Here’s Cleveland Amazon HQ2 location leaders didn’t want you to see – By Mark Naymik (cleveland.com) / May 10 2018
CLEVELAND, Ohio — The secret location Cleveland leaders offered to Amazon for its second headquarters included the historic Terminal Tower and the Post Office Plaza, a five-floor office building on West Third Street, according to records obtained exclusively by cleveland.com.
The information is contained in records released to cleveland.com by the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, a public transportation planning agency which contributed numerous charts and data to Cleveland’s bid.
The information does not constitute the entirety of the region’s bid and does not include what public tax incentives Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish offered to Amazon. They continue to shield that information from the public. The private, nonprofit economic-development groups, Team NEO and the Greater Cleveland Partnership, which spearheaded the region’s secret bid, also refuse to release the bid.
The documents released by NOACA show that leaders offered a 25 percent fare discount to Amazon employees who might use the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority bus and rail lines. The discounts, assuming 50,000 employees used RTA, would have been worth $121 million over 15 years, the documents say.
NOACA’s documents also say that Cleveland promised to “accelerate” plans to triple RTA’s capacity, including increasing commuter rail lines from 37 miles to 111 miles by 2029.
NOACA released the records late Thursday after it declined to appeal a recent ruling by an Ohio Court of Claims special master, who recommended that the court order NOACA to release the records.
Cleveland.com columnist Mark Naymik filed a complaint in November, after NOACA declined to provide reports, maps and other data that it gave to Team NEO.
NOACA claimed the records were trade secrets and, therefore, exempt from Ohio’s public records laws. The court’s special master has ruled that the location of the proposed Amazon headquarters site in Cleveland’s failed bid for the project is not secret and should be released. Melissa Bertke a partner of BakerHostetler, represented cleveland.com.
Nancy Griffith, NOACA’s attorney, said in a statement Thursday to cleveland.com that the agency disagrees with some aspects of the special master’s ruling but would not risk spending more public money fighting to keep the records secret.
“NOACA believes the ruling of the Special Master does not fully understand the position of the Agency as they relate to competitive elements of the bid proposal, however NOACA leadership believes it is in the best interest of the community to not pursue the matter on appeal with the Court,” Griffith wrote. “Further action would only be a waste of public resources and divert the general public’s attention away from more pressing matters in our region. Therefore, NOACA is today releasing to you the documents created by the Agency in its supporting role in formation of the Amazon HQ2 proposal.”
Griffith said that other sites were considered for the bid, but Cleveland leaders settled on Tower City and the Post Office Plaza.
The K&D Group owns both Terminal Tower and the Post Office Plaza.
K&D paid $38.5 million in 2016 for the 52-story Terminal Tower from Forest City Realty Trust, Inc., The Plain Dealer’s Michelle Jarboe has reported. At the time, K&D said it planned to convert 12 of the tower’s lower floors into apartments beginning in 2018.
In August 2017, The K&D Group paid $15 million for Post Office Plaza, which was 55 percent vacant at the time, Jarboe reported. In a separate transaction at the time, K&D paid $1 million for a triangular parking lot next to the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel, west of Public Square.
The Post Office Plaza has been the subject of controversy in the past related to public subsidies its former owner, Forest City Enterprises, received to renovate the building in the early 1990s. In 2001, Cleveland City Council voted to allow Forest City to pay back the loan early at a $4 million discount. Cleveland hoped to use the early payoff to help bail out LTV Steel Co. Forest City said the early payoff was roughly the equivalent of what the city ultimately would have made from the loan if they had invested the money.
http://www.cleveland.com/naymik/index.ssf/2018/05/heres_cleveland_amazon_hq2_loc.html
