Cuyahoga County Decides to Join Downtown Improvement District, Which Aims to Keep City Center Safe, Clean

So far this year, DSP deputies have taken 127 guns off Downtown’s streets, made 125 drug-related arrests and handed out 373 traffic citations. In city data analyzed by Scene, the remainder is a lot more complex: though number of crimes reported went down this past winter with the DSP patrolling, it actually went up earlier this spring, compared to 2023 numbers. Credit: Mark Oprea

Following months of back-and-forth and grilling of reps from DCI, Cuyahoga County Council decided to join the Downtown Cleveland Improvement District, contributing some $1.3 million over seven years.

The district, overseen by Downtown Cleveland Inc., aims to keep downtown safe and clean by, among other things, paying yellow-shirted Ambassadors who pick up trash, water flowers and sweep sidewalks. The funds, collected as a fee from businesses with frontage on downtown streets, could also be used for pretty much anything, from hiring security guards to buying Christmas decorations on Public Square.

But the county’s buy-in didn’t come without rampant skepticism from the five members of its Economic, Development & Planning Committee, who repeatedly grilled DCI president Michael Deemer or Ed Eckart, DCI’s senior VP of operations, on why exactly County Council needed to help DCI reach its member quota in the first place.

There were questions on whether DCI had enough buy-in to keep the improvement district going forward, which is partly why it approached Cuyahoga County about including its buildings.

“Here we are carrying the water again,” District 5 Councilman Michael Gallagher told Eckart during a meeting on March 12. “I don’t mind doing it, because I feel sorry you guys are in a city that doesn’t give a damn about you.”

District 5 Councilman Michael Gallagher led Council’s criticism of DCI at a meeting earlier this month. Credit: Mark Oprea

Gallagher was riffing on Eckart and Deemer’s central ask to the dozens of agreements from Downtown businesses to keep the district legit. At least 60 percent of those property owners—save for churches, state or federal buildings—need to agree to chip into that tax pool for it to be legal.

DCI collects roughly $5 million a year from that district tax. Property owners’ pay is determined on the size of their building and the current value of their land. In other words, the County Headquarters building off East 9th has more chips to toss into the pot than Rebol on Public Square.

Eckhart’s argument to Gallagher earlier in March was essentially one trying to manage a communication breakdown: DCI could make that 60 percent threshold without the county. Even with, as Deemer noted in a February 3 council meeting, a “reduced footprint”—excluding, for the first time in 19 years, the Columbus Road Peninsula and the area south of the Erie Cemetery.

“Frankly, if the county doesn’t [join], and we submit petitions,” Eckhart told Gallagher, “the property owners within the district will pay more money.”

DCI declined to disclose to Scene earlier this month exactly how many properties had signed onto the district, or exactly how much more they’d be paying.

Both the city and the county will be contributing tax dollars into Downtown Cleveland’s upkeep next year.