The Observation Deck

Additional Commentary on the FAQ

Folks, I do understand that the hospital is never coming back. I am equally confident that One Lakewood Place or something just like will be built upon the former hospital site.

My primary goal is to describe what has occurred over the past several years as reflected in publicly-available documents in order to fully understand the existing problems in our local municipal government.

Those descriptions illustrate a need for reform.

Debunking More FAQ Answers:

What Did The Planning Department Know And When Did They Know It?

Casto Was Clearly The Lead Candidate To Redevelop The Former Hospital Site In Round One:

The ONLY reason Carnegie was “chosen” was Ed Fitzgerald.

It was all planned years ago and he delivered the goods to Carnegie.

Bridget Conant wrote:The ONLY reason Carnegie was “chosen” was Ed Fitzgerald.

It was all planned years ago and he delivered the goods to Carnegie.

Let's not forget, some county jobs, and Sam's Coming Out err fundraising party in a year he is not running thrown by FitzGerald and Carnegie.


Castro never had a chance, they were qualified, met the criteria, and had great ideas. Dared to question if community was informed.

No room at City Hall for competence.


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Based on multiple on-the-record comments, "reject the first recommendation and approach the other finalist" is a 100% legitimate option.

Which may not be the best conceivable option, but would seem more strongly than ever to be a better option than rubber-stamping a developer which raises numerous red flags (including some not mentioned so far in this thread).

Repeating my caveat.

For integrity purposes, I want to remind all readers of posts that I write that I do not have any clients related to Lakewood Hospital, its competitors or developers seeking to redevelop the former hospital site.

Nor am I seeking such clients.

This story from the Summer of 2017 confirms that Mr. Fitzgerald was retained by Carnegie during the final stages of the selection process.

http://www.cleveland.com/lakewood/index ... spita.html

More Documents To Review

Here are two comparison slides from the city document that is linked-to in the One Lakewood Place FAQ:

From reviewing the above two slides and their comparative bar charts, we can see that the primary differentiation between the two Round Two proposals is one of size. The Carnegie proposal just appears to be larger in terms of scale in most of the metrics of comparison. In the Round Two Recap slide-deck attached above, there are no specific qualitative comparisons.

We can probably make a reasonable argument based upon public data that the Casto proposal is probably more "right-sized" to realistically capture future demand and that the Carnegie proposal may be modeled on unrealistic expectations for future demand for the completed project. The Casto proposal assumes more demand for residential units; The Carnegie proposal assumes more demand for office and retail space.

If there are quantitative differences related to financing, they are NOT in the slide-deck made available by the city administration in its FAQ. (There may be legitimate legal reasons for this).

Now Let's Take a Look at Round Two

Comments on Recently Filed Motion In Taxpayer Lawsuit

Mark Kindt wrote:Are We Really Planning To Demolish Our Hospital?

FAQ DEBUNKED - One-Lakewood-Place-Term-Sheet FAQ Q27.jpg

It is incomprehensible that the current leadership would allow this destruction and call it progress.

Councilmembers Anderson, O’Malley, Litten, Bullock, George, Radar, and Council President O’Leary... it’s your legacy.

Are you going to allow the replacement of that historically significant structure with a pre-fabricated building containing “cash for gold” and other generic chain-style stores? This is a tragic and should be fought wholeheartedly by each of you.