Photo courtesy Cleveland Planning Commission
UPFRONT
NEWS
Cleveland to Give Rocket Mortgage Another Handout, Economic Development Brain Worm Thrives THE CITY OF CLEVELAND will give Rocket Mortgage roughly $1 million over the next five years as part of a so-called job creation incentive package. The grant is now a standard offering, one of the city’s go-to tools in its economic development toolbox. It is equal to 0.5 percent of a company’s new payroll. Rocket Mortgage, the Detroitbased mortgage lender formerly known as Quicken Loans, is housed under Dan Gilbert’s Rocket family of companies. It plans to expand its Cleveland headcount by roughly 700 employees. The new hires will work on the fourth and fifth floors of the Higbee Building downtown, above the JACK Casino, and will expand the company’s fintech (financial technology) division. According to Rocket’s Clevelandbased director of government affairs, Wendell Robinson, these
positions will not require a fouryear college degree and will pay, on average, $75,000 per year. In a city council committee meeting last week, which consisted largely of council members prostrating themselves in gratitude before Rocket Mortgage, the city’s legislation was revealed to be a formality. Robinson told Councilwoman Phyllis Cleveland that Rocket was already recruiting for these new positions and intended to begin hiring immediately. The company had received a pledge from the city that they’d get the grant, Robinson said, and wanted to hit the ground running. City council was just the rubber stamp, in other words. Everything had already been ironed out by the Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP), Ohio Means Jobs and other partners who assembled the picnic basket of subsidies for the
mortgage giant. Everyone was confident that city council would raise no objection of any kind. They didn’t. Tuesday morning, the city’s elected representatives took turns heaping praise on the mortgage lender. They declared that the deal was “Christmas in February,” (Councilman Joe Jones). It was a wow-worthy “big win for Cleveland,” one that “the entire city should be celebrating,” (Blaine Griffin). Indeed, Griffin said it was one of the best deals he’d ever seen on council. Downtown councilman Kerry McCormack offered his “enthusiastic support,” and Phyllis Cleveland said Rocket’s expansion represented “an investment in human capital in our community that we haven’t seen the likes of in quite some time, if ever.” Basheer Jones called the deal “very very exciting” and told the city’s economic development director, David Ebersole, that he “continue[d]
to hit home runs.” (No word on how the deranged 60-year TIF for the Flats East Bank project affected Ebersole’s batting average.) Unlike the Q Deal, which was praised by a majority of city leaders in equally outlandish terms, the current job creation grant is actually contingent upon new jobs being created. It will be disbursed annually, based on Rocket Mortgage’s new payroll, and will be capped at $975,000 over five years. The city is not bonding out tens of millions of dollars up front based on wildly optimistic projections, as Cuyahoga County did for Dan Gilbert in the Q Deal, increasing its substantial debt burden and downgrading its bond rating in the process. (Mayor Frank Jackson nevertheless saw fit to call the Q Deal the best deal he’d ever seen as an elected official as he signed the city legislation authorizing nearly $100 million | clevescene.com | February 10-23, 2021
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