Crain's Cleveland Business

VOL. 38, NO. 25

JUNE 19 - 25, 2017

Source Lunch

Akron Local developers aren’t building typical senior centers. Page 15

CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Anne Bitong, executive director of the Akron Marathon Page 19

RETAIL

The List The region’s largest SBIR grants Page 16

ENTERTAINMENT

Signet Fabulous Food Show is tabled for 2017 is trying to regain its luster

By JOE CREA

clbfreelancer@crain.com

By DAN SHINGLER dshingler@crain.com @DanShingler

It’s a critical time for retailers generally, but especially for Fairlawn-headquartered Signet Jewelers, which employs about 3,500 people in Northeast Ohio, most of them in the Akron area.

While its roughly 3,000 U.S. stores are facing the same threat as other brick-and-mortar retailers from changing consumer shopping patterns, the next 12 months also may determine whether the company can regain not only its sales momentum, but its public image and customers’ trust.

To top it off, a trial that the company says is set for early next year may determine whether Signet has to pay as many as 250 former female employees who have charged it with sexual harassment and discrimination.

“They’ve got a big credibility challenge on their hands now, by having all this be their public persona and be their image. They’ve got to fix it,” says Matt Barkett, chief client officer for one of Cleveland’s top public relations firms, Dix & Eaton.

Signet’s nightmare year began in May 2016, when some customers claimed the company’s Kay Jewelers stores swapped out the diamonds on jewelry they brought in for repair or cleaning. Although the company vehemently denied the accusations, there were online calls for a store boycott.

SEE SIGNET, PAGE 15

INSIDE

Clevelanders faithfully mark their calendars to attend annual events

Donors keep endowed chairs bright. Page 10 Kent archaeology professor embraces unusual methods.

“The show’s not dead,” Attewell said. “We needed time to step back and re-evaluate best practices for the event and find areas to improve — and make certain the event made financial sense for us.”

Dates for a 2018 show already have been set aside, he added.

Some critics argue the show has run its course. Others consider the cancellation a disappointment, especially foodies who have attended FFS since it debuted in 2006.

“Oh man, I hate to see something like that die,” said Mike Pillar, who operates Mikan Die & Tool in Cleveland.

A tool-and-die maker’s chagrin might seem unlikely. But to a weekend warrior in the kitchen and at the backyard grill, as well as father to a young chef, annual forays to the Food Show are a passionate affair.

“It’s something we really enjoy going to. It’s a lot of food experience in one venue,” Pillar said.

SEE FOOD SHOW, PAGE 17

SPORTS BUSINESS

Bobbleheads are ‘destination’ item for Tribe

The National Bobblehead Hall of Fame has a wide array of Cleveland-centric collectibles. (Contributed photos)

By KEVIN KLEPS

University research

Page 11

Editor’s note: One of the foremost names in the Cleveland food scene, Joe Crea, will now appear on the pages of Crain’s Cleveland Business. Now a freelance writer, he’ll introduce himself to Crain’s readers in an upcoming column.

like the Cleveland Auto Show and the Great Big Home + Garden Show at the city’s International Exposition Center.

But they can scratch off one date this year. The Fabulous Food Show, a perennial favorite among Cleveland’s culinary set, won’t be back in 2017.

I-X Center operators opted to ice the expo this year “in order to step back and regroup,” said the show’s producer, Rob Attewell, consumer show manager at the I-X Center.

kkleps@crain.com @Kevin Kleps

The final product — a bobblehead of Jose Ramirez — was notable because the Cleveland Indians third baseman was running, with his batting helmet having fallen to the ground behind him.

But the helmet, which Ramirez lost 62 times on the basepaths in 2016, might have been the easy part for the Tribe’s promotional department during the planning stages for the popular May 27 giveaway.

“I can’t tell you how many revisions we went through to try and get his hair right,” Anne Madzelan, the Indians’ manager of advertising

Entire contents © 2017 by Crain Communications Inc.

and promotions, said of the “crazy orange” locks Ramirez sported for much of the Tribe’s World Series season.

For many big-league clubs, that’s business as usual. Eighteen years after they became a Major League Baseball staple, bobbleheads are still the top promotional item for the majority of teams — and the complexity and quality of the giveaways has continued to soar, much like Ramirez’s helmet on a mad dash around the diamond.

Jay Deutsch — the CEO and co-founder of BDA, a Seattle-based merchandising agency that supplies bobbleheads to the majority A bobblehead of Terry Francona on a scooter was a popular item.

of MLB’s 30 clubs — said the collectibles can produce an attendance jolt of 15% to 30%. Those numbers are in line with gate numbers Crain’s studied for the previous 10 years of Indians bobblehead giveaways — a collection that has run the gamut from current stars such as Jason Kipnis, to a manager on a scooter (Terry Francona in 2015), a mascot as a lifeguard (Slider in 2009), past standouts such as Jim Thome and Omar Vizquel, and even a movie character (Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughn in 2009).

Each bobblehead is handpainted, said Deutsch, whose company has been working with the Indians for more than two decades.

SEE BOBBLEHEAD, PAGE 7

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Credit union consolidation: blessing in disguise?

By JEREMY NOBILE jnobile@crain.com @JeremyNobile

New banking regulations and evolving market demands are sending ripples through the credit union industry, and the resulting tsunami is washing many of them away.

Yet, while pressures of the modern banking climate consolidate the total number of credit unions in Ohio and across the country, leaving fewer in its wake, the industry overall is managing to grow members, assets and overall market share.

In this case, what doesn’t kill a credit union may should make it stronger.

“It can be unfortunate and disappointing to hear a credit union throwing up its hands because it just can no longer keep with the regulatory crush and compliance demands that have basically forced them to file more time on government reports than interacting with members,” said Paul Mercer, president and CEO of the Ohio Credit Union League (OCUL) trade association. “But the consolidation that’s underway is largely a natural and necessary process. In the end, it’s producing a smaller number of stronger credit unions that can meet member and community expectations.”

The mounting expenses required to meet today’s heightened levels of compliance in the wake of the DoddFrank Act are exacerbating the pressures on all financial institutions.

Where there is pressure, there is cost. And for credit unions, which don’t have shareholders, or chase profits the same ways traditional banks do, the financial barriers to meet those challenges are simply harder to clear.

“There’s a different toughness to-

day in the sense that we navigated the economic downturn, which was difficult for everyone, then what came after is this enormous amount of regulation,” said Christine Blake, president and CEO of Mentor-based Cardinal Credit Union, which has $248 million in assets. “It’s not a real friendly climate right now.”

Blake said she’s optimistic for the industry and her credit union, which absorbed three smaller credit unions last year, growing their assets by about 27% (organic growth accounted for 6% of that). Other growth metrics across the industry are equally promising.

“But at the same time, there’s nothing currently I see that’s going to provide any immediate relief,” she said.

Consolidation wave There are 290 credit unions in Ohio today, a nearly 35% decrease from the 446 in 2007. In recent years, the state has seen 15 to 20 credit unions fade away through mergers.

Comparatively, there are 5,737 credit unions nationwide as of the end of March, which marks a 21% decrease since the like point in 2011 (which is as far back as data from the National Credit Union Administration goes), when there were 7,292 credit unions. Through the last four years, credit unions have consolidated at an average rate of 262 annually.

In Ohio — which is loaded with tiny credit unions — Mercer thinks consolidation will peter out when there are about 200 credit unions left.

Credit unions with less than $50 million in assets compose nearly 34% of the market in Ohio and 80% of the market in Cleveland.

And those with less than $150 million in assets make up 85% of the market in Ohio and 94% of the market in Cleveland.

DAN T. MOORE PRESIDENT, DAN T. MOORE COMPANY MEMBER, CSU BOARD OF TRUSTEES

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‘If you’re not growing, you’re dying’

Blake

Mercer

Dodd-Frank put credit unions on the same plane as banks in terms of compliance, even though the former sector is but a speck in the financial industry at-large. There are $1.34 trillion in total assets among all U.S. credit unions combined, which is less than what’s controlled by each one of the country’s four largest banks: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup.

The exponentially higher costs of new regulations, which primarily come from the personnel costs that didn’t need covered pre-DoddFrank, have clashed with slowed income growth stemming from a historically low interest rate environment and consumers’ financially instabilities in the aftermath of the recession.

That margin squeeze has gotten tighter in the past few years. That’s why credit unions struggling to meet the costs of doing business are merging in droves.

“Imagine you’re a credit union, you’ve got these increasing compliance and regulatory costs, lending costs, management costs, staffing costs, and on the revenue side, interest rates are at record low levels and they’re still there 10 years later,” said Kevin Jacques, Boynton D. Murch Chair in Finance at Baldwin Wallace University and a former bank regulator with the U.S. Department of the Treasury. “That’s a really difficult environment to operate in.”

To grow, credit unions need to draw more members, particularly younger, millennial-age people: a key demographic for all banks because of their growing incomes and credit needs.

And they’re doing well at that. But that means spending resources on marketing to familiarize the name in a market while covering investments in technology that meet the basic demands of younger and middle-aged adults.

“I’ve been waiting for a mobile app for the last seven years,” said Kelly Reddy, business development manager for the $71 million in assets Unity Catholic Federal Credit Union.

“Now we have the capital.”

Reddy said Unity’s board is populated with older members. Selling them on funding an app was an effort all its own.

“The cost alone is considerable.

Then you have to get people used to it, market it,” she said. “It’s a costly venture for a small credit union.”

At $250 million in assets, Cleveland’s Firefighters Community Credit Union is one of the state’s better-positioned credit unions likely to absorb other struggling cooperatives. Their executives are focused on the millennial segment, devoting plenty of resources to technology to draw those people while not pulling back on branch locations.

For Firefighters, 37% of new members last year were 22 to 40 years old.

The Generation Z demographic underneath that makes up about 19% of their member base, said marketing director Jennifer Norris. Among other offerings, the credit union has all the basic technology offerings of most banks today: online and mobile banking, an app, web chat and more.

“Credit unions are well-positioned to align with millennials in their core values,” Norris said. “We have to capitalize on that.”

Cardinal has made similar efforts in tech to attract millennial members who hold the key to credit union vitality. The institution is competing with its bank peers, offering all the basics to modern services like Apple Pay and Google Wallet.

“We need to stay ahead of the technology to stay relevant,” Blake said.

That’s why investments at these midsize credit unions are chasing what members want.

“We have been very aggressive toward this growth because we understand that leveraging power of the balance sheet is the way we can continue to invest in the things that are necessary,” said Firefighters president and CEO Ben Laurendeau. “If you’re not growing, you’re dying.”

Often, the greatest challenge for a credit union is getting its message out, and marketing may seem like an extraneous cost when compliance and tech and training expenses add up.

But for these smaller players in the financial sector, familiarizing people with their institutions is still a battle.

According to the most recent quarterly report by the Credit Union National Association, Ohio credit unions alone are offering superior rates on savings accounts, charge less in credit card and mortgage fees, and almost always beat the traditional banking industry on interest rates for comparable loans — often by several percentage points.

And the fact they don’t have shareholders usually appeals to the millennial demographic. That’s part of what Norris was referencing in a market proposition that would appeal to them.

“We really need to grow additional members,” Reddy said.

But for institutions without marketing departments comparable to large and midsize banks, their voice can get drowned out in the crowd.

SEE CREDIT, PAGE 18

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‘Tightening’ NEO job market loses 2,505 jobs last month

By JAY MILLER

The ACE Report

jmiller@crain.com @millerjh

The Cleveland-Akron area lost 2,505 jobs last month, a 0.21% decline from April, according to the Ahola Crain’s Employment Report, or ACE Report.

The report estimates that the seven-county Northeast Ohio region employed 1,174,540 people in May, down from 1,177,045 in April.

The report is based on payroll data from 3,000 employers, gathered by The Ahola Corp., a Brecksville payroll and human services firm.

Cleveland Heights economist Jack Kleinhenz, who developed the ACE Report economic model, said the decline in the May seven-county employment estimate, “while perhaps a bit discouraging, can be an indication that labor markets are tightening.”

He cited a National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) jobs report from May that found business owners are upbeat about sales and are looking to add staff, but that firms say it’s hard to find qualified workers.

Kleinhenz said two factors are key to the shrinking labor pool.

Northeast Ohio’s unemployment rate fell to 5.1% in April from 6.2% in March, according to data from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. That translates into a decline in the jobless of 14,200 people, from 85,900 to 71,700. At the same time, baby boomers are retiring.

To Kleinhenz that suggests that “there are not enough people out of work to go back to work.”

Also, Kleinhenz sees a longer-term upward trend, with regional employ-

AHOLA. CRAIN’S. EMPLOYMENT

Crain’s Cleveland Business has partnered with The Ahola Corp., a payroll and human capital management firm in Brecksville, and local economist Jack Kleinhenz to provide monthly data — and clarity — about a key factor in business decisionmaking: the size of Northeast Ohio’s workforce.

Seasonally adjusted employment numbers, Northeast Ohio DECEMBER: 1,169,560 JANUARY: 1,173,253 FEBRUARY: 1,175,747 MARCH: 1,175,054 APRIL: 1,177,045 MAY: 1,174,540 1,155,000

1,160,000

1,165,000

“I continue to expect a pickup in the pace of economic activity in the second quarter and modest growth for the remainder of 2017.”

— Economist Jack Kleinhenz

ment growing by 2,647 in the 12-month period ending in May, though that gain was accomplished by five up months overcoming seven months of job declines. By comparison, national employment has registered 80 straight months of increase.

The greatest loss in jobs came in

1,170,000

1,175,000

the goods-producing sector, which includes manufacturing and construction, a loss of 1,655 jobs versus the loss of 850 service sector jobs.

That correlates, Kleinhenz said, to recent U.S. Census figures showing that factory orders declined 0.2% in May. Manufacturing production was down 0.4%, Kleinhenz said, including a 2% decline in motor vehicle output.

“I continue to expect a pickup in the pace of economic activity in the second quarter and modest growth for the remainder of 2017,” Kleinhenz said. “The second-quarter 2017 National Association for Business Economics outlook median forecast calls for average annual GDP growth of 2.2% for 2017 as a whole.”

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PA G E 5

Calfee opens fed lobbying practice in D.C.

By JEREMY NOBILE jnobile@crain.com @JeremyNobile

As part of overall growth efforts and, specifically, an expansion of its government relations practice, Calfee, Halter & Griswold LLP has opened its first location outside Ohio with a new office in Washington, D.C. The firm, which traces its roots back to Cleveland in 1903, marks its fourth office with the new location. A physical presence at the capital is something the firm has been considering for decades, said Brent Ballard, managing partner since 2004. The firm’s government relations practice is one of its largest and fastest growing segments alongside its IP group.

“It’s really an extension of what we’ve been doing in the state lobbying practice for years,” Ballard said.

“The reason we went to Columbus in the first place was state lobbying work. Fast-forward 20 years and we’ve been very successful in the state lobbying side, so it’s a natural extension to start a federal lobbying practice.”

He added that clients have been clamoring for federal lobbying work as well. The ongoing nature of the regulatory environment for business has facilitated much of that need.

A couple lawyers have been working out of a temporary office in D.C. since January, and the firm is in ne-

Flashstarts entrepreneur program adds university partners The Flashstarts Global Entrepreneur-In-Residence program has added two university partners: Baldwin Wallace University and the University of Akron Research Foundation.

The goal of the program is to bring foreign entrepreneurs to Northeast Ohio, where they would work part-time for a local university and, ideally, start a company. The Global Entrepreneur-In-Residence program would provide them with an H-1B visa. U.S. Citizenship and Immigrant Services can only give out 65,000 H-1B visas each year, plus another 20,000 to applicants with advanced degrees. However, the cap does not apply to universities.

The program was announced in February as a partnership between the Flashstarts accelerator and economic development organization Global Cleveland. At that time, the group said it had plans to finalize university partnerships, as well, but it had not yet. The new university partnerships were announced last week in a news release.

The global entrepreneurs-in-residence will align with Baldwin Wallace’s global focus, the university said in its own release.

“BW will look to further deepen our relationships in areas of the world where we regularly send our students for study and service abroad, such as Ghana, Zambia, Brazil, Guatemala and India,” said John DiGennaro, director of strategic initiatives and library services at Baldwin Wallace, in the release. “We are especially interested in hosting entrepreneurs that build on our growing global exchanges.” — Rachel Abbey McCafferty

Ballard

Hall

gotiations for a permanent spot, which would open with around three or four attorneys or lobbyists.

“It’s not beyond the realm of reason that the new office could offer an enhanced platform for some other practices with significant federal components, though that’s not going to happen immediately,” Ballard said. “But we have 40-plus lawyers in

the IP practice, and D.C. is an important address for those clients.”

That sort of lobbying work has been one way for firms to keep busy in a world where the overall demand for legal services is not expected to rebound to pre-recession levels as companies tighten their legal budgets and do more work in-house.

That has created a movement in the business of law for firms to adapt by focusing on development of their core practices to maintain profitability.

“Our business post-recession will never snap back to where it was,” Ballard said. “So you’ve got to listen to clients. They’re asking us to expand our offerings. And that’s what we’re doing.”

As part of overall growth plans, the

firm also announced its first partnerin-charge for the hometown Cleveland office.

The other Ohio locations in Columbus and Cincinnati have that position, but Arthur Hall III will be the first to hold that title in Cleveland.

Overseeing day-to-day operations at that location will free up Ballard to work on other firmwide growth goals.

“Part of our succession planning, if you will, is to get me out in the market to spend more time with clients and strategic initiatives like opening up that D.C. office and growing the business,” said Ballard, noting he has no immediate plans of retiring or abdicating the managing partner role.

“Partners have put me in a position in the community with our clients,” he said. “And it’s at this point in

my career that my highest and best use is doing these things.”

Meanwhile, the firm has named Douglas Neary and Mitchell Blair firm vice chairmen. The new roles mean they’ll work alongside Ballard and chairman Thomas McKee on strategic initiatives. And in other moves, Jennifer Vergilii has been named leader of the capital and corporate markets group, and Maura Hughes will lead the litigation group as general counsel.

Calfee has about 177 firm-wide professionals today, Ballard said, which includes both attorneys and non-lawyer staff, like lobbyists. According to Crain’s research, Calfee is the fourth-largest law firm in Northeast Ohio, with at least 131 local attorneys.

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B’laster Corp. in Valley View has been in a state of flux in recent years, as it welcomed new leadership, went through a rebranding and, most recently, created a new strategic plan that includes a larger focus on markets outside the United States.

The maker of penetrants, lubricants and other specialty formulas for markets including automotive is driven by a philosophy of making “people’s lives easier,” said president Kurt Gabram, which ties into the quality of the products the company aims to make.

Gabram knows the feeling of having a job looming at home.

“So B’laster’s here to make that task easier,” he said.

The company got its start 60 years ago under William K. Westley, who created the penetrant that became PB B’laster for a friend in need of help with his rusting mining equipment, said Randy M. Pindor, executive vice president of sales and marketing.

A penetrant like PB B’laster — the company’s flagship product — should be used for anything rusted together, as it attaches to the rust, said George Ebert, industrial sales manager. That makes it different from the lubricants B’laster sells, which

are used on products that are sticking or squeaking. The company serves a range of industries, from automotive to industrial to big box, which includes stores like Home Depot.

Right now, B’laster offers about 20 to 22 products, Pindor said, up from 16 to 18 at this time last year. The most recent addition is the company’s food-grade products.

Pindor said B’laster currently has 45 employees between its Valley View and Medina locations. The former is used for offices and manufacturing (B’laster does not make its cans or mix chemicals on site, but it does assemble them), while the latter is a warehouse space.

As a privately owned company, B’laster declined to share its annual sales, though Pindor said it has seen steady growth.

Now, it’s moving into a more aggressive growth strategy, which includes a push into international markets.

To that end, B’laster is entering the Mexican retail market through a partnership with AutoZone in Mexico. And it has expanded its retail presence in Canada in recent months, making its PB B’laster Penetrant available in Canadian Home Depot stores and expanding the number of products it offers at Canadian Tire, a company with which it already had a standing relationship.

It’s also entering the country’s industrial market for the first time through

a partnership with Mississauga-based Wajax.

B’laster is well-known and has a good reputation, said Donald Charbonneau, manager of safety and mill supply product for Wajax, a distributor of industrial products ranging from bearings and generators to large equipment.

B’laster already had a Canadian presence in the retail market, but before Wajax became a master distributor for B’laster in the country, there was no industrial presence. So there’s demand, Charbonneau said.

A small company like B’laster has to be strategic about how it expands internationally, Gabram said. It’s building off existing relationships, like with AutoZone in the United States, and is creating similar ones in Canada and Mexico.

Last December, the leadership team created an extensive, five-year growth strategy, Pindor said, of which international growth is a large portion. Other areas of focus include marketing, employee growth and reinvestment, and product development and innovation.

Gabram said creating a clear strategy for B’laster was a goal of his when he joined the company in 2013.

“You know, in the past, I think that B’laster was doing a lot of good things, but as far as really being focused and pushing toward one common goal, I think that was not always clearly put out there,” Gabram said.

Campus, MidTown districts considering addition of SIDs

By JAY MILLER jmiller@crain.com @millerjh

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Two more Cleveland development corporations are planning to create special improvement districts, or SIDs, within the areas they serve.

Campus District Inc. and MidTown Cleveland Inc. see the SIDs as a self-help way to polish the appearance and the image of their prime commercial areas and to attract more development. They have seen how SIDs have worked, most recently, to spiff up Ohio City and the Gordon Square Arts District.

The Campus District neighborhood runs between East 18th Street and East 30th Street from Interstate 77 on the south to the Shoreway on the north. Midtown covers the commercial and industrial blocks that run from the Innerbelt Freeway on the west to East 79th Street on the east, between Payne and Carnegie avenues.

The campaign for the Campus District SID is well underway, with the community development corporation wrapping up the petition campaign to get property owner approval. MidTown Cleveland is in the early planning stage.

A SID is a quasi-governmental entity established under Ohio law that allows property owners to tax themselves to improve the services in their neighborhood beyond what the city provides. Playhouse Square property owners created one of the first in the state in the 1990s, and a downtown

Cleveland SID was created in 2005.

Depending on what the neighborhood wants, or can afford, a special improvement district can collect trash, provide off-hours escorts, remove graffiti, install plantings, remove snow and even provide marketing or business development for the neighborhood.

The cornerstone of the program run for the downtown SID by the Downtown Cleveland Alliance is its “Clean & Safe” service. Other neighborhood development groups have admired the Clean & Safe program and have hired DCA to operate their programs. Its yellow-shirted “Ambassadors” are on the streets 24 hours a day. Clean Team ambassadors collect trash, scrape gum from the sidewalks and remove graffiti, decals and fliers from public spaces.

Other ambassadors patrol streets on foot or on bicycles and carry twoway radios to alert off-duty Cleveland police officers who provide security services.

“We think it’s a really good model for organizing businesses and property owners and creating a platform, not just to provide great services for the neighborhood but also for creating a unified voice for the business community to try to attract more investment into the neighborhood,” said Michael Deemer, DCA’s executive vice president for business development.

Jeff Epstein, executive director of MidTown Cleveland, said he has had preliminary conversations to see if the concept will fly in the developing corridor between downtown and

University Circle.

“We’ve identified that this kind of initiative has made a big impact in other neighborhoods in the city of Cleveland, and it’s worth at least kicking the tires on,” he said. “Ultimately, it’s up to the property owners.”

By law, owners of at least 60% of the front footage of taxable property within the defined district must sign a petition that must be legislatively approved by the city.

The character of subdistricts within a neighborhood and talks with major property owners will help the neighborhood group circulating the petition define the SID’s boundaries.

Usually, the boundary lines will be drawn to exclude property owners known to be reluctant to support the additional tax. That typically will exclude from a SID older, industrial properties or properties whose owners are more interested in maximizing revenue from existing rents, rather than developing or redeveloping properties.

In the Campus District, that has meant defining the SID to exclude the area north of St. Clair Avenue.

In Midtown, that is likely to mean the SID will include the western end of the district, adjacent to downtown.

Bobbi Reichtell, executive director of Campus District Inc., said on Thursday, June 15, that she believes the petition drive underway there will garner 64% approval from property owners in a SID planned for the southern half of the Campus District.

Voting closed at the end of the day on Friday, June 16.

CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

BOBBLEHEAD CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

“The attention to detail, we are maniacal about it,” the BDA CEO said.

You could say the same thing about the Indians, who have given away an average of 4.4 bobbleheads per season since 2007.

Madzelan and her team begin to plot out the next year’s promotional items during the current season, and then solicit fan feedback via a survey in late July.

“We want this to resonate with the fans,” Madzelan said. “We want to put out items that are appealing to them.”

The majority of the promotional items are manufactured in China, which means the Tribe must finalize its list of giveaways in late November or early December, Madzelan said.

The bobblehead process is more complicated, because such factors as unique characteristics that would make for a good giveaway — Ramirez’s helmet, Francona’s scooter and Kipnis’ batting stance, for example — and even the next year’s trade deadline must be considered.

In that regard, the Indians are in a pretty good place, with a young core of players signed through 2018 and beyond who are coming off the franchise’s first Fall Classic appearance in 19 years.

This year’s bobblehead giveaways, for instance, include three standout players — Ramirez, shortstop Francisco Lindor (July 4) and Kipnis (July 22) — and an Aug. 23 collectible featuring Francona, the club’s popular manager. That’s a stark difference from 2011, ’12 and ’13, when all but one (Asdrubal Cabrera in 2012) of the Tribe bob-

On May 27, the Indians handed out a bobblehead that showed third baseman Jose Ramirez running without a helmet. (Contributed photo)

“The attention to detail, we are maniacal about it.”

— Jay Deutsch, CEO and co-founder of BDA

bleheads was of a former player.

When the Indians were working with BDA on the Ramirez bobblehead, they sought the help of Anna Bolton, the club’s translator and player engagement coordinator.

Ramirez was involved early in the process, and the Tribe went so far as to include the tattoo on the 24-yearold’s right forearm in the design.

“It’s a very detailed process, but we want to make sure we get it right and it’s true to the player,” said Madzelan, who has been with the Indians since 2005 and was promoted to her current role in 2013.

CRAIN’S HEALTH CARE FORUM

‘Destination weekends’ Phil Sklar, the co-founder and CEO of the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum, has a database that has tracked giveaways for baseball, basketball and hockey teams since 1999, when the bobblehead became a fixture on the promotional schedules of pro sports organizations. (The hall’s collection was boosted by a large donation from the late Bob Manak, a huge Cleveland sports fan, earlier this year.)

There have been more than 7,000 bobblehead designs handed out in that span, said Sklar, who added that teams love that the collectibles get fans in the gates early, since most bobbleheads are given out on a firstcome, first-served basis. (Since 2012, the Indians have most often limited bobbleheads to the first 12,500 fans, though season-ticket holders can get

special access via Tribe Rewards.)

In addition to the spending increase that results from fans arriving to the ballpark earlier than normal, the collectibles are a draw for sponsors.

Madzelan, the Indians’ advertising and promotions manager, said sponsors are aligned with promotional items and fireworks nights as part of a “bigger partnership asset mix.” Factors such as the level and tenure of the partnership, plus brand fit and business needs, are considered as the Indians fill out their promotional calendar.

Bobbleheads and jersey giveaways are the Indians’ top two promotional items, though Dollar Dogs, a Tribe source said, are still the largest driver of attendance.

“There is a lot of analysis that goes into trying to figure out when the best date is for every item,” Madzelan said.

“We really want to make summer weekends at the ballpark destination weekends for fans. That’s when we tend to schedule our high promotional items and really stack those promotions to make it a big event.”

Because of that, the data for the popularity of the bobbleheads can be a little skewed, since the collectibles are most often given away on Saturday (which, along with Friday, produces the best gate numbers for the Indians) and sometimes coincide with such special occasions as the unveiling of a statue honoring Hall of Famer Frank Robinson.

The latter was the case for the Ramirez bobblehead on May 27, a Saturday matchup against the Kansas City Royals that generated a crowd of 30,920 — the best non-opener gathering in April or May at Progressive Field since May 17, 2014.

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Still, there’s no doubt the bobbleheads have given the Indians’ often-down attendance numbers a jolt.

From 2007-16, a 10-season span that included 44 bobblehead giveaways, the collectibles produced an attendance norm of 26,287 at Progressive Field. The average is 5,216, or 24.8%, above the Indians’ attendance norm for the 10 seasons.

If you narrow the window to five years, from 2012-16, the attendance bump is almost identical — 24.5%, to 23,352 per contest. During that stretch, the Indians ranked 28th or 29th in MLB at the gate each year, which makes the average bobblehead bump of 4,600 per game seem even more considerable.

“Fans really love those collectibles and things they can wear,” Madzelan said. “Those are consistently things that they ask for.”

Deutsch — whose company also has merchandising deals with the NFL and NBA (BDA produces the T-shirts that are given to each fan at Cavs playoff games) — said some fans prefer that the bobbleheads be more traditional. Others would rather have Terry Francona on a scooter.

“There are teams that want to push the boundaries,” Deutsch said. “The Indians are a team that says, ‘I want to try something new.’ ” That leads to an orange-haired third baseman running helmetless and, as will be the case with the Lindor bobblehead on July 4, an All-Star shortstop with a platinum glove commemorating a 2016 honor as the best defensive player in the American League.

“Immediately, these are collector’s items, and fans know that,” Deutsch said.

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PA G E 7

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PA G E 8

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Opinion From the Data beat

A data trove is at your disposal

Editorial

Making it happen Late last month, MetroHealth completed the sale of $945.7 million in hospital revenue bonds to fund a dramatic transformation of its aging campus on West 25th Street on Cleveland’s West Side. It was a major sign of progress for the ambitious endeavor — a project that will be punctuated by a new 12-story, 270-bed hospital to replace its aging, though iconic, patient towers.

Investors were bullish on the bond sale — and we are, too, about the impact this project will have on Cuyahoga County and its residents.

The competitive issuance resulted in a lower-than-expected interest rate that is believed to save the health system roughly $50 million over the life of the bonds. It was a crucial step in making this much-needed project become a reality.

Everything about this project is bold — the size, scope, timeline and especially MetroHealth’s decision to finance the entire project on its own credit. Adding to that risk, of course, is uncertainty blanketing the health care industry, given Republican-controlled government’s failure to advance any sort of meaningful health care reform.

Amid this uncertainty, prior to MetroHealth going to the market, three major ratings agencies downgraded MetroHealth’s long-term ratings. Despite the downgrades, they all remained relatively optimistic about the health system’s plans even in the face of adversity. Fitch Ratings noted that it had believed “other funding sources (i.e. county, philanthropy) would be available to fund the majority of the cost” and MetroHealth moving forward on its own “significantly increases its leverage.”

Of course, after years of negotiations, the credit-tapped county has agreed to help with the project, though perhaps not eagerly as some community activists would have liked — particularly given the county’s fervent support for the controversial (though needed and welcome, as we’ve argued) Quicken Loans Arena project.

For the MetroHealth project, the county is obtaining a letter of credit at an annual cost of $350,000 — a move expected to

save the health system up to $160 million on the total cost of the transformation effort.

It’s often overlooked what a value MetroHealth has been for Cuyahoga County taxpayers, especially as the health system has carefully — and cost effectively — plotted its expansion plans over the last few years. Just recently, for example, MetroHealth announced a $25 million investment that would add single-occupancy patient rooms to its Cleveland Heights and Parma facilities, which are former Healthspan outposts.

All the while, MetroHealth’s county subsidy — which makes up only a sliver of its annual operating revenues, now hovering north of $1 billion — has continued to shrink. Last year, the county provided a $32 million subsidy — down from $40 million in 2015.

It’s easy to overlook health care construction projects in Northeast Ohio, given the bevy of activity from giants like the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals. Construction crews, after all, have been a mainstay for the last decade or more on Euclid Avenue near University Circle.

Still, there’s something special about MetroHealth’s effort that should have Cuyahoga County taxpayers, and really anyone doing business in Northeast Ohio, thrilled. Perhaps it's the do-it-yourself approach employed by the MetroHealth administrators who have long dreamed of this transformation. Or that the hospital system is making its construction project as much about the surrounding neighborhood as its own campus.

Given the current health care environment, the MetroHealth overhaul certainly carries some risk — especially when its patients, for the most part, rely on government-funded health insurance — though we don’t believe MetroHealth administrators are being naive about their ambitions.

MetroHealth CEO Dr. Akram Boutros perhaps said it best at the system’s June 9 annual meeting.

“What we’ve been trying to build is a good life for everyone who lives here, and hope, hope that gets passed from one good person to the next; hope that builds a better Cleveland, a better world and ignites the future we all dream of,” he said.

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

CLEVELAND BUSINESS

CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Managing Editor:

Scott Suttell (ssuttell@crain.com)

Sections Editor:

Timothy Magaw (tmagaw@crain.com)

Contact Crain’s:

216-522-1383

During my first 10 years at Crain’s Cleveland Business, I did a pretty crappy job of using the massive amount of data we collect.

As our tech reporter, I was obsessed with just one of the lists we publish: the Local Software Developers list.

Every year, I’d compare it to lists I saved from previous years.

Who’s growing? Who’s not? Who’s new?

It gave me an instant snapshot of the largest software companies in town and how the local industry was doing.

But then last September I became the Crain’s Data Editor — and quickly realized how bad of a job I was doing.

For instance, I’ve written a lot about Hyland Software, given that they’re the biggest software company in town.

But most of those stories don’t include Chuck revenue figures for Hyland. Why not? I had it Soder in my head that Hyland didn’t give out that information. But I was wrong: Hyland was already giving us those revenue figures. And we’d published them for five years in a row.

Of course, I would’ve known that had I taken a closer look at our Largest Privately Held Companies list.

Other reasons I’ve been kicking myself: J I had no idea we collected names and titles for so many local executives. I should’ve added some of those names to my digital Rolodex. Alas, they appeared in the Microsoft Excel version of the list — which I completely ignored.

J Instead of comparing print versions of the list, maybe I should’ve been using the Excel version to run all those calculations I had been doing by hand. How dumb!

J I’ve spent a lot of time talking to tech investors over the years.

Yes, I occasionally glanced at our Private Equity and Venture Capital Firms list, but why didn’t I use it to find sources for stories or identify the types of companies they tend to fund? Come on, Soder!

My old self infuriates me sometimes. Today, however, I can download any Crain’s list or directory in Excel or PDF form with the push of a button. And so can anyone who becomes a Crain’s Data Member.

For $299, you can get unlimited access to data on more than 1,800 local companies and more than 4,000 local executives and business owners — plus our print edition and full access to every story we publish.

No, we don’t sell individual lists online anymore. To those of you who’ve bought them, thank you. But I encourage you to learn from my example. See how else you can take advantage of our database to make good decisions — and more money. You may already know you can use the lists to shop for a law firm or an accounting firm, to hunt for sales leads or to research your own industry.

You might not know just how deep the rabbit hole goes. A creative sales manager could use our Excel lists to segment companies by industry or by location when creating territories for their sales teams. A savvy executive might check out the compensation data we publish before going into a salary negotiation. And if you simply want to know who the major players are in the local business community, becoming a Data Member is a quick way to do it (learn more: CrainsCleveland.com/Data).

Want to dip your toe in before taking the plunge? Then sign up for our free Data & Lists email newsletter. It'll include stories breaking down our lists and other data-related articles (to sign up, visit bit.ly/2stoatn).

Of course, given my track record, I know I’ll be kicking myself again before long. I’ll discover that I’ve been ignoring some obvious idea that could make our data products better.

So please — help me avoid that scenario. What local data should I be collecting? What survey questions I should be asking? What can I do to help you succeed?

If you have answers, message me at csoder@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 letters@crain.com. Please include your complete name and city from which you are writing, and a telephone number for fact-checking purposes.

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

Please include a telephone number for verification purposes.

CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

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PA G E 9

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Letters to the Editor Replacing ACA isn’t answer Endorsing Metro’s methods Anthem, one of Ohio’s major insurance providers, recently announced its exit from the state’s insurance marketplace, which would leave 18 counties without a coverage option under the state’s Affordable Care Act marketplaces. This should come as no surprise, as the administration’s efforts to undermine the ACA have left insurance companies with few options, and this is harming our small businesses.

The uncertainty surrounding ACA repeal and the White House’s refusal to commit to reimbursing insurance companies for cost-sharing subsidies will undoubtedly result in more providers following suit, or increasing their premium costs. This will be especially harmful for entrepreneurs who struggled to obtain health coverage for themselves and their employees prior to the ACA, particularly those with pre-existing conditions.

Entrepreneurs around the country don’t want or need another health care overhaul. What they need is quality, affordable health coverage so they can focus on running their businesses. The only solution is for lawmakers to work toward strengthening the ACA, and drop any further attempts to move forward with a replacement plan.

Michaela Hahn Burriss Ohio outreach manager, Small Business Majority

I found Lydia Coutre’s June 5th article “Hospitals taking wider approach to care� a fascinating behind-the-curtain insight as to how hospitals approach patients. My previous MetroHealth thinking was that it was the place that “took out bullets� (nightly newscasts don’t help to dispel that thinking), but I found that it is not. My congenital aortic valve replacement was diagnosed by my MetroHealth primary-care physician during an annual visit, synchronized between a MetroHealth cardiologist and Cleveland Clinic surgeons at Metro, and healed by the most caring people. MetroHealth exemplifies multi-discipline care to their staff — which is expressed forward in a beyond exemplary way to those of us who count on their kindness.

If I were to advance MetroHealth’s next great idea, it would be to widen its approach in empowering patients to take a 60% role in their recovery. Sure there are classes, but why not serve protein burgers and how to cook them to patients instead of pizza and burgers?

Why not have the guy in front of the pavilion serve healthy food instead of hot dogs and pop?

MetroHealth System is a community gem that seems to be polishing itself every day.

Greg Coloian, Cleveland

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Focus UNIVERSITY RESEARCH

When research gets a helping hand Through endowed professorships, donors help sustain – and grow – the academy

By TIMOTHY MAGAW tmagaw@crain.com @timmagaw

E

arlier this year, the title on Alexis Abramson’s business card got quite a bit longer.

The Milton and Tamar Maltz Professor of Energy Innovation at Case Western Reserve University might be a bit of a mouthful, but it’s a designation that comes with quite a bit of prestige and, perhaps more importantly, latitude. If it weren’t for this endowed position, she wouldn’t have the resources to fund a student who’s developing a program using Microsoft’s virtual reality HoloLens technology to demonstrate how a power plant works — something that could dramatically alter how her students learn about energy sources.

“At a research university, we’re expected to bring in grant money to do the majority of our work. It takes hundreds of thousands of dollars to run our labs,” said Abramson, also the director of the Great Lakes Energy Institute.

“What’s difficult is when we have an exploratory project like this in mind.”

Endowed professorships and chairs aren’t a new phenomenon in higher education. The first endowed chair in North America reportedly dates back to 1721, with the Hollis Professorship of Divinity at Harvard.

However, they are becoming an increasingly valuable, self-sustaining tool as the competition for premiere academic talent escalates and traditional public funding sources erode.

Interest income from these endowed funds, for instance, can be used to cover a professor’s salary and provide a number of other ancillary benefits like research support. Endowed positions can also be useful for retaining a university’s rising stars.

On the local front, CWRU, John Carroll University, Oberlin College and, just recently, Kent State University have all made raising funds for endowed positions a priority in their latest fundraising campaigns. Notably, CWRU raised funds for a staggering 88 endowed positions during its recent $1.5 billion fundraising push.

“I don’t know whether lay people understand that for faculty members at large research institutions having a

title like this emphasizes their excellence in a field,” said Suzanne Rivera, CWRU’s vice president for research.

“When they hear ‘professor,’ they might assume all professors are created equal.”

Raising the bar Kent State for years has been trying to elevate its research enterprise, and upon the arrival of Beverly Warren as its president, she hired Paul DiCorleto, a veteran researcher from the Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute, to lead that renewed charge. A key prong of DiCorleto’s plan to strengthen Kent State’s research muscle is to secure more funding for endowed positions. Endowing a position a Kent State can cost anywhere between $500,000 and $2.5 million, DiCorleto said.

After all, a university’s research enterprise is only as good as its faculty, and when you have an endowed position, DiCorleto said, “The quality of applicants goes way up.” The Chronicle of Higher Education last year characterized endowed chairs as “the foolproof recruiting tool.”

“If we really want to grow the research effort here and be competitive, we need endowed funds for chairs or professorships,” said DiCorleto, Kent State’s vice president for research and sponsored programs.

“When you’re recruiting, to be able to put that in a description for the job can make a big difference.”

During DiCorleto’s 13 years at the Clinic, DiCorleto said the institution secured 15 new endowed chairs for research. At current, Kent State boasts 13 endowed positions — funders including Bridgestone and the John S. Knight Foundation.

Even smaller institutions without a doctoral program like John Carroll are making endowed positions a piece of their fundraising efforts.

John Carroll recently finished off its Forever Carroll campaign, which brought in more than $100 million.

In that campaign, the university secured $6.1 million for four endowed positions. So, why does a liberal arts university with an undergraduate emphasis need a high-profile researcher?

SEE RESEARCH, PAGE 14

Endowed professors at a glance Alexis Abramson The Milton and Tamar Maltz Professor of Energy Innovation Case Western Reserve University What she does: Abramson’s research included the study of the design and synthesis of unique nanomaterials for use in alternative energy applications. She’s also director of the Great Lakes Energy Institute.

Antonie van den Bogert Parker Hannifin Endowed Chair in Human Motion and Control Cleveland State University What he does: The objective of his research is to improve advanced prosthetics and orthotics in their ability to replicate the movement of healthy human limbs. Van den Bogert is an internationally renowned researcher in biomechanics.

Robert Giacalone Raymond and Eleanor Smiley Chair in Business Ethics John Carroll University What he does: Giacalone will focus on business ethics at the undergraduate and graduate levels and organize conferences and symposia to assist business leaders, students and faculty with insight into the challenges of ethical and moral leadership in today’s business world.

Matthew Becker W. Gerald Austen Endowed Chair in Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering University of Akron What he does: Becker’s lab develops biodegradable polymers for medical applications. One application cited by the Knight Foundation, which funded the chair, has included a polymer tube designed to replace sections of arm and leg bones destroyed by injury.

Mark Goodman Knight Chair in Scholastic Journalism Kent State University What he does: Goodman is an expert in media law and student free speech rights. Before joining Kent State as the first Knight chair, he served for 22 years as executive director of the Student Press Law Center.

Illustration by nihatdursun via iStock

CRAINâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

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PA G E 11

UNIVERSITY RESEARCH

KSU prof is an archaeological wunderkind

By MARK OPREA clbfreelancer@crain.com

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not a room like this anywhere in the world,â&#x20AC;? Metin Eren said while walking into his four-section lab in Lowry Hall at Kent State University.

In one, the â&#x20AC;&#x153;experimental room,â&#x20AC;? sits a stationary bow called a Hooter Shooter aimed toward a 12-foot-tall plastic enclosure with clay bricks stacked with tiny slits in them, as if theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been stabbed repeatedly.

Eren, a 34-year-old experimental archaeologist, grabs an arrow from a nearby table of hundreds, one with an imitation Clovis point head he â&#x20AC;&#x153;flintknappedâ&#x20AC;?â&#x20AC;&#x201D; or, made by hand â&#x20AC;&#x201D; months ago. â&#x20AC;&#x153;When we first got this thing, we broke like 50 of them,â&#x20AC;? he said, one-eyeing the bow string like a marksman. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Do I get paid to shoot arrows?â&#x20AC;? he added, cranking the bow. â&#x20AC;&#x153;No,â&#x20AC;? he answered, â&#x20AC;&#x153;we get paid to do science.â&#x20AC;?

He hit a button, the bow fired. At 80 miles an hour, the arrow exploded into clay. Eren sped over. His face lit up. â&#x20AC;&#x153;How about that?â&#x20AC;? he said, surveying the damage.

Ever since January, Eren, a native Ohioan who became an archaeological wunderkind as a teenager, began a multi-year, grant-funded series of research projects headquartered at Kent State. Although the university has been the home for many weathered archaeologists â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Owen Lovejoy, who famously helped reconstruct the 3-million-year-old â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Lucyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, for one â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Eren is the first archaeologist of his kind to accept a years-long research position, one allowing him to delve deep into Northern Ohioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Paleo Crossing, an undisclosed site

Metin Eren, director of archaeology and an assistant professor of anthropology in Kent State Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s College of Arts and Sciences, prepares to fire a replica arrowhead. (Contributed photo)

where Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first homo sapiens may have colonized.

A conclusion, Eren said, he and his team of post-docs will reach by a â&#x20AC;&#x153;hypothesis-experimental-quantitative approach.â&#x20AC;?

Pure science, that is.

Taking a stand For many millennial-aged researchers like Eren, the field of archaeology today stands on a sort of tilt, one half leaning toward traditional methods, the other toward progressive techniques (firing points

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into fake deer named Bambo, for example). Also, Eren said itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a discipline relatively new for the field, one brought into the mainstream and in most academic journals only in the last 10 years â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a feat held back by traditionalists, esteemed archaeologists who call shots based on subjective intuition more so than objective lab data. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the Big Chief mentality: whatever he says is correct,â&#x20AC;? Eren explained. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve had a lot of pushback where people in peer-reviews will say, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Oh! We donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need statistics to tell me about this thing.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; And weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re

actually like, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Yes, we do.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;â&#x20AC;?

Eren added, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re just trying to pull archaeology out of the dark ages.â&#x20AC;?

Erenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s defiant push against the grain began at an earlier age than many. Born in Cleveland to a family of doctors, Eren discovered a strong predilection for human origins in a biology class at St. Ignatius High School.

Intrigued, he wrote a letter in 2000 to Cleveland Museum of Natural Historyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s archaeological curator Brian Redmond, asking if he could apprentice on an ongoing dig reported in The Plain Dealer. Redmond was doubtful.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;To have a 16-year-old kid working with him?â&#x20AC;? Eren said.

Yet, in a few years, Erenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s captivation with prehistoric artifacts would pay off. By the time he was 21, he published a top-tier article in a popular science journal, and was already supervising graduate students.

Worldwide digs were offered in waves, along with close-calls. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve had vehicles stuck in the middle of rivers,â&#x20AC;? Eren said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I fell off a cliff in China. In Africa, we scared off a hyena with machetes.â&#x20AC;? And stateside, frequent trips to the ER. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve gotten obsidian in my eye before,â&#x20AC;? Eren added, laughing. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It sucked.â&#x20AC;?

In August 2008, his research on Upper Paleolithic Blade Cores â&#x20AC;&#x201D; which showed that the technology of earlier human species was just as efficient as our ancestors â&#x20AC;&#x201D; went viral.

It was cited 102 times on Google Scholar and even was mentioned in a Jay Leno monologue (â&#x20AC;&#x153;It must have been a slow news week,â&#x20AC;? Eren joked).

He came to be the go-to source on the subject of Neanderthals and Paleo tool recreation by BBC, PBS and The Washington Post. What was a proof of prehistoric cognition was Erenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s breakout number, one he said simply â&#x20AC;&#x153;showed that 70 years of archaeological canon was incorrect.â&#x20AC;?

He was 24 at the time.

A decade later, Eren continues to focus his emerging brand of archaeology not without his range of criticisms. An adviser at Harvard once scoffed at the bones of one of Erenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s breakthrough articles for The Journal of Archaeological Science. Also, naysayers claim that reverse-engineered science canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t truly replicate prehistoric behavior, and therefore must eventually take on imagination.

SEE KENT, PAGE 14

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Five research projects to watch Northeast Ohio is home to a bevy of incredible colleges and universities — all of which are conducting research that has the potential to save lives and transform our economy. And while much of this work is being done in conjunction with other researchers around the country and globe, there’s no denying the intellectual capital housed in Northeast Ohio. Here is just a sampling of the novel research taking place.

Jae-Won Choi

Elena Manilich

Anant Madabhushi

Liya Yin and William Chilian

Katherine Judge

Associate professor University of Akron

Assistant professor John Carroll University

Professor Case Western Reserve University

Associate professor; professor Northeast Ohio Medical University

Associate professor Cleveland State University

Details: 3D printing has the potential to upend the manufacturing industry, and Choi, a mechanical engineering professor who joined the University of Akron in 2011, is developing technology that could expand the revolutionary process even further. Choi has developed a technique for 3D printing called “direct-print photopolymerization.” The process extrudes inks from a nozzle in layers and uses light to simultaneously cure it, as opposed to forming something from a vat of material. That’s a complicated way of saying this process achieves a new level of detail, as well as being solvent free — meaning it can be used in more sensitive areas like medicine. Choi, meanwhile, did his post-doctoral research at W.M. Keck Center for 3D Innovation at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Details: In conjunction with the Cleveland Clinic, Manilich — a computer scientist by training — is leading a project that has the potential to save lives. Manilich’s team has developed software that uses data-mining algorithms that can detect errors in blood tests before physicians even have the opportunity to see the results or enter them into a patient’s electronic medical record.

“If these errors aren’t detected, the patient could potentially be harmed,” said Manilich, who formerly worked at the Digestive Disease Institute at the Clinic. “Incorrect medications could be prescribed. There are some very serious implications.” Using data science, Manilich said she and her team “can approach medical problems with a whole different perspective.”

Details: The adage that a picture is worth a thousand words has taken on new meaning when it comes to research undertaken by Madabhushi that has the potential to lead to new frontiers in the world of personalized cancer diagnostics. Madabushi’s team, for instance, is developing algorithms that can quickly scan a pathology image — going beyond what the human eye can see — and determine the aggressiveness of a breast cancer diagnosis, allowing oncologists to make more appropriate treatment plans. That means a patient could avoid the damaging effects of chemotherapy. Last year, the National Cancer Institute supplied a five-year, $3.3 million grant for Madabhushi’s research team that includes academics from around the country.

Details: Cardiologists have long known about a life-saving vessel in the heart called a collateral that serves as a bridge for bloodflow between two major arteries. That said, many patients don’t have enough of these collaterals or those collaterals are too small to carry blood when needed. Yin and Chilian are exploring ways, using stem cells, to make those vessels grow bigger and faster — something that could ultimately serve the same function as a bypass and re-route blood to area of the heart receiving insufficient blood because of a blockage, according to information provided by the university. This year, the pair received $435,371 from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health to support the research’s next stage.

Details: Psychological stresses like embarrassment, isolation and depression can ravage patients suffering from a traumatic brain injury as well as their caregivers. A research team involving Judge is moving into the fourth year of a project that is exploring ways to test non-pharmacological, psychosocial interventions for both the patients and their caregivers to treat these issues. “There is no way to fix any of these conditions,” said Judge, whose research originally began with dementia patients.

“There’s no solution. For caregivers and individuals it can be overwhelming and isolating. I feel rewarded when these techniques and skills help them lead high quality lives.” Judge is partnering with the Veterans Health Administration on the research project.

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UNIVERSITY RESEARCH

Connections key to CWRU, CSU partnership

By JUDY STRINGER clbfreelancer@crain.com

Sunnie Chung spends a lot of time thinking about data.

Specifically, the Cleveland State University lecturer studies how conventional analytical tools can be used to find commercially useful patterns in unstructured datasets — such as the fast-growing and wildly diverse realm of social media content — or scour internet traffic datasets to pinpoint unique characteristics of malicious activity.

About four miles east, Case Western Reserve University associate professor Pan Li is developing a cloudbased system for the secure collection and sharing of health care information over mobile devices. The two had never worked together, although each was aiming to produce more efficient and effective ways to manage, understand, use and protect the avalanche of new data being generated via connected devices and networks.

That changed last year when Chung and Li joined a handful of pioneers in a grassroots effort to cross pollinate data-driven research at CSU and CWRU and position Northeast Ohio as a leader in the next wave of computing called the Internet of Things, or IoT for short. Last month, the presidents of CSU and CWRU formalized the partnership, saying the universities will join forces to advance the development of IoT curriculum and research and to spur IoT initiatives with civic and business partners.

In their case, Chung and Li created a new “big data” testbed — a platform that links data computing cen-

ters at the universities via a high- ternet-enabled heart monitors, cars tunity,” said Nigamanth Sridhar, grant or collaborate on a particular speed 10 gigabit-per-second network and kitchen appliances and a vast ar- professor of electrical engineering research project,” Wilson said. “They and allows researchers and engi- ray of commercial and industrial and computer science at CSU. are talking about how do they cross neers to crunch datasets concurrent- sensors that can collect and share “Based on our research, we are connect their academic programs. ly and in parallel. The CSU data is data to improve the efficiency of a right at the point where we can How do they cross connect their reonly visible at CSU, and the CWRU manufacturing line, for example, or make a big play, a big investment, search, their graduate work, their data is only visible at CWRU, but the calculate auto insurance rates based and have a chance to establish various partners that they work with.

Cleveland and Northeast Ohio as This is no small task.” analysis can be performed collabora- on a driver’s behavior.

IT analysts at Gartner Inc. forecast the leading go-to place for reSridhar and Loparo will act as fatively, which Chung said is a necessity given the volume of data and com- that 8.4 billion connected “things” search, commercialization, new cilitators at their respective instituplexity of processing massive will be in use worldwide this year, up ideas, new curriculum develop- tions, maintaining a log of faculty specialties and datasets. active projects Another proj“Based on our research, we are right at the point where we and being the ect involves the point of contact development of a can make a big play, a big investment, and have a chance to for prospective system that can collaborators outdetect, monitor establish Cleveland and Northeast Ohio as the leading go-to side the universiand optimize unties. Wilson hopes derground elec- place for research, commercialization, new ideas, new that might not trical lines or wacurriculum development, new workforce development — all in only include pubter pipes. lic and private Kenneth Lopathe area of IoT.” sector partners ro, the Nord prolooking for IoT exfessor engineering — Nigamanth Sridhar, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at CSU pertise but also and chair of CWother regional RU’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Com- 31% from 2016. Gartner notes that by ment, new workforce development colleges, such as the University of Akron or Kent State University, which puter Science, said opportunities for 2020 there will be more 26.4 billion — all in the area of IoT.” The collaboration builds on an ini- undoubtedly have their own experfuture collaboration are almost end- connected devices, and that still may tial $200,000 planning grant from the tise to bear. less, and some will spill outside of the be just the tip of the iceberg.

“It is very much emerging, both in Cleveland Foundation that enabled McKinsey & Co. partner Enno de computer science and engineering departments into law, urban plan- terms of maturity of the technology CSU and CWRU to assess their exist- Boer said building out a rich IoT netning, business schools and even be- and the collection of technologies ing expertise in IoT technology areas work of collaborators — rather than that comprise IoT and also in terms and identify gaps to be filled. The competitors — will be critical for any havioral sciences.

“The impact of IoT is going to be of market options,” said Hung, who grant was part of the foundation’s organization wanting to have a seat at the table. His firm has identified 60 felt well beyond smartphones,” he pegs hardware spending in IoT at Digital Excellence Initiative.

Leon Wilson, the foundation’s digital manufacturing use cases said. “If you think about it in terms of nearly $964 billion this year.

In its June 2015 report, industry chief information officer and chief of where IoT is having the greatest tracthe verticals of manufacturing, energy, infrastructure and health care, watcher McKinsey & Co. said if policy digital innovation, said that while the tion. Even for large companies, he the opportunities are going to dwarf makers and businesses get it right, planning grant may have been the said, it is almost impossible to do all anything that we have seen to this linking the physical and digital impetus for university administrators of the work in-house to develop a roworlds could generate up to $11.1 to explore a formalized partnership, bust IoT strategy. point.”

“It is all about collaboration in this IoT is a phrase coined to describe trillion a year in economic value by he is impressed with how broadly the initiative is being embraced. space, because it is such a big space, the vast network of interconnected 2025.

“The Internet of Things is just “They are going beyond just having not one company, not one kind of devices from already-pervasive smartphones, tablets and fitness beginning to gather steam and it a handful of professors collaborate network, is able to cover everything,” watches to an emerging flood of in- presents us with a unique oppor- on a (National Science Foundation) he said.

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UNIVERSITY RESEARCH

KENT

RESEARCH

“We should never pretend that we’re replicating these people fully,” Eren said. “And we shouldn’t. We should focus on the questions that we can answer.”

At Kent State, where Eren’s skill set, and lab space, helps to pinpoint the precise age of the Clovis people — a seminal homo sapien group at least 11,000 years old — by heavily-detailed replicas, Eren works an hour drive from his hometown with a hunch furthered by Paleo Crossing’s possibilities. As are the Ph.Ds working alongside him.

“He actually taught me and Alastair (Key) how to flintknap,” Michelle Bebber, a post-doctorate student who specializes in the recreation of Paleolithic pottery, said, referring to a England-based partner in Eren’s research.

“Most people don’t know how to do it.

As far it being dangerous? It takes a kind of personality to do what we do. Curiosity overrides all else completely.”

After Eren fired a second arrow in his lab that day, one with a much thicker stone head, he ran to the enclosure

“When you bring in an endowed chair, not only are you raising the visibility of the university, but in our case, this person brings a leadership role that improves and raises the work of the entire department,” said Jeanne Colleran, who was recently named John Carroll’s interim president.

John Carroll, for example, is eagerly awaiting the arrival this fall of Robert Giacalone from the University of Denver as its Raymond and Eleanor Smiley Chair in Business Ethics. Giacalone will focus on business ethics at the undergraduate and graduate levels and organize conferences and symposia that provide insight into the challenges of ethical and moral leadership in today’s business world.

That chair was made possible by a $2.5 million contribution from the Smiley Charitable Foundation. Raymond Smiley is a 1951 John Carroll graduate, who held leadership roles at McDowell-Wellman Engineering Co., Gilford Instrument Laboratories and Bearings Inc.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10

A collection of Clovis point replicas and casts. (Contributed photo)

to survey the punctured clay targets.

He tugged out the arrows, and gripped each to measure the impact. “You can clearly see,” Eren said holding up the first, smaller arrow, “there would have been much more blood with this one.”

Later, after firing a third arrow with the purpose of breaking it into two, Eren brought up the topic of the traditionalists as if one was secretly observing him in the adjacent room. Plainly, he cited his experiment as his basis.

“I just want the truth,” Eren said.

“That’s why we get a lot of pushback. Just because 70 years of archaeologists said differently?” He palmed his hair, then pointed to the cracked arrow on the ground. “There’s your proof,” he said.

“The key is to find the person who connects with your strategic plan, mission and identity,” Colleran said.

“We are able to do that with this particular endowed chair. We teach business with an Ignatian heart.

Without an endowed chair, we were definitely doing OK, but now with one, we are really walking the walk.”

Locally, the bulk of endowed chairs are from grateful alumni or foundations. With a $3 million endowment, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation funded the W. Gerald Austen Endowed Chair in Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering at the University of Akron to recognize the work of renowned thoracic surgeon Dr. W. Gerald Austen.

Corporately funded chairs, too, aren’t unusual. Take Cleveland State University, which has its Parker Hannifin Endowed Chair in Human Motion and Control, which is funded by the Mayfield Heights-based maker of motion and control technologies.

Cleveland State also has two endowed chairs bearing the name of Monte Ahuja, a Northeast Ohio business giant known for his philanthropy and the founding of Transtar, a Walton

Hills-based distributor of transmissions and drivetrain-related products.

For the most part, the names attached to these professorships aren’t controversial, though there have been a few across the country. The Chronicle reported Brown University in Rhode Island had been criticized for a position honoring Hans Rothfels, a German historian described as an early supporter of Adolph Hitler. Also, Spelman College, a historically black women’s college in Atlanta, suspended an endowed professorship named for Bill Cosby and his wife in the wake of his sexual assault allegations.

By attaching an individual’s or business’ name to an academician’s title, there could be a perception that they have some sort of control or influence over the professor’s work, though local higher ed administrators insist that’s not the case other than the donor designating a general research area like energy or ethics.

“That person is expected to have same academic freedom as any other faculty member,” Case Western Reserve’s Rivera said. She added, “We think about people who hold these positions are our superstars.”

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AKRON

Danbury Senior Living is expanding in big way

By DAN SHINGLER

build or to live in. Each project costs between $15 million and $30 million, and the facilities range in size from a 45-unit development in Alliance to the 152-unit Danbury Hudson development under construction on a site overlooking Lake Forest Country Club and slated to open in 2018.

The clients are all private pay, Spring said, and rents vary from $3,000 to $5,000 a month.

For that, tenants get an environment that pretty much replicates a country club. They have bars, fancy restaurants, fitness centers, spas, salons, libraries and theaters (with leather seating, of course) — all on site. Gouldian finches hop from perch to perch in some common areas.

It’s not a nursing home, however,

Lemmon stressed. Danbury offers independent living, assisted living and special memory-care units, but it does not get involved with skilled nursing, he said.

There’s also no obvious skimping in individual units, which can be as large as 1,500 square feet, with two bedrooms — and all the granite countertops, high ceilings and huge bathrooms that come with a highend rental. About the only thing giving them away as being for seniors to the trained eye is the fact that things like breakfast counters are designed so that a wheelchair can pull up beneath them.

Spring said it generally takes about 18 months to completely rent out a new facility, but all of the Danbury properties so far have been a success.

Little wonder — anyone who says the U.S. doesn’t make anything anymore obviously is not counting seniors into the mix.

The baby boom is exploding into the market for senior housing, whether it’s empty nesters competing with younger renters for urban condos, or older folks looking for a facility like Danbury.

According to the most recent U.S. Census data, Ohio has more than 1.6 million residents age 65 or older.

Only New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, California and Florida have more.

And more are on the way. The Washington D.C.-based nonprofit Population Reference Bureau estimates that the number of U.S. residents 65 or older will increase from 46 million today to more than 98 million by 2060, when they will make up nearly a quarter of the nation’s population.

That’s the mega-trend driving Danbury’s expansion, Spring and Lemmon said. And Ohio stands to remain a top market, because seniors tend to move around less than a lot of other demographics.

The two said they plan to continue building. They’ve found not only a ready market of tenants in Ohio, but also enough investors — largely area real estate professionals and other businesspeople Spring and Lemmon have worked with over the years — to form groups to back each project.

And, like Spring and Lemmon themselves, the investors are in it for the long haul, the men said. There’s no plan to sell off individual developments or the whole company.

“The purpose is not to build and flip this,” Lemmon said.

And banks are also willing to lend in this arena, especially smaller community banks that know the markets in which Danbury builds, Lemmon said.

“We’re not slowing down,” Lemmon promised.

than any legal or image problems the company faces, including figuring out how to keep the business of consumers who increasingly shop more online and less at the malls, where many of Signet’s Kay, Zales and Jared the Galleria of Jewelry stores are located.

The company’s e-commerce business was up, but just by 1% in the first quarter. At $81 million, it’s still a rela-

Google also are apt to see reports about the allegations against Signet for sexual harassment.

Signet hopes what it calls its “ominichannel” sales platform of online and strategically placed retail sales outlets will help it rebuild sales.

Asked whether the company believes its reputation with customers has been damaged and impacting sales, Bouffard responded, “It is difficult to measure the impact of any specific company news versus the overall challenges related to the retail landscape, which we believe is the key business driver.

“We have worked hard to address misperceptions in the marketplace over the past year,” he said, “and we are continuously focused on better understanding our customers and engaging with them across all channels and platforms. Our customers are the lifeblood of our company, which is why we are committed to our omnichannel, customer-first strategy.”

Barkett said Signet was probably slow to react to the hits to its image, but has been moving in the right direction, especially since appointing a board committee and bringing in a former federal judge.

“It’s going to take a lot of time and effort to repair the damage this situation has caused, but they are taking better steps toward that now,” Barkett said.

As for the company’s executives,

Signet recently announced that chief operating officer Bryan Morgan resigned on June 2, “due to violations of company policy unrelated to financial matters.” The company declined to say whether Morgan’s departure was related to any of the recent controversies, but Light and other top executives have survived the spate of bad news.

Dix & Eaton’s Barkett said that if the company were going to do any wholesale bloodletting in its C-suites, that likely would have happened already.

“It’s really hard to handicap that, but I think if they were going to make sweeping executive changes they would have already,” Barkett said.

But what Signet really needs is a wholesale reversal of the hits that its image has taken.

Barkett said the company has done the right thing in terms of first addressing the problem internally.

Now, he said, it has to rebuild its reputation via communications directly with target audiences through direct outreach and a variety of social and traditional media.

It doesn’t help that some of the issues will be drawn out, apparently through next year, but Barkett predicts the threat to Signet, though serious, is not existential.

“I think they’ll get through it, but it’s not a small challenge. It’s a very big challenge,” Barkett said.

dshingler@crain.com @DanShingler

A real estate professional and a veteran developer in North Canton are developing new apartments as fast as they can to meet what they say is a niche of skyrocketing demand in Ohio.

They’re not just any apartments either — they’re the luxurious, amenity-filled complexes that cater to foodies, wine drinkers and fitness fanatics, and are in demand by the current market of rental-oriented hipsters.

You might know them as seniors.

But you might not guess that from looking at their digs, which is kind of the point.

“This isn’t like the place a lot of people think of when they remember going to visit their grandmother,” said Bill Lemmon, co-owner of Danbury Senior Living with Brian Spring.

About to turn 80 himself, Lemmon walks through the dining area of one of Danbury’s latest developments, the 137-unit Sanctuary Grande in North Canton, like a bit of a celebrity.

Nearly everyone says hello, including the chef that he hired away from a nearby restaurant.

But Lemmon is doing anything but slowing down. He’s still president and owner of Lemmon & Lemmon Builders and Developers in North Canton, but says these days most of his time is spent working on Danbury with Spring and their management company, Brookwood Management.

Spring, meanwhile, is also chief financial officer and a principal at NAI Spring, a commercial real estate firm in Canton.

They’ve been at it since 1997, but only recently started running at the pace they are today.

They’ve opened a dozen senior living centers to date, and they have centers under construction in Hud-

SIGNET

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Then, in February of this year, The Washington Post reported on the sexual harassment claims, which included allegations that Signet CEO Mark Light and other executives engaged in a pattern of sexual harassment and discrimination that included nude pool parties and not paying or treating female employees the same as male employees.

Image body blows, to be sure, but Signet has taken numerous actions to address its problems.

It quickly launched an investigation into the ring-swapping claims. A company investigation found no evidence of the practice at its stores, but Signet said it would begin testing a diamond-tracking system that would allow customers to identify their specific diamond by its unique internal features.

As for the sexual harassment and discrimination claims, Signet has always steadfastly denied them, and says it will continue to do so.

“We have taken the pay and promotions allegations in the arbitration case very seriously from the outset, have thoroughly examined the facts, and we believe that the allegations have no merit. The trial is expected to begin the week of March 12, 2018, or as soon thereafter as the arbitrator’s schedule

Danbury’s Sancturay Grande senior living center in North Canton. (Dan Shingler for Crain’s)

Lemmon

Spring

son, Mentor, Brunswick and Huber Heights. They also are expanding two existing facilities in Wooster and Westerville.

“Most of that has happened since 2012,” Spring noted.

If anything, that’s an understatement, too — all but two of the properties have been developed since 2012.

They aren’t cheap, either — to permits, and we will continue to defend the company vigorously,” Signet spokesman David Bouffard said in email correspondence with Crain’s.

The company has set up a special committee of its board of directors to “focus on respect in the workplace,” and in April it brought in former federal judge Barbara S. Jones to “conduct a thorough review of the company’s policies and practices regarding equal opportunity and workplace expectations,” a process that Bouffard says is ongoing.

Signet last month settled a complaint by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, also over the pay and treatment of female employees. Signet walked out of that with no finding of wrongdoing and no penalties imposed on it by the EEOC. That might be a good sign with regard to the upcoming class-action trial. But are the moves enough to regain customers’ trust?

So far, sales are lagging. The company reported a drop in same-store sales of about 12% for the first quarter, which ended April 29. Analysts had been expecting an 8% decline.

The company reported disappointing earnings of $1.03 per share, which was down 84 cents from the first quarter of 2016.

Signet’s branded stores may be confronting fundamental challenges that are more of a big-picture priority

Sales are lagging.

The company reported a drop in same-store sales of about 12% for the first quarter.

Analysts had been expecting an 8% decline. tively small sum for a company whose total sales of $1.4 billion were down 11% from 2016 as retail store sales fell.

On its May 25 conference call, it wasn’t Signet’s image or legal problems that were brought up and scrutinized by security analysts. It was the company’s margins, sales channels and e-commerce strategy.

In the online realm, though, image is important. And online shoppers who find the company’s stores via

PA G E 16

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J U N E 19 - 2 5 , 2 017 |

CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

THE LIST

SBIR Grants Awarded in 2016 HUB ZONE

DISADVANTAGE

WOMAN OWNED

Ranked by Award Amount

1

Euclid TechLabs LLC 5900 Harper Road, Solon, 44139 (440) 519-0410/www.euclidtechlabs.com

$999,984

DOE

2

Flat Field Emitter Based on Ultrananocrystalline Diamond Film for Superconducting Radio Frequency Technology

To use thin-film diamond to create better particle accelerator cathodes

N

N

N

Sergey Baryshev

2

Euclid TechLabs LLC 5900 Harper Road, Solon, 44139 (440) 519-0410/www.euclidtechlabs.com

$999,966

DOE

2

GHz Electron Buncher Compatible with Commerical Transmission Electron Microscopes for Strobosopic Imaging with High Space-Time Resolution

To develop a more affordable high resolution electron microscope

N

N

N

Sergey Baryshev

3

AlphaMicron Inc. 1950 State Route 59, Kent, 44240 (330) 676-0648/http://alphamicron.com

$999,952

DOD

2

Guest-host Liquid Crystal Dimmable Visor

To test whether AlphaMicron's e-Tint liquid crystal material can be applied to large, curving eyewear

N

N

N

Bahman Taheri

4

Euclid TechLabs LLC 5900 Harper Road, Solon, 44139 (440) 519-0410/www.euclidtechlabs.com

$999,846

DOE

2

Single Crystal Diamond Compound Refractive Lenses

To make diamond X-ray lenses that could improve the performance of next-generation Xray light sources

N

N

N

Sergey Antipov

5

Terves Inc. 24112 Rockwell Drive, Euclid, 44117 (216) 404-0053/http://tervesinc.com

$995,797

DOE

2

Expandable Proppants for In-Situ Well Stimulation

To improve oil and gas recovery by developing improved hydraulic stimulation fluids

N

N

N

Andrew Sherman

SPR Therapeutics LLC 22901 Millcreek Blvd., Suite 110, Highland Hills, 44122 (844) 378-9108/www.sprtherapeutics.com

$873,240

HHS

2

Electrical Stimulation to Reduce Pain and Improve Function After Knee Replacement

To conduct studies evaluating the feasibility, safety and effectiveness of using nerve stimulation to relieve pain after knee replacement

N

N

N

Joseph W. Boggs

7

Powdermet Inc. 24112 Rockwell Drive, Euclid, 44117 (216) 404-0053/www.powdermetinc.com

$749,712

NASA

2

Wide Temperature, High Voltage and Energy Density Capacitors for Aerospace Exploration

To advance the development of highperformance capacitors designed to help NASA store energy in harsh environments

N

N

N

Haixiong Tang

8

Athersys Inc. 3201 Carnegie Ave., Cleveland, 44115 (216) 431-9900/www.athersys.com

$450,040

HHS

2

Cell Therapy for the Treatment of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome

To run animal trials designed to test whether Athersys' MultiStem adult stem cell therapy might be an effective treatment for ARDS

N

N

N

Anthony Ting

9

PediaVascular 7181 Chagrin Road, Suite 250, Chagrin Falls, 44023 (888) 691-6161/www.pediavascular.com

$397,952

HHS

1

Development Leading to the Commercialization of Bioresorbable Stents for the Treatment of Coarctation of the Aorta in Neonates

NA

N

Y

Y

Rashida S. Ferebee

Binnacle Biosciences Inc. 1649 Compton Road, Cleveland, 44118 (216) 368-4603

$337,587

HHS

1

Cellular Model for Personalized CFTR-Directed Therapeutics (for cystic fibrosis)

To develop and test a human cell-based tool for predicting how individual cystic fibrosis patients will respond to drugs that improve the function of mutated forms of the CFTR protein

N

N

N

Calvin U. Cotton

11

Thermalin Diabetes LLC 11000 Cedar Ave., Cleveland, 44106 www.thermalin.com

$299,991

HHS

1

Enabling Implantable Artificial Pancreas Pumps with Heat-Stable, Ultra-Rapid Insulin

To develop an ultra-stable, ultra-fast insulin analog formulation for use in advanced smart pumps

N

N

N

Bruce H. Frank

12

Ento Bio LLC 4230 Lander Road, Chagrin Falls, 44022 http://entobio.com

$225,000

NSF

1

Termite-Derived Enzymatic Tree Bio-Herbicides

To study termite digestion for the purpose of developing a tree herbicide that would replace synthetic chemicals

N

N

N

Jeffrey Bargiel

13

GLC Biotechnology Inc. 7362 Stockwood Drive, Solon, 44139 (440) 666-2844

$225,000

HHS

1

A Method for Quantitatively Retrieving Circulating miRNAs from Plasma

To develop a way to retrieve miRNA from the blood, allowing health care providers to use miRNA levels to diagnose diseases

N

N

N

Baochuan Guo

14

O2 Regentech LLC 411 Wolf Ledges Parkway, Suite 100, Akron, 44311 www.o2regentech.com

$224,977

HHS

1

OXAID: Oxygenating Hydrogel for Diabetic Wound Care

To test a hydrogel dressing designed to deliver oxygen to chronic wounds, promoting healing

N

N

N

Andreas Inmann

15

ImageIQ Inc. 26801 Miles Road, Cleveland, 44128 (855) 462-4347/http://image-iq.com

$224,851

HHS

1

Liver Surface Nodularity Score as a New Noninvasive Biomarker for Chronic Viral Hepatitis

To refine and test software that analyzes CT and MRI images to diagnose cirrhosis and predict future liver problems

N

N

N

Andrew D. Smith

16

Perfusion Solutions Inc. 10265 Carnegie Ave., Cleveland, 44106

$224,826

HHS

1

Small Diameter, High Output, Durable Transapical Left Ventricular Assist Device

To test the performance of a minimally invasive heart pump in animals

N

N

N

William A. Smith

17

H-Cubed Inc. 26988 Valeside Lane, Olmsted Falls, 44138 (440) 241-1413/www.h-cubed.com

$224,634

HHS

1

Device for Treatment of Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia

To develop a miniature valve system for the trachea designed to treat Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia by promoting lung growth

N

N

N

Kenneth G. Goldman

18

BioInVision Inc. 781 Beta Drive, Suite E, Mayfield Village, 44143 (216) 373-1500/www.bioinvision.com

$224,116

HHS

1

Cancer Imaging and Therapy Platform

To create an imaging platform researchers could use to study cancer, especially metastatic and invasive cancers, in animals

N

N

N

David L. Wilson

19

Lumitex Inc. 8443 Dow Circle, Strongsville, 44136 (440) 305-5769/www.lumitex.com

$220,352

HHS

1

Non-Invasive Intraoral LED Phototherapy Device for the Prevention and Treatment of Oral Mucositis

To create a light therapy device to treat Oral Mucositis, a painful mouth condition often endured by patients undergoing cancer therapy

N

N

N

Vedang P. Kothari

Cleveland Medical Devices Inc. 4415 Euclid Ave., Suite 400, Cleveland, 44103 (216) 791-6720/https://clevemed.com

$206,663

HHS

1

Inspire Feedback Oral Recording Monitor (INFORM)

To develop a platform for monitoring sleep apnea patients using a stimulation treatment system; the data would be used to improve the system and identify who benefits from it

N

N

N

Hani A. Kayyali

Euclid BeamLabs LLC 5900 Harper Road, Unit 2, Solon, 44139 (301) 637-0669/www.euclidbeam.com

$149,856

DOE

1

High Average Current Bunched Electron Source for Radiofrequency Accelerators

To study and create the design for a particle accelerator beam that provides short, highcurrent bursts of electrons

N

N

N

Vadim Jabotinski

Ocius Technologies LLC 411 Wolf Ledges Parkway, Suite 100, Akron, 44311

$149,630

DOD

1

Analog Co-Processors for Complex System Simulation and Design

To design a computational platform that can solve differential equation-based simulations much faster than existing systems

Y

N

N

Dale Mugler

23

Linda and Cameron Inc. 7274 Hollyhock Lane, Solon, 44139 (330) 631-9949

$149,450

HHS

1

MySearch: Purposeful Individual and Independent Activities for Persons with Early to Moderate Stage AlzheimerÕs Disease and Related Dementias

To create and test a kit meant to encourage AlzheimerÕs patients to participate in activities designed to improve their lives and behavior

N

N

N

Cameron J. Camp

24

Powdermet Inc. 24112 Rockwell Drive, Suite A, Euclid, 44117 (216) 404-0053/www.powdermetinc.com

$145,012

DOE

1

Subterranean Acoustic Imaging Agent

To develop an acoustic imaging agent the oil and gas industry would use to map underground fractures

N

N

N

Brian Werry

THIS YEAR RECIPIENT

6

10

20 21 22

AWARD AMOUNT

AWARDING PROJECT AGENCY PHASE PROJECT TITLE (1)

PROJECT GOAL (2)

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

RESEARCHED BY CHUCK SODER: CSODER@CRAIN.COM

Want the full version of this list Ñ and every other Crain's list? Become a Data Member: CrainsCleveland.com/data Source: www.sbir.gov. The Small Business Innovation Research program encourages domestic small businesses to engage in federal research and development that has the potential for commercialization. HHS = Dept. of Health and Human Services, DOD = Dept. of Defense, DOE = Dept. of Energy, NSF = National Science Foundation.

(1) Some titles have been edited for style; acronyms have been replaced with full phrases. (2) Summarized from project abstracts.

CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

FOOD SHOW

“You never want to see something like that go away. It’s been going for so long, and I think it’s a good event for the city — but also brings people to Cleveland.”

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

His son, Matthew Pillar, 22, is a chef for the Zack Bruell Restaurant Group.

He called the show’s suspension a big loss, especially for someone like him.

“Me and a lot of my friends go every year,” Matthew Pillar said. “You get to meet some of the famous names and some of Cleveland’s best chefs, and learn from them — and learn more about local products, things I haven’t seen yet, new upand-coming ingredients.”

Michael Symon, who has headlined and hosted the two most recent Fabulous Food Shows, shares their disappointment. He considers the expo a rare opportunity for everyday foodies like the Pillars.

“You never want to see something like that go away,” Symon said. “It’s been going for so long, and I think it’s a good event for the city — but also brings people to Cleveland.”

While commercial shows abound — such as the annual Fancy Food Shows in San Francisco and New York City, the National Restaurant Show in Chicago and Produce Marketing Association’s Fresh Summit in New Orleans — few are geared to mainstream consumers.

Fewer still rival FFS for magnitude and content under one roof.

Marquee events, such as Food Network’s South Beach Wine and Food Festival in Florida and the San Diego Bay Wine and Food Festival, aim for a high socio-economic demographic.

They’re also spread over a variety of venues and locales.

By contrast, FFS may be the nation’s single largest show under one roof. Symon said he couldn’t name another like it.

Cleveland’s premiere food event started in 2004 with The Great Big Food Show, hosted by the Food Network. The cable TV enterprise staged a pair of events, in Cleveland and Philadelphia. The productions were

— Michael Symon

Celebrity chef Michael Symon has headlined and hosted recent Fabulous Food Shows. (Peggy Turbett)

intended as a roadshow to highlight the network’s budding stars, among them Alton Brown, Rachael Ray and Mario Batali. In Cleveland, a pre“Iron Chef” Symon joined in.

The Philadelphia show drew fairly tepid response, but the one in Cleveland was a smash, bringing in as many as 40,000 attendees.

Those initial live forays, however, taxed the Food Network’s resources, and executives chose to forgo a repeat.

Two years later, I-X Center directors launched their own locally produced version, and the Fabulous Food Show was born — on the eve of the winter holidays and the biggest home-cooking season of the year. Since then, it has been pitched as a November event.

During its 11-year run, the show has spotlighted some of the food world’s biggest names: Martha Stewart, Bobby Flay, Paula Dean, Marcus

Samuelson, Sandra Lee, Guy Fieri and Sunny Anderson all have appeared.

Attendance has settled into a comfortable average of 25,000 to 30,000 for each annual three-day show, Attewell said. Saturdays draw the biggest crowds.

Older guests tend to pour in for the quieter Friday show, while Sunday ticket sales compete with Browns game days.

Attendees average in age from 25 to 54, with a household income of $60,000 to $100,000. In addition to about $35 for a ticket and parking, an average guest spends around $100 in merchandise at the show.

That adds up to a reasonable success, Attewell said, but not enough to profitably offset the show’s mounting costs. Attendance has remained essentially static since the show’s inception. Production costs have not.

“A lot of what we do offer is very appealing, but it’s awfully expensive

to offer,” he said.

Attewell wouldn’t share overall figures to produce the FFS or other I-X Center shows but said the decision to cancel the 2017 show was “primarily financial.”

“We want to make sure we’re unveiling programs that will increase our attendance base and make the show financially sound,” he said.

Each event hosted by the I-X Center, whether produced locally or by an outside firm, has its own financial variables.

Endless aspects factor in, from the cost of turning on the lights and heating or cooling the behemoth facility, to creating the show’s overall ambience.

When it comes to FFS, however, it’s the cost for live talent that poses maybe the greatest challenge.

“Main Stage names cost a lot,” Attewell said. “In a given year, that can be anywhere between $300,000 and $500,000 total for all the stars. Plus

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J U N E 19 - 2 5 , 2 017

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PA G E 17

there’s the cost for food and beverages, backstage operations. … It’s a huge portion of our show budget.”

And it’s a gamble. Attewell said the organization proceeds cautiously in selecting headliners that will draw enough guests to offset costs.

And it can become an exercise in fortune-telling.

Producers have to choose and book the headliners months in advance, often earlier. Attewell explained that means guessing which food stars will be hot by the time the show opens.

Who will be releasing a book or debuting a new program? Which network will be showcasing new talent? How much will they be promoting those stars, and who will be watching them?

“We try to make sure we have some diversity of talent, Cleveland being the melting pot that it is,” Attewell said. “Of course, there’s always some crossover in appeal, but it’s a gamble determining that this (headliner) will bring in 15,000 people and that one may bring in 3,000 or 30,000.”

Symon, whom Attewell credits for helping to make the show into what it has become, said that if I-X Center leadership hopes to reshape FFS into a more dynamic draw for attendees, they may want to look at some of the higher-profile events around the nation.

“See why some are working better than others. In addition to the cooking demos, the more interactive the events are, the better these shows seem to do,” Symon said.

Events like the Food and Wine Classic in Aspen, Colo., and South Beach Wine and Food Festival attract a more diverse range of attendees by integrating a variety of venues, levels of sophistication and price points, he said.

“You can go to one event in one part of the city, then another event elsewhere,” Symon added. “It enables you to bring in a more diverse clientele, and everyone has a different amount of money they can and will spend.

“It’s a hard thing to pull off, no doubt. But if done right, it could be very powerful for the community.”

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PA G E 18

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

J U N E 19 - 2 5 , 2 017 |

CREDIT

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3

“We’ve been around 100 years and still there are consumers who just don’t know what a credit union is,” Reddy said. “We’re constantly educating to get the word out and why we might be the better choice over their current financial partner.”

The silver lining here is that despite the struggles and shrinkage in total number of credit unions, the sector is managing to grow members and assets both in Ohio and across the country. An economy that continues to improve is helping.

According to CUNA, at the end of 2016, U.S. credit unions combined grew total assets 7% from the prior year, with nearly 74% of all institutions

enjoying asset growth. Average assets per credit union grew, partly due to consolidation, by 11% to an average of $221 million per cooperative.

Total memberships increased more than 4%, the largest increase since the mid-1980s.

In Ohio, there were more than 2.8 million members at the end of the first quarter, according to CUNA, which marks growth of 3.3% over the

prior 12 months.

The sector’s wide base of small credit unions saddled with the high cost of doing business will continue to roll up into large institutions. That will mean fewer options for consumers.

But at a time when a deep base of resources is required to not only serve members effectively but keep up with regulators, consolidation should create better, stronger credit unions, particu-

larly in Ohio, which will create further competition for for-profit banks.

There will just be fewer of them.

“As an industry, we’re doing very well and member growth is strong,” Mercer said. “The stronger a credit union is, the more capable they are of providing an alternative to for-profit banking services. We will see more consolidation. But it’s building toward ever-stronger credit unions.”

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PAGE 18 μ JUNE 19, 2017 μ CRAIN'S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

REAL ESTATE

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Source Lunch

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PA G E 19

Anne Bitong

President/executive director, Akron Marathon Akron native Anne Bitong started as a volunteer co-chair of the inaugural Akron Marathon in 2003 and now leads a staff of seven employees, several seasonal workers and thousands of volunteers in putting on not one but three races. Under Bitong’s leadership, the race has grown into the Akron Children’s Hospital Akron Marathon Race Series, with tons of community support and home-grown sponsors such as Goodyear, FirstEnergy and National Interstate Insurance.

The Akron Marathon gives back in return, having donated nearly $1.5 million to local charities. The series kicks off June 24, with an 8K and 1-mile run.

It continues Aug. 12 with a half-marathon and 10K, and culminates Sept. 23 with the marquee event. But to Bitong, who previously served as marketing director for Main Street Gourmet, it’s about more than just running. “Race day is Akron at its best.” — Sue Walton

Five things Are you a runner?

Yes. Witnessing her first Akron Marathon inspired her. Bitong has participated in the Marathon relay, 5Ks and a half-marathon. She’s training for her first marathon.

If you could be any superhero, who would you be?

“Not sure about a superhero, but a superpower I wish I had was the superhuman endurance.”

It’s Saturday night in Akron.

What’s your favorite thing to do?

“Weekends are typically reserved for family time.” Bitong and her husband have two sons, plus she’s one of seven siblings, most of whom still live in the Akron area.

What’s your car radio tuned to?

“1590 WAKR for news on my drive into work every morning and country music on 94.9 WQMX in between.”

Best advice you’ve ever gotten?

Turn a challenge into an opportunity.

Lunch spot The Lockview 207 S. Main St., Akron 330-252-5128 thelockview.com

The meal Grilled goat cheese sandwich with red pepper and tomato on threecheese miche; grilled mozzarella, tomato and pepperoni sandwich; Goldfish crackers; water and soda.

The vibe A laid-back spot that features gourmet grilled-cheese sandwiches. Crowds visit for both business lunches and before events at nearby Lock 3 Park.

The bill $19.48, plus tip

This is the third year since the marathon has expanded into a series — two “training runs” throughout the summer, culminating in the September marquee event. What was the reasoning behind that decision?

Our goal is to continue to grow the organization and the people we touch. Not everyone can run a marathon or a half-marathon, so the reasoning behind the race series was twofold: First, we wanted to offer shorter distances to attract new participants, and second, we wanted to offer additional races to support those training for our marquee race.

As running has become more popular and all sorts of races pop up all over, how do you make this series stand out? How do you attract your “customers?”

We have a very high retention rate; over 80% of our participants return every year. We find that if we are consistent in our race experiences and continue to impress our loyal customer base, they often will help us spread the word organically and bring along their running buddies.

Social media has certainly helped us market.

How has the move to a series affected attendance?

We knew that we wanted to grow participation. We had a goal of hitting 20,000 runners, and we knew that was going to be somewhat challenging to do that for our marquee race because we have certain restrictions in terms of road closings, and we want to provide a world-class race. We didn’t want to just throw a ton of numbers at that event. We wanted to offer additional races where our runners could have another Akron Marathon experience.

We have over 1,500 runners that run in all three events in the series.

What’s the estimated economic impact of the marathon? How has changing it to a series affected that?

Our marquee race generates a $6 million economic impact to the Akron area. The race series has increased our impact to $8 million. Last year, the Akron Marathon had participants from 40 states and seven countries.

The other races generally see representation from 19 to 26 states.

How is all of the construction in downtown Akron affecting the course planning?

The city of Akron has been wonderful. It provides updates on all of the construction that’s going to affect any of our race courses, and we work with them as well as ODOT, as necessary, so that we have a runnable surface for our race dates. This year, our June race was impacted with some construction. We knew about it well in advance, as well as our September race is impacted with some construction.

So then do you just alter your course?

We alter the course. We don’t try to change the course for the sake of changing the course, but if we have to change the course to work around a construction project, we will then take a look at what’s on our wish list. … We always try to keep the course somewhat similar to the original course in terms of the landmarks that we travel and the neighborhoods that we travel through. We try to give the best tour of Akron that we can. With the new races, we were very deliberate in designing the courses. We wanted to feature a new section of town or a section that we knew would be on the horizon for growth. So that if runners run … for multiple years, they can actually see that transformation.

What’s next for the Akron Marathon Race Series? Any plans to add any races?

Currently, we are focusing on continuing to build our infrastructure to support our growth over the last several years. We are looking to secure a new building to expand our office and warehouse space. While we’re not necessarily planning any additional races in the next year or so, we are looking at how we can support our runners and walkers through the training process, whether that’s adding some additional programming to support their efforts or to serve as a resource in their training.

It’s the day after the main race in September, after you’ve gotten through three big events. What are you thinking about?

After reading the paper with a very tall cup of coffee and sifting through emails and social media, my favorite post-race tradition is to get pumpkins with my family and start decorating for fall. On Monday, the planning begins for the following year.

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Presented by Truline Industries and University Hospitals, the Ronald House Pro-Am Golf Tournament is the longest-running and most successful fundraising event in the history of the Ronald McDonald House of Cleveland.

Over the past 37 years, the tournament has raised more than $4 million to support the Ronald McDonald House’s mission of keeping families close when they need it most. Led by committee chairman Andy McCartney, this tournament is made possible by the dedication of our committee members, sponsors, and golf professionals.

PRESENTING SPONSORS

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UNDERWRITING SPONSORS ®

k {k e ) {kc k American Consolidated Industries, Inc. BDO Bowden Manufacturing Carnegie Investment Counsel Chemical Bank The Crawford Group

The Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company Davey Tree Expert Company Dawson Insurance, Inc. Deloitte Elk & Elk Fifth Third Bank

Genesis Motor America Hilton Garden Inn, 700 Beta Banquet and Conference Center Hinkley Lighting HC Murray Group NSK Industries PwC

Resilience Capital Partners Resource Strategies, Inc. Ronald McDonald House Charities of Northeastern Ohio The Sherwin-Williams Company ShurTech Brands LLC Taylor Oswald Wellspring Financial Advisors

{) FeX BecU × Company Car, IMG and Suburban Press Our heartfelt thanks to the PGA and LPGA tour professionals and the NOPGA local resident professionals for their commitment to the Ronald House Pro-Am event.

TOUR PROFESSIONALS: Zac Blair, Bud Cauley, Roberto Castro, Fred Funk, Jason Gore, Jason Kokrak, Nancy Lopez, Peter Malnati, Larry Mize, Dicky Pride, Hal Sutton, Kyle Thompson and Harold Varner RESIDENT PROFESSIONALS: Dominic Antenucci, Mark Bixler, Jennifer Creech, Matt Creech, Mark Evans, Mike Heisterkamp, Jim Logue, Bill McKinley, David Mottice, Drew Pierson, Bill Reilly, John Sico, Mark Sierak, Judd Stephenson, Tom Waitrovich, and Charlie Wood

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