Water Cooler Conversations

Written by Pat Perry
President, ERC 

Over the past week and month I have been struggling putting my arms around a few things…

• If the proposed Medical Mart is such an incredible destination and economic development machine, why is our town the only one considering getting into this business?

• Why do we let three
  County Commissioners who have no real business experience make $900 million dollar decisions like the Medical Mart?

• Agreeing with Dan Gilbert…why would we build anything underground (Medical mart proposal) with views of the lake or river waiting to be had?

• Why did the Plain Dealer have to threaten a lawsuit to have the Medical Mart plan made public?

• Doesn’t it sound like the Consulting firm from Chicago have the better end of the deal on the Medical Mart proposal?  I have this sense that they are laughing their heads off at us in Chicago.

• Will the City of Cleveland ever paint its rusted bridges, clean up the garbage downtown (which rolls around like tumbleweeds) and bring down the old Howard Johnson’s hotel and Aviation High School?

• Does the Hopkins Airport Director ever travel to other airports and see how efficiently they are operated and how clean they are kept?

• Why is there still paid parking downtown Cleveland?

• Why can’t we place a few palm trees around our town during the warm months?

• Why not give land away for free in the City of Cleveland to any business that is willing to bring in at least 100 jobs into the city?

• Why don’t our newspapers understand that the more they scare people with their shock headlines, the more they reinforce the negative, the greater the likelihood of reinforcing negative behaviors like not buying newspaper advertising?

• When will we realize that we are the economy?  When people quit being scared things will get better.

Perhaps I am just plain dumb.  I try to stay informed, read quite a bit and meet with lots of people.  Seems like they have plenty of the same questions.  Just wish I could run into a few people who could provide the answers.