The first evidence that somebody might actually spend money at Cleveland’s Medical Mart is due to be revealed at a press gathering next Friday morning at Mall B downtown.
On tap for the groundbreaking: Names of the 49 businesses lined up to lease Med Mart space will be unveiled, in addition to a list of 31 conferences and trade shows committed to doing business in Cleveland, according to Med Mart spokesman Dave Johnson.
Those numbers, he adds, are changing every day. To illustrate: It was reported last week that there were 40 possible tenants, compared to 47 the week before. By Friday’s celebration, project coordinators expect the actual number of exhibitors to fall somewhere between 0 and 600,000.
This article appears in Jan 5-11, 2011.
This all could have been done, cheaper, faster and ending up with a much larger facility, if the 1,000,000+ sf IX Center had been utilized. The IX Center building is geographically near central in the county, is still one of the nationally top ten largest convention spaces under one roof, and is adjacent to the majority of the Medical Mart traffic source (CLE airport). The 2 story Medical Mart could have been located within the southeast corner of the IX Center, making it an “Interiors Project”, which means cheaper and faster constuction costs and scheduling. The remaining eastern end of the IX Center then could have been utilized for conference and meeting rooms. This would have left approximately 850,000 sf left for convention space (2.5 times the proposed downtown space). Then, with federal infrastructure funding (Obama’s current favorite $$$ giveaway), an elevated monorail could have been extended from the CLE Airport over to the Medical Mart / IX Center facility. Along the 2.5 mile elevated monorail route to the IX Center, there is enough real estate east and south of the IX Center that 2-3 new hotels could have been built, at no taxpayer cost, with weather protected transit stations (similar to Disney World) as well as a station at the IX Center / Medical Mart. A glass enclosed walkway would then extend from the Medical Mart transit stop along the east face of the Convention facility to the main east building entrance allowing visitors for other convention events to utilize the weather protected public tranportation too.
The monorail as well as accessing the CLE Airport would also be tied into the Cleveland RTA Rapid transit which could transport the hotel guests to Tower City with its restaurant, retail and entertainment venues, as well as the “Q”, and the new Casino. All of this access would be possible without ever having to step one foot into the Cleveland’s winter weather. Imagine a convention visitor to Cleveland never having to don snow boots nor a winter coat for a convention meeting in the middle of January or February. Now that is how you attract convention business to Cleveland in the winter months.
Costs? If you assume full federal funding for the monorail system, allocate about $350-$400 /sf for the interiors work for the Medical Mart which includes a new building “glass skin” for the Medical Mart, $35 million to upgrade the IX Center mechanicals and outer skin for energy efficiency, and another $20 million for the meeting rooms, you’d be looking at a cost of just over $100 million with an additional $40 million contingency. That $140 million total at this time is what has already been collected by the sales tax. Which means, we could immediately rescind the 0.25% sales tax making the county a tiny bit more attractive for new businesses, which ultimately means MORE JOBS!
Medical Mart, Dairy Mart, Quickie Mart,Walmart, all either over priced or filled with crap. My 11 year old will be paying for this fucking fiasco still when he is 60.
Medical Mart, Dairy Mart, Quickie Mart, Walmart, all filled with either overpriced items or crap. Sometimes both. I can see my 11 year old if he is stupid enough to stay in Cleveland being forced to help pay for this fucking disastrous fiasco when he is 60.
In related business news Cleveland’s own International Center for Environmental Arts (ICEA) gets ready to celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2012 by exporting International Peace from Cleveland through its Worlds Children Peace Monument, all done without Gov’t funding.
Bet’cha it’s a no-show or another delay.
This is a good idea and makes far too much sense.
The flaw in this is that the IX Center remains outside the city and out of control of the old boy city network.