Cuyahoga County taxpayers footing the bill for the Med Mart and convention center have long been assured that adequate performance standards are built into the contract with project developer MMPI. But it turns out it would take a near-catastrophic failure on the part of MMPI before the county could withhold rent payments or find a new developer.
To meet the contract terms, MMPI needs only to keep convention attendance at levels the old convention center maintained between 1994 and 1999, and make sure enough people stay overnight to keep one 100-room hotel mostly full.
Although a 2005 PriceWaterhouse Coopers study projected that a new convention center would generate 125,000 booked hotel nights each year, MMPI is expected to total only 35,000 hotel nights, for example.
