The Observation Deck

Before we go too far. A little background on my thoughts on this from 2014. The Mayor has the right to renegotiate any contract the City of Lakewood has. BUT, he has no reason to lie about it. To this date, nearly everything the residents have learned about this debacle from City Hall has been and continues to be a lie. Elected officials, City Hall workers should not lie, or intimidate residents.

ALSO, if they are really going to do this, make sure the i's are dotted and the t's crossed. This is far too big of a deal to leave to amateurs, or have even one small screw up. This deal is/was for the very future of Lakewood.

OVER THE PAST 4 YEARS, members of the Lakewood Observer and lawyers for various groups have proven with documents:
1) The City, not CCF was proactively looking to close the hospital from 2010 at least.
2) Much of this was done based on Ed FitzGerald getting elected governor for possible state help if needed. Well he was soundly defeated.
3) The original plan was for a rec center, they found out the city could never afford.
4) That it was probably more about privatizing LHF money into Three Arches,
5) The City was wrong and proven wrong on all projections, on how the city would benefit. They lied repeatedly and knowingly.
6) A concentrated effort was put into convincing the residents and pushing them forward at all costs and by any means: papers, discussion boards, BuildLakewood, coffee clatches every inside trickster lying to keep it moving forward. False police reports, SLAPP Lawsuits, intimidating restaurants with flunky thugs.
7) Even when Metro and others came in with plans to rescue the city from a plan that had blown up, no rec center, no Governor, nothing-- a chance to at least save the status quo-- Mayor Summers sought and got County help in killing the deal.

So to bring you up to speed, original plans failing, all good options ignored, because the good options would not allow for the transfer of the millions to the new foundation where friends of the mayor, and many of the people telling Lakewood to hurry, hurry, hurry sit on the board receiving the funds. Jay Foran (Active Living Task Force, aka Big Boy Pants) "We have to hurry." Jay Carson, (BuildLakewood) "We need to get this done now." Pam Smith (various organizations) "We need to do this now." And they all knew. Plans had fallen apart and there were in fact NO PLANS.

18 years of planning, with NO PLANS outside of grabbing and privatizing the foundation money.

Which brings us to this week. Workman on the hospital site talking about slowing down as there are issues on the land. Something to do with a river. Looking at the 400 page site study, not one sentence mentions the issue with a stream and a very large pond. Then another call came in from another person working on the site. Major issues with a potential for changing one-lakewood strip mall around. When I spoke with people associated closely with City Hall they both said, "It is not a big problem as they do not even know exactly what is going on the land!" WHAT?

Well, as witnessed at the latest ABR, the site developers are looking at moving the entire project back 200'-400' so that Lakewood could finally get some greenspace near the center of DowntowN, another one of fantasies of 5 or 6 people. This is actually a left over mediocre idea from Mainstreet. A program Lakewood paid heavily into, so we could compare ourselves with Tiffin, Milan, and other Mainstreet Communities. There are ZERO reasons for a mall with a gazebo in Downtown Lakewood. We already have all of that and more 1 block north on the lake.

Other things to ponder: the genius who put this nightmare together has us on the hook to clean up a site, used by a hospital for over 100 years that has never been checked by the EPA. Mercury, radioactive liquids, other chemicals over 100+ years, could make the clean-up very costly, and take much longer.

So here we are on the cusp of having nothing but a field where our largest employer stood. The people warning of a black hole in the middle of the city are but months away from predicting exactly the outcome of the endeavors.

And the kicker, if nothing gets built on the acreage that we were paid $1 for, we have to buy it back from Ed FitzGerlad and developers for $5 million. Not a bad payday for $1.

Lakewood City Council you have failed in the simplest of your duties, making sure it was all legit, and done properly. Lakewood City Hall in 5 years has never once asked the Mayor to show them the numbers. Hell, they haven't even asked him to tell the truth!

City Hall, BuildLakewood, Jay Foran, Pam Smith, all of the sycophants, why did you tell us we had to hurry? Afraid we would get to the truth?

Lakewood, you have been played.

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Jim O'Bryan wrote:Before we go too far. A little background on my thoughts on this from 2014. The Mayor has the right to renegotiate any contract the City of Lakewood has. BUT, he has no reason to lie about it. To this date, nearly everything the residents have learned about this debacle from City Hall has been and continues to be a lie. Elected officials, City Hall workers should not lie, or intimidate residents.

ALSO, if they are really going to do this, make sure the i's are dotted and the t's crossed. This is far too big of a deal to leave to amateurs, or have even one small screw up. This deal is/was for the very future of Lakewood.

OVER THE PAST 4 YEARS, members of the Lakewood Observer and lawyers for various groups have proven with documents:
1) The City, not CCF was proactively looking to close the hospital from 2010 at least.
2) Much of this was done based on Ed FitzGerald getting elected governor for possible state help if needed. Well he was soundly defeated.
3) The original plan was for a rec center, they found out the city could never afford.
4) That it was probably more about privatizing LHF money into Three Arches,
5) The City was wrong and proven wrong on all projections, on how the city would benefit. They lied repeatedly and knowingly.
6) A concentrated effort was put into convincing the residents and pushing them forward at all costs and by any means: papers, discussion boards, BuildLakewood, coffee clatches every inside trickster lying to keep it moving forward. False police reports, SLAPP Lawsuits, intimidating restaurants with flunky thugs.
7) Even when Metro and others came in with plans to rescue the city from a plan that had blown up, no rec center, no Governor, nothing-- a chance to at least save the status quo-- Mayor Summers sought and got County help in killing the deal.

So to bring you up to speed, original plans failing, all good options ignored, because the good options would not allow for the transfer of the millions to the new foundation where friends of the mayor, and many of the people telling Lakewood to hurry, hurry, hurry sit on the board receiving the funds. Jay Foran (Active Living Task Force, aka Big Boy Pants) "We have to hurry." Jay Carson, (BuildLakewood) "We need to get this done now." Pam Smith (various organizations) "We need to do this now." And they all knew. Plans had fallen apart and there were in fact NO PLANS.

18 years of planning, with NO PLANS outside of grabbing and privatizing the foundation money.

Which brings us to this week. Workman on the hospital site talking about slowing down as there are issues on the land. Something to do with a river. Looking at the 400 page site study, not one sentence mentions the issue with a stream and a very large pond. Then another call came in from another person working on the site. Major issues with a potential for changing one-lakewood strip mall around. When I spoke with people associated closely with City Hall they both said, "It is not a big problem as they do not even know exactly what is going on the land!" WHAT?

Well, as witnessed at the latest ABR, the site developers are looking at moving the entire project back 200'-400' so that Lakewood could finally get some greenspace near the center of DowntowN, another one of fantasies of 5 or 6 people. This is actually a left over mediocre idea from Mainstreet. A program Lakewood paid heavily into, so we could compare ourselves with Tiffin, Milan, and other Mainstreet Communities. There are ZERO reasons for a mall with a gazebo in Downtown Lakewood. We already have all of that and more 1 block north on the lake.

Other things to ponder: the genius who put this nightmare together has us on the hook to clean up a site, used by a hospital for over 100 years that has never been checked by the EPA. Mercury, radioactive liquids, other chemicals over 100+ years, could make the clean-up very costly, and take much longer.

So here we are on the cusp of having nothing but a field where our largest employer stood. The people warning of a black hole in the middle of the city are but months away from predicting exactly the outcome of the endeavors.

And the kicker, if nothing gets built on the acreage that we were paid $1 for, we have to buy it back from Ed FitzGerlad and developers for $5 million. Not a bad payday for $1.

Lakewood City Council you have failed in the simplest of your duties, making sure it was all legit, and done properly. Lakewood City Hall in 5 years has never once asked the Mayor to show them the numbers. Hell, they haven't even asked him to tell the truth!

City Hall, BuildLakewood, Jay Foran, Pam Smith, all of the sycophants, why did you tell us we had to hurry? Afraid we would get to the truth?

Lakewood, you have been played.

.

This may eventually be worse than Mr. O'Bryan states. The repurchase price cost to the City is likely to be higher than just $5,000,000.

That may depend on many factors, but rests upon the fact that the 2018 appraisal that the City sought was an "as instructed" appraisal and not a true fair market appraisal.

Jim O'Bryan said:

And the kicker, if nothing gets built on the acreage that we were paid $1 for, we have to buy it back from Ed FitzGerlad and developers for $5 million. Not a bad payday for $1.

Mark Kindt said:

This may eventually be worse than Mr. O'Bryan states. The repurchase price cost to the City is likely to be higher than just $5,000,000.

That may depend on many factors, but rests upon the fact that the 2018 appraisal that the City sought was an "as instructed" appraisal and not a true fair market appraisal.

Hi Jim and Mark,

Excuse me if I should know this, but what are you guys talking about?

If nothing gets built, wouldn't that be the fault of the developer? Why would we have to buy the land back for five million dollars or more?

Betsy Voinovich

Betsy Voinovich wrote:Jim O'Bryan said:

And the kicker, if nothing gets built on the acreage that we were paid $1 for, we have to buy it back from Ed FitzGerlad and developers for $5 million. Not a bad payday for $1.

Mark Kindt said:

This may eventually be worse than Mr. O'Bryan states. The repurchase price cost to the City is likely to be higher than just $5,000,000.

That may depend on many factors, but rests upon the fact that the 2018 appraisal that the City sought was an "as instructed" appraisal and not a true fair market appraisal.

Hi Jim and Mark,

Excuse me if I should know this, but what are you guys talking about?

If nothing gets built, wouldn't that be the fault of the developer? Why would we have to buy the land back for five million dollars or more?

Betsy Voinovich

Apologies if I'm misreading but it seems to be suggested that the city would have to pay the full new appraised value of the property in the unlikely event we ever repurchase it from Carnegie. That is not true. The cost would be the new appraised value at that time, minus the ~$5millon appraised value when it was conveyed to Carnegie. This is in the development agreement. I asked about this on the record at the November 5, 2018 Committee of the Whole meeting. Here is a video of the meeting. The relevant exchange begins around the 29:20 mark. http://onelakewood.granicus.com/player/ ... ?view_id=2

Council-member O'Malley, thank you for your post. When I read the draft agreement, I reached a different conclusion. It has been a while since I reviewed it. I will double-check the agreement and revert here when I have a chance.

Additionally, I am concerned that the "as instructed" appraisal intentionally undervalued the assets at issue. I have previously written at length about all of this. Somehow the City of Lakewood gets to eat a hospital building that had significant value.

However, the real issue for me is that a public asset worth hundreds of millions of dollars was liquidated; is now under demolition; the entire process was conducted outside of public purview or public contracting norms; and we were consistently lied to by our elected and public officials about all of this.

The cost would be the new appraised value at that time, minus the ~$5millon appraised value when it was conveyed to Carnegie. This is in the development agreement.

So what genius negotiated THAT clause?

I cannot believe we’d have to PAY to get back what was ours to begin with, that we received NO MONEY for from the developer. Remember, we GAVE it to them!

Let me make a couple of other points:

The hospital business that was liquidated in 2015 was never the subject of an independent appraisal.

The hospital building that is now being demolished was never the subject of an independent appraisal.

The hospital site that will at some point be cleared was never the subject of an independent fair-market appraisal, only the "as instructed" one that generated an artificial value.

It took three groups of public interest lawyers three cases and three years to surface key documents that citizens could review independent of PR spin and nonsense.

The public will never fully know the truth because some documents were destroyed in the Mayor's office and most of the key decision documents from the Clinic, LHA, and particularly LHF will never be available for public review.

We are witnessing live and in real-time an extraordinary tipping point in our civic life.

I encourage each reader of this post to drive-by the now wrecked Lakewood Hospital and ask yourself the question "why".

Now, to return to Mr. O'Bryan's topic. He seems to be suggesting that the City planners and the selected developer haven't really decided what they plan to build. Whoops!

Dan-- if you will excuse me-- you G D*** Fu** Up* !!! the shovels are digging-- how can you walk this cat back? Stan Austin

I will address the City's repurchase rights in a separate post. Now posted.

For Ms. Voinovich, here's an example of what a buy-back might cost Lakewood for a failed development project.

It all depends on how far along the construction is.

Stan Austin wrote:Dan-- if you will excuse me-- you G D*** Fu** Up* !!! the shovels are digging-- how can you walk this cat back? Stan Austin

No kidding! They were high on the Kool-aid!

A recession is coming. What will happen to this development?

Do they have ANY SIGNED TENANTS?
I do not think they do.

What does that tell you? That businesses are unwilling to commit.

I said 3 years ago that all you need is a fall off in the economy and this entire project turns into another Foran’s Folly (Sloane Ave project that destroyed 2 homes that are now empty lots )

It’s entirely possible that the scope of the project is limited, or worse, abandoned.

Then we will have the luxury of paying the developer to buy back our own land!

It’s mind boggling how moronic our “leaders” are.

Bridget Conant wrote:

Stan Austin wrote:Dan-- if you will excuse me-- you G D*** Fu** Up* !!! the shovels are digging-- how can you walk this cat back? Stan Austin

No kidding! They were high on the Kool-aid!

A recession is coming. What will happen to this development?

Do they have ANY SIGNED TENANTS?
I do not think they do.

What does that tell you? That businesses are unwilling to commit.

I said 3 years ago that all you need is a fall off in the economy and this entire project turns into another Foran’s Folly (Sloane Ave project that destroyed 2 homes that are now empty lots )

It’s entirely possible that the scope of the project is limited, or worse, abandoned.

Then we will have the luxury of paying the developer to buy back our own land!

It’s mind boggling how moronic our “leaders” are.

Bridget, Stan, Others

I will argue their point, as none will come in the house to do it, as it will not be erased or deleted. They all have active accounts.

At the time the plan was devised, Ed FitzGerald was hot footing it to the Presidency, via County Executive, Governor, White House. It seems like a lifetime ago, but that is how people including people in this town were talking of the Ed FitzGerald machine. It was during this time so many sycophants signed up to ride the coattails of the chosen one.

Well that plan failed big. By that point, they had plans for the Rec Center they actually schemed for. Thanks to conversations with mayors in other cities you would hear, "Oh your Mayor was out checking out our rec center last week. He is looking at building one in Lakewood..." What they were finding out was Lakewood could never afford a Rec Center, as most cities cannot. Around this time the desperate need for a Rec Center was pushed onto Lakewood Schools, who then gladly squandered Bond and Levy dollars into the public Rec Center that sits in Lakewood High School, rarely used.

Had Ed FitzGerlad become Governor, he could have helped to direct state dollars to Lakewood. Failing that he could have directed other incentives to fill in the space. When he failed at that, the deal went into a tailspin. What to put there?

Here is what I don't get...
During the time the entire deal was going south, "Civic Leaders," City Administrators, and sycophants not knowing better, pushed ahead, doubling down, again and again and again. At what could have been natural places to stop the insanity, they would lie again, and move on. Even the Cleveland Clinic refused to answer the City's RFP the first time. Another great opportunity to reflect and say wow this is quickly getting to the FUBAR level. But no, they doubled down and came up with more lies. When they ran low on lies, they would start to say, we have to do this quickly, we have a small window, amazing opportunities... WTF?

Between 2010 and 2015 they had hundreds of opportunities to take a step back and say let's think about this again. Hell between 2014-2016 they had hundreds of legitimate reasons to look at the facts and be honest. Every time, every opportunity they would lie through their various megaphones, and watch the sycophants ripple it out to the ears of people not willing to wade through thousands of pages of documents. Not willing to spend the money and the thousands of hours with lawyers and courts to get the documents they lied about and hid. Not willing to be harassed by City employees helping the Mayor and his wrecking crew. You can't blame the average Lakewoodite for being fooled. It was a massive magic trick.

All of City Council: You are either complicit or lazy. Each member of council is well aware of the truth. Each member of Council then was also aware of the many various chances to slow down and doublecheck the paperwork, and look at the facts one more time. Each member of Council today knows it was a fraud and a lie from day one. And they all now know it was a huge mistake. The heart of the civil war in Lakewood everyone wants to heal is between people who know the truth, and those that will do anything to cover up the lies.

The reason I have a used the term magic trick from day one...
The entire deal was misdirection. While the audience watched the stage and all of the assistants instead of the right hand of the magician... While the plans for the Rec Center, now strip mall, now nothing actually has been fraught with troubles and setbacks... what was happening was the transfer of over $40 million in funds from the Foundation whose sole purpose was to keep Lakewood Hospital going, to a Private Foundation, controlled by the Mayor's friends and supporters, --the very people that told us to stop asking questions, and let's get this thing going. Vote! We have millions in development coming! Shut up and vote, this will change Lakewood forever.

I can see how they were thinking, but as usual it was poorly conceived, poorly carried out, and like all their plans, will leave us with yet another strip mall errrrr multi-use strip mall built on lies and over promises.



During this entire nightmare brought on to all of Lakewood, the LO told the truth, and were cited as "being mean." We told the truth, and were called liars, by the very people lying, while we backed up the truth with documents and in court. We told the truth, and we were called criminals, by the actual criminals. We told the truth, and the Deck was blown up with hate up by the very same people now running heavily monitored and censored discussion boards so that the cover-up can continue.

Lakewood you were played.

The people involved in this should never hold office or be allowed any say in the way what little funds if any remain from our $258 million dollar publicly owned asset.

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To add to the collection...



On the left is the topographical map from City of Lakewood. On the right is the water features on the property.


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Truly fascinating....

Mr. O'Bryan, the developers who responded to the City's RFP to develop the hospital site might have benefited from knowing that there was a buried stream-bed and pond on the property before they submitted their respective proposals.

How was this missed?

Mark Kindt wrote:Truly fascinating....

Mr. O'Bryan, the developers who responded to the City's RFP to develop the hospital site might have benefited from knowing that there was a buried stream-bed and pond on the property before they submitted their respective proposals.

How was this missed?

This has been my big concern. That this whole ridiculous scheme is going to blow up in their collective faces. And now, by not disclosing this, could a developer get an easy out of any agreement? Or, put the city in jeopardy of being sued?

Their chicken little cry constantly fluctuated from if we don't do something NOW we will end up with a big empty building on the city's books to six empty acres in the middle of town. Not to mention the asbestos!!!

So we could conceivably have six empty acres that we have to buy back?