Collinwood CDC Resurrected After Years of Being Out of Commission

The Greater Collinwood Development Corporation is back in business after about a three-year hiatus. Credit: Emanuel Wallace

If the Collinwood area hadn’t already begun to lose faith in its community development corporation by 2018, it sure would by that fall.

That was when Tamiko Parker, the then head of the Collinwood and Nottingham Villages Development Corporation, was charged by federal officers with theft in office. From 2014 to 2016, they said, Parker redirected $195,088 into personal expenditures—trips to Atlantic City, gambling at the casino—out of the nonprofit’s bank account.

Come October 2020, Parker pleaded guilty. She was sentenced to about three years in a federal prison.

Parker “was put in a position of public trust, charged with helping to lead a neighborhood to further prosperity,” federal attorney Justin Herdman said after her plea.

“Instead of using her position for the public good,” he added, she “chose to enrich herself with public dollars and spend lavishly on trips and home furnishings.”

In February 2022, five years after renaming the CDC and taking Parker’s place at the helm, nonprofit chief Jamar Doyle left the nonprofit following a exodus of its employees, due to wrecked funds and issues controlling real estate. (Including the difficult heft of making over the LaSalle Theater.)

Today, following years of regrouping, of finding new board members, of opening new office space on St. Clair Avenue and rebooting its phone bank and website, the Greater Collinwood Development Corporation says it’s back for a more responsible sequel after years, critics note, of vague budgets, lukewarm progress and self-serving behavior.

Critics including Ward 8 Councilman Michael Polensek, who had once chipped in upwards of $400,000 a year to GCDC before illegal and unprofessional behavior became apparent.

“They had some terrible people on that board who were nothing but placeholders,” Polensek told Scene.

“I mean, I’m not about fattening frogs for snakes,” he added. “I’m not putting another dime in there until I was sure we have confident people on that board.”

Polensek’s vetting came last month, when he met with Sarah Kennedy, a Collinwood resident for the past two decades, to explore what a resurrected GCDC could do if it operated like a real CDC. If it could help build housing. If it could help business owners with pulling permits. If it could actually carry out its own state audit.

The latter which, Polensek recalled, was seemingly impossible in GCDC’s previous incarnation.

“To get federal money—you have to be able to substantiate what you’re doing,” he said. “And I’m not going to fund a smokescreen, a group involved in questionable stuff.”

Kennedy, who’s also the director of the Northeast Ohio Musical Heritage Foundation, told Scene that she’s amassed about a dozen board members as of June, those ready to help steer some $150,000 in money awarded to the nonprofit this spring. (So far, confirmed board members include planner Allison Lukacsy-Love, politician Angel Washington and resident Lawrence Hill.)

The aim is to do what may be obvious: focus on beefing up Waterloo with full retail, attracting a supermarket in Nottingham Village, aiding the Western Reserve Land Conservancy best navigate the future of its Euclid Beach Mobile Home park.

“We have, like, the entire lakefront here,” she said. “It’s the lakefront for the whole east side. You wanna get to the lake? You have to go through Collinwood.”

As for the misbehavior of ex-directors, or the lackluster board efforts during Covid, Kennedy said none of it really matters this time around.

“We are very not focused on the past,” she said. “We are very forward-looking.”