Is the City Giving Away Our 20 Million Dollar Hospital Site For One Dollar?

[Bridget Conant]

It’s all a shell game. The money is HERE! NO! It’s HERE!

Move it around so many times and no one can keep track of it.

All carefully planned and orchestrated so that most people get bored or confused and give up.

[Jim O'Bryan]

It’s all a shell game. The money is HERE! NO! It’s HERE!

Move it around so many times and no one can keep track of it.

All carefully planned and orchestrated so that most people get bored or confused and give up.

Called "money laundering"

.

[Bridget Conant]

My question- is anyone really surprised at this developer giveaway?

[Jim O'Bryan]

My question- is anyone really surprised at this developer giveaway?

Bridget

Well considering the Mayor assured everyone in 2015, it caught him by surprise, then Essi found out he worked on it since Ed FitzGerald appointed him on the LHA.

NO!

.

[Bridget Conant]

Well considering the Mayor assured everyone in 2015, it caught him by surprise, then Essi found out he worked on it since Ed FitzGerald appointed him on the LHA.

Yup. All planned out.

Only a fool would believe otherwise.

[T Peppard]

I'm giving this topic its own thread, not that it doesn't belong in a thread about honesty in local government, or civic accountability, but this is outrageous, and I know that a lot of people see the civic accountability title and they scan past it, not because they don't care, but because, like me, they wait until they have time, or energy to delve deeper and sometimes they never get back to it.

But this is outrageous.

I'll copy what's in the last post of that thread, and hopefully Jim or Dan will move the rest of it and maybe Mark can keep the thread going here.

In Mark Kindt's last post he's copying excerpts from Public Records. The first is from a deposition, Transcript, page 97. I'm not sure who is answering. I think it's Mayor Summers.

Question: "Okay. What about an appraisal for the hospital itself?"
Answer: "We still own that hospital, and you know, what its future plans are remain undecided. So, you know, the idea of selling it is not-- it's not clear what's going to happen to that."

The next excerpt is from Deposition Exhibit H and is pretty simple.

"20 million." (Book value. City-owned Hospital Buildings and Land.)

The next excerpt is from the 2015 CAFR (Comprehensive Annual Financial Report)

"The City will retain ownership of the existing Lakewood Hospital site and all other property currently leased to LHA (Lakewood Hospital Association). The Lakewood Hospital site (consisting of 5.7 acres) will be available for redevelopment." (Note 22, page 88)

And the last note:

Media reports quote Mayor Summers as stating that the former hospital site would be transferred to the recommended developer for $0 or $1.

Yes, that's ZERO or ONE DOLLAR.

As if it wasn't enough to have given away our hospital.

WTF.

Mark's too polite to say that. And oactually, he doesn't waste his time saying things like that, because he has much more valuable things to say. I just wanted to make sure people saw this.

Betsy Voinovich

Great post, Betsy Voinovich. My sentiments exactly!

When OUR outstanding city services, our world-class library & our excellent schools begin to suffer financially.... maybe more folks will open their eyes & care? When individual jobs and lives are affected, they will care and recognize Brian Essi’s valiant fight for justice and the greater good of our city and Mark Kindt’s extraordinary legal analysis of ethics & civic accountability as it relates to our city government. I am profoundly grateful to both of them. They are heroes.

Thank you, also, for taking this information and placing it in a separate post to clearly point out the egregious behavior of our mayor. For Councilman Anderson to sit back and comply with these numbers is also egregious. He lacks courage and also stands to represent the corporation instead of his constituents.

Carnegie should not be an option. Ed Fitzgerald is a political failure with ZERO integrity ...no way should he, the perpetrator of this debacle, be permitted to profit from destroying our LAST HISTORICALLY INTACT COMMERCIAL BUILDING.

...& to give it away for $1?! ...$20 million book value?! Something is very wrong.

[Bridget Conant]

Yes it’s wrong and we can only hope that our new council members will be able to stand up against this giveaway.

Don’t count on the current crop to have the cojones to object.

[Mark Kindt]

My question- is anyone really surprised at this developer giveaway?

Ms. Conant, yes, I am surprised with the magnitude of the proposed municipal subsidies to the recommended developer. If my estimates are correct, the taxpayer subsidy to the recommended developer is between $27M and $30M.

This appears to be a municipal subsidy of about a third of the estimated high-end ($90M) of the proposed redevelopment project.

Keep in mind, that I generally support economic development and have written articles in favor of it in both Crain's and the PD.

The magnitude of this potential municipal subsidy is off-the-map for a community of our size.

I'm sure that the next thing we will hear from the city administration is that the former hospital site isn't worth much.

[Bill Call]

An alternate title to this post could be:

Ed Fitzgerald cashes in.

[Brian Essi]

Ms. Voinovich,

Great post, but I'm afraid that you have understated by about $100M what we really gave away to get Ed Fitzgerald & Co. the "land and public money".

Since City Hall's goal was economic development, i.e. taking healthcare assets, real estate and money and giving it to developer---City Hall needed to give CCF $100M to get the $20M to Fitzgerald.

Below are 2 old posts that made the point:

In the PD editorial candidate interview (at about minute 20 Part 2) Summers finally admits the reasons he ignored both Metro proposals was because he believed that he and his cronies on LHA's Board would have to "GIVE UP CONTROL" of the MONEY and LAND in order to keep a hospital to care for the people.

So his "CONTROL OF MONEY" of the land and money was more important than having a hospital in Lakewood.

Summers' MO is also to CONTROL INFORMATION---please recall that he kept the Metro proposals secret and mischaracterized them even after the records laws forced him to reveal them to the Public.

So there you have it---the Summers administration in a nutshell---His control of money and land are more important that taking care of people.


Lakewood mayoral candidate endorsement interview Part 1:



Part 2:




http://lakewoodobserver.com/forum/viewt ... ey#p172204

http://lakewoodobserver.com/forum/viewt ... and+%26amp%3B+money

[Mark Kindt]

A few more points:

1. Before the City of Lakewood transfers the former hospital site to its recommended developer for a nominal amount ("nothing or $1"), council members and citizens deserve to have a full understanding of the commercial real estate value of the former hospital site.

2. Is the former hospital site really worth $20,000,000 or is that just another "bogus" number anchored in public relations blather from the city administration. We don't know.

3. An independent commercial real estate appraisal of the former hospital site is a fundamental necessity.

4. We deserve to have a clear understanding of the approximate dollar size of any proposed municipal subsidy to the recommended developer whether direct (transfer of land for nominal value) or indirect (benefit of site demolition and remediation).

3. We also deserve to have a clear understanding of any other economic development incentives, e.g., loans, grants, guarantees, tax abatement/deferral, provided to the recommended developer.

[Brian Essi]

A few more points:

1. Before the City of Lakewood transfers the former hospital site to its recommended developer for a nominal amount ("nothing or $1"), council members and citizens deserve to have a full understanding of the commercial real estate value of the former hospital site.

2. Is the former hospital site really worth $20,000,000 or is that just another "bogus" number anchored in public relations blather from the city administration. We don't know.

3. An independent commercial real estate appraisal of the former hospital site is a fundamental necessity.

4. We deserve to have a clear understanding of the approximate dollar size of any proposed municipal subsidy to the recommended developer whether direct (transfer of land for nominal value) or indirect (benefit of site demolition and remediation).

3. We also deserve to have a clear understanding of any other economic development incentives, e.g., loans, grants, guarantees, tax abatement/deferral, provided to the recommended developer.

Mr. Kindt,

As I recall there was an MAI appraisal of the east side of Belle was done and came in around $900K per acre.

"MAI" is the an "Appraisers Institute" designation that is frequently referred as "Made As Instructed" though.

[cameron karslake]

Boy, you just got to love some of the statements in that article!

"The remaking plan follows Cleveland Clinic's closing the hospital in 2016 and donating its site to the suburb."

Wow, I thought LHA, with the mayor's blessing, closed the hospital. AND, I thought the site was ALREADY LAKEWOOD'S PROPERTY!

"They (Carnegie) asked for very little in terms of public investment, except the land for nothing or $1."

Wow again, a public investment of $20 million site is NOTHING??? Not to mention the preparation of the site, which will be paid for by the TAX PAYERS, to the tune of $7-8 million. And Carnegie/Summers says this is "very little".

I guess when it's not your own money, they don't give a damn!

Absolutely not surprised about this latest revelation.

[Mark Kindt]

For completeness sake, here is the relevant quote from the Cleveland.Com article on October 2, 2017:

"On the public-finance side, Carnegie is asking Lakewood to throw in the site and pay for demolition and abatement of hazardous materials at the old hospital. The city is still analyzing the site clean-up needs, Sylvester said, but it could cost $7 million to $10 million to raze the old hospital and prepare the land for development."

[Mark Kindt]

Here is a copy of the article for your files.

Until I see different numbers in different public documents, my estimate of the proposed municipal subsidies to the proposed developer range between $27,000,000 to $30,000,000.

At these estimated amounts, about a third of the redevelopment project would be taxpayer subsidized.