20160718-NEWS--1-NAT-CCI-CL_--
7/15/2016
4:34 PM
Page 1
VOL. 37, NO. 29
JULY 18 - 24, 2016
Business of Life
Source Lunch
New café Rebol now open in Public Square Restaurateur Bobby George plans to offer healthy food choices. Page 23
CLEVELAND BUSINESS
The List
Region’s Top 100 employers. Pages 27, 28, 30, 31
Page 24
RNC IN CLE
REAL ESTATE
Cleveland, The convention by the numbers Philly put 50,000 1,000+ $20 million on spot By RON RUTTI clbfreelancer@crain.com
National political conventions have evolved into cookie-cutter productions. The drama borne from back-room dealings that begat delegates beholden to certain candidates was eased out four decades ago. Now, with party primaries and caucuses determining the nominees for president well before the conventions, the assemblies are scripted get-togethers for party stalwarts and springboards into the fall campaigns. The Democrats have the larger gatherings, with more than twice as many delegates. The GOP typically has the more tranquil conventions. “They (Republicans) sit in their chairs. When you watch on TV, you can see the color of their carpet. Everything is so pretty,” said the Rev. Leah Daughtry, CEO of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, her second time as a convention chief. “At our conventions, you don’t even know there is carpeting. People are always talking with each other. The aisles are never there.”
Jacqueline Greene, National Lawyers Guild
Total number of people expected to come to Cleveland to participate in, report on or be close to the action surrounding the Republican National Convention.
4,776 Total delegates,
2,472, and alternate delegates, 2,304, from 50 states, five territories and the District of Columbia, that the Republican National Committee is expecting to be Cleveland when the convention opens July 18.
8,000 Volunteers
expected to help delegates, media and other visitors make their way in and around Cleveland.
15,000 Credentialed
media expected to be working in Quicken Loans Arena and the Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland.
Businesses who registered to be included in the Cleveland 2016 Host Committee supplier guide.
350 Buses brought in
from around the region to move delegates and others staying at area hotels.
135 Hotels the Cleveland
2016 Host Committee has contracted with within 35 miles of downtown Cleveland for the more than 16,000 hotel rooms needed for convention delegates, media, party officials and guests.
Money from the $50 million federal security grant allocated for equipment for the 2,500+ law enforcement officers who will patrol the city during the convention. That includes 2,000 riot suits and 300 patrol bicycles.
3.7 miles The length
of the interlocking steel barriers that will be used for crowd control during the convention.
■ Test yourself: Think you know GOP convention history? Take our quiz at crainscleveland.com
Numbers compiled by Jay Miller
SEE PHILLY, PAGE 12
Photograph by David Kordalski Entire contents © 2016 by Crain Communications Inc.
CEO’s exit has DDR facing questions By STAN BULLARD sbullard@crain.com @CrainRltyWriter
David J. Oakes, the just-deposed CEO of DDR Corp., is known to have frequented Ratatouille, a FrenchItalian fusion restaurant near the shopping center owner’s Beachwood headquarters, so much that associates who stopped in would ask if he had been there that night. Milo Valenti, a co-owner of Ratatouille, said Oakes would sometimes show up at 11 p.m. and say he was taking a break before going back to the office. “I told him they must be paying you a lot of money to work so many hours,” Valenti said. “He’d just smile.” Valenti is dumbfounded by Oakes’ sudden termination last Monday, July 11, wondering why the DDR board would fire the person who created and executed the plan to save the company in the recession. Like many observers, he scratches his head over the outcome. Oakes became CEO in February 2015, at age 36. He had a genuinely meteoric rise at the Beachwood-based company. He joined the big publicly traded owner of shopping centers in 2006 with experience at Cohen & Steers Capital Management and a Goldman Sachs security analyst. Oakes, 38, was the first hire in a strategy by DDR to bring young people, including recent graduates, into its ranks to train them in its own mold. The switch reflected the maturation of the real estate investment trust business because real estate companies historically had relied on hiring older people with on-theground experience in commercial property. A CEO of Oakes’ age at an SEE DDR, PAGE 25
EIGHT OVER 80
These Clevelanders still give their all to make NEO great FOCUS, Pages 17-22