ORIGINAL CYNICISM

Newcomers to Cleveland express amazement at the lack of traffic, the modest cost of living, the array of arts and the East Side-West Side divide that it is as much a part of the suburban cocktail hour as olives and ice.

The other discovery newcomers make, and with some chagrin, is the
negativism that permeates the town, the oft-gloomy attitude
Clevelanders have toward themselves, their sports teams and their
future.

Eric Johnson, the new director of real estate for the
Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, is the latest arrival to
experience this euphoric-depressive syndrome. He concluded recently in
The Plain Dealer editorial pages that our city suffers from a
negative attitude that affects perception, progress and prosperity.

He is right.

Johnson’s job is to help promote a new dramatic downtown development
project designed to be built on the site of the present port at the
foot of West 6th Street. That’s why he invoked the need for
Clevelanders to be optimistic and reach for a new and better future.
What Johnson does not yet know is why sullenness weighs so heavily on
the community, making it a target of mockery and a specter of
insincerity. But he will learn in his job how and why this miasma
gathers and lingers and suffocates.

Then too, I suspect at some point, Johnson and his boss, the
mercurial and messianic port authority CEO Adam Wasserman, will do as
others have and blame the media as part of a conspiracy of morbidity
dedicated to cloaking the town’s destiny in darkness.

In fact, it used to be that so much emphasis was put on the positive
nature of things that the media overlooked what was eating away at the
soul of the city. Things like corruption, a sick political system and
developers who take advantage of the fragile enterprise that exists. We
have suffered all nature of plans, plots and promises because the media
were naive or promoting hope.

With time out for reporting from distant places, I have written or
directed news coverage of the town for 45 years. I was here when the
town proudly called itself “The Best Location in the Nation,” and I am
here while Mayor Frank Jackson apathetically says of his city, “It is
what it is.”

No better analogy describes our descent into cynicism. Jackson will
never go on to fame — and neither will we as long as he is in
office — but he will be remembered for his line in the same way
Ralph Perk is for his hair catching on fire and Dennis Kucinich for the
tumult of default.

If a writer were to use only newspaper clippings to write of
Cleveland history, we would have a jetport in Lake Erie, a bridge to
Canada, a lakeshore that rivals Chicago’s and skyscrapers with heavenly
beckon.

Instead, over the years, we’ve had the failure of the Erieview
urban-renewal district, the decline of the Flats, Tower City sucking
the life out of Euclid Avenue and then the millions spent to make the
once-great thoroughfare a bus lane. We couldn’t even get a ferryboat to
Canada. These all came at the expense of tax rebates and other
incentives offered from the public coffers along with misused federal
money.

Such failures have left the public skeptical of new ideas and
directions. Business and the public in general no longer have
confidence in government. The reigning Democratic Party is not a
political entity, it’s a culture run by those whose idea of reform
resembles that of the Taliban war lords. They want to go back in time
because yesterday is easier to understand than tomorrow.

The average voter here not only is treated by politicians as
chattel, but acts the part, bowing to the pillaging of city hall in the
1990s during the Mike White administration and now the sacking of
county government by what appears to be cast of thousands. County
commissioners laugh at the electorate as they act in their own best
interests. Small nations around the world have revolted over less than
the farcical convention center/medical mart deal and the effort to
hijack government reform.

These are some of the things that Eric Johnson would not necessarily
have known when he came here to work for the port authority. Most
people who have lived their entire lives here don’t know or care
either. But Johnson knows that late in the port authority committee
meeting in August, board member John Carney abruptly and casually
called for a change to the well-publicized plans to develop the
waterfront.

“Tell [Stanton Eckstut] I’d like West 6th Street to run all the way
to the lake,” said Carney. “We better do it now. You know how these
things get lost.”

Eckstut is a partner in the firm of Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn
Architects of New York, which is being paid more that $365,000 to
develop a master plan for the waterfront. With his red-framed
spectacles, bow tie and East Coast manner, Eckstut is the
quintessential out-of-town consultant whose presence can light up any
planning commission west of Philly.

I was so surprised at the brazenness of Carney’s comment that I
asked several around me whether they heard the same thing. Carney owns
property near West 6th Street and his action in that meeting was a
blatant conflict, a request that could benefit him at the public’s
expense.

No one said a thing. A board of politically connected, intelligent
and seemingly principled persons was either uninformed or chose to
ignore this act — a symbolic crucible for the cynicism that
Johnson deplores. Either way, the board’s lack of stewardship adds to
the stigma that has become the hallmark of Cleveland leadership these
days.

Minutes from the meeting appeared days later:

Director Carney stated taking West 6th Street north has been
brought up at all the meetings and Stan Eckstut will not put it in and
inquired as to the reason. Mr. Carney continued that there is no reason
not to show the connection, Stan is resisting it and is resisting the
community.

Mr. Johnson answered saying the reason it is not there is because
Stan Eckstut is working it through with the City, making sure they are
comfortable with it. He said that Mr.Eckstut’s resistance was not about
connectivity, it was about the excessive cost of such
connection.

Director Carney stated there have been previous conversations
with Bob Brown and his staff and Chris Warren before on the
connectivity of West 6th Street. Mr. Carney emphasized that the port
must find the money for such connections. Mr. Carney suggested that
with the Mayor, County Commissioners and City Council, a presentation
should be made if needed. Mr. Wasserman stated that discussions with
the City and County will continue.

Shortly thereafter, the board invited the legal counsel for the Port
of Seattle to educate them on the scope of their duties. The lawyer
issued a harsh warning on the problem of conflict of interest. No one
said a thing and Carney never blinked.

The development of the lakefront would be a boon for Cleveland, but
Carney’s actions have already tainted its credibility. Since we know we
can’t count on the county commissioners — who along with the
mayor appoint the board members — Mayor Frank Jackson should shed
his complacent manner and ask Carney to leave the board before eyebrows
rise in the federal building. I figure the port authority has spent
nearly $3 million to help increase Carney’s net worth.

So it is ironic that Eric Johnson should comment on the negativism
here and then be witness to a plan that affords him an intimate view of
why the cynicism and lack of trust is so endemic in our culture.

Michael D. Roberts is former city editor of

The Plain Dealer and, for 17 years, editor of Cleveland Magazine.
He is a member of the Press Club Hall of Fame.

news@clevescene.com

This article appears in Sep 23-29, 2009.