07/14/2003 Meeting Minutes (2) - Laserfiche WebLink

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Caucus/Regular Council Mtg. 7-14-03 Page 23 returned to a Public Auditorium. Public Auditorium has gone through a number of different renovations. The last one started about 20 years ago. It mostly involves upgrading facilities to allow for exhibition halls themselves. But this will be within the City of Cleveland. It has such a regional impact that this is why the discussion has been opened up that they have asked the County Commissioners and the City of Cleveland Planning Commission and the Mayors and Managers Association who had discussed it last week. All the sites-there are 6 sites in all- each one of them-there was a 7`h that was jettison-it all involved downtown. So, fundamentally, this is a decision that will have to be made by the City of Cleveland itself. But the connection with the County, the connection regionally and the connection in Columbus, all those factors make it-I mean it's going to be a pretty challenging role to uphold. But the numbers that they have shown that the jobs generated, the revenue streams they have generated-a lot of the battle I think is going to be over how these dollars are going to be funded and how the dollars are going to be divied up. I don't think anyone really has argued about the need to address this kind of regional issue. There are those who don't feel a Convention Center is an appropriate vehicle but I think it is hard to argue that the tourist industry is something that needs to be addressed. Even assuming the ballot (I think there was an article either today or yesterday) that this were to put together and voted upon this Fall (which is take advantage of dollars at their cheapest); it is probably going to be a 3 to 4-year period before you'd actually have something constructive because of the scale of construction that would be required. But the impact that it has is substantial. Dr. Parker said in our meeting, some of the discussion that prompted the deferral action came out of--one was the location-whether we as a legislative body should be necessarily endorsing directly Cleveland as opposed to Cleveland or the greater Cuyahoga County area. The other ~' question rose out of the financing. There has been a lot of controversy as to how the City finances these projects-whether we should endorse public funding with this at this point without really knowing how that would occur or whether, perhaps private enterprise (which has been brought up as a various option)-may be a better mode. So there was a concern that by stamping our approval on public financing and the direct location in Cleveland that perhaps that it wasn't appropriate. Discussion was held. Mayor Rinker said this is only one issue; this is only one project. Overall, the issue is one where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. If you look at each individual project, it is very easy to be critical of its weaknesses and its limitations. But in gross, in total, the big picture issue, this is probably a symbolic, I think, one of a regional impact as you can have. Jobs, job creation and the flow of money goes far beyond the Cleveland borders. That is why it is something where symbolically we could say even though we are an outer ring suburb and we seem to be pretty remote to all of this, in many respects we are tethered-as goes Cleveland-as goes the area. That is really what I was trying to achieve rather than getting into the detail as to exactly how this is going to be carried off. Mr. Riter said I also have concerns with this piece of legislation. I don't necessarily know that downtown Cleveland is the best location for a new Convention Center. I also think there's an awful lot of issues for financing and so putting down that we want to support the financing and '