[image-1]What a weird night, everybody!

Putting aside all that unprecedented top-of-the-ticket stuff for a moment, let’s take a look at Lakewood, where voters gilded the hospital closure with the approval of Issue 64 yesterday. According to the unofficial vote count, the measure passed by a slim 52-48 margin.

Practically speaking, that vote changes nothing. The passage of Issue 64 merely maintains the process of converting the Lakewood Hospital property into a family health center and shuttling money into a forthcoming “foundation.”

(Law Director Kevin Butler said earlier this year that even if Issue 64 was shot down, the legal cogs of the deal to shutter Lakewood Hospital have been spinning for months and, due to the contractual structure of the deal, cannot be undone.)

Lawsuits related to the Lakewood Hospital deal are still working their way through the court system. At least one case has led to a mountain of discovery that shows how the city and the Cleveland Clinic orchestrated the deal and hid their goals from the taxpaying public for years.

This article appears in Nov 9-15, 2016.

Eric Sandy is an award-winning Cleveland-based journalist. For a while, he was the managing editor of Scene. He now contributes jam band features every now and then.

2 replies on “Voters Approve the Closure of Lakewood Hospital”

  1. I’m just curious why you returned to this issue after all this time, now, when you mentioned nothing during the campaign.

    Old time’s sake?

    I appreciate your good writing on this last year, and neither you nor Scene exactly owes anything to Lakewood or the hospital campaign. I’m just puzzled.

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