If true, the news follows months of speculation and anxiety from regional leaders. It also validates the reporting of local transit and infrastructure blogger Ken Prendergast, who broke every major development on the story of Sherwin’s search and has provided depth and nuance as he pieced together evidence that Sherwin was indeed staying put.
Prendergast used visual evidence, city records, inside sources and auxiliary information — like the fact that CEO John Mokiris and his wife recently moved to a new, 22,000-square-foot mansion in Bay Village — to develop the huge, regionally significant story, even as Sherwin itself remained tight-lipped throughout.
The company employs upwards of 3,000 people in its downtown offices (both corporate HQ and R&D), and more than 4,000 total in the region. Channel 3 reports that the downtown employment leads to roughly $15 million in annual payroll tax revenue for the city of Cleveland.
Public officials have been mum, as is their custom. They’ve enlisted legal teams to assemble incentive packages for the paint and coatings giant and will presumably cite attorney-client privilege to shield the public from knowing anything meaningful about the exotic incentives they eventually offer. When Cleveland.com asked the city and the county to make transparency pledges about forthcoming incentives, they declined to do so.
In any case, we’ll know for sure Thursday. But mad props to Ken.
***
Sign up for Scene’s weekly newsletters to get the latest on Cleveland news, things to do and places to eat delivered right to your inbox.
This article appears in Feb 5-11, 2020.
Ken’s exhaustive research made it obvious they were “staying,” and that is great…. but losing R&D to the suburbs really sucks.
spelled Ken’s name wrong.
Curious what will happen to the Landmark Office Towers and the Skylight Office Tower after SHW moves out.
Proving that anyone can do Cleveland Media’s job better than them.