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MetroHealth’s ambitious main campus makeover may be the push the area needs By JAY MILLER jmiller@crain.com
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The decision to make over MetroHealth Medical Center on Cleveland’s West Side may just be the spur that gets the neighborhood surrounding the public hospital to take off. The neighborhood, with West 25th Street as its spine, has been treading water for years. Although it has a sturdy housing stock comprised of homes built in the decades before the recession, the miseries that have beset so many parts of Cleveland — a decline in the public schools, the lure of newer suburban housing and, early on, freeways that chopped up neighborhoods — cost the neighborhood its vitality and led to a fleeing middle class. Now, though, nearby city neighborhoods have rebounded, and city leaders and planners think this area has a chance to be the next Ohio City or Tremont. And, unlike in the past, MetroHealth is turning outward to embrace the neighborhood as it remakes its campus, instead of turning its back, as it had done in the past. In May, MetroHealth CEO Dr. Akram Boutros said the countyowned hospital would embark on a redevelopment of its main campus, which is bounded by Interstate 71 on the east and south and West 25th on the west. He envisions the replacement or refurbishing of most of the hospital’s buildings and he described a cam-
BY KEVIN KLEPS he statistics Dominic Antenucci reads about the Tcompiled golf industry are uglier than most of the scorecards by time-crunched weekend hackers. Just last week, PGA PerformanceTrak, which tracks golf facility revenue and other key numbers for every state, released a report that showed rounds played at Northeast Ohio courses from January to June this year are down 8.3% from the like period of 2013. On July 22, a day after the PGA report hit inboxes, Dick’s Sporting Goods fired more than 500 golf pros — 18 of whom were employed at its stores in northern Ohio. The job cuts occurred two months after Dick’s CEO Ed Stack said the company missed its See GOLF, page 25
See OVERHAUL, page 8
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pus and a hospital community that was more a part of the neighborhood that surrounds it. The hospital also plans to encourage the use of neighborhood contractors and vendors for hospital goods and services. The MetroHealth redevelopment plan likely will take more than five years to complete. But community leaders are stepping up with plans now to ready the neighborhood for a closer relationship with the hospital across the street. Currently, the West 25th Street commercial strip lacks vitality. At its north end is a gem: the newly expanded operation of Nestle S.A.’s L.J. Minor culinary products plant. But moving south, it’s mostly a gap-toothed hodge-podge of vacant lots and rundown buildings, with only a few strong commercial operations and little attractive retailing. The corner of West 25th and Clark Avenue, though, is home to several Hispanic organizations and retailers serving a robust Latino community. At the southern end is Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, which attracts more than 1 million visitors annually. The West 25th Street corridor is one of the busiest public transit routes in the region. So the neighborhood has assets but it hasn’t been able to unite them. “The perception of West 25th Street right now is not very attractive,” said Jeff Ramsey, who is
IS THE SUN SETTING ON OHIO’S GOLF INDUSTRY?
FOTOLIA
High hopes for W25th overhaul
MORE MEETINGS Landing the Republican National Convention spurs additional event bookings at Cleveland Convention Center ■ Page 5
Entire contents © 2014 by Crain Communications Inc. Vol. 35, No. 31