for him at the start of his tenure: improve academic performance, bolster the district’s “organizational health” and restore public trust. He said he believes signi cant progress has been made on all. (See more, page 3)

BY STAN BULLARD

SILVER LINING: Developers of a planned 304-unit apartment complex in the Flats paid $1.4 million an acre for their project site. Public records show that Silver Hills Development Inc. of Shaker Heights and Columbus-based Edwards Communities shelled out $5.9 million for 4.17 acres on Scranton Peninsula. e land sits on the west side of the long-fallow peninsula, just south of the BrewDog brewpub. A separate but related transfer, of a 1.13-acre strip of land at the water’s edge, still does not appear in Cuyahoga County records. at long, narrow parcel is earmarked for a waterfront boardwalk or trail being discussed by an array of public and private partners. rough a joint venture, Silver Hills and Edwards are set to break ground in October for their project, called Silverhills at underbird. e apartments could open in 2024.

Stan Bullard: sbullard@crain.com, (216) 771-5228, @CrainRltywriter

Currentlycenter. located at a leased location at a multitenant building on Allen Drive in Valley View, Faber-Castell is weighing a potential move to Independence. e company is being o ered an income tax incentive package in nearby Independence, according to legislation Independence City Council approved on Tuesday,Faber-CastellSept.13. is considering space in a to-be-built structure, according to city documents. e proposed building is at the north end of Rio Nero Drive in the suburb’s industrial district. e street is o East Pleasant Valley Faber-CastellRoad.would move at least 81 employees, with a minimum payroll of $3 million annually, to the proposed structure, according to a letter that Jessica Hyser, Independence economic development director, led with enabling legislation at the council meeting.

NEW APPROACH: St. Vincent Charity Medical Center will end inpatient services in November, shifting its focus to outpatient care and, through the creation of a new nonpro t, a “whole-person approach” to serve community needs in Cleveland and, in particular, the city’s Central neighborhood. After more than 150 years as a medical center, St. Vincent will transition into an ambulatory health services provider. e transition is expected to be complete on Nov. 15. St. Vincent Charity Medical Center expects to retain about 100 caregivers, including clinical and nonclinical sta . e human resources team from University Hospitals will be on-site beginning this week to conduct job fairs and o er opportunities to the 600 a ected employees. Medical residents are invited to move to UH, which has been a partner for clinical rotations in recent years.

e proposed incentive would allow the company to recoup 37.5% of the income taxes collected by the company for its employees. e in-

centive would run for a total of eight years, from 2024 to 2033.

Independence pencils in incentive for arts supply rm headquarters

ists and people who prize writing instruments, including fountain pens. e family-owned company, which dates to 1761, acquired Creativity for Kids in 1999 and subsequently moved its U.S. headquarters here.

WORK OF ART: e Artcraft Building, a hulking historic anchor in Cleveland’s Superior Arts District,

THE WEEK

Creativity for Kids sells boxes of arts and crafts and other materials for children and educators. Two Cleveland women, Phyllis Brody and Evelyn Greenwald, founded it in 1976 and based it on the idea of enhancing the power of creativity in children’s lives. Today, distributors and major retailers sell the company’s products.esite that may become Faber-Castell’s next home is a 38acre parcel controlled by Indexo, which has owned the land since at least 2002, according to Cuyahoga County land records. Tax bills go to the headquarters address in Independence of DiGeronimo Cos., best known as the operator of Independence Excavating Co.

The Artcraft Building anchors the eastern edge of the Superior Arts District, just outside of downtown Cleveland. MICHELLE JARBOE/CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

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has been sold to a major player in the fast-changing neighborhood. An investor group led by Ron Leonhardt Jr., the CEO of CrossCountry Mortgage, bought the Superior Avenue property. e transaction didn’t appear last week in public records, but both the seller and buyer conrmed that the deal is done. e purchase price will remain a mystery, at least for now. e transfer was structured as an entity sale, in which a buyer acquires a limited liability company that holds the real estate rather than purchasing the property outright. e 260,000-square-foot Artcraft Building is roughly half-empty and in need of extensive repairs, including new windows. e onetime textile building is likely to become apartments as part of a wave of redevelopment activity along Superior Avenue east of downtown.

e company is well-known to art-

Faber-Castell USA, the U.S. unit of the Stein, Germany-based company known worldwide for ne pens, art supplies and its Creativity for Kids operation, is in the hunt for a potential new headquarters and distribution

Kim Palmer: kpalmer@crain.com, (216) 771-5384, @kimfouro ve

Speci c policies are needed to incentivize companies not to throw out usable food waste, Sridhar said, and the city needs to create those policies. “Policy makes the eco nomics feasible, and from there marketplaces are created. ese businesses need to have a market, need market guarantees for growth,” she added.

bor and transportation, they will most often lose money with purchasers who don’t want to pay a premium for organic produce,” Diamond said. “It’s more feasible just to leave it in the elds.”

SEPTEMBER 19, 2022 | C R AIN’S CL EVE LAND B USIN E SS 5 Subscribe FOR FREE : CrainsCleveland.com/enewsletters STAY IN KNOWTHE with Crain’semail newsletters For over thirty years, the team at Sequoia Financial has been assisting clients craft personal financial plans that achieve their unique goals. Simply put, we’re here to help. SEQUOIA-FINANCIAL.COM | 440 473 1115 Investment advisory services offered through Sequoia Financial Advisors, LLC, an SEC-registered investment advisor. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply a certain level of skill or training. More information about Sequoia can be found here: https://adviserinfo.sec.gov/ SCAN THIS TO SCHEDULE A MEETING COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE SERVICES LEE & LEEASSOCIATESCLEVELAND GOVERNMENT

In addition to the school program,with the circular economy grant Diamond plans to help Garden of Flavor, one of the companies in the Central Kitchen incubator, collect and properly store the leftover pulp from the company’s cold-pressed, organic juices, eventually to be used as an ingredient in another company’s product.“ebyproduct of the juices is really nutri ent-rich,” said Diamond, who reached out to other Central Kitchen members to nd an end user, possibly a dog food or natural body product com pany, for the pulp. “We are working with several di erent entrepreneurs right now who are testing out di er ent uses and testing out di erent formulas,” he said.

Using compost or irregular food is not a new concept but is part of an overall circular economy, which continually looks for ways that waste can become a commodity for the local business community or an input to help diversify local supply chains.Elements of the circular econo my have been part of the city’s cli mate action planning for a number of years, said Sarah O’Keefe, the city of Cleveland’s director of sus tainability. “It’s not that we were not doing these types of things al ready. What we are doing now is trying to nd the best practices and

After talking to Ohio farmers with this problem, Diamond came up with a plan to buy the unused or ganic produce — carrots, sweet potatoes and zucchini — and transport the harvest to Central Kitchen, where the food is processed, packaged and sold to area schools at a steep

have these conversations in the public eye, because it’s also an op portunity to determine what can be done on the policy side and share lessons learned with others in a very public way,” she said.

e city is looking for best prac tices for composting and the most e ective way to divert food from land lls by nding ways to make it us able in a healthy and safe way so that, O’Keefe said, “We do not waste all of the energy used growing, trans porting and bringing food to mar ket.”Programs like the one at the West Side Market, coupled with inten tional public policy incentives, are key for a circular economy to thrive, Sridhar points out.

A full circular food network will also require the re-evaluation of municipal food safety regulations that prevent businesses from do nating or selling excess edible food to local charitable organizations.

“ e farmer can go in the elds, harvest all of it and take it to an auc tion to sell it, but after the cost of la-

Centraldiscount.Kitchen

is year, as part of a plan to expand a farm-to-school produce program, Diamond purchased equipment so sta does not have to wash, peel and cut everything in the thousands of pounds of produce by hand. He now plans to expand the farm-to-school produce program to 10 select schools in Cleveland, starting this spring.“e

Local governments can wield purchasing power to stimulate food waste markets by buying food and goods from these circular com panies and providing incentives to other organizations to do the same, all the while spotlighting those sus tainable companies, she said.

Finalists will receive at least one year of free mentoring from SCORE Cleveland and will have the oppor tunity to seek additional no- or low-interest nancial through HFLA of Northeast Ohio.

Food waste

O’Keefe points to the city’s food waste diversion and composting initiative, helmed by local com posting business Rust Belt Riders at the West Side Market, as a program woven into the city’s goal of stimu lating local food production and reducing waste.

—Divya Sridhar, CNP’s director of climate resiliency and sustainability and project manager for Circular Cleveland

new funding has allowed us to process more vegetables and get more farmers into the program,” Di amond said.

KIM PALMER

Food waste diversion is a ‘ripe opportunity’ for new program

Diamond

Also, in October three $10,000 Circular Cleveland Business Incu bation grants will be awarded, in partnership with the Small Busi ness Administration’s SCORE Cleveland, to three new or startup business concepts or rms cen tered on a product or service that reduces waste in the business, in dustrial or community sector.

is one of two re cipients of $30,000 Circular Cleveland Transition Grants, aimed at supporting established businesses to launch new products or services related to the circular economy.

“With a circular economy, we look at the production cycle and see its ‘waste ow,’ and identify places where there are opportunities for improvement and identify the play ers, including the people who need those products,” Sridhar said.

About 413,600 tons of food are consumed every year by Cleveland households, producing about 33,950 tons of waste. Only about 3,900 tons of that waste will be reused as fer tilizer, meaning food waste presents a “ripe opportunity” for both the economic development and sustainable goals of a circular economy, noted Eric Diamond, CEO of Central Kitchen, a food hub located in Cleveland’s Midtown neighborhood.“ismonth alone, we will use 4,000 pounds of agricultural prod ucts that would have otherwise rotted in the elds, and that is just because there previously was no end user,” said Diamond of the nonpro t kitchen that helps incubate local food startups, including Cleveland Bagel and Cleveland Kraut.

Ohio farmers leave thousands of pounds of organic produce in the eld every year, he said, sometimes because it is not aesthetically pleas ing for that farmer’s single customer, in the case of high-end grocery stores or restaurants, or from lack of demand due to an overabundant cropWhateveryield. the speci c reason for not harvesting the produce, the problem is that there is no identi ed, dependable market for that food, Diamond said.

Public policy

Developing a system that keeps viable products out of landfills and in the economy, while reducing de pendency on the use of new raw materials, is the goal of the city’s new Circular Cleveland program — a partnership between the city and Cleveland Neighborhood Progress (CNP).With the help of funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Cleveland’s circular economy plan is ramping up with $100,000 avail able in economic development grants and the impending release of a 116-page road map for policymak ers, community organizations, residents and businesses to help identify markets in the local economy to divert and reuse what was once considered waste.

“It is fundamentally about capturing unused things,” explains Divya Sridhar, CNP’s director of climate resiliency and sustainability and project manager for Circular Cleveland.egoal is to shift the economic model we are familiar with by re considering what we throw away and instead getting those usable resources out in the market as a viable product, she said.

To help foster those new circular markets, the group created an in teractive map that identi es com panies providing or looking for di verted waste material.

“It is about creating new oppor tunities, because the old ways are not working anymore,” Sridhar said. “We cannot mine and use re sources forever. is type of sus tainable thinking helps cut down on emissions by strengthening the consumer-production relation ship.”

“IT IS FUNDAMENTALLY ABOUT CAPTURING UNUSED THINGS.”

Money well spent

wo institutions that are vital to the social and economic well-being of Northeast Ohio — the Cleveland Metroparks and the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority — will be on the ballot on Nov. 8, seeking voters’ support for their operations.

Will Friedman, president and CEO of the port authority, noted this summer that the organization is able to leverage local tax dollars at a 3:1 ratio with additional state and federal grant dollars, bringing more money into the community.

EDITORIAL

Executive Editor: Elizabeth McIntyre (emcintyre@crain.com)

We see this as a clarion reminder that excellence and ac cess are incompatible with expensive. We’ve been an elite training ground from day one, but we’ve never been — and must not accept being — an elitist institution, a place exclu sive to wealthy families. We must beckon the best young musicians in the world, no matter where those musicians happen to fall on the socioeconomic spectrum.

ese aren’t the easiest times to ask taxpayers for more money. In ation is putting a dent in household budgets, and there are enough warning signs in the economy to raise ques tions about what we’ll see in 2023. As a long-term investment, though, the Metroparks have been a gem — and will continue to be with voters’ support.

It’s worth thinking, too, about how the Metroparks system distinguished itself during the pandemic, maintaining many of its services during the worst of times as a source of recre

PERSONAL VIEW

It’s a modest ask, amounting to $2.72 per $100,000 in assessed value, and it goes toward maintaining funding for capital ex penses and general operations at the Port of Cleveland. e port authority receives a little less than $3 million from the levy each year. Voters recently supported levy renewals in 2013 and 2017.

You read that right: Cut tuition. We call it our “moonshot” mission. But it is no pie in the sky. At CIM, we think it’s man datory.Research suggests that, soon, no student pursuing a highly specialized education will pay for that degree. In CIM’s case, a tuition-based model intensi es the competition over a declining number of students, some of whom are not pre pared for conservatory training and not likely to become professional musicians. What’s inescapable is this: While CIM’s history is legendary, there is no future pathway for a tuition-centric, elite-level conservatory.

In both cases, it’s an easy call: Vote yes on these levies, which provide substantial bang for the buck. Among the easiest things you can do to help make Northeast Ohio a better place to live, work and play is to make sure the park district and the port au thority have the resources they need to continue their work.

at relationship is about to grow even deeper.

Sound o : Send a Personal View for the opinion page to emcintyre@crain.com. Please include a telephone number for veri cation purposes.

Read Crain’s online: crainscleveland.com

Cleveland Institute of Music’s moonshot: Cut tuition

We’ll start with Metroparks, which is proposing a 2.7-mill re placement levy that would be collected for 10 years. Voters last passed a Metroparks levy in 2013, with about 70% support. is levy would increase property taxes by about $27 per year for every $100,000 of home valuation. Passage would in crease homeowners’ contribution to the Metroparks to $94.50 from $67.38 per $100,000 of valuation and generate $12 million to $14 million annually.

Managing Editor: Scott Suttell (ssuttell@crain.com)

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.

In my view, and the view of our trustees, CIM’s conserva tory is too big — way too big. is, despite the fact that we’ve already begun shrinking by further raising artistic standards and decreasing net paid tuition by 25%. e strategic plan we approved in 2017 calls for us to raise the bar even higher while scaling down by almost 50% within the decade. ose are lofty goals.

L

e pandemic hit the port authority hard, of course, as com merce worldwide was disrupted. But it bounced back strong in 2021, with a 69% increase in tonnage across its docks. at year, it reported handling 6.9 million metric tons of bulk materials, such as iron ore and limestone, and 649,324 metric tons — the sec ond-highest gure of the last 10 years, slightly behind 2015 — of general cargo including steel, containers, salt and cement. Car go’s not necessarily a sexy business, but e cient ports are vital for businesses looking for ways to resolve supply-chain issues.

Our relationship with the Cleveland Orchestra runs further and deeper than any other of its kind in America. Not only do 35 members of the orchestra teach at CIM, but about one-third of its members also graduated from the school. Since 2015, more CIM grad uates have won seats in the Cleveland Orchestra than from any other school in the country.

is season, thanks to this new arrangement, our CIM Orchestra will appear at Severance Music Center — one of the greatest halls in the world — an unprecedented seven times, an incredible opportunity for our students.

ation and relief for a stressed public. Metroparks o cials’ strong and responsible management through a crisis further raises our con dence that they will continue to be good stew ards of taxpayer dollars.

Truth is, neither would exist if weren’t for the CIM’sother.graduates command the most celebrated stages in the world as soloists, chamber musicians and ensemble mem bers. ey compose award-winning mu sic and shape the future as teachers, ad ministrators and thought leaders.

Everyone in Cleveland knows the Cleveland Orchestra. Fewer realize how closely it’s connected to the Cleveland Institute of Music.

ess well-known, but no less important to the region, is the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, which is seeking renewal of a ve-year, 0.13-mill levy. If passed, the tax would take e ect in 2024.

Contact Crain’s: 216-522-1383

T

On the waterfront

PAUL HOGLE

e port authority estimates its work supports more than 20,000 jobs here, with signi cant spillover economic impact. e local economy is unimaginable without it, and voters should act accordingly by supporting the levy renewal.

See CIM, on Page 22

6 CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | S E PT EM BER 19, 2022

Metroparks says taxes derived from the levy will be used “to conserve the natural resources” and “maintain, repair, improve, plan, acquire, develop, protect and promote the use of the existing and future lands and facilities” within the park system, and to operate the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. e park system has been involved in an impressive array of conservation projects, implementation of trails and the opening of play spaces that serve residents from across the region. If you’re a user of the Gar eld Park Reservation (a big renovation started there in May), the Wendy Park Bridge and Whiskey Island Trail, the Lindsey Family Play Space at Edge water Park or many other amenities, you understand how the Metroparks system enhances the quality of life in Northeast Ohio. And even if you’re not, you’re bene ting from high-quality attractions that draw (and keep) people here.

Make a list of the things about Northeast Ohio that are truly elite — the things that delight residents on a daily basis and prompt most visitors to say, “Why can’t we have something as good as that?” — and this park system would be one of them.

Earlier this month, just as students were returning to CIM and the orchestra was starting a European tour, we an nounced a partnership through which CIM and the Cleveland Orchestra will share resources as never before.

Hogle is Music.InstituteClevelandCEOpresidenttheandoftheof

e knee-jerk response to a downsized future would be to make up the di erence by raising tuition. at, though, would not sustain excellence. e CIM Standard binds us not to higher prices but to higher achievement. A century ago, our bold founders in the Fortnightly Musical Club imagined a school where “every type of student” could excel.

Given this remarkable alignment, it makes sense that our two institutions also see the same big picture, that we both envision a similar future for classical music. Just as the or chestra is further shifting toward philanthropy as its primary revenue, CIM is looking to cut tuition altogether.

METROPARKSCLEVELAND

If you are nervous about change because you think your business might su er if you deviate from what you’ve always done, I understand. Change is hard. Don’t be afraid to try some di erent things out. You might be pleasantly surprised at the result and wished you would have done something sooner. You can alter the guidelines and still have appropriate measurements for success.

Being exible in your communications of the bene ts you o er so that they are attractive to the candidates you are trying to hire is imperative.

Business owners are wondering how in the world they are going to continue to operate if they accommodate one ... more ... thing.

e medical mart/Global Center for Health Innova-

It took the money and ran.

Is it possible to reconcile the needs of a business with the ever-growing desires of the current day employee?

Hours

Why exibility?

So many dress codes in employee handbooks are outdated to begin with, and now the post-pandemic world has set a whole di erent set of standards of what acceptable dress is.

tion issue reveals how issues get hopelessly entangled. Cuyahoga County should reach back — by lawsuit if necessary — to the Chicago rm MMPI that was chosen to operate the original med mart by then Democratic county commissioner Tim Hagan. Why? Because MMPI walked away with $32,854,730 for the med mart work, including a sweetheart monthly payment of $333,333 for 30 Andmonths.itleftan un nished job.

Yet, I saw media coverage — even among the best of the Plain Dealer reporters, and there are some excellent ones — was not tapping into what I saw happening.

e desire for exibility is here to stay. ose who gure out what exibility is desired within their organization and nd solutions of exibility that will appeal to their workforce will continue to stay ahead of the game.

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County should reach back for med mart money

Bene ts

A newspaper needs a daily working beat reporter to see what’s happening.

If your business has a busy time and a less busy time, create a plan to take advantage of each of those business needs that can also satisfy something within a person’s personal life.

Groups, outings, and parties, from 24-140 people in September and October.

For example, if it’s retail, you know December is the busiest month and the business can’t a ord to provide time o . In spring, an accountant’s world and excess hours may be unavoidable.

Hybrid, remote, on-site are all becoming standard terminology in job descriptions, essentially describing where the work is to be done.

We often overlook the people who may not have the

Is it me or are people becoming less exible with their demands for exibility?

But I decided near the end of last year that I would no longer write what I call “pieces,” that others might call columns. I was out of the mix.

SEPTEMBER 19, 2022 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS 7

As the world is morphing and transforming, we nd that we are at a point in time where exibility is the want of the Understandingday. how exibility plays into each workplace will require all businesses to venture into unfamiliar and uncomfortable territory. Working and managing in di erent types of environments will require individuals and businesses alike to become more exible.

Hours are an area of exibility that can really change the dynamics of morale. Some people get their best work done at 10 p.m. Why not let them do it then if the result is equal to or better than what you would expect?

If personal preference is the cause of very strict dress codes, perhaps it’s time to shake things up.

Di erent bene ts are important at di erent phases of one’s life. Selling a new college graduate on your dependent care program and even health care when they get to stay on their parent’s plan until age 26 may not get it done for you.

8 a.m. to 5 p.m. e time factor of work. Are you still abiding by the 8-5 mantra, without any really good reason? ere are certainly businesses that have to keep a xed start and stop time, but so many have the option to alterHoursthem.can be a game changer for some people who have obligations like daycare pickup, pets, a school dropo , a newborn at home, caring for a sick family member, or a hobby.

Seasonal

Dress codes

Many are working hard at trying to be exible in that regard. If you haven’t considered if remote or hybrid can work for some or all of your business, you may want to put this on your list to contemplate if it could work in your business.

Ironically, there are employees who are wondering the same thing about their workplace. ey don’t know how they are going to accommodate one more thing their employer is asking of them.

Here are ve versions of exibility that your business should revisit on a regular basis to move toward a more exible work environment:

Location

same familial obligations and simply have hobbies and outside interests other than work.

PERSONAL VIEW OPINION Learn

Clambake Season

It is easy to say thank you, create team building, and loyalty.

We can accomodate smaller parties by incorporating into another group. Speak to Chad about details and menu options.

Ament is the HR consultantdirector for Austin,anwhichConnectedHR,headquarteredCleveland-alsohasoceinTexas. how to ex in the workplace

If the business really has a legitimate reason of requiring a polyester suit, tie and jacket, certainly keep it.

Do you remember when being exible in the workplace meant that you could work an extra hour if you came in an hour late because you had to go to the dentist?

Some people love the concept of summer hours, and that might mean something di erent for each person, such as leaving “early” on a Friday or having a day o every other week.

Flexing, not your muscles, but the ability to o er exibility in the workplace, has transformed from a nice perk some organizations or managers o ered, to an expectation that most people aren’t willing to “ ex” on.

Figure out how to take advantage of the less-thanpeak times so that people have a little bit more breathing room when the needs of the business are less.

BY CHRISTINE AMENT

I started my rst reporting job in 1959 (in 1965 in Cleveland). A long time ago.

It is not easy to break that kind of habit.

Roldo ClevelandBartimole

While this might seem like a simple concept, consider how “ exibility” may mean something di erent to everyone. We are in a time where workplaces are being asked to be exible in order to accommodate every individual’s needs and desires.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

MICHELLE JARBOE

Delta Media Group CEO sees fertile ground for tech careers

Michael Minard wants to change the narrative around tech careers in Northeast Ohio. In 2000, he and three partners bought a Silicon Valley startup and moved the business to Barberton. at company, now called Delta Media Group and based in North Canton, was an early player in producing websites and other tech tools for the residential real estate industry.Minard, who is 50, grew up in Stark County. And he’s committed to growing Delta there.

at wasn’t always the case.

company called TigerFly, it was ailing. e dot-com bubble was bursting, and venture capital funding dried up.

“BEING FROM THIS AREA, I WANT HIGH SCHOOLERS, I WANT COLLEGE STUDENTS TO UNDERSTAND THE OPPORTUNITIES IN NORTHEAST OHIO FOR TECH. AND THEY STILL DON’T. AND THAT JUST FRUSTRATES ME TO NO END. TECH IS NOT JUST BOSTON OR CALIFORNIA OR OTHER AREAS.”

See CAREERS on Page 22

Twenty-two years ago, when a group of Northeast Ohio investors bought a West Coast

How smaller businesses can harness the power of the Industrial Internet of Things to stay competitive.

When you visit a real estate brokerage’s website to look for homes or receive an email from an agent about the value of your house, you might be clicking on one of Delta’s prod ucts. Some real estate companies use their own templates, o ering free websites to agents. But others rely on outside contractors,

like Delta or competitor kvCORE, for marketing, lead-generation, analytics and automation.Delta, now solely owned by Minard, doesn’t disclose nancial information. e compa ny’s platform has close to 60,000 active users — and thousands more who are signed up but don’t regularly sign on. Minard said the busi ness generates more than $10 million in annual revenues and is “highly pro table.”

PAGE 10

“Being from this area, I want high school ers, I want college students to understand the opportunities in Northeast Ohio for tech,” he said. “And they still don’t. And that just frus trates me to no end. Tech is not just Boston or California or other areas.”

Minard and his partners, including pub lisher Ernie Blood and real estate broker James Bray, bought the business and brought it home. ey saw potential in Delta’s tech nology, designed to take a bricks-and-mortar industry online, and in the company’s nascent relationships with some big-name clients.

8 CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | S E PT EM BER 19, 2022

—Michael Minard, owner and CEO of Delta Media Group

TECHNOLOGY FINDING CONNECTIVITY

An employee works at Delta Media Group’s o ce in North Canton. | DELTA MEDIA GROUP

Believingcountry.is the first step

What would you like the power to do?

These partners help women entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs of color establish and grow their businesses, create jobs and improve financial stability in local communities across the

We know that it takes more than a great idea to start and keep a business running. My teammates and I in Cleveland want to make sure every big believer has the opportunity to achieve and reach their goals.

at

Jeneen President,MarzianiBank of America Cleveland *“Minority Entrepreneurs.” Minority Entrepreneurs — U.S. Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship Bank of America, N.A. Member FDIC. Equal Credit Opportunity Lender © 2022 Bank of America Corporation. All rights reserved.

®

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In the last decade, more than 50% of all new businesses created were diverse-owned.* It’s why Bank of America has taken an innovative, industry-leading approach to help fuel growth by supporting mission-focused equity funds, Community Development Financial Institutions and Minority Depository Institutions, including IFF, Community Reinvestment Fund, USA and Accion Opportunity Fund.

We’re empowering entrepreneurs to take the next one

Owners of small and medium-sized rms need to know where to start

With technological transformation a critical facet of the region’s economic livelihood, the Cleveland-based Manufacturing Advocacy and Growth Network (MAGNET) is providing “lighthouse tours” for companies considering investing in the areworkers,”chines,sandnancepletecansupervisorstime-savingmachinelinkednizations.startingbasicoperationsimprovedownohostedBowdenWilloughby-headquarteredIIoT.Manufacturingrecentlyatourofitsfacilities,showinganinternet-connectedcount-timerusedtoreplacepartsandteamworkontheshopoor.MikeO’Donnell,vicepresidentofatMAGNET,pointedtomachinemonitoringasasolidpointfortech-mindedorga-Machinesensorsaretoscreensthatdeliverdataonpowerandeciency—afunctioncomparedwithwalkingtheshopoor.Ownersworriedaboutexpensespendabout$15,000onacom-system,withsoftwaremainte-runningthemacouplethou-dollarsannually.“ebenetisuptimeonma-especiallyifyoucan’tndO’Donnellsaid.“Sensorsagreatrststep.”

“ ere’s lots of noise around the marketplace, so it’s hard for small organizations to know where to begin,” said Nicholas Barendt, executive director of the Institute for Smart, Secure and Connected Systems (ISSACS) at Case Western Reserve University. “ ere’s also a perception that these solutions are expensive, which used to be the case. Now (the technology) costs less than adding a new employee to the shop Barendt,oor.”who also directs the Smart Manufacturing Innovation Center (SMIC) at Case Western, said companies unwilling to upgrade are facing an “existential threat” around their continued success. With the advent of IIoT, customers are demanding digitally powered operations and detailed data reporting that they can then send to their downstreamUnderstandingpartners.the standard Internet of ings (IoT) is the rst step in its proper utilization, industry observers said. In its simplest denition, the IoT describes networks of small, low-powered devices connected to each other and the internet. e IIoT refers to interconnected sensors and devices networked with various industrial applications. Examples include big data, machine learning and readinessingtionstalimited“Adoptingborers,whennessingaboutbusinessesof-mindIIoT’smentthatareterlinkeddecision-makingIndustryfourthcommunication.machine-to-machineeIIoTisanintegralpartoftheindustrialrevolution,dubbed4.0.Inthisspace,real-timeisgleanedfromin-devices.esemachinesfurtherabletoautomatetaskspreviouslyunconnectedequip-couldnothandle.However,advantagesareoftennottop-forsmallormedium-sized(SMBs)moreconcernedputtingoutresthanhar-thenewestinnovations.“ere’sacompetitionforfocusyou’redealingwithcustom-supplychainproblemsandla-shortages,”saidBarendt.thesenewtechnologiesiswhenyou’retryingtopayandkeepcustomershappy.”Fororganizationsseekingatransi-toIIoT,theSmartManufactur-ClusterledbyTeamNEOoersaassessmentfocusedon

Mike O’Donnell, vice president of operations at MAGNET.

“Ongoing monitoring services may not be obvious, so you have to break it down to dollars and cents,” said Green. “Like if I’m monitoring oil condition (in a machine), and see that I’m building particle contamination in the oil. What’s generating that? I can avoid machine downtime by taking action now instead of oughlater.”the advantages of the IIoT are seemingly contradicted by security concerns, owners have avenues they can take, said Barendt of ISAACS. For instance, a downloadable framework from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) consists of guidelines and best practices to manage risk. Another guide from the nonpro t Center for Internet Security provides additional advice on cloud serviceDevicesmanagement.suchasconnected cameras and collaborative robots are only going to become more prevalent across industries, meaning most SMBs will have to adjust apace to an ever-expanding digital age, said O’Donnell, the MAGNET o cial.

Contact Douglas J. clbfreelancer@crain.comGuth:

Nicholas Barendt, executive director of the Institute for Smart, Secure and Connected Systems at Case Western Reserve University.

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“ e worst thing you can do is put a sensor on everything without thinking about the details,” he said. “Businesses doing that will just get data on everything and make a huge spreadsheet to nd trends. en they give up because they can’t analyze the data.”

FOCUS TECHNOLOGY

Most equipment is going to need some level of connectivity in today’s Industry 4.0 era.

Scaling up around IIoT entails connecting additional sensors to an edge device where data is collected and processed. Edge devices have ports to connect to the internet and the cloud, allowing users to monitor several dozen machines along any number of performance parameters.

OEM systems integrator Kraft Fluid Systems lives on the supply side of IIoT, where customers can install sensors in machines to remotely observe their e cacy. Clients in agriculture or construction may need software updates on equipment as well, which Kraft engineers can access through a webbasedTraditionally,portal. customers would expect Kraft to accomplish these tasks on-site. Now companies are getting the same functionality via IIoT gateway hubs that connect sensors to cloud-based computing and data processing. Ambitious adopters are active in predictive maintenance, where data streams captured by devices enable owners to proactively replace parts even while their machines operate under normal working conditions.

Building for the future

actual machines are deployed. Additionally, digital twins take real-time data and apply this information to optimize performance.

Regardless of where companies are on their digital journey, having a plan is of the utmost importance, noted O’Donnell.

“Digital twins” represent an even higher level of IIoT technology, acting as virtual replicas of physical devices to run simulations on before

basic concepts and pilot project opportunities. Key indicators around digital maturity and workforce prociency can ideally put SMBs on the road to a full online transition.

One piece of this interconnected future is the Industrial Internet of ings (IIoT). As this technology grows, so are organizations in accelerating their processes. Yet, this innovative utopia is not the reality for many small and medium-sized businesses still learning the intricacies of the IIoT.

“In innovation, people get scared o by the newness,” O’Donnell said. “But when you ip it around, innovative companies are exciting places to work. Machines that don’t break down will help you bring in better talent.”

For owners, full-scale IIoT adoption requires knowing where to start, as well as education on how their enterprises can pro t from the technology, said industry experts interviewed by Crain’s.

|

IIoT’s relatively low cost of entry and immediately demonstrable return-on-investment are bene ts that nonetheless must be presented to owners in clear language, said Kraft vice president of sales and marketing Patrick Green.

Harnessing the power of the Industrial Internet of Things

Making PDF documents more accessible to every one inside and outside an organization also can bolster search engine optimization (SEO) e orts and improve organizational reputation, he said.

On the strategy page of its website, Tailwind says it makes equity invest ments of $25 million to more than $200 million in companies with enter prise value of $500 million-plus and EBIDTA (earnings before interest, tax es, depreciation and amortization) of $10 million to more than $50 million.

The former Bonne Bell building in Lakewood is the home of Equidox. CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS FILE PHOTO

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SCOTT SUTTELL

Needles

Equidox aims for equity in digital accessibility

working in services and software development, Needles said. Equidox over the next year plans to in crease the size of its workforce by about 50%, Needles said, with much of that growth being on the sales and marketing side of the operation.“eproduct — every body just loves it,” he said. “Now the goal is to make sure (potential customers) are aware of it.” He said he’s putting “an infusion of capital into the business,” though exactly how much he wouldn’t disclose.

Ryan Pugh, Equidox’s director of accessibility, said the company’s software uses automated machine learning tools that “simplify the most time-consuming aspects of PDF ac cessibility while providing the ability to edit the results to ensure full compliance.” Equidox also is developing automation projects to further re-

duce the time it takes to make PDFs accessible, according to Pat Needles, the company’s vice president of sales. e roots of Equidox trace back to the 2000s, when the Treasury De partment of Ottawa began working with a company called Capital Technology Partners to create a prototype software that could convert those PDFs into accessible HTML. Onix ac quired Capital Technology Partners in 2014 and continued to develop the product, a task that Equidox now is undertaking as a standalone busi ness.Needles looks to Onix as the model for how he will build Equidox.

One part of Equidox’s case to cus tomers, Needles said, is “about doing the right thing” and recognizing that “digital accessibility is part of inclu sion and making sure that everyone in an organization has an equal op-

Needles is CEO of Equidox Soft ware Co., which in August announced it has become an independent company following the July acquisition of Onix, a cloud IT services company, by New York private equity rm Tailwind Capital Partners. (Equidox had been operating within Onix but wasn’t part of the deal.) Tailwind did not disclose terms of the purchase of Onix, which has about 185 employees in the U.S. and an o ce in Toronto. Needles remains an equity partner in Onix and says he’s “very bullish” about the future of thatIncompany.aphoneinterview, Needles said Equidox, which provides software that helps make PDF documents ac cessible by everyone, including people who are sight-impaired, “was not in the Onix or Tailwind wheelhouse” but has strong growth potential as a standalone business. End-users of the technology include universities, government agencies, companies and other organizations. Equidox also provides automated batch-pro cessing software to universities, government agencies and other organizations that generate accessible PDFs on demand, the company said.

portunity to be part of the organization’s success.”

At Onix, he said, leadership built a culture of people “obsessed with cus tomer delight and satisfaction,” and that’s “the most important part of delivering excellent results.”

Tech entrepreneur Tim Needles, the co-founder of Onix Networking, has worked for years in the landmark Bonne Bell building in Lakewood. He’s still there — he owns the build ing, after all — but his work these days is with a di erent company.

Making documents more readily available to everyone also helps mitigate the risk of lawsuits re lated to digital accessibility, he said.

Needles said Onix, which has been in the Bonne Bell building, will leave theOnixspace.o cials as of Tuesday, Sept. 13, hadn’t responded to an inquiry about the company’s o ce plans.

Scott Suttell: ssuttell@crain.com, (216) 771-5227, @ssuttell

e company has about 30 em ployees at present, based in the Bonne Bell building and primarily

statement at the time of the acquisi tion of Onix that the deal was de signed to “accelerate the next phase of the company’s growth.” In that growth phase, Onix “will increase its focus on building out advanced service o er ings to complement its strong Work space and Google Cloud Platform practices, including signi cantly scal ing its technical consulting, applica tion development, data and analytics and managed services businesses,” Tailwind said. (O cials there did not respond to an interview request.)

Tailwind, for its part, said in a

Tailwind describes itself as a “mid dle market private equity rm invest ing in industrial and business services companies.” It says it “partners with experienced management teams and entrepreneurs to transform business es through organic growth initiatives, acquisitions, and operational and strategic investments.” Since its for mation more than 15 years ago, Tail wind said, it has invested in 51 portfo lio companies and more than 160 add-on acquisitions.

JAY MILLER

REGIONALISM

n August, after North Olmsted city council approved merging its emergency dispatch center into Chagrin Valley Dispatch, which serves 125,000 residents in 26 municipalities across Cuyahoga County, the council walked back the move.

I

At rst, the city disagreed. In a statement, May or Nicole Daily Jones said the move to join Chagrin Valley Dispatch would improve response times. “If, as mayor, I felt it was unsafe and a danger to our police o cers or residents in any way to move dispatch operations to CVD, we would absolutely not be doing so,” she said.

See SOLUTIONS on Page 14 BUSINESSCLEVELANDCRAIN’SFORCHANGUSIMAGES/ISTOCKGETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKGETTY

e city backed down after Fraternal Or der of Police Lodge 25, which represents the western suburb’s police o cers, and a group of citizens objected. e FOP said it had not been consulted and that the move would “a ect the safety of members of the police department,” but also dangerously a ect the safety of residents.

SPONSORS

A BUMPY ROAD: City leaders have been trying to think and plan beyond their borders for over a century. PAGE 16 INDIANAPOLIS EXAMPLE: Indiana’s capital shows how government and business can collaborate. PAGE 16

12 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | S E PT EM BER 19, 2022

CHARTING A REGIONAL VISION: Northeast Ohio needs an updated game plan for the future. PAGE 17

Northeast Ohio has grown up around Akron (top), Canton, Cleveland (middle), Lorain and Youngstown (above). Each of those communities has their own focus and identity. Each has its own suburbs, downtown shopping districts and colleges.

e Cleveland-Akron Combined Statistical Area of Erie, Lorain, Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Medina, Summit, Portage, Wayne and Stark counties is larger. e Mahoning Valley — Ashtabula, Columbiana, Mahoning and Trumbull counties in Ohio — is much smaller.

Hill was a member of Cleveland State University’s faculty for 30 years serving as dean of the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban A airs.

When I’m with her I’m confusedOutof focus and bemused

Oh, how do you solve a problem like Maria?

By law, Ohio House Districts nest within Ohio Senate Districts — three House Districts constitute a Senate District. e next step is to align Senate Districts with political-economic geography. U.S. Congressional Districts are then layered on top of the Ohio Senate districts

Ohio’s statewide elected o cials advocate for low taxes with vague references to the “Laf-

How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?

happens to rural Ohio? Rural and Appalachian Ohio each have specialized social and economic concerns. ey can bene t from being better connected to urbanized areas where jobs and markets exist. And districts can link rural counties that represent their unique circumstances.Howdoyou solve a problem like Northeast Ohio? You do it by creating coherent, nested, political-economic geography representing people where they work and live. en connect the vertical web of representation across levels of government from city hall to the U.S. Congress and invest in the future.

Ensuring that electoral jurisdictions nest so that representation also nests is critical to investing in political-economic regions.

the somewhat fuzzier boundaries of school districts because they are well-established service and taxing districts. People can tell you where they are from and where they work. And elected politicians know who they represent — and do so in terms of political geography. When these two views of reality do not meet, the economy and its region su er.

SEPTEMBER 19, 2022 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | 13

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And I never know exactly where I am

while respecting one-person-one-vote and maintaining the nesting principle. e U.S. Senate seats are already nested by the state’s borders.eresult is political alignment and representation of Ohioans by where they live and work.What

Northeast Ohio stretches from Ashtabula County to Erie County and wanders south to Wayne County, forming a portfolio economy with no one industry dominating. And the fundamental regional problem is a mix of lagging incomes, jobs that cannot support families, and persistent economic isolation, especially among African American and low-skill rural residents. Solving these wicked problems takes leadership money and government involvement. Yet, the regional economy, where people live and work, has no political standing.

e region tried to solve these wicked problems. Our thoughts were collected and analyzed by America Speaks. We chased after the Creative Class. And marketing tag lines were written, but none of them stuck.

Gerrymandering confuses who and what is represented. People understand the indelible lines of municipal and county government and

None of the usual regionalist nostrums have cracked the nut of regional economic development. e solutions to the core regional problems will not come from city-county consolidation or region-wide zoning because political support does not exist. Instead, the answer lies in recognizing the region’s political-economic geography and strengthening collaborative problem-solving.NortheastOhio is two loosely linked regions.

How do you solve a problem like Northeast Ohio?

fer curve” — which is quite the laugher. At the same time, policy advocates from the left point to California’s tax policies as the path to prosperity without acknowledging di erences in economic bases.

Whenever I hear regionalism mentioned in Northeast Ohio, I hear “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” from the “Sound of Music.”

City council districts nest within municipal lines, which rest within counties (excepting Columbus, which has eaten large parts of Franklin County and is now gnawing on Delaware County). Ohio House Districts should nest within counties as much as possible, and if they spill out, they should stay within an economic region while respecting constitutional norms.

BY NED HILL

Improving competitive assets of skill, quality of place and environment, and transportation is done by regions through collaboration and requires state government funding with support from the federal government. Unfortunately, gerrymandering prevents Northeast Ohio’s economic regions from becoming politicalTyingentities.political geography to economic geography can defeat the dead hand of gerrymandering. e second puzzle piece is nesting representation while respecting the U.S. constitutional requirement of one-person-onevote. e third is building a culture of cross-region collaboration that delivers services.

land Heights and May eld Heights and the villages of Gates Mills and May oseeld.collaborations remain im portant, and new ones continue to crop up, though the rate of adoption is not high, since residents tend to not want their public services disrupted. After a nancial review in 2016, the board of the Shaker Heights Public Library sys tem recommended a merger with the Cuyahoga County Public Library system. But the library’s board turned down the recommendations after a round of public meetings. Among the comments residents made was that Shaker’s two well-stocked libraries were among the reasons they moved to theButcity.the challenges facing com munities have grown more complex.

Brandy Carney, Cuyahoga County’s director of public and justice services, said the county has been working for nearly a decade to re duce the number of dispatch centers that handle calls made to 911.

‘Collaborate to compete’

study, “Northeast Ohio Economic Revenue Study” by the In stitute on Metropolitan Opportunity at the University of Minnesota, found that job and income growth in North east Ohio have trailed the United States and other comparable areas for decades. Furthermore, the region continues to consume previously un developed land despite the fact that its population is not growing. is meant that the ability to nance local public services varied dramatically from place to place. It also noted the region showed some of the highest rates of segregation by race and in come in the country.

In the civic and public space, beyond the service-delivery connections, there is a need for broader regional collaboration. e businesses and talent they need to grow are attracted to regions, and those regions have developed marketing e orts to promote themselves. at has been harder to develop in Northeast Ohio than in other parts of the Rust Belt that are built around a single metro politan area — around Chicago, Indianapolis, Milwaukee or Pittsburgh.

SOLUTIONS

But there have been e orts to think

Personal identity is one thing, though. And making communities or metropolitan areas work for the people in them, or to attract new people to them, won’t happen by consolidating emergency dispatch services or buying a T-shirt that says, “Northeast Ohio.”

“IF YOU WANT TO PISS OFF AN AKRONITE, TELL THEM THEY’RE FROM CLEVELAND. IF YOU WANT TO PISS OFF SOMEONE FROM CANTON, TELL THEM THEY’RE FROM AKRON.”

Communities in the county are free to choose how they handle dis patching, Carney said, but both the state and the county have created nancial incentives, mostly to help pay for upgrading equipment, to encourage consolidation.

Partnership, a chamber of com merce whose members are scattered across not just Cleveland, or even Cuyahoga County, but the counties that ring the city as well, put it another way: “If you have a T-shirt in your closet with ‘Cleve land’ on it, you’re a Clevelander,” he said.Chris ompson, a management consultant who works with com munity leaders on collaboration, was a bit blunter: “If you want to piss o an Akronite, tell them they’re from Cleveland,” he said. “If you want to piss o someone from Canton, tell them they’re from Ak ron.”LeBron James was almost as clear as ompson when he ex plained to GQ magazine in 2010 that he is not from Cleveland — he’s from Akron, 30 minutes south: “It’s not far, but it is far,” he said. “And Clevelanders, because they were the bigger-city kids when we were growing up, looked down on us, so we didn’t actually like Cleveland. We hated Cleveland growing up. ere’s a lot of people in Cleveland we still hate to this day.”

“Not just across layers of govern ment, but across sectors of society.”

“(T)here was no single, overarching entity charged with creating a plan for Cleveland and its neighbors in the Northeast corner of Ohio,” he wrote. “It is hard to imagine any sin gle entity that could take on the task.”

A unique region

—Chris Thompson, a management consultant who works with community leaders on collaboration

regionally.A2008

single core city. Where most of today’s compara ble regional economies — which grew up in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Chicago, Detroit and Pittsburgh, for example — Northeast Ohio has grown up around Akron, Canton, Cleveland, Lorain and Youngstown. Each of those communities — call them legacy cities — had their own focus and identity. Each had its own sub urbs, downtown shopping districts, and colleges and universities.

Or eld said, though, that other re gions have handled similar problems better. In particular, he wrote, regions that “coordinate land use and eco nomic development planning on a regional scale have consistently out-performed Northeast Ohio.”

Still, the problems are all the same.

“I think all these cities, these metro regions, are trying to gure out, how do you collaborate to compete?” said Bruce Katz, an urban policy expert who is director of the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University.

Nowhere is collaboration more important than in the Rust Belt, where employment, particularly in the major manufacturing industries, the historic backbone of the econo my of all of Northeast Ohio, fell dramatically and permanently.

In the business world, organizations respond to their need to lower costs and improve e ciency by consolidation and collaboration. Sometimes the moves, which are not always successful, consolidate operations within the business; sometimes it is through joint ven tures or mergers.

14 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | S E PT EM BER 19, 2022

And they all had manufacturing economies that competed interna tionally. Akron grew strong because of the rubber industry; Canton made axle bearings and safes and bank vaults; Cleveland had a broad manufacturing base; Lorain and Youngstown had steel mills.

In the economy of the 21st century, collaboration means thinking and working as a region — creating more e ective planning to attract new businesses and talent and ad dressing urban sprawl and uncoordinated land use. It also means nding ways to pay for housing, education and environmental redevelopment.Allthisin a region unlike most others, built around ve cities, not a

In 2013, the county had 48 of what are formally called Public Safety Answering Points or PSAPs. It now has 20. Carney said the county had set a goal in 2013 to re duce that to four by 2023.

Ethan Karp is president and CEO of MAGNET: The Manufacturing Advocacy and Growth Network in Cleveland, which advocates for manufacturing in the area.

Katz has made numerous visits to Northeast Ohio over the years. In 2013, in his book “ e Metropolitan Revolution,” Katz reported that in Northeast Ohio, he saw metro areas with similar populations and econo mies, but he could see no e ort to work together to solve their common, di cult challenges.

From Page 12

“ at’s not what happened, but (reducing the number of centers) makes sense for the communities and the county,” Carney said.

Even when people left for the suburbs, they took their identities with them and held on to them tightly.Ethan Karp, president and CEO of MAGNET: e Manufacturing Advocacy and Growth Network in Cleveland, which advocates for manufacturing in the northern part of Ohio, said the people in the com munities his organization serves feel strongly about their hometowns.“You’ve got the parochialism of just having the di erent cities with di erent identities that all have pro vided wonderful philanthropy and infrastructure and place-making, but also left people with an identity that their grandparents had,” he said. “So that’s a problem, the way that the politi cal power centers have Greaterdentthemselvesarrangedhere.”BaijuShah,presiandCEOoftheCleveland

at kind of inter-city collabora tion is not new and takes many forms. ey are what academics call service-delivery collaborations and include how the re depart ments in two small, adjacent suburbs respond to major res on their neighbors’ streets or how communities link together for sewage treatment services. It also includes school districts like the May eld City School District, which serves the students in the cities of High

Baiju Shah is president and CEO of the Greater Cleveland Partnership, a chamber of commerce whose members are scattered across Northeast Ohio.

“A variety of factors are responsible for these trends,” wrote author Myron Or eld. “Some, like major declines nationally in manufacturing sectors that were once the core of the re gion’s economy, are largely beyond the scope of local policies. And others, like the highly fragmented nature of local governance in the region, are rooted in long-standing tradition.”

BUSINESSCLEVELANDCRAIN’SFORPHOTOSCHANGUS

In 2021, JobsOhio invested $271.4 million to attract business growth to Ohio.William Koehler, CEO of Team NEO, believes his regional organiza tion, and the JobsOhio money it has to invest, makes sense for the communities within the region.

A holistic region

Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA) runs plans for Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain and Medina counties; the Akron Metropolitan Area Transportation Study (AMATS) serves Summit and Portage counties; the Eastgate Council of Governments for Trumbull and Mahoning; and the Stark County Area Transportation Study (SCATS) for Stark County.

Jay Miller: jmiller@crain.com, (216) 771-5362, @millerjh

Koehlersaid.said Team NEO was talking with a software development rm that was looking for a site for at least 150 software developers. In the conversation, the company was sur prised that Team NEO’s pitch came as close as it did to matching the company’s needs; Team NEO’s data didn’t match what the company had put together for the region.

In its ongoing monthly Forum series, Crain's Cleveland Business will explore issues at the intersection of public policy and business.

A 2018 report from the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C., nonpro t research group, agreed that places like Northeast Ohio need public o cials and the leaders of civic institutions to better collaborate.

In 2011, for example, several orga nizations came together to create the Northeast Ohio Sustainable Commu-

“To match the scale of what is needed and to make regional mar kets work better for more people, leaders must help workers gain skills and nd jobs, connect employers to quali ed workers, support business expansion and quality job growth, modernize transportation and freight networks, and create a variety of housing options,” the report said. “No single mayor or leader can e ec tively move these levers.”

When a business is looking for a site for an operation, it may look across a wide geography for the loca tion with the right piece of land in an area that can supply it with talented workers. It may also need to be near potential suppliers and good access to highways. Koehler said Team NEO can nd the best sites in the 18-coun ty region to show that business.

e Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission handles federal trans portation spending for 10 counties around Pittsburgh.

About this series

e organization’s role grew stron ger in 2011 when then-Gov. John Ka sich created JobsOhio, a nonpro t that would use state liquor pro ts to use as incentives to attract business growth to the state and named Team NEO as one of six regional partners around the state. Until JobsOhio came along, Team NEO focused only on attracting businesses to the region, leaving local chambers of commerce and public de velopment corporations to help exist ing businesses in their areas expand.

e Northeast Ohio

Stagnant population growth

In my time in being in the civic world, we’ve had parochialism, we’ve had personalities that are very focused on their boundaries. I don’t believe that that’s true anymore.”

Find the complete series online at CrainsCleveland.com/Forum

One problem is that there is no single de nition of what comprises the region of Northeast Ohio. (See related story page 16.)

SEPTEMBER 19, 2022 | C R AIN’S CL EVE LAND B USIN E SS | 15

“We look at the various logistics assets around a site; we look at the technology or research and development assets that are a reasonable distance from the site; we look at the labor pools, usually about a 30-minute drive,” he

e numbers used by “Vibrant NEO 2040,” but updated to include the 2020 U.S. Census data, bear out thatNationally,conclusion.the population of the United States grew 17.1% between 2000 and 2020, from 281.4 million to 329.5 million, according to census numbers.Northeast Ohio has lagged the country considerably. In 2000, the ve-county Cleveland area — which includes Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain and Medina counties — had a population of 2,148,143. e 2020 U.S. Census counted 2,043,807 in the metro area, a decline of 104,336 peo ple. But during that time, the population of Medina County grew from 151,095 to 180,912, an increase of 19.7%. In the meantime, the popula tion of Cuyahoga County declined from 1,393,978 in 2000 to 1,227,883 in 2020, a decline of 11.9%.

Sprawl, she said, is the No. 1 threat to the vitality of the region.

nities Consortium (NEOSCC). ey won $4.25 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to participate in a program to help regions create more connected communities across a 12-county region that stretched from Lorain to Ashtabula and from Akron to Youngstown.estudythe group produced in 2014, “Vibrant NEO 2040,” argued that cities, suburbs and even rural farm communities in Northeast Ohio need each other to tackle the major issues they will face in the years ahead. It, too, recognized that a key factor is that while people for de cades have been leaving center cities and building new communities on former farmland, the number of peo ple in the region hasn’t grown, leaving behind aging core cities.

By comparison, it takes four MPOs to handle transportation planning for the 10 most populous counties in Northeast Ohio — though all coordi nate with the Ohio Department of Transportation.

Civic leaders, primarily chambers of commerce, did help bring together a broad swath of Northeast Ohio in 2002, when they formed, and agreed to nance, Team Northeast Ohio to help attract new businesses to an 18-county region that would run from Ashtabula County on the east, Erie County on the west and Tuscara was to the south. It’s a region that accounts for roughly 40% of Ohio’s economic output.

“Fragmentation has its challenges, whether you’re talking about eco nomic development, companies or government,” he said. “ e more fragmentation you have, the less abil ity you have to see what is happening with the whole region.”

Joanna Ganning, an associate professor of economic development in the College of Education and Public A airs at Cleveland State University, said she believes one of the reasons businesses are having di culty nd ing workers is that some job seekers, who rely on public transportation, can’t get to the jobs.

“We have spread out; it’s the same number of people, but we’re spread out over a vastly larger area of land,” she said. “And somehow, we magi cally expect (the transit agencies) to cover that with no new resources. We don’t have more people, we don’t have more jobs. We just keep build ing factories farther away and then wonder why this system doesn’t work the way we want it to.”

For example, the planning for how federal transportation dollars are spent is handled by what are called metropolitan planning organiza tions, or MPOs. e Southeast Michigan Council of Governments, for example, controls federal transportation spending for a six-county region that runs from the Ohio border with Toledo on the south, through Detroit, to Port Hu ron, along Lake Huron on the north.

Similarly, population in the Akron metropolitan area, which includes Portage and Summit counties, went from 694,960 in 2000 to 701,449 in 2020.at pattern of development, the NEOSCC report said, will not gener ate su cient new tax revenue to maintain existing services in a sprawling region in the years ahead. It noted that the 12-county region has 400 local governments that have their own re, police, trash collection and street repair departments. e sprawl also forces residential and commercial builders and developers to contend with hundreds of di er ent zoning and building codes. at profusion of small, local departments makes little sense when the best growth strategies connect communi ties to broader regional development plans.People look for housing and jobs, and shop for groceries across city and county borderlines. Also, the best air pollution control plans need to account for regional commuting patterns. Meanwhile, the city of Cleveland couldn’t create a plan and undertake the cleanup of its stretch of the 46-mile-long Cuyahoga River without the removal of dams in plac es upstream like Brecksville and Kent.

“So we looked at their data and they were focused on being in down town Cleveland; they didn’t know the whole market,” Koehler said. “What we did is we went to 60 or 70 mile ra dius, which includes four MSAs.” e region didn’t land the project but, Koehler said, with Team NEO’s data, the region went from being 21st out of 25 locations being considered to sixth.

Shah believes that having a group of legacy cities can work to the re gion’s advantage.

ere have been earlier e orts at regional collaboration, but none had staying power. (See related story page 16.)

Tower City Center on Public Square in Cleveland.

“It gives us strength and power,” Shah said, adding that he believes that outweighs any parochial think ing. “I’d like to think that (parochial thinking), that’s in our past, no doubt.

People may live in one city, send their children to school in another and work in another county a 60-min ute drive away. As important, busi nesses looking to relocate or open a new operation focus on the infra structure, available real estate and tal ent pool in that 60-minute radius.

At rst, after the recession, com munities continued to focus on nding more local tax dollars. In Summit County, Akron pushed legislation through the state legislature in the early 1990s that allowed a city to join a development district with a town ship. e new structure was called a Joint Economic Development District, or JEDD. Since Ohio townships can’t levy income taxes, the JEDD al-

in many ways like Northeast Ohio. | RYAN DE HAMER/UNSPLASH

Indianapolis is a

JAY MILLER JAY MILLER

Grace Gallucci, executive director and CEO of the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, gives a presentation during the Board of Directors meeting on Sept. 9. GUS CHAN FOR CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS community

“Our clients always seem confused by the Cleveland-area economic de velopment network,” one economic development pro with a national practice said in an email at the time.

Washington, D.C., nonpro t research group, by 2007, Cleveland had lost 28.9% of its 1980 population while Ak ron lost 14.9%, Canton lost 26.4% and Youngstown 40.3%.

ose consolidations of public services are still few and far between because many communities contin ue to see collaborations, where their name may be obscured by a bigger name community, as a loss of local identity and independence.

16 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | S E PT EM BER 19, 2022

In 2002, regional business leaders, led by the late H. Peter Burg, then chairman and CEO of FirstEnergy Corp., began talking about creating a nonpro t that would bring together economic development e orts in

at statistical breaking of borders came about in 1949 when the U.S. Cen sus Bureau created the “standard met ropolitan area,” acknowledging that the automobile and its freeways and the expansion of economic activity into suburban areas had created inter connected communities beyond city and county borders.

Despite his skepticism, Abbott and other civic leaders in Northeast Ohio — past and present — have been try ing to think and plan beyond their traditional city and county borders for more than 100 years, not always successfully. e early e orts were focused on providing public services at a lower cost and evolved to include improving the environment, trans portation systems, housing and the economy. More recently, civic leaders have been thinking more broadly about regional economies.

change in state law. e communi ties sought as merger partners typically feared higher taxes and the loss of local identity.

As the deadline approached, Crain’s reported that at least three bids were in the works to woo Ama zon to places in Northeast Ohio. Sources told Crain’s that one bid was being prepared by the Greater Cleve land Partnership, the chamber of commerce that draws members from the Greater Cleveland area. A di er ent source heard that Team NEO, the

regional economic development nonpro t a liated with JobsOhio, the state economic development nonpro t, was leading a second pro posal. Still another source said Akron and Canton were putting together a bid.

at led to the creation of organiza tions such as metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) — which allo cate federal transportation dollars — and regional councils of government, which perform a variety of services for member communities. Unlike most regions, Northeast Ohio has four MPOs — the Akron Metropolitan Area Transportation Study, which serves Summit and Portage counties; the Eastgate Council of Governments, serving Mahoning and Trumbull counties; the Northeast Ohio Areaw ide Coordinating Agency, which cov ers Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain and Medina counties; and Stark County Area Transportation Study serving Stark County.

One reason thinking regionally might be making Abbott feel ill is that, for much of the 20th century, North east Ohio was not actually considered a region. Instead, it was ve cities, and then ve metropolitan areas — Akron, Canton, Cleveland, Elyria-Lorain and Youngstown — surrounded by small towns and farmland.

lows the two communities to share the tax revenue on commercial development in the township.

sistance, nancial and otherwise, is provided.”Intheend, Amazon got one bid from Northeast Ohio. Among the key participants in the bid were the city of Cleveland, Cuyahoga Coun ty, the Downtown Cleveland Alli ance, the Greater Cleveland Part nership, JobsOhio, the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agen cy, Team NEO and Cleveland State University. Included with the bid were letters of support from the mayor of Akron and the Summit County executive, though the bid anchored Amazon in downtown Cleveland.HQ2ended up in Northern Virgin ia, while Amazon also expanded operations in Nashville and New York City. ose communities, along with places like Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Chicago; Denver; and Miami were

e possibility that Northeast Ohio would produce multiple bids puz zled observers of the process.

A bumpy road to regionalism

Among the groups that helped shape and fund the new organization, which opened shop in January 2003,

en came the recession of the early 1980s, when the cities of the Midwest’s Factory Belt turned to rust. Cleveland lost 12,000 manufacturing jobs, and Akron lost 10,000 jobs in its rubber and plastics industry. at led to steep de clines in population. According to an analysis by the Brookings Institution, a

In 1917, the Citizens League, a government watchdog group that lasted until 2004, proposed creating a metropolitan government for all of Cuyahoga County. At the time, only a few suburbs had been created out of the county’s townships — 85% of the county’s population still lived in the city of Cleveland — and the Citizens League believed a strong county gov ernment would lower taxes and improveSimilarly,services.Akron in 1929 annexed the city of Kenmore and the village of Ellet and was unsuccessful in bids to annex Barberton and Cuyahoga Falls before the Great Depression and a

What can NEO learn from Central Indiana?

“In most other places, you might deal with the state economic develop ment agency, a regional group and a municipality. But regardless of who you call rst, the project will be han dled the same. In Northeast Ohio, who you contact rst will dictate how the project is handled and what as

Northeast Ohio. “ e time for a more regional approach may have been right for some time, but we didn’t have the vehicle to drive it home,” Burg told Crain’s at the time. Rather than em phasize the virtues of particular cities or counties to businesses in and out side Northeast Ohio, Team NEO would sell as a single market the 13 counties in the new group. “Our focus is to nd what companies need and then nd where in the region that need can be met,” Burg said.

When Amazon announced it was looking for a second headquarters city in 2017, it got 238 proposals from communities eager to land the 25,000 jobs the online retailer said the new operation, then called HQ2, would bring. ose proposals explained the community’s workforce skills, avail able land for development and, let’s face it, likely included a variety ofnancial incentives.

“Regionalism sounds like a disease,” David Abbott, a retired former presi dent of the Gund Foundation, told a group of law students at Case Western Reserve University in April. “I never re ally liked it for that reason, but also be cause it’s so hard to de ne and it’s even harder to apply in the real world.”

And while Northeast Ohio was not in that group, Indianapolis, a community in many ways like Northeast Ohio, was.

Team NEO focused only on at tracting businesses to the region, leaving local chambers of commerce and public development agencies to help existing businesses in their areas expand. But it didn’t work out as planned, Crain’s reported in 2011, as public o cials and local economic development organiza tions resisted giving up their role as leaders for their communities’ busi ness attraction. “It was passive aggres siveness done in a beautiful fashion,” Ned Hill, dean of the Maxine Good man Levin College of Urban A airs at Cleveland State University at the time, saidAboutrecently.the same time, in 2004, a group of 28 philanthropies and businesses committed $30 million to create a nonpro t, the Fund for Our Economic Future, to build stronger ties between the shrinking cities and the region, and to shake o the rust. “We’ve been individual cities, competitive with each other, very parochial, and that doesn’t sell in the 21st century,” said Robert Briggs, then president of the GAR Foundation in Akron. Speci cally, the Fund began with aspirations to be the place where regional eco nomic strategy — looking at issues such as stimulating entrepreneurship and improving transportation links and higher education — was hashed out. But that didn’t pan out.

among 20 nalists announced in January 2018.

We began by asking, “Where are we now?” What we found was deeply troubling. e region’s population was shrinking, not growing. Projections made in the late 1960s suggested that Northeast Ohio would grow from 4 million to 5 million people by 2020. Based on these projections, we planned our freeway system and related infrastructure networks to meet the antici pated needs of 5 million people.

e third theme, “Preserve and Protect our Natural Environment,” focuses on the unique assets of our region’s natural environment and recommends that we take full advantage of the rich “blue green” environmental framework of lakes, rivers, parks and agricultural lands that sets Northeast Ohioeapart.fourth and nal theme, “Encourage Collaboration and E ciency,” speaks directly to the message we heard loud and clear from citizens throughout our region: “Do more with less,” “work together and spend our tax dollars well,” and similar sentiments. Simply put, people told us to work collaboratively to make Northeast Ohio work for all its citizens and com munities.Tenyears on, where are we as a region? e bad news is that we continue to spread outward, building new subdivisions and commerce parks, and supporting retail centers at the edges of our region. e good news is that our development patterns are becoming more balanced. Rather than de velopment being exclusively outward, an increasing percentage of the region’s new development can be found on previously overlooked sites in our established communities. As a result, development pressures on our rural townships is lessening.

Important though these collective accomplishments have been, they have not been enough to put Northeast Ohio on a growth trajectory com parable to its sister metros, Columbus and Cincinnati. With new Census information, newly available federal and state resources, and new leadership in communities throughout our region, the time is opportune to revisit our regional plan. By reconvening public o cials and citizens across Northeast Ohio to create “Vibrant NEO 2050,” we can analyze how our region has changed; take advantage of new scenario planning, data mining and remote sensing tools; and address the profound lessons and long-term consequences of the COVID epidemic. With a renewed vision and an upto-date game plan, Northeast Ohio will be better equipped than its com petitor regions to move to 2050 with conviction and con dence.

Bob Bowman, then deputy mayor of Akron for economic development, didn’t jump on the bandwagon, not understanding how a nonpro t or ganization could put together the kinds of deals he was doing. “I don’t know how somebody from the pri vate sector puts together a public deal,” he told Crain’s, conceding that politicians would be unhappy not being the center of deals. “Who gets the credit? e state always wants credit, and now the region will want credit, which was not involved until now, and there’s also the local level and all the people in between.”

Team NEO gained clout among the region’s mayors and economic devel opment professionals because, as one of JobsOhio’s six regional partners, it would hold the strings on the $100 million business-attraction purse that Kasich was creating from state liquor pro ts to invest in business attraction

Morrison is a senior fellow in Urban Studies at StateClevelandUniversity.

bid. “ is process has demonstrated that the region can work well to gether and be uni ed in its pursuit of a transformative opportunity,”

e most signi cant early alliance was Unigov, the 1970 merger of the Indianapolis city council and mayor’s administration with the government of the surrounding Marion County, which included 11 towns. It was not a complete uni cation since it did not include four municipalities, though those suburbs receive county services and participate in the election of the Indianapolis City-County Council and the consolidated city’s mayor, and it did not include the suburban school systems.

Gigerich wrote. “ e Indianapolis region has the leadership, focus and shared goal of collaboration to ac complish important things together.”While Northeast Ohio has moved toward greater regional collabora tion since the Amazon bidding, the push to collaborate in Central Indiana began much earlier.

SEPTEMBER 19, 2022 | C R AIN’S CL EVE LAND B USIN E SS | 17

“Workforce services aren’t deliv ered regionally, nor I don’t think they should they be,” she said. “But what I think has been useful is we share (ideas on) what makes local workforce delivery better.”

MORRISON IDEAS

and job creation. So most, but not all, local o cials applauded the move.

Not content to describe our challenges, we identi ed four broad initia tives or “themes” to guide Northeast Ohio toward a more prosperous, equitable and sustainable future.

However, the Fund has built a strong reputation for its work in building the skills of job seekers and connecting them with well-paid, in-demand jobs. And though it con siders itself a regional organization, current Fund president Bethia Burke considers its partners on workforce issues to be local organizations.

See INDIANA on Page 21

As reporter Jay Miller has noted, our polycentric region is uniquely com plex. We knew that our goal of encouraging public o cials and concerned citizens in each of our four metropolitan areas — Cleveland, Akron, Canton and Youngstown/Warren — to think beyond their traditional boundaries and envision together a more vibrant future for our whole region was not going to be easy. But, working together and listening to each other, we did just that.

were the Greater Akron Chamber, the Greater Cleveland Growth Associa tion, the Lorain County Chamber of Commerce, the Stark Development Board and the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber. e 13 counties in the region were Ashtabula, Columbi ana, Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Mahoning, Medina, Portage, Stark, Summit, Trumbull and Wayne.

“I’ve watched for years as the chambers have just stuck their mid dle ngers up at Team NEO, because as much as they need Team NEO, Team NEO needs them,” he said. “But it looks like (Bill Koe hler’s) got them working together.”

e rst theme is wide reaching: “Strengthen Our Established Communities.” Rather than continuing to extend the region’s infrastructure grids into undeveloped rural areas, we should encourage new development in communities with established infrastructure and public services.

‘Vibrant NEO 2050’: Charting a collaborative regional vision

HUNTER

Northeast Ohio, like much of the Rust Belt, continues to lag the na tional economy. But observers are optimistic that with Team NEO playing its regional role, the region and its communities are making headway.WardJ.

“From our talent pipeline, to our proven track record of private-pub lic partnerships, from our culture of innovation, to our collaborative spirit — Indianapolis rose to the top of Amazon’s search process because this is a place companies want to do business and the workforce of the future wants to live, work and play,” he said.

Timken Jr., former chair man, CEO and president of North Canton’s TimkenSteel and a member of the Team NEO board of directors, believes the region’s civic leaders, who he calls “leados,” and Team NEO are meshing well.

Jay Miller: jmiller@crain.com, (216) 771-5362, @millerjh

e second theme, “Increase Transportation Choice,” addresses the need to improve the quality and diversity of the region’s transportation op tions and open our communities to new ways of addressing issues of mobility and equity.

In a statement at the time, India napolis Mayor Joe Hogsett praised how the Central Indiana region came together to make the bid.

What did Central Indiana have that Northeast Ohio didn’t? Writing in Inside Indiana Business, Larry Gigerich, a consultant who worked on the Indianapolis bid, said the re gion quickly put together a group of business and political leaders who worked closely to put together the

manufacturing) that are sub-regional but there’s not an (overall) strategy.”

In fact, our population shrunk — substantially. Largely as a consequence of widespread deindustrialization in the 1980s, Northeast Ohio lost 7% of its population between 1970 and 2010. Despite the absence of population growth, our region has been expanding its development footprint. is ur banization pattern, “no growth sprawl,” combines outward expansion with inward abandonment and puts signi cant scal strain both on the communities losing population and those experiencing growth. Simply put, we have been building infrastructure to support a region of 5 million people and asking fewer than 4 million people to pay for it.

“I think when the Fund rst got started, it was trying to be the keeper of the regional strategy with a portfo lio of economic development (proj ects), but it was just too unwieldy,” said Brad Whitehead, who served as the Fund’s president from its found ing in 2004 until 2020 and is now a senior adviser. “We have thriving sec tor partnerships (in areas such as

“I think all of the leados that I have been involved with through Team NEO are doing a great job,” he said, noting that many of the key re gional organizations have gone through leadership changes in the last few years. “I think they’re coop erating, which is really, really important. Everybody is rowing in the same direction right now, which is great.”Another civic leader who did not want to be named said he is more skeptical that the region is working well together, but he is hopeful.

In 2011, Team NEO was able to rmly establish itself as the princi pal manager of economic development in Northeast Ohio. en Gov. John Kasich created JobsOhio, his vehicle for channeling state incen tives to induce businesses to invest in Ohio. JobsOhio then sought existing regional organizations to be its partner around the state. It chose Team NEO to oversee economic de velopment for 18 counties, only slightly more than was planned for the original Team NEO. e added counties were Ashland, Erie, Huron, Richland and “CompaniesTuscarawas.chooseto invest in Northeast Ohio because of the criti cal mass that exists within the 18 counties — an integrated supply chain, 7,700 manufacturing compa nies, 25 higher education institutions and a $240 billion economy,” said William Koehler, Team NEO’s president since 2015. “ e question then is: How do we take advantage of the focus people have and their desire to invest in (their) communi ties, while also challenging them to lift up their eyes and recognize there are some things that are better-o if they’re leveraged regionally?”

In the spring of 2012, representatives from Northeast Ohio’s public, private, nonpro t and university communities came together in Hudson to inaugurate the Northeast Ohio Sustainable Communities Consortium. Together, they embarked on an unprecedented investi gation of our region with the hope and expectation that this collaborative initiative would chart the course to a more economically prosperous, socially equitable and environmentally sustainable Northeast Ohio. e product of this initiative was “Vibrant NEO 2040,” a regional vision and framework for understand ing our region’s development trajectory and a set of “action products” and policy recommendations that communities, organizations and concerned citizens could utilize to put Northeast Ohio on a more prosper ous, equitable and sustainable path. e full report and reports for each of the 12 Northeast Ohio counties can be found at Vibrant NEO — A NEOSCC Initiative.

An earlier e ort

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The 2022 Cleveland Heritage Medal recipients:

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The Cleveland Heritage Medal Presentation Thursday, November 17, 2022 6 Grandp.m. Rotunda, Cleveland City Hall 601 Lakeside Avenue, East Cleveland Heritage Medal Committee Chairs Akram Boutros, MD, FACHE President & CEO, The MetroHealth System Beth Mooney Former Chairman & CEO, KeyCorp Robyn Minter Smyers Partner, Thompson Hine For tickets and sponsorship opportunities, please call 216-778-5665. HeritageMedal.com

e purchase required a bit of ser endipity. After decades of working with bands on the coasts, Hanson, who is 56, missed the Midwest. A Shaker Heights native, he started toy ing with concepts for a project in Cleveland and searching for properties on the East Side.

“I want to have music that they can’t nd anywhere else, anywhere close. And I want to have food and drink that they can’t nd anywhere else,” he said.

Some of Hanson’s friends think he’s crazy to open a new club, when existing operators are trying to nd a new rhythm after two-plus years of disruptions. Others are backing him up, though, noting the void created when Nighttown closed in Cleve land Heights in 2020.

project.It’sunclear how much the renova tions will cost.

A mural brightens up the wall behind a basement bar at the Slovenian Workmen’s Home. MICHELLE JARBOE/CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS PHOTOS

Michelle Jarboe: michelle.jarboe@ crain.com, (216) 771-5437, @mjarboe

The auditorium at the Slovenian Workmen’s Home will become a jazz club called the Treelawn.

or a seated audience of 300, he said. e partners also have talked about hosting weddings and events.

“I de nitely think there’s more room for good music venues, espe cially jazz venues,” said Balogh, who plays the saxophone and has a de gree in music production and engi neering.Hanson also plans to open a bar somewhere in the building, where the Slovenians rst added a public watering hole after Prohibition. Downstairs, the dining room and kitchen might become a restaurant. On the second oor, Barber is lining up artists and makers to lease o ce space, while she sorts through arti facts including little-league gear and stockholder certi cates.

A proclamation and blueprints sit on a table in the auditorium at the Slovenian Workmen’s Home (left). A painting adorns the back wall of the auditorium (above). The building on Waterloo Road is full of artifacts and the property’s new owners are exploring ways to preserve the largely vacant building’s history while bringing it back to life.

20 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | S E PT EM BER 19, 2022

Cleveland City Council designat ed the Slovenian Workmen’s Home as a city landmark in the spring, in a move that could help the group ac cess tax credits and other preserva tion

JAZZ From Page 1

Hanna Commercial Real Estate listed it for sale in early 2021. e property attracted plenty of interest from would-be venue operators, said David Wagner, a Hanna Commercial managing director and principal who handled the listing.

Keith Ari Benjamin, an econom ic-development adviser helping Barber cobble together nancing, expects to seek grants or low-inter est loans from the city and Cuyahoga County. It’s also possible the group will pursue tax credits for historic preservation, he said.

Councilman Mike Polensek, who represents the area, said he stands ready to help. A former Slovenian Workmen’s Home shareholder, who describes himself as “mostly Slove nian,” he’s thrilled that local inves tors plan to create another destina tion in a district where progress has been halting, and hard-won, over the last two “Collinwooddecades.hastremendous op portunities and potential, in light of where it’s geographically located,” Polensek said. “What we need is be lievers.”Juodisius, one of the founders of Willoughby-based Integrated Mill Systems, signed onto the project through Barber. “ e train was start ing to roll, she held out her hand, and I jumped into the boxcar with all the other hobos,” he said with a laugh.Heand his wife live nearby, close to Lake Erie, and are trying to invest in their backyard instead of putting money into stocks and other intan gible assets. A member of the Lithu anian community, he nds the chance to prepare a cultural asset for a new century appealing.

In late 2017, the Slovenians sold the property to Patrick Hawkins, a lo cal entrepreneur and president of a company that makes snowplow blades. He considered new uses for the site while renting out the audito rium, dining room and bars for private parties and Lenten sh fries. en the pandemic put events on hold — and put the property on rocky nancial ground.

Eventually, he bumped into Barber, who was fretting about the state of the scrappy arts district where the Beachland has been a mainstay for 22 years.elocal community develop ment corporation, a nonpro t steward for the area, fell apart in 2018. en the pandemic battered the art galleries, entertainment venues and small businesses that populate the street.“Ibecame very worried about ev erything going backwards and the Beachland being left as an island once again, the way we were in 2000 when we came there,” said Barber, who at 71 nds herself doubling down instead of aging out of neigh borhood revitalization. “It just felt like we had to do something. And Eric was looking for a spot to land. It just made perfect sense.”

en there are the remnants of the bowling and archery facilities and the indoor bocce courts. e new owners hope to resurrect bocce and, possibly, bowling as part of the

“It’s like manufacturing,” he said of maintaining the city’s old-world social halls. “If you have equipment, you have to utilize it. If you don’t uti lize it, it’s not a sustainable model.”

e auditorium can accommo date a standing crowd of 600 people,

Meanwhile, the Slovenian Work men’s Home property — which includes adjacent parking lots, vacant land and a freestanding building leased to a tombstone maker — was in Fromlimbo.the hall’s grand opening in 1927 through 2017, members of the community owned the real estate through a shareholder system. As those owners aged, though, it be came di cult to maintain the building. A similar story is playing out at other social clubs across the city.

Barber’s partners on the real estate deal are Eric Hanson, a booking agent who hopes to open the jazz club, called the Treelawn, early next year; Marius Juodisius, a lifelong Col linwood resident and chief nancial o cer at an automation company; Steven Balogh, a jazz-lover who over sees operations for a plastic and injection molding business based in Chagrin Falls; and Dr. Brett Siegfried, a Virginia neonatologist who grew up in Shaker Heights.

aid.eproject is key to stabilizing and improving the Waterloo area, but it’s also important for adjoining communities, said Benjamin, who is a village councilman in neighboring Bratenahl and serves as community services and development director for nearby South Euclid.

“ e No. 1 thing that people are demanding is unique event space,” he said.eTreelawn — a nod to a region al term for the grassy strip between the sidewalk and the street — will complement the Beachland by o er ing di erent types of music. Jazz will take center stage, but Hanson also mentioned modern classical.

Northeast Ohio has no organization comparable to CICP, which was



TechPoint works to strengthen the region’s tech community.

“ ere’s a lot of advantage having everybody under the same roof,” he said. “What we’re nding out is that we’re seeing talent issues in every sector. And most of our vertical leaders (collaborate) and look at shared challenges. So I think there are a lot of advantages to have everybody under the same roof, on the same mission and really collaborating.”

created in 1999. Its members are CEOs — who can’t delegate subordinates to participate. Its membership currently includes the CEOs of 55 corporations, eight universities and three foundations, and its purpose is to provide a strategic focus, corporate funding and long-term, nonpolitical planning for Central Indiana.

To advance this mission, CICP has about 120 employees who run six afliates it calls “verticals” that focus on talent and speci c industries:

Jay Miller: jmiller@crain.com, (216) 771-5362, @millerjh

BioCrossroads is CICP’s initiative to grow the life sciences.

How BusiGrowtoYourness BROUGHT TOYOU BY: POWERED BY: CRAIN’SCONTENTSTUDIO CLEVELAND SEP 29 | 11am EST. TO REGISTER: crainscleveland.com/grow-your-business A WEBINAR SERIES FOR ENTREPRENEURS EVENT #4 Hiring, Talent Retention and Leadership As a small business owner, your employees are an invaluable resource now more than ever. Engage with experts in this free webinar and hear strategies for hiring, managing and retaining quality talent. CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | SEPTEMBER 3 - 9, 2018 | PAGE 29 EXECUTIVECLASSIFIEDSRECRUITER Advertising Section To place your listing in Crain’s Cleveland Classi eds, contact Suzanne Janik at 313-446-0455 We have a unique opportunity for a senior executive to make an immediate impact on a dynamic industry. You will join a group of dedicated business professionals who, together, constitute the premier source of research, information and analysis on the staf ng industry, contingent workforce management and the workforce solutions ecosystem. In the role of SME Research Director, you will lead and coordinate SIA’s research focused on small and medium sized staf ng rms (annual revenue below $75 million). Visit crain.com/careers/ for more information and available positions. Research Director - SME Staf ng GLOBAL POLYMER GROUP POSITION AVAILABLE INDIANA From Page 17 The board of directors for the NOACA meet on Sept. 9. | GUS CHAN FOR CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

portant to have all these operations under a single umbrella.

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David Johnson, who is CICP’s president and CEO, though he is retiring at the end of 2022, said it is im-

e consolidation was scorned by many in the region’s Black population, which continues to see the move as a way to dilute its voting power by adding mostly white voters to the city’s electorate, noting the city has never had a Black mayor. But Indiana lacked home rule, giving the state legislature the authority over local government structure, so the merger was accomplished without a local“Unireferendum.wasbrilliant in its construction and its political equation, it just came at a cost, and the cost is being felt today, 50 years later,” said Richard Pierce, author of “Polite Protest: e Political Economy of Race in Indianapolis, 1920-1970,” on a recent documentary about Unigov. If Northeast Ohio were to follow in Indianapolis’ footsteps, leaders should be aware of those potential costs.

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Iglehart said her organization also works closely with the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership (CICP), which was formed in 1999 to bring together leaders of the region’s leading corporations, foundations and universities to provide strategic focus and set regional priorities for the region.“Our economic development team works really closely with them for their industry expertise and for some additional talent expertise,” she said.

Bruce Katz, an urban policy expert who is director of the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University, in his 2017 book “ e New Localism,” calls Indianapolis “the leading U.S. example of networked governance,” where government and the business and nonpro t sectors nd the best ways to collaborate, often by creating new kinds of organizations, such as CICP.

Ascend Indiana connects job seekers with career opportunities, as Akron’s ConxusNEO does for that community.

Its Conexus Indiana segment, like

SEPTEMBER 19, 2022 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | 21

Its AgriNovus Indiana works to grow what it calls agbioscience — the place where agriculture, food science and technology meet.

“We serve the traditional economic development function,” said Sarah Iglehart, vice president of regional economic development at the chamber and leader of the Indy Partnership. “We focus on business attraction, talent attraction, and we have a research arm, as well.”

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en, in 2012, the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce absorbed several smaller organizations, including Develop Indy and the Indy Partnership, organizations that focused on economic development in the city and broader region.

Northeast Ohio’s MAGNET, works to grow the region’s advance manufacturing and logistics industry.

Energy Systems Network focuses on advanced energy technology and transportation. It recently merged with the Battery Innovation Center in Newberry, 90 miles south of Indianapolis, which develops energy storage systems for industry.

Lisa Denholm, CPA, has been promoted to Director at Sikich LLP, a global professional services accounting,specializingrminadvisory, technology and managed services. Lisa specializes in auditing not-forpro t organizations, assisting clients in navigating nancial challenges, and providing technical guidance and expertise. She has in-depth experience performing nancial health analyses for organizations and implementing best practices to strengthen nancial processes.

From Page 8

Minard, a self-taught programmer who took a circuitous route to the C-suite, developed a fascination with technology in grade school. He stud ied electrical engineering at the University of Akron but dropped out beforeIngraduation.the1990s,he managed a bicycle shop and served as a youth pastor — jobs where he found ways to make processes more e cient through dig itizing and automation. en he ran a business that helped manufacturers put their product catalogs and tech nical know-how online.

CAREERS

that align client portfolios with their nancial objectives. He has more than 25 years’ nancial experience. Scott earned his Bachelor’s degree from Ohio University and a Master of Business Administration degree from Case Western Reserve University. He has served as a mentor at Hiram College and is a member of the CFA Society of Cleveland.

Brouse McDowell is proud to welcome E. Camille Yancey to the rm’s CamillePracticeEnvironmentalGroup.joinsBrouse as

Scott Kamenir has joined PNC Private Bank as a investmentcomprehensiveworkingInvestmentSeniorAdvisor,todeliveradviceand

Key Family Wealth, the family of ce division of Key Private Bank, has appointed Carey Spencer as national director of ProfessionalStrategistPlanner,Careywealth,responsiblyultra-high-net-worthprovidingServices.GovernanceFamilyandDevelopmentSheisresponsibleforstrategiestohelpfamiliesmanagegenerationalaswellasdeliveryoftherm’sbroadrangeofcapabilities.isaRegisteredFinancialCertiedWealthandaHeritageDesign™

serve

“My play is to run a pro table and growing business that’s a family busi ness, that is sustainable,” he said. “And by sustainable, that means that we have a 10-year vision that we’re executing on. Hey, I’d love to say that we have a 100-year vision. But we don’t. Nobody does.”

ACCOUNTINGSikichLLP

NONPROFITSPRE4CLE

“Delta is sort of an all-in-one type of situation and does it for the agents,” said Wolfe, the president of RE/MAX DFW Associates.

In 2016, after Bray’s death, Minard bought out his remaining partners. And he hasn’t taken on new ones. He’s leery of outside funding and the risks of growing too fast, or ceding control.Delta has roughly 70 employees today, most of them in Northeast Ohio. Minard was preparing for an other expansion early this year, but the cooling housing market and uncertain economy prompted him to slow“We’rehiring.just being cautious,” he said. “I don’t think anyone knows where this is going.”

He had no background in real estate when he bought into Delta. e common theme in his work, and the idea that he pitches to high school students and aspiring entrepreneurs, is the premise that technology can solve problems and provide users with more freedom and time.

“My passion, it’s not so much the tech,” Minard said. “ ere are peo ple that get really engrossed by the tech itself. What fascinates me about technology is what it can do for peo ple.”

Michael Minard, owner and CEO of Delta Media Group, talks to an employee at the company’s North Canton headquarters. | DELTA MEDIA GROUP

While they’re here, too, we want our students focused on music. We feel strongly that to achieve at the highest level, to take their place as the future of classical music, our students can’t be distracted, work ing extra jobs to pay o loans. Like musical Olympians, they must be free to concentrate on their educa tion, to the exclusion of almost everything else.

ere’s only one way we’re going to make this “moonshot,” and that’s with extraordinary philanthropic support. I can’t say enough about the trustees, governing members and countless community donors who’ve brought us this far and pro pelled our Second Century campaign so successfully. And yet, as we seek to attract the world’s most talented classical music students to Cleveland over the next 100 years, we’ll need to invite all of Northeast Ohio to consider playing a part.

is isn’t just a moral imperative, either. It’s an existential one. If CIM is to thrive long-term, it absolutely must remain competitive with Phil adelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music, Yale Graduate School and Los Angeles’ Colburn School of Music, each tuition-free, not to mention the Juilliard School and a parade of

of Communication and Special Initiatives in 2019. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Middle Childhood Education from Ohio Univ. and a master’s in Leadership, Policy, and Politics from Teachers College, Columbia Univ.

ERIEBANK, a division of CNB Bank, has promoted Tim Flenner to Senior capacity,Banking.President,ViceCommercialInthisMr.Flennerwill

Moreno

NONPROFITSUSSCleveland Legacy Foundation

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PEOPLE ON THE MOVE

Michelle Connavino has been promoted to Deputy Director at PRE4CLE. In this role, she 2015ConnavinoLearningleadsandication,PRE4CLE’scoordinatescommun-advocacy,evaluation,outreachstrategiesandtheClevelandEarlySpacesproject.joinedPRE4CLEinandwasnamedDirector

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“Even with all the due diligence that we did, it was such a nightmare,” MinardMajorsaid.contracts didn’t pan out. Delta’s ambitious plan to launch a national listings platform, a central ized repository for real estate data, got shelved. And the company was left with only a handful of employees after sharp cost-cutting. e new owners began to rebuild. By early 2008, the company was preparing for a huge sales push and settling into a new corporate head quarters in Canton. en the Great Recession, and a brutal housing bust, stalled that growth. “We were fortu nate that we weren’t one of the tech companies serving the space that went under,” Minard said.

Delta retooled its longstanding products and added new services, rolling out a suite of digital marketing tools that includes search engine op timization and custom content produced for agents’ blogs and email newsletters. at writing covers howto advice and home-care tips, in ad dition to market data.

Michelle Jarboe: michelle.jarboe@ crain.com, (216) 771-5437, @mjarboe

“WHAT FASCINATES ME ABOUT TECHNOLOGY IS WHAT IT CAN DO FOR PEOPLE.”

McDowell, LPA

FINANCEPNCPrivate Bank

Counsel focusing her practice on advising clients through environmental issues in real estate and transactions,corporateincluding due diligence on all aspects of environmental liability and compliance. She also has notable experience representing clients in a variety of environmental litigation matters.

—Michael Minard, owner and CEO of Delta Media Group

He has bigger aspirations for Del ta, though, far beyond the real estate business.Hebelieves the company’s cus tomer relationship management software could be a good t for other industries with balkanized systems, manual processes and lots of hardto-access data.

college schools of music with virtually unlimited scholarship capabilities.

C IM From Page 6

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I’m optimistic because this is a remarkable place. Judging by its or chestra and its conservatory, Cleveland knows better than most that past performance is no guarantee of future results, that the quest for greatness is relentless.

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solutions

22 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | S E PT EM BER 19, 2022

The USS Cleveland Legacy Foundation is pleased to announce Cheryl Levanduski and Bernie Moreno as Campaign Co-Chairs of Launching a Legacy, a $5,000,000.31 fundraising effort to support the USS Cleveland (LCS 31), scheduled to be commissioned in Cleveland Septemberin2024. The Campaign maintainingbycivil-militarysupportsrelationscreatingandarobust and meaningful bond between the citizens of northeast Ohio and the crew of the future USS Cleveland. The ship will be a platform for economic largerpatriotism,ClevelandLegacyforcommunityeducationaldevelopment,programming,building,andsupportourveterans.Launchingarepresentsajourneyofcivicpride,Americanandservicetoacausethanself.

local businesses in Northeast Ohio as a trusted advisor to achieve their nancial goals, working with businesses of all sizes in providing lending for commercial real estate, lines of credit, and equipment nancing. Mr. Flenner has spent his career at ERIEBANK. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in business management from Grove City College.

Longtime customer Mark Wolfe said Delta essentially provides a vir tual front door to his o ce, a large RE/MAX a liate that serves the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas. His agents have access to free company websites, but they’re willing to pay for a more robust online presence.

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In terms of what business lines might be divested or consolidated, or what other reparative actions will be taken, Rosen said that a refocusing plan is in the works. So, more to come

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But damage was already done.

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Before its struggles, Invacare was a Northeast Ohio success story.Mixon — an Oklahoma native and longtime chair of the Cleveland Clinic board of trustees who died in 2020 — is known for turning the little-known Elyria company into a juggernaut in its industry.

Azurite started buying up Invacare’s devalued shares earlier this year. As of June 30, the investment rm was reported as the company’s largest shareholder with an ownership stake of 10.3%. e company’s stock is currently hovering around $1 per share.

Merriman previously served on Invacare’s board and served as chair of its audit committee from 2014 to 2018. He also worked with Rosen’s Resilience Capital between 2008 and 2017. He’s now the non-executive chairman of the Invacare board.

As a result, Invacare’s Elyria operations became heavily restricted. The company was no longer permitted to make power wheelchairs or conduct design activities related to wheelchairs or power beds until passing future inspections intended to ensure compliance with the law.

Additionally, Monaghan was removed from his roles as chairman, president and CEO, though he retains a seat on the board.

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Invacare Corp. is a global maker of medical equipment, which once was revered as a leading innovator for products such as its powered wheelchairs. | CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS

“We are taking a hard look at every aspect of our business to ensure Invacare is best positioned for the future,” said Purtill in an emailed statement. “Between my time leading our international business and now as interim CEO, I am partnering closely with our board and appreciate their con dence as we take necessary and decisive action to address supply chain challenges, simplify our operations and product portfolio and accelerate our business transformation to return to pro table growth.”

Web editor Damon Sims (216) 771-5279 or dpsims@crain.com

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Chief Financial O cer Robert Recchia

“It is a story where you have a unique company that is balance sheet insu cient that continues to run into various macro headwinds,” Mishan added. “ ey are trying to ght them o but just can’t.” is is where investors like Azurite manager Steven Rosen — co-founder and co-CEO of Cleveland lower-middle market private equity rm Resilience Capital Partners — think they might make a difference.“(Late Invacare founder) Mal Mixon built a great global business. Over time, the operations and performance of the business have deteriorated,” Rosen said. “We do see an opportunity to unlock value, return the company to pro tability and leverage what’s there but also change a lot of things as well.”

A juggernaut’s downfall

That consent decree was in place until July 2017. Its lifting was deemed an important milestone for the company.

“Invacarethere. North America may look di erent a year from now than it does today,” he said. “But our goal is to have it be a much better business.”Whatever plays out, Rosen did say that there are no plans to shrink the Elyria workforce — quite the contrary, in fact. e local operations actually have open positions now that need lled. e company has about 3,000 worldwide employees, including roughly 395 in Northeast Ohio.“I’m not sure the people we have in Elyria have historically been optimized properly,” Rosen said. “But I would tell you it is in our plans to potentially even grow in Northeast Ohio.”With Invacare, there is not just “one big thing” that needs addressed, Rosen said, but a number of smaller things.

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analyst with KeyBanc Capital Markets who has covered Invacare for many years.

Vice chairman Mary Kay Crain

At its peak, Invacare was the world’s top manufacturer of home medical products with $1.7 billion in sales. In 2004, its stock was worth more than $50 per share.

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ing taken, starting with a revamping of Inleadership.August, Invacare and Azurite inked an agreement that added Rosen and Michael Merriman, Jr. to the manufacturer’s board of directors.

But troubles soon began to mount.Onelongtime employee, a product engineer who worked at Invacare for nearly 20 years before being laid off in 2005, said workers were fond of the company, its culture and Mixon himself. He recalls Mixon often coming in to have breakfast and shoot the breeze with workers in the morning.

Chairman Keith E. Crain

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Sales began to slip. But a greater issue was a consent decree filed in December 2012 by the Department of Justice.

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The Food and Drug Administration said it had conducted numerous inspections of Invacare’s corporate headquarters and Taylor Street manufacturing facility related to “design controls, complaint handling and corrective and preventive action.”

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INVACARE From Page 1

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“ e plan was starting to work,” Mishan said. “But then they ran into the pandemic. And this year and last year, they were hit with supply chain issues.”ecompany was facing competitors in lower-cost areas than its own footprints in Europe and North America. Costs soared and continue to be elevated among various macroeconomic headwinds, creating a rough situation for Invacare both domestically and overseas.

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“ is isn’t a case where you can just change the right front tire and get back on the highway. e entire car needs an overhaul, including parts of the engine,” he said. “ is car also needs gas in the tank for when it’s xed. We are working on the current capital structure and actively thinking about those nancial needs going forward.”

Geo rey Purtill is Invacare interim CEO (left) and Steven Rosen is co-founder and co-CEO of Resilience Capital Partners.

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Replacing Monaghan is Geo rey Purtill, who previously served as senior vice president and general manager, EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) and APAC (Asia-Paci c) for RegardingInvacare.the removal of Monaghan, Rosen said it was simply “time for a change.”

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“When you transform a business, you really need to do it with a fresh, transformational leader,” he said, “and I think we are putting that team together.”Asfaras a search for a permanent CEO goes, that’s seemingly Purtill’s position to keep or lose.

President and CEO KC Crain

The road ahead

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“ ey see a company that has $900 million in revenue but isn’t making money, and they think they can nd out a way to get around this,” Mishan said. “But you are in a horrible macro environment right now. ere is maybe a European recession coming. You have massive supply chain and energy issues. So, I’m not sure what those guys are seeing.”

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Matthew Monaghan, Invacare’s CEO at the time since 2015, seemed to have a plan to improve the company in the aftermath of all that. Making up lost ground proved to be tough sledding, though.

“It is di cult to understand why you can have $900 million in sales and you can’t make money o that,” Mishan said.

“If you are going to spend the time and e ort and invest and allocate resources, you should do it in a marketplace and end market that has nice growth characteristics and a nice addressable market, and that is where Invacare is,” Rosen said. “ ey’re in healthcare. We have an aging population, and everyone is talking about longevity and lifespan. People want to be independent longer and living at home, not in nursing homes. What Invacare is doing today and, in the future, will allow that to Invacare’shappen.”ultimate long-term road back to pro tability is still being mapped out, Rosen said. But some actions are already be-

Publisher and CEO KC Crain

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“At some point, we are going to bring that Mal Mixon entrepreneurial spirit back,” Rosen added. “But for now, we need to focus on the fundamentals of running a business.”

Stan Bullard, senior reporter, Real estate/construction (216) 771-5228 or sbullard@crain.com

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So what does someone like Mishan think about folks like Rosen who are optimistic about a ecting a nancial turnaround for Invacare?

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“ ey were very limited in what they could sell to their customers (with the consent decree in place),” Mishan said. “ ey lost a ton of market share coming out of that.”

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Hear

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