(Note: This post had as its inspiration a round of emails which were emphasizing the ability of the net to spread news - in particular the news of new web sites (one site went from inception to 1 million hits in 3 days). My impression of the discussion in the email exchanges was that other enterprises, besides political web sites, could utilize the phenomenal facility of the web to spread other development ideas. Let's see if the following wind turbine tower suggestion gets a million hits!)

 

WIND TURBINE TOWER FACTORY AT STEELYARD COMMONS 

Not to knock the inventiveness, initiative, computer savvy and $35.00 domain name purchases of www.sorryeverybody.com , http://www.apologiesaccepted.com/index.html , and http://www.halfthecountry.com , but Cleveland needs more than clever websites. Cleveland needs (numerous) 100 million + dollar no holds barred commitments to cutting edge manufacturing facilities.

Cleveland needs debilitating schemes like gambling, convention centers and the like to take an embarrassed exit - along with their promoters - and instead put 1/2 the money that would be spent on them into a REAL economy project.

One such REAL project is mass production of steel wind turbine towers. Instead of a Wal-mart at Steelyards commons, Joe Cimperman and Mr. Ryan should be promoting a minimum of a 1 unit per day (300ton) tower production facility. (for starters!) The US market for these towers in 2005 will be in the vicinity of 1250 units for a gross value of apx 625 million dollars. There could be 6 such factories in the US and not satisfy the market. Stevens Point, Wisconsin is on to this http://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/stories/2004/04/05/daily14.html

Manitowoc is on to this http://energy.sourceguides.com/businesses/byGeo/US/byP/wRP/lwindtower/byS/WI/WI.shtml

Turbine towers are the second largest consumer of steel in Germany after automobiles. What are we waiting for?

Look at Sudbury, Ontario. They didn't lobby for gambling, they licensed with Repower, a German turbine manufacturer. That's good civic sense. http://www.northernontariobusiness.com/displayHeadline.asp?291id115-pn=&view=19229

There's no reason our civic leaders can't be as wise!