In the Sunday Nov. 29th Plain Dealer cover story about the Health Line Steven Litt deserves much praise for mentioning in the fifth to the last paragraph of a 32-paragraph article that somehow, “a state psychiatric hospital planned near East 55th Street could discourage development of housing and other businesses nearby.”
At least Mr. Litt said it somewhere. This soft touch on something that could be very destructive to the future of Cleveland is puzzling. There is much to look into concerning this proposal.
1-What the American Public Transit Association would say about the advisability of a transit agency (in this case the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority) selling strategically located land next to a $200 million dollar “nationally important demonstration” Bus Rapid Transit line to be used as a parking lot to serve a mental hospital? What about the much touted “transit orient design” that environmentalists talk about?
2-Did the Ohio Department of Mental Health take a good look at the 8.4 acres of shovel ready land on Broadway that is the site of the former St. Micheal's Hospital? It had 222 beds and a look at the site from Google Earth shows about a quarter of this property was taken up by a surface parking lot. The proposed state hospital is to have 300 beds. It is likely the new state facility would fit just fine on the St. Micheal's site. Did Broadway neighborhood leaders reject such a proposal?
3-How much income tax money from this facility will be new to Cleveland? Rumor is that some of the beds and the jobs are being transferred in from Cleveland-located Metro Hospital, not just from outside of Cleveland. Mayor Frank Jackson has touted all the new income tax the city would receive from this facility.
4-Where does State of Ohio policy stand on something like building a suburban styled regional mental hospital sprawled over 14 acres of some of the most commercially appealing property in the state. Has Governor Strickland's administration ever set statewide standards for making sure huge strategic public investment, such as the $200 million Health Line, is put to the highest and best use, instead of squandering it with a property-value-destroying State mental hospital? If this facility is built as proposed, then it will be tax money used to destroy potential great value produced by tax money. It will be a massive collision of public dollars destroying the potential for private, and much public good. I fear that the good governor does not have a rudder on the good ship Ohio.
5-What about the overwhelming volume of public land use already on Euclid Avenue? None of it pays property taxes. What does continuing this trend mean for the future of property taxes in the City of Cleveland? Information provided by the Cuyahoga County Treasurer's office shows that there are currently at least 12 properties on Euclid Avenue, some large, that are now tax exempt between E. 46th and E. 86th Streets. This does not include the mammoth tax exempt properties of the Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals and Case Western Reserve University further east along Euclid.
6-With all the property tax exemptions given to encourage land development in recent decades, has it finally come to pass that “the highest and best” use is no longer a valid model for development that produces tax income? Maybe Mayor Jackson has insight into this.
7-Who benefits from the destruction of property value in the middle of midtown? Downtown business interests that have gone unexamined by the Plain Dealer? Perhaps the downtown boys are concerned for protecting the value of their property by making sure the State and City steer public funds to limit land available for commercial development and competing with their under appreciated properties.
Without the town's major newspaper taking a hard look at this proposal, conspiracy theory and rumor become the only ways to explain why such a thing as the Mayor Frank Jackson state mental hospital is being propsed for such prime land.
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