The Observation Deck

A Big "Thank You" To Readers

I appreciate your interest in this very boring and legalistic topic.

When you disagree, I encourage you to post your disagreement. I am always open to alternative viewpoints.

As many of you know, I am always available for a cup of coffee and conversation about how Lakewood might improve.

I am not quite as "curmudgeonly" as perhaps I might sound in my posts.

One final table on this topic. Let's just hope the City of Lakewood is never in a position where it has to repurchase the former hospital site once it is in development. It would be a $50,000,000 headache.

Mark, thanks for explaining the “repurchase agreement”. I would argue if the undeveloped property is worth 18 million dollars due to its location. There is no lake view and downtown Lakewood is not attractive. What I didn’t see is a time line in the agreement requiring the developer to start construction. Who wrote this agreement, it reminds me of the recent revelation that the FAA allowed the Boeing attorneys to write the 737 Max airworthiness report for them.

Perhaps I missed it, but the top of the City Council and Mayor’s abandonment list should be the welfare and safety of the residents. They should be proud of themselves and it continues to make me wonder if their decision was due to stupidity, vested interests or dishonesty.

I empathize with your frustration but you are fighting windmills. The world is full of spineless little people who have alligator key boards and chicken arses that hide by anonymity. Try to forgive them because they are the losers of society.

Richard Baker wrote:Mark, thanks for explaining the “repurchase agreement”. I would argue if the undeveloped property is worth 18 million dollars due to its location. There is no lake view and downtown Lakewood is not attractive. What I didn’t see is a time line in the agreement requiring the developer to start construction. Who wrote this agreement, it reminds me of the recent revelation that the FAA allowed the Boeing attorneys to write the 737 Max airworthiness report for them.

Perhaps I missed it, but the top of the City Council and Mayor’s abandonment list should be the welfare and safety of the residents. They should be proud of themselves and it continues to make me wonder if their decision was due to stupidity, vested interests or dishonesty.

I empathize with your frustration but you are fighting windmills. The world is full of spineless little people who have alligator key boards and chicken arses that hide by anonymity. Try to forgive them because they are the losers of society.

I do not have a copy of the final agreement, so I do not know the agreed-to time-lines.

The range of values for the hospital site run between $5M+ and $24M+ depending on which evaluation you prefer.

The range of $12M to $18M are just ball-park estimates of what it might cost to repurchase a site that contains partial, but incomplete, construction on it under the repurchase right.

Our hospital had crucial value in terms of our community's emergency preparedness needs and I am still considering the question of where our public safety leaders were on all of this. That seems to be a strange blank.

Let me quote Kevin Malecek (Mentor's Director of Economic Development) about a much smaller county that (like Parma) will have three hospitals:

"I think it's always a good thing for us to have another hospital option, another medical service option for our population. As we have an aging population in this area, there will be plenty of patients."

(Source: Plain Dealer, March 24, 2019, p. B4)

Lakewood has chosen a much different path.