The Observation Deck

While I love the fact that there are so many great development projects going on in Lakewood, I would really love to hear about the businesses that are drawing their income from outside of Lakewood. The numbers based on number of employees seem to indicate that there may be few. I'm optimistic that there are some small shops, maybe like a ThinSolutions or Virginia Marti that create their revenues from those that do not live or work in Lakewood.
While I love the restaurants, and small shops in the area, these will not create the volume of tax base necessary to start making the property taxes of homeowner's more reasonable. I'm not an economist but once these projects (Rockport, Rosewood and this new Cliffs project) are done and occupied, the average homeowner will still be in the same situation, won't we?
What does it take to start drawing an industrial parkway to the east side or the tourism to the lakefront? I'm not so naive to think that I'm the first to suggest it but isn't this really the starting point to improving a city? I am happy that there are new attractive places to live in Lakewood, I would like to hear about more from the business perspective though. That's the side that is going to make Lakewood more affordable.

Our revenues are not only from outside of Lakewood, but typically outside of Ohio & frequently outside of the US as well.

We however, have a b-2-b service based firm (marketing consulting), as opposed to retail or mfg., so our potential customer base is smaller - particularly in Lakewood.

Peace,
~Charyn

Shawn

95% of my business from the two businesses outside of the paper is outside of Lakewood.

Jim

Shawn

Retail/industry vs residents?

Have you ever crunched the numbers on this?

Just curious how much business is needed to offset the taxes of 53,000 residents?

At the same time let me wonder aloud about which is the safer bet. Industrial, Retail or living space?

During the WestEnd I heard fantastic numbers about what a boom it would be to Lakewood. Of course to get them here we could not charge tax for 30 years on anything but the low paying jobs. On top of that we would have lost 1,500 residents that go to local stores to shop and eat. With retail we would have put a larger burden of safety services, so that would eat into any gain. the numbers I came up with, was a mere $250,000 dolar difference on best case scenerio. I take residents over retail with numbers like that everytime.

I am curious why you think our taxes ar so high?

How long have you lived here?

These are questions I need to hear the answers to before I can help you see what I see.

I usually only hear about how high our taxes are from parents who fought for every tax levy. But now their kids have graduated from schools and moved out.

I see what the Foran Group doing right now as building and adding to a community. I would probably see and Industrial Park as a form of pushing neighbors out of the lifeboat not to save my life, but to put a couple bucks back in my pocket. That is no way to build a community. Walk the WestEnd with me and lets sit and talk with the people, then go to Birdtown. You will hear the same fears. In the WestEnd it is more real and they will shake and cry. "What if they come back and try to take my house?" It is no way to live and no way to attract good neighbors.

Lakewood's history is being the best place to raise a family and to LIVE. Not to work, not to shop. This gets me back to two very real points in my mind. 1) While every suburb whores itself out to be the next home of Walmart or strip malls that are now emptying(legacy village, crocker park).Doesn't it make sense to be the one that doesn't? When the whole region has gone nuts for regionalization and what will become one "government." Doesn't it make sense to be the only city in the region that offers something different?

Tom Barrett when speaking at the ground breaking for Rosewood really nailed Lakewood in my mind. "A friendly town, 10 minutes from the airport, and downtown, 15 minutes from Great Northern and Crocker Park. A walking town where you can walk to the library, Lakewood Park, Metro Park, 6-10 minutes from 3 golf course, riding stables, 60 mile bike path, boating, fishing. Living life to it's fullest."

When I heard it, all I could think was, I would love to live there.

Back to the taxes and harsh realities. I do not live on the lake because I cannot afford it. I doubt that I will be grabbing a place in The Cliffs, could never afford it. I have had serious discussion with Tom Barrett about buying in Rosewood, but would be pure investment, wife isn't that hot on giving up our modest house.

Peope love change. I am not opposed to change. But when it is just for the sake of change, and makes little sense, then I do no get it.

Kathy Berkshire at the Chamber of Commerce mentioned to me today that she is very excited about the Cliffs. That it had living on one floor. I mentioned to her that we have that place, it is called the Gold Coast. Her answer was, "But this is new." Now I am excited about the Cliffs for a very different reason. It makes use of space not used, it adds to the community with no negative impact, and it looks damn nice.

Final challenge. What is the net gain to the city of Lakewood if we were to build one more GoldCoast Condo? What about two? What about two on the lake and three on the river? More residents, higher property values, and no negative impact on the city. Based on the GoldCoast that would be true for 45 years! Now do the numbers on retail malls and industrial sites.

FWIW


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I think most of the 11 business in our building draw their sales from outside of Lakewood. We have 2 accountants, a dentist, an insurance agent, 2 mortgage brokers, 1 software company, 1 network firm, 1 graphic arts company, an attorney and a beauty salon.

But remember our schools get ost of their revenue from property tax. The city gets its revenues from both Income Tax (granted some of that is income tax is corporate income) and property tax.

So when we increase our property tax base, we do great things for Lakewood. Both the schools and the city wins.

Sales tax is paid to Cuyahoga County. So Sales tax from retail is the same to us where ever it is paid.

So is it just a misnomer or flat out wrong that an increase in businesses in a city will offset the property taxes of the residents. I have never fully understood or looked too deeply into it but each conversation that I have had about it have used Solon or Westlake as an example of how to control the level of taxes by the presence of industry. Before any reactions, I don't want Lakewood to necessarily become a Solon or a Westlake. I am glad to hear that there are businesses listed here that draw from outside of Lakewood. But, I think it is a realistic, not pessimistic view of Lakewood to say that driving down Detroit or Madison what you find are businesses that service the neighbors. Whether its malls (strip malls, enclosed malls, crocker parks) or banks or bars/restaurants or Walmarts/Walgreens these are not the businesses that bcreate a local economy, in my opinion. Their success is a reflection of their local customers. They provide a service and we as residents keep their stores open (until someone bigger and cheaper comes in and shuts them down). I don't intend this to be a negative mark on Lakewood but more a challenge to find an business that can be THE business in Lakewood. Looking at the top employers we are a city that survives off of it's residents. The top employers are the Hospital, the city and the Board of Education. We are a huge municipality that seems to pay itself rather than export a service or product. Tell me if I'm off (wouldn't be the first time) but Silicon Valley, Financial districts, the cities that are home to Corporate Headquarters have better schools, lower taxes and better services.
In regards to the point about how taxes (income and property) are used I can understand the differences. I haven't crunched the numbers to compare industry/retail to residential income. I can only use my experience of having one of the highest rates in the state (feel free to correct me on that) as an indication that there may be something that needs to be addressed. I doubt that these new projects (Rosewood, Rockport, Cliffs) are trying to fix that issue and that's great, they are what they are. While we're excited about developers investing in the city and willing to provide tax abatements, I'm curious what the impact on the other residents will be. The way to effect a positive change for the existing residents may include drawing a business less like Walgreens and more like a manufacturing company.
Here's a suggestion, we have an aging housing stock and there is a huge fad these days in home decor. How about the schools develop an apprenticeship program to train student on how to do home repairs, cabinetry specifically. We use qualified homes for their projects and sell the end products (refurbished cabinets) outside the city. Over the years Lakewood will become the new Amish Country when it comes to restored cabinets and such. Only a swiss cheese idea (full of holes) but I could see a variety of benefits (educationally, economically and the quality of homes).
Again, I don't think that it's a bad idea to build new townhouses and condos. I think it's a great solution to offset the aging housing stock and a way to compete with all the new spaces being created downtown. I'm sure that given the option between a loft downtown and a townhouse in Lakewood, many would select the neighborhood feel here over the urban living of downtown.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply that income tax doesn't play a part in the City's inocme. It does.

But retail sales doesn't except to the extent that it employs people with significant enough salaries to pay much income tax or as a corporation they pay lots of income tax. Usually retail pays minimum wage and so do restaurants.

But accountants, attorneys, software engineers, dentists pay lots of income tax to our city. I believe that is why the Grow Lakewood committee said we needed more office spaces than we do retail. Retail is nice in that it gives people places to shop - but it doesn't generate as much money as other businesses.

BTW, I love your idea of having a vocational program of fixing up old houses.

Lynn

I might be wrong and maybe we could get someone from Grow Lakewood in this discussion but...

Office space over retail is based on two things. 1) People tend to live near where they work. so office space would bring in more residents. 2)Office space is easy to transform, but moving walls, etc. so when one moves out it is easy to make the space two spaces instead of one.

I think I remember this as being the reasons in the presentations.


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A small story to relate : My mother's cardiologist and a couple other of his collegues moved out of Lkwd for these reasons; 1) Lack of large office space, and 2) lack of parking. What did they do? They pooled a large sum of money, had a fine building built in Westlake with their own attached parking, with large rooms for each office space. They would have stayed in Lakewood, but moving out to Westlake was the better move for them, financially, and for their patients, logistically. People recouperating from heart surgury don't care to be hiking large distances from their cars to their doctor's office.


This must be a significant loss to our city, as they are not the only big ticket MD's that have exited our city for lack of "good office space with parking".

Just a little story that seems to fit the thread.

**Pardon my spelling.... and the spell checker is not working at this time.


Mark Allan Crnolatas
"There are lies, damn lies, and statistics."
Mark Twain