Development economics -or- how Cleveland gets screwed

I was going to be so bold and entitle this post, why "Wal-Mart doesn't love Cleveland" but to be fair other big box stores involved in the good time s Steel Yard Commons fiasco are also poised to negate any positive influence their presence could have brought to the city.

I won't be so crazy as to say I hate new shiny objects that I may purchase from stores. In fact I find excursions to Target sometimes delightful and the dusty hard working "man-scent" of Home Depot sawdust takes me back to a more simple time. (I won't admit to being able to shop at Wal-Mart nor Kmart though, I find that being inside those places makes my skin all itchy with awful florescent-ness).

But this shiny example of more corruption and down-right MEANNESS (for lack of a better word) is more, as we say, site specific.

Already mired in controversy Steelyard Commons is nothing more then an open air strip mall tucked away in what was once a former industrial site (No. 2 Finishing Mill) that sold itself to the city by promising revitalization of the urban core, offering amenities, creating jobs, protecting the environment and create a "vibrant regional retail development that draws Clevelanders". All that and more without the use of any "public money" for developing and infrastructure costs. On top of that over $18 million in property tax from the project was to be used for small local businesses, to complete parts of the Ohio & Erie Towpath Trail and by Cleveland Public Schools (who are in ridiculous need for funds). Such a heady list of feel good community projects and intention, it is easy to see why so many people got swept up in it. Now let us look at what really happened.

Public money was used for development
There is a good chance that most of the promised tax money will not be recovered
I suppose one could argue that they did clean up a "hazardous" site, but they did it "voluntarily" and I am personally curious as to what the site condition was before "clean-up" (also, the Not to Sue Covenant looks ridiculous, if you did clean up the site before developing on it, what are the State's legal responsibilitys to your clean up effort?) and they will create jobs (insert sarcastic comments about low income jobs without health benefits, living wage, etc) and they are revitalizing the urban core (somehow more people in a parking lot is good for the whole city, especially when there is little to no tax revenue from it?) and don't forget the added amenities of the same awful homogenized shopping experience you could get ANYWHERE ELSE.

But it makes it so much more wonderful to live here, as long as you don't have kids and you have a decent job already and a car to get to this strip mall and nothing better to do then try to find an entrance ramp. Criminy it would have almost been better to shove some more overpriced shoddily made "Cleveland City Condos" on the site.

So basically, nothing that was supposed to be accomplished was really accomplished and all we get to show for it is a place to buy some crappy tee shirts. Fantastic.

Oh, and am I a little bitter that an actual interesting location possibility with tons of "contextual potential" became another "Bane of America"? Answer; yes.