Crain's Cleveland Business

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$1.50/JULY 19 - 25, 2010

Vol. 31, No. 28

Athletic club redo may get moving

Asterisks now come with free checking

“We’ll run the port based on the facilities today.”

– William Friedman (below), CEO, Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority

Banks eye revenue in fees, relationships

New investor plans hotel for downtown building

By ARIELLE KASS akass@crain.com

By STAN BULLARD sbullard@crain.com

Court filings signal the longplanned renovation of the former Cleveland Athletic Club Building may be starting to come together, albeit at the hands of a different investor than Eli Mann, who has owned the property since 2007 and secured state aid to remake it into apartments.

A suit filed by lender Waring Investments Inc. of Clifton, N.J., in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court to collect a past-due, $2.9 million loan to CAC Buildings Properties LLC, which is controlled by Mr. Mann, was settled out of court June 30, according to court records.

Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, although Judge Brian J. Corrigan retained authority to enforce the private settlement.

Investor Ned Weingart of Cleveland Heights views the settlement as good news because his investor group, CAC Club Ventures LLC, will demand clear title to close the purchase of the 15-story building at 1118 Euclid Ave. before its option to buy expires next month.

Tom Yablonsky, executive vice president of the Downtown Cleveland Alliance, which promotes downtown redevelopment, said, “Anything that clears up the situation with the property might help get the project started.”

The four buildings Mr. Mann controls just east of East Ninth Street are the most blighted set of properties on Euclid between Public Square and the city’s Theater District.

Although a settlement with Mr. Mann’s lender may go far toward advancing a sale of the CAC Building, other unpaid bills linger for entities controlled by Mr. Mann.

For one, the Kohrman, Jackson & Krantz law firm of Cleveland sued another of Mr. Mann’s legal entities

MARC GOLUB

Port changes course New CEO steers maritime agency toward less lofty goals in a marked departure from previous grandiose vision

By JAY MILLER ■ jmiller@crain.com

T

he Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, with the hiring of a new CEO, is getting back to basics.

By choosing as its head William Friedman, the former executive director of the Indiana Ports Commission, the Port Authority board has a leader whose expertise is in running waterfront cargo operations and whose inclination is to play the hand he’s dealt.

“We’ll run the port based on the facilities today,” he told Crain’s editorial board last Monday, July 12.

“We’ve got plenty of land right now,” Mr. Friedman said. “We can move a lot (of cargo) right now.”

See PORT Page 4

As a consumer, Pete Collins has noticed banks are doing less advertising for their free checking accounts.

As the managing director of Aurorabased business intelligence firm Collins, Williams & Associates, he thinks he knows why.

“To make up their lost revenue, they’re going to have to do something,” Mr. Collins said.

“The era of fees INSIDE: Promos, is coming again such as cash in a big way.” and electronics Mr. Collins, are some banks’ himself a former selling points for banker who now new products. focuses on busiPage 5 ness intelligence for banks, said he thinks banks will continue to de-emphasize free checking, looking instead to both fees and relationships as they seek more revenue sources. However, he doesn’t foresee all customers paying for their accounts — including those at banks where free checking is a thing of the past.

Mary Kay Bean, a spokeswoman for Chase, put “air quotes” around the phrase free checking, as it is See FREE Page 5

INSIDE Help wanted Local law schools say some firms are seeking unpaid interns in place of summer associates, with some employers favoring students earlier in their law school careers with the belief that they are less likely to expect a job in the near future.

Read Arielle Kass’ story on Page 3.

28

See CAC Page 20

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SPECIAL SECTION

We honor 12 distinguished business leaders for their contributions ■ Page W-1

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

CORRECTION A July 12, Page 12 story incorrectly included Lexus among the brands of new automobiles sold by Bernie Moreno in Northeast Ohio.

REGULAR FEATURES Best of the Blogs .........23 Big Issue .......................8 Classified ....................22 Editorial ........................8 Going Places ...............10 List: Assisted living centers .....................21 Reporters’ Notebook....23 The Week ....................23 What’s New..................23

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COMING NEXT WEEK A place to relax Some local institutions such as Cleveland State University are incorporating more amenities as they modernize student centers. We explore in our Higher Education section how the centers are evolving into a home away from home.

JULY 19-25, 2010

HOPE THEY’RE RIGHT There’s talk lately of an economic slowdown, but the Business Roundtable’s CEO Economic Outlook Survey for the next six months is fairly optimistic. The organization, which is an association of CEOs of U.S. corporations with a combined work force of 12 million people and nearly $6 trillion in annual revenue, says members expect improved sales and some hiring gains, though they’re still cautious on capital spending. Here’s how results of the survey, released in late June, compare with those of the group’s first-quarter survey: Survey on economic outlook for next six months, first-quarter to second-quarter sentiment

Increase 1Q 2Q

Decrease 1Q 2Q

No change 1Q 2Q

73%

79%

5%

4%

23%

17%

Capital spending

47

43

7

7

46

50

U.S. employment

29

39

21

17

50

43

Sales

SOURCE: SOURCE: BUSINESS ROUNDTABLE; WWW.BUSINESSROUNDTABLE.ORG

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

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UA prof confident in clean coal technique Momentum builds locally to better contain carbon dioxide; FirstEnergy, others pitch in

By CHUCK SODER csoder@crain.com

Only now is Steven Chuang confident enough to say that he expects the University of Akron — with help from FirstEnergy Corp. — to become a leader in developing clean coal technologies.

The university last month formally established its FirstEnergy Advanced Energy Research Center, financed partially by a $2 million grant the university received from the Akronbased electric utility in 2008.

Back then, Dr. Chuang, the center’s director, only could describe how his idea might give coal-fired power plants a better way to capture the carbon dioxide they emit. Today, however, he can show how it’s done: In one of his laboratories sits a 5-foot-tall rack of pipes hooked up to three containers designed to capture small amounts of the gas that many say is the cause of global warming.

“This is a golden moment to form the center. We have a technology in

a solid format, and there’s real progress there,” said Dr. Chuang, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

The center, which also is developing a coal-powered fuel cell, isn’t Northeast Ohio’s only effort to clean up carbon emissions from coal. Aside from its contribution to the center, FirstEnergy in 2008 allowed the Battelle research think tank in Columbus to use its R.E. Burger coal-fired plant in southeastern Ohio in one of many experiments nationwide aimed at testing the ability of different geological formations to store captured carbon dioxide underground. However, the ground near the plant was able to hold only 12 tons of carbon dioxide, as opposed to the 3,000 tons Battelle hoped to store.

In addition, Babcock & Wilcox Power Generation Group of Barberton is working on multiple technologies aimed at helping power plants capture carbon emissions. It even See COAL Page 9

JASON MILLER

Steven Chuang (left), a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Akron, with the help of students including Ph.D. candidate Mathew Isenberg, is working on a method to capture carbon dioxide emissions from coal.

Search engine adviser’s growth easy to fathom Late CEO’s foundation works as rising demand leads to sales uptick

By CHUCK SODER csoder@crain.com

“(Businesses have) started to become more attuned to the entire (search engine marketing) ecosystem.”

It seems Bill Fox left Fathom SEO in good shape.

In the midst of the recession, the search engine marketing company posted record sales in 2009 after several years of growth, and so far 2010 sales have been even better, said CEO Scot Lowry.

That’s not to say 2010 has been an easy year for the Valley View company. In March, Mr. Fox, who founded the company, died of a heart attack at a Fathom SEO sales office in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 50.

When Mr. Fox died, the company not only lost its founder and CEO, but it also lost a good friend, said Mr. Lowry, who was Fathom’s chief operating officer before assuming Mr. Fox’s title.

“You wouldn’t meet a guy who was more full of life and more fun,”

– Chris Boggs, president, Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization Mr. Lowry said.

The company he built, however, should be able to maintain the momentum that has driven its sales up by roughly 30% in each of the last three years, Mr. Lowry said. Sales in 2009 exceeded $8 million, and the first half of 2010 has been particularly strong, he added, noting that revenue should surpass $10 million this year.

“We’re seeing the market starting to heat up a bit,” Mr. Lowry said.

Demand for search engine marketing services — which are aimed at helping companies attract online customers through search engines such as Google and Bing — has been on the rise for years. The

size of the market tripled from $4.1 billion in 2004 to $12.2 billion in 2007, according to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization’s State of Search Report 2010.

The market since has continued growing but at a slower rate, hitting $14.6 billion in 2009, the report stated.

The past three years have been particularly kind to the top line at Fathom SEO, which became a company in 2005 after spinning off from information technology services firm Fathom IT Solutions of Cleveland.

Some of that success is the result of the company expanding beyond the specialty it was named for,

search engine optimization, which is the practice of designing a web site to appear higher in search engine rankings. For instance, Fathom SEO has increased its focus on “pay-perclick” advertising, which appears alongside search results, and it now films videos for clients to use online, which can boost a web site’s search ranking, Mr. Lowry said.

The company also has had success retaining and winning new business from existing clients, according to Mr. Lowry.

Employee ranks grow Those successes have driven the company to add 12 people since the start of 2010, bringing its staff to more than 70, Mr. Lowry said. One new hire, Kevin Herendeen, was brought on to serve as controller, giving Mr. Lowry time to take on the CEO role, and to head up a business See FATHOM Page 20

THE WEEK IN QUOTES “Free checking has sort of been losing its luster. It almost became a nasty word.

It wasn’t free, when people got down to it.”

— Greg Mulach, Fifth Third Bank senior vice president and head of retail banking in Northeastern Ohio. Page One

“It was a way to bridge traditional ads with digital communication. …

You can create that bridge and take a person to a place on the web where multimedia kicks in.”

— Cindy Fink, Cleveland Museum of Art director of marketing and communications. Page 6

“We are so far away from trend. I’m tired of that. … I don’t want them to ever think it’s ‘last season.’

I want to make pieces that people are collecting.”

— Heather Moore, founder, Heather B. Moore Inc., which makes personalized fine jewelry. Page W-6

“We die as we’ve lived, and it’s our job to make sure that your dying is what you believe it should be.”

— Pat Stropko-O’Leary, executive director, Hospice of Medina County. Page W-7

INSIGHT

Summers free now has new meaning for law students Schools report more unpaid labor requests

By ARIELLE KASS akass@crain.com

Law students continue to face difficulty in their quest to find employment in their field while still in school unless they’re willing to work for free, Northeast Ohio law schools are reporting.

Local law schools said employers sometimes are reluctant to pay summer associates and instead are seeking unpaid interns, with some employers favoring students earlier in their law school careers in the belief that they will be less likely to expect a job in the near future.

Barbara Weinzierl, director of the office of career planning for the University of Akron School of Law, said she has had “a couple” potential employers call, saying they would love to hire an Akron law student, but that it wasn’t in their budgets to do so. Ms. Weinzierl said as wonderful an experience as working for those firms or companies might be, she was not advertising the unpaid positions, which she thought might be in violation of wage and hour laws.

“I don’t feel comfortable advertising something that might be under scrutiny from the Department of Labor,” Ms. Weinzierl said. “That’s not to say that it’s not going on out there.”

See UNPAID Page 20

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Port: CEO focuses on shipping, starting ferry service across lake continued from PAGE 1

Achieve.

MIKE DEBOSE STATE REPRESENTATIVE CLASS OF ‘77

Learn how our alumni engage at: www.csuohio.edu/alumni

That’s a different approach than the one taken by the port board and Mr. Friedman’s predecessor, Adam Wasserman, who resigned abruptly last November under board pressure. Then, the focus was on a grand, long-range plan to move the docks and redevelop Cleveland’s lakefront.

One of Mr. Friedman’s first moves will be to see if he can resuscitate plans for a passenger and cargo ferry service across Lake Erie that could attract freight that now travels by truck around the lake. That plan has stalled because no community in Ontario has been willing to be the Canadian terminus of the shuttle service, partly because of the upfront cost of creating a terminal.

Mr. Friedman also is exploring bringing container freight service to the docks. Containers are cargo boxes that move easily from ships to rail cars to truck trailers, and they’re expected to be the fastest-growing segment of the shipping industry. But few now enter the Great Lakes because no one has figured out how to make lake container ships competitive on a cost basis with inland shipping by rail or truck.

Don’t assume Even if the Port Authority’s maritime operations were to decamp from their downtown location to another site along Lake Erie, Mr. Friedman said the new port would be smaller than the 200-acre one planned under Mr. Wasserman. The former CEO’s sinceabandoned concept for a $500 million complex of docks and warehouses at East 55th Street was premised on bringing a large amount of new

container cargo to Cleveland.

“I wish that was an assumption we could make,” Mr. Friedman said.

“But there are reasons it hasn’t happened in 50 years.”

Mr. Friedman said changes in transportation economics, particularly rising fuel costs for trucks and a return to the brisk level of international trade that clogged U.S. coastal seaports before the economy soured, eventually could alter the situation.

But, he said, it won’t happen soon.

“There is a lot of capacity on the east and west coasts and on the Gulf (of Mexico),” he said. “We can’t compete with that infrastructure, but there are some niches.”

Mr. Friedman said he wants to diversify the cargo coming into the Port of Cleveland beyond the iron ore and finished steel that now make up the bulk of the shipments crossing the docks. Potential niches, he said, are a cross-lake ferry service to carry passengers, their cars and trucks and a shuttle service from Montreal or Halifax, Nova Scotia, with ships carrying containers and other cargo.

“There is enormous trade between the United States and Ontario,” Mr. Friedman said, and he believes some of the shipments connected with that business could be moving through the lakefront docks.

High hopes Last month, the Port Authority agreed to spend $415,000 to hire a team of consultants that will be led

by Martin Associates of Lancaster, Pa., a maritime specialist that has worked for the Port Authority in the past. Under this engagement, the consultants will develop a new business plan that will assess opportunities to increase shipping through the port.

And because the city of Cleveland’s 20-year waterfront plan envisions moving the docks, Martin Associates also will examine alternative locations for the Port Authority’s docks and maritime terminals.

Though Mr. Friedman has only been on the job since June 1, he already has made some favorable impressions.

“I have high hopes for Will,” said John D. Baker Sr., secretary-treasurer of Local 1317 of the International Longshoremen’s Association. The members of Mr. Baker’s union make their living loading and unloading ships, and he had been critical of what he saw as more than a decade of inattention to the shipping business under the Port Authority’s last two CEOs. “Will knows what a ship looks like,” Mr. Baker said.

Other Port Authority critics and watchers are equally optimistic.

“Everybody is anticipating that the port business will be improved and the Port Authority will get back to focusing on marketing,” said Jim Cox, executive director of the Flats Industry Association, which repre-

sents businesses along the lake and riverfront, many of which rely on the water for their livelihood.

Dominic LoGalbo, commander of the Greater Cleveland Boating Association, is simply relieved the Port Authority isn’t moving to East 55th Street. That change would have wiped out a boating marina and generally would have made navigating within the lake break wall more difficult for boaters, he said.

“To me the port should stay where it is,” Mr. LoGalbo said.

“Somewhere along the way, they lost their way.”

Tough nut to crack Despite the new direction, Mr. Friedman still knows he must address a key issue from the earlier agenda besides moving the port — namely, finding a place for the silt that runs down into the navigable stretch of the Cuyahoga River. The river must be dredged and the silt dumped to keep the channel open to shipping as far down as the ArcelorMittal steel plant.

The Port Authority had intended to build its new port docks at East 55th Street on top of filled-in land created as part of a confined disposal facility, or CDF, in engineering jargon. A CDF is necessary because the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers needs a place to dump the silt it regularly dredges from the river bottom to maintain a sufficient depth to allow the big boats to continue to navigate the river.

The Port Authority continues to work with the Corps to find shortterm solutions for dumping the dredge material. The problem is paying the local share of the cost.

Until a recent change in federal law, the cost of dredging was covered in its entirety by the federal government. Now, when the current disposal site near Burke Lakefront Airport is filled, local communities — not necessarily the Port Authority — will pay 25% of the cost of dredging work.

Because it has managed the local end of the dredging in the past, the Port Authority expects to continue in that role. But it needs to find the money for the local share.

Paying the local share would burst the Port Authority’s current operating budget, so it must look to new sources of revenue to cover the cost. That money could come from a new tax or grants from state or federal transportation funds.

Late last week, Mr. Friedman went to Washington, D.C., to enlist the local congressional delegation in the effort to cover the local dredging cost. Mr. Friedman said he also hopes to defray some of the cost by selling dried river dredge to developers as fill dirt.

“Upland placement is where we’re headed,” Mr. Friedman said, referring to the practice of moving dredge material off the lakefront to dry land.

■

Volume 31, Number 28 Crain’s Cleveland Business (ISSN 0197-2375) is published weekly, except for combined issues on the fourth week of May and fifth week of May, the fourth week of June and first week of July, the third week of December and fourth week of December at 700 West St. Clair Ave., Suite 310, Cleveland, OH 44113-1230. Copyright © 2010 by Crain Communications Inc. Periodicals postage paid at Cleveland, Ohio, and at additional mailing offices. Price per copy: $1.50. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Crain’s Cleveland Business, Circulation Department, 1155 Gratiot Avenue, Detroit, Michigan 48207-2912. 1-877824-9373.

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Free: Financial reform likely to influence product mix continued from PAGE 1

offered at Chase. While she would not say how many customers pay to have checking accounts at the bank, she said the fees — from $6 to $25 a month, depending on the account — can be waived if customers meet certain minimum balances, use direct deposit or make a prescribed number of debit card transactions each month.

Such exemptions aren’t new at Chase, nor are they new at Third Federal Savings & Loan, where checking customers are charged a $5 monthly fee unless they have either a mortgage with the bank or upwards of $1,500 in deposits in Third Federal accounts.

But at Third Federal, checking accounts are seen “primarily as a convenience for loan customers,” spokeswoman Jennifer Rosa said, and not as stand-alone products.

Other banks are newer converts to the idea of tying free checking to relationships or fees. Greg Mulach, senior vice president and head of retail banking in Northeastern Ohio at Fifth Third Bank, said the bank eliminated its free checking option last September.

“I think it’s been a very good move,” he said. “Free checking has sort of been losing its luster. It almost became a nasty word. It wasn’t free, when people got down to it.”

In the past, Mr. Mulach said, customers paid extra when they overdrafted their accounts or used

Gifts come with checking accounts Want an iPod Touch? You could spend $199 at the Apple Store, or open a checking account at KeyBank.

The giveaway is one in a series that Key offers, often of electronics, to get people in the front door.

“The different types of promotions help differentiate Key,” said Todd Hays, senior vice president and retail executive in Northeast Ohio. “They break through the market clutter.”

While some banks use such offers to attract certain clients, others do it to keep up. Rob Soroka, senior vice president of retail banking at Huntington Bank, said cash has become the latest fad.

“We do it because our competitors do it,” he said.

In some cases, banks have stepped away from such promotions. Greg Mulach, senior vice president and head of retail banking in Northeastern Ohio at Fifth Third Bank, said customers who open an account

other banks’ ATMs. Now, they receive some services, such as outside ATM use, free of charge or at discounted rates, and customers know what they must do to avoid usage charges altogether.

Ties that bind While banks such as Bank of America, which does not have

because of a promotion are less likely to remain.

“They don’t tend to attract a relationship,” he said. “They just come for the cash or for the toaster.”

If Fifth Third does have promotions in the future, Mr. Mulach said he expects them to have “hooks,” like a requirement for direct deposit or debit card transactions, as Key’s does.

Trading one big giveaway for offers such as a points program is becoming a more frequent occurrence.

The gifts, though, aren’t always intended as a carrot for customers.

Sometimes, Ohio Savings Bank spokeswoman Donna Winfield said, they’re a way to say thank you. All of the bank’s gifts are worth $10 or less, she said, and include kitchen items such as Pyrex storage pieces.

“It’s a welcome surprise,” she said.

“It’s really more about the products and services we offer. That’s our focus.”

branches here, are exploring eliminating their free checking products, Fifth Third appears to be the only one operating in Cleveland that already has done so. Banks such as PNC, Charter One and Ohio Savings said they continue to offer free checking accounts and do not have plans to do otherwise.

The key for Fifth Third and other

banks is to make their institutions the primary destination for an individual’s banking activity.

“Our focus is on relationships,” Mr. Mulach said. “We want to build something long lasting with our customers.”

A customer who only has a free checking account typically stays with a bank for a year or a year and a half, he said. By adding a savings account, credit cards or other services, banks can increase the average life of a customer to four or five years.

KeyBank still offers free checking accounts, but increasingly is looking to focus on relationship banking, said Todd Hays, senior vice president and retail executive in Northeast Ohio.

KeyBank constantly is reviewing its product mix and Mr. Hays said he had no immediate comment on the future of free checking at the bank.

He did say, though, that Key is more likely to require more relationships than to simply do away with free accounts.

Relationship banking is what Key seeks to foster in its promotions.

That’s the case currently with an iPod Touch that new checking account customers can receive if they make a debit card transaction and complete two direct deposits or automated payments of more than $100 in addition to simply opening the account.

“We want to drive as many clients

as we can into the door,” Mr. Hays said. “It’s how we attract new clients into the bank. We wow them with our approach, then they never want to leave.”

Staying the course Rob Soroka, senior vice president of retail banking at Huntington Bank, said it’s the free checking itself that brings in customers. Expanding hours, which the bank did earlier this year, also helps provide more volume.

“There are pressures, but we are finding new ways,” Mr. Soroka said.

James Thurston, a spokesman for the Ohio Bankers League, said he expects to see an increase in feebased accounts, or those that require other relationships, as the nation’s bigger banks move away from free checking, calling it a trend where “others will follow suit over time.”

Mr. Thurston said part of the appeal among bigger banks is a chance to make up fees that are lost in a new financial reform bill; those include interchange fees that are paid to banks from retailers where credit and debit cards are used.

But others see free checking staying for the long run, at least at their banks.

“It certainly is a big part of our history,” said Ben Benack, vice president of product management at Dollar Bank in Pittsburgh. “Dollar Bank has offered free checking as long as we’ve offered checking.”

■

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Hopkins facelift pays off early on Four-year effort to upgrade terminal has yielded more consumer spending

By JAY MILLER jmiller@crain.com

It’s a big year for Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.

Although a cloud hangs over Hopkins in the form of the proposed merger of Continental and United airlines, the airport is holding a party next Monday, July 26, to celebrate both a four-year effort to spruce up its terminal and retail operations and its 85th birthday as the nation’s first municipally owned airport.

When he arrived to be Cleveland’s airports chief nearly four years ago, Ricky D. Smith pledged to make the city-owned airport more attractive to passengers and airlines. He began by reorganizing the flow of the airport’s ground transportation, notably its parking lots and taxi service, then brought in BAA USA, a retailer specializing in airports, to transform Hopkins’ retail operations.

BAA is using its “Airmall” concept at Hopkins, a marketing strategy the firm’s British parent pioneered in Europe. The idea, reinforced with the slogan, “Regular Mall Prices … Guaranteed,” brings local and national restaurateurs and merchants and lower prices to airport retailing.

By the end of this year, BAA will have redeveloped 76,000 square feet of retail space at the airport. Among the new retailers for travelers to sample are Hudson News and Hudson Booksellers, Quaker Steak & Lube

and Great Lakes Brewing Co. The city also has updated the concourses and restrooms.

Though passenger satisfaction hasn’t been gauged formally, the strategy is succeeding financially. The average retail dollar spent per passenger has risen since Mr. Smith’s arrival to $12 per passenger from $5.

“Our goal is to get to $15 per passenger,” he said.

Every dollar counts The city gets a portion of that revenue and that share is important because of the complicated financial structure of airports. Every dollar the city nets from parking, food operations and other concessions makes Hopkins less costly to the airlines, which pay Hopkins landing fees. The lower the fees Hopkins needs to charge the airlines to maintain its operations, the more willing they are to keep or increase service at Hopkins, which some observers say is critical to the region’s attractiveness to businesses.

Mr. Smith said the landing fee has dropped to $2.45 per ton of aircraft from $6 per ton in 2009.

“It’s been a struggle keeping (the landing fee) down because traffic is down,” Mr. Smith said.

Mr. Smith said his staff has been doing the kind of business development spadework that could lead to a new airline or two flying into Hopkins or to the addition of service by an existing airline. But, until the Continental-United merger is resolved and the economy stabilizes, it’s unlikely Hopkins will land new business.

Even so, Mr. Smith believes he has succeeded in his pledge to improve the airport. It appears he’s right, based on anecdotal comments by travelers, even though the airport’s

ranking in an annual survey of airports doesn’t reflect any change.

Decent early reviews “I like it, it’s a very neat place,” said Robert Salmon of Chevy Chase, Md., a semi-retired business consultant and former Clevelander who flies into Hopkins to visit family and through it on business trips.

“The prices (at the restaurants and other retailers) seem reasonable compared to other places,” he said.

He’s been through Hopkins three times in the last six months, he said in a phone call. He considers it the best transfer point when he’s traveling on business to the West Coast.

“The chance of being on time through Cleveland is better than other places,” he said.

Other travelers agreed.

“It’s friendlier and definitely cleaner,” said Terry Aiken of Hudson, a real estate agent with the Keller Williams brokerage, who was at the airport last Wednesday to meet his son’s plane. “The pickup area is much improved.”

BAA has put a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee shop in the baggage claim area, which until now has lacked any food service. It also put a Dunkin’ Donuts and Hudson News café in the ticketing area, along with table seating. Until now, that concourse, which is outside the secured area, has not had any food service.

Paul Barnes, national sales manager for Hunter Laboratories Inc. in Reston, Va., said the airport “smelled musty” when he got off the plane last Wednesday, but he was otherwise complimentary.

“It’s starting to shape up, although they’ve got a ways to go yet,” he said.

“The food court is looking more hospitable than in the past.”

■

STORMWATER FEE CREDIT WORKSHOP Art museum quick to try new ad format Wednesday, July 28 from 8-11 a.m.

Halle Building, 1228 Euclid Avenue

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Register online at http://stormwater-workshop.eventbrite.com or call 216.881.6600 ext. 6435

By SHANNON MORTLAND smortland@crain.com

You might have seen the twodimensional, black and white boxes around town and wondered what they were.

Located on kiosks and in newspaper ads, the boxes have lines running in all directions and are called quick response — or QR — codes. Though they’re popular in countries such as Japan and Canada, the Cleveland Museum of Art is among the first to adopt them in Northeast Ohio as part of its marketing strategy.

“It was a way to bridge traditional ads with digital communication,” said Cindy Fink, the museum’s director of marketing and communications. “You can create that bridge and take a person to a place on the web where multimedia kicks in.”

Using a smart phone, a consumer can download a free application to enable the phone to take a picture of the QR code, which then will immediately connect the person to a web site that provides more information on the topic advertised. The consumer can watch videos, read more about an exhibit or learn where and when to see it, Ms. Fink said.

“They’re going to land on the exact page we want them to land on,” Ms. Fink said. “We could really direct their (Internet) path.”

Posters with the quick response codes will be on 11 kiosks down-

When consumers photograph “quick response” ads with a smart phone, the bar code takes the user to a specific web page on the advertiser’s site. town and in Little Italy, Tremont and Ohio City until Aug. 2. Print ads are running in The Plain Dealer and Scene, said Tim Brokaw, managing partner at Cleveland advertising agency Brokaw Inc., which helped the art museum create the ad campaign. Posters with the codes also will appear in bars and restaurants, Ms. Fink said.

The art museum chose to experiment with QR codes for the first time to become more attractive to those people who often are early adopters of technology and are willing to try

new things, Mr. Brokaw said. The use of QR codes is one way to make the art museum more accessible and attractive to young audiences, he said.

The campaign coincides with the reopening of 17 galleries at the art museum that had been closed for construction, Ms. Fink said.

Though QR codes have been slow to catch on in the United States, their popularity is expected to rise now that 50 million Americans have smart phones, Mr. Brokaw said.

QR codes were tested on kiosks at Case Western Reserve University two years ago by Mobile Discovery Inc., a mobile marketing firm in Reston, Va. During a two-week campaign, thousands of people clicked on the QR codes to register for free prizes, said David Miller, CEO of Mobile Discovery.

Mr. Miller said Americans’ short attention span is precisely what will boost the use of QR codes in the near future.

“The fact that the U.S. has a little bit of (attention deficit disorder) is what makes them successful,” Mr. Miller said.

Ms. Fink said some museums are using QR codes in the galleries to provide audio tours of the artwork, and the Cleveland Museum of Art is considering following their lead.

“As more and more people adopt and use smart phones, it makes sense to use (QR codes) in museums,” she said.

■

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

WWW.CRAINSCLEVELAND.COM

JULY 19-25, 2010

PUBLISHER/EDITORIAL DIRECTOR:

Brian D. Tucker (btucker@crain.com) EDITOR:

Mark Dodosh (mdodosh@crain.com) MANAGING EDITOR:

Scott Suttell (ssuttell@crain.com)

OPINION

Cut the carp

A

fter looking on helplessly for three months as one ecological disaster has unfolded in the Gulf of Mexico, President Barack Obama finally may be realizing it would be a good idea to head off another from developing in the Great Lakes. Or so we hope.

Little did we know when we were writing our “Carp crapshoot” editorial for last week’s issue that Gov. Ted Strickland and Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray were doing some writing, too. They sent a letter dated July 8 to Mr. Obama pleading with the president to take emergency action to stop the potential invasion of Asian carp into Great Lakes waters.

It’s unusual for two high-profile members of a president’s own party to take a demanding tone with the big boss. However, the immediacy of the threat posed to native aquatic life by the voracious Asian carp and the devastation the invader could inflict on Ohio’s fishing and tourism industries leaves no time for subtle suggestions that the Obama administration take a less contemplative approach to the problem.

With evidence growing that electric barriers aren’t keeping the big fish from advancing into tributaries of Lake Michigan, Messrs. Strickland and Cordray do not mince words in calling for the immediate construction of a permanent physical barrier in the Calumet River between Chicago’s Lake Calumet, where an Asian carp was caught last month, and Lake Michigan.

“While it is always an admirable goal to find the best, most precise solution to any problem, in this case it is entirely impractical,” they wrote. “By the time we identify a better solution to the permanent physical barrier, if there is one, it will be too late. We cannot tolerate further delays in the construction of a physical barrier, nor maintain the current ‘study and monitor’ status quo as the only solution.”

In their letter, the two men asked Mr. Obama to host an emergency summit today, July 19, to address the Asian carp issue. That isn’t happening. However, Amanda Wurst, a spokeswoman in the governor’s office, said the White House late last week indicated it would convene a summit in the next 30 days.

Also last week, U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois announced the Obama administration planned to name an Asian carp czar within a month to oversee state and federal efforts to keep the fish in check.

Both steps are welcome. However, we fear they only will add weeks, if not months, to the already drawn-out process of addressing the carp threat.

Any lengthy delay would be regrettable, especially in light of the ongoing mess in the gulf. The massive oil leak there put Mr. Obama in a reactive position.

In the case of the Asian carp, the president could avert an ecological calamity before it happens.

Instead, it appears he has been trying to appease shippers in his home state of Illinois who don’t want to see their inland waterway connections disrupted.

As any commercial or sport fisherman knows, efforts over the last 30 years to improve the water quality of the Great Lakes have yielded wonderful results, with fish such as walleye now in abundance.

It would be a crime to see that hard work destroyed by a failure to act. The carp must be cut off ASAP.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

LeBron killed more than his legacy

I

For the first time in his young life, thought waiting might take the sting LeBron James acted his age and joined the away, perhaps temper my comments. ranks of the other self-obsessed athletes Maybe even lead me to a different we’ve watched in the glare of TV lights. conclusion about LeBron James.

“I’m taking my talents to South Beach and Nope. the Miami Heat,” he told Jim Gray, who I The day after the airing of “The Decionce respected as a commentator. In this, sion,” the self-absorbed ESPN special to he was a paid actor in an attempt to wrap announce LeBron’s intentions as a free this farce in journalistic credibility. agent, I was with Darrell McNair, a I thought it was telling that thoughtful CEO who has a habit LeBron chose the words “South of looking at things with a thor- BRIAN Beach,” rather than “Miami.” It’s ough attention to detail.

TUCKER as if he couldn’t wait to get to the “What LeBron did was flashy strip of clubs, restaurants murder,” Darrell said. “Not involand hotels that rejuvenated a untary manslaughter, mind you. once-decrepit neighborhood. He This was premeditated murder.” seems to be choosing a lifestyle He wasn’t being literal, of as well as the chance to join the course; he was describing the other two high-profile free manner in which LeBron slapped agents, Dwyane Wade and Chris the Cleveland Cavaliers and all Bosh. So be it; he has the right to of Northeast Ohio in the face. peddle his wares anywhere he chooses. He To stage this TV special to shine the did, however, owe the Cavaliers a phone light on himself, and try to wrap it in the call before trumpeting his decision. But he form of some contribution to the Boys didn’t have the guts. and Girls Club, was shameful. It was a Then came the bombast from Dan calculated attempt to bring more attenGilbert, who excoriated his former tion to the LeBron brand, and it was a superstar player as a coward and vowed pathetic failure.

that his Cavaliers would win an NBA title before the newly energized Heat. We’ll see about that, but if it doesn’t happen, it won’t be because of a lack of will on the part of Mr. Gilbert. He has shown repeatedly since buying the team that he intends to give the organization every tool to win.

As for that $100,000 fine NBA Commissioner David Stern slapped on him, the owner must have known he’d get hit hard for his rant. He’s too smart to have spouted off without thinking. His comments were meant to express the same betrayal felt by all Cavaliers fans.

We can only wait and see how the triumvirate plays together in Miami and whether the trio can share the spotlight, let alone the ball. And will they play the defense needed to win championships, or just want to dazzle the fans with their dunks?

Only time will tell, but for now, life goes on in Cleveland. We’ll recall the winning seasons LeBron James brought to this team, but I hope we never, ever see his jersey in the rafters of Quicken Loans Arena. He doesn’t deserve it.

■

THE BIG ISSUE Now that the LeBron James banner that was hanging in downtown Cleveland has been removed, what should go up in its place?

ANDREW STEBBINS

JORDAN MARKHAM

HELEN RHYNARD

BEN ANDERSON

Cleveland

Brecksville

Cleveland

Cleveland Heights

“I saw a great picture of (the Browns’) Josh Cribbs going around the Internet … something about the Browns or something from Dan Gilbert talking about the Cavs and how they’re still our team.”

“I think they should put up the Cleveland Indians.”

“The Cavs … the new Cavs without LeBron.”

“(Browns president) Mike Holmgren. … I fully expect that if he gets the team’s attention and gets the results he has in other places that he’s going to return us to some long overdue past glory.”

➤➤ Watch more people weigh in by visiting the Multimedia section at www.CrainsCleveland.com.

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

WWW.CRAINSCLEVELAND.COM

Coal: Technology plays to region’s strengths continued from PAGE 3

has a joint marketing agreement in place to help sell another company’s technology.

The government is becoming involved, too. Sens. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, and Jay Rockefeller, D-W. Va., last week introduced legislation that would add a fee to utility bills to finance $20 billion in research and development related to carbon capture and sequestration technology over the next 10 years. The bill also would promote the adoption of such technologies by giving tax breaks to power plants that use them.

Plus, the state of Ohio in 2008 passed a jobs bill that included $66 million to fund clean coal projects.

That’s on top of bonds the state regularly issues to finance coal research and development.

Two is better than one It’s no coincidence that Dr. Chuang has received money from FirstEnergy, Babcock & Wilcox and the state of Ohio, given their common interests.

He has received two grants from Babcock & Wilcox’s Barberton division, part of Babcock & Wilcox Co. of Lynchburg, Va., and each year he secures about $80,000 from the Ohio Coal Development Office. The bulk of his financial support, however, comes from the federal government and now FirstEnergy.

That money helps Dr. Chuang buy equipment and pay stipends to almost all of the 30 undergraduate and graduate students who do research in his laboratories.

One of his labs contains the machines that his team uses to test a method of pulling carbon dioxide from a stream of air with a solid amine as opposed to a liquid. The solid, he said, is more effective because liquids typically used for the process are diluted with water, resulting in less contact between carbon dioxide molecules and the amine molecules that catch them.

Dr. Chuang said he expects the technology to be ready for commercialization in two or three years, while the coal-powered fuel cell will take another four or five years to

A CLEAN COAL PRIMER Steven Chuang, a University of Akron professor in chemical and biomolecular engineering, with the help of FirstEnergy Corp. is making progress on clean coal technologies.

How his idea works: Using a solid material consisting of amine molecules, machines attempt to pull carbon dioxide from streams of air. Carbon dioxide is blamed by many for causing global warming.

The amine molecules in solid form interact better with carbon dioxide, without the water that limits liquid amines’ effectiveness.

Meanwhile, Dr. Chuang also is working on a longer-term project, a clean coal fuel cell. The fuel cell, he hopes, will generate power from coal more efficiently while also emitting a nearly pure stream of carbon dioxide, making the gas easier to capture than when it is mixed with air. develop. The fuel cell should be able to generate power from coal more efficiently while emitting a nearly pure stream of carbon dioxide, which Dr. Chuang said is easier to capture than carbon dioxide mixed with air.

Using the two technologies as a starting point, the University of Akron is in a good position to capitalize on increasing demand for clean coal technologies, Dr. Chuang said. Besides the research money already flowing into the university and the expertise of his team, he’s cultivating knowledge among the students who work with him, some of whom may continue collaborating with the college after graduation. Plus, Northeast Ohio has a manufacturing base capable of producing and improving the parts his high-tech machines need.

“For these two technologies, we are able to get a lot of parts and a lot of materials from the nearby area,” he said.

requests for an interview. On its own, the company is developing ways to improve liquid solvents to remove carbon dioxide from coal plant emissions, and it has developed a technology that replaces air used in the coal combustion process with nearly pure oxygen, resulting in a gas stream of nearly pure carbon dioxide.

The presence of Babcock & Wilcox gives Northeast Ohio an edge when it comes to taking advantage of the economic development opportunities related to clean coal, though it is among many blue chip companies developing technologies, said Tom Sarkus, deputy director of the office of major demonstrations at the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Pittsburgh. Mr. Sarkus said he expects carbon capture and storage technologies to become widespread as they become more affordable during the 2020s.

The state of Ohio is interested in commercializing more clean coal technologies, but to date just $11.5 million of the $66 million allotted to such projects in the 2008 jobs bill has been awarded so far, said Mark Shanahan, director of the Ohio Air Quality Development Authority, which oversees the Ohio Coal Development Office. About $30 million had been reserved to install carbon capture technology on a coal plant American Municipal Power Inc. intended to build in southeastern Ohio, but the nonprofit utility shelved that project earlier this year, citing increasing costs.

Regardless, Mr. Shanahan said he expects there to be plenty of opportunities to use that money in the future.

“This whole issue of having to capture carbon dioxide is the next huge challenge to the coal industry,” he said.

■

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Creative Alternatives to Bankruptcy Thursday, July 22, 2010 • 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

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Regional advantage Babcock & Wilcox continues to work with Dr. Chuang’s team, though officials from the company declined

COMING UP IN CRAIN’S Forty Under 40 Crain’s Cleveland Business is accepting nominations for our annual Forty Under 40 feature, which profiles 40 people under the age of 40 who are making their marks on Northeast Ohio.

Nominations can be submitted via the nomination form on Crain’s web site, CrainsCleveland.com. Nominations also can be sent to editor Mark Dodosh via e-mail at mdodosh@crain .com or via regular mail to 700 W. St. Clair Ave., suite 310, Cleveland 44113. E-mail nominations must include “Forty Under 40” in the subject line. All nominations should be no longer than a single page; longer submissions will be rejected.

Self-nominations are welcome, but people eligible for the feature should still be under the age of 40 as of the section’s Nov. 22 publication date. The deadline for submissions is Aug. 9.

Health Care Directory Crain’s Cleveland Business on Sept. 20 will publish its 13th Health Care Directory, a listing of companies and organizations that provide health

care services in Northeast Ohio. Go to www.CrainsCleveland.com/ section/hcd to view the Health Care Directory.

If your company or organization has never submitted information for the directory, send an e-mail requesting a survey to Deb Hillyer, dhillyer@crain.com. The e-mail must include company name, address, phone number and a contact name; incomplete requests will not receive a response. The deadline to submit information is Aug. 13.

The directory will be divided into 18 categories: addiction services; associations and professional groups; dentists and dental groups; fitness and wellness; health insurance underwriters (only those companies listed as Health Insuring Corporations by the state of Ohio); home health; hospice; hospitals and hospital systems; laboratories; medical equipment and imaging; mental health; occupational health/occupational therapy; outpatient services; physical therapy/rehabilitation; physicians and physician groups; prescription services; senior and long-term care services; and women’s health services.

TM

We want to We thank the 1,602 supporters of the Weatherhead School of Management.

Your continued generosity allows us to provide an outstanding education to the next generation of business leaders.

Learn more about Weatherhead’s full-time, part-time and Executive MBA programs by visiting weatherhead.case.edu/academics.

9

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

WWW.CRAINSCLEVELAND.COM

JULY 19-25, 2010

GOING PLACES JOB CHANGES CONSTRUCTION

Congratulations to our NAIOP Award Winners!

H.R. GRAY: Aaron Smith to construction engineer.

SHOOK CONSTRUCTION: Joseph Lammlein to project superintendent.

EDUCATION The National Association of Industrial and Of¿ce Properties (NAIOP) recognized best projects, real estate transactions, and individual performances for the commercial real estate industry in Northern Ohio in 2009.

CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY: Arnold Hirshon to university librarian and associate provost.

UNIVERSITY OF AKRON: William J. Landis to the G. Stafford Whitby Chair in Polymer Science; Abraham Joy to assistant professor, polymer science.

FINANCE OHIO COMMERCE BANK: Valerie Lehman to loan administrator.

Robert J. Roe, SIOR Managing Director “2009 Of¿ce Broker of the Year” rob.roe@am.jll.com

AJ Magner Senior Vice President “2009 Industrial Transaction of the Year”

Andrew G. Coleman Vice President “2009 NAIOP Member of the Year”

Joseph A. Messina Vice President “2009 Industrial Transaction of the Year”

aj.magner@am.jll.com

andrew.coleman@am.jll.com

joe.messina@am.jll.com

For real estate services:

FINANCIAL SERVICE ANCORA ADVISORS LLC: John Micklitsch to senior vice president; Renie Walters to assistant vice president.

CORRIGAN KRAUSE: Susanne Morgan to bookkeeper; Dennis M. Dlugosz, Timothy M. Radigan and Brian J. Weisbarth to supervisors.

Robert J. Roe, SIOR Managing Director + 1 216 861 7171 www.us.joneslanglasalle.com/cleveland © 2010 Jones Lang LaSalle IP, Inc. All rights reserved.

HEALTH CARE THE SISTERS OF CHARITY HEALTH

Crains Set up_NAIOP 2010 Winners Ad Grid (2).indd 1

7/12/2010 10:14:54 AM

®

Higher standards make better lawyers.

Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP Cleveland 216.479.6100 Akron 330.208.1000 www.vorys.com

SYSTEM: Dr. Giesele Robinson Greene to chief medical officer, health system and St. Vincent Charity Medical Center.

INSURANCE USI INSURANCE: Matt Baird to benefits consultant.

MANUFACTURING LASZERAY TECHNOLOGY INC.: Joe Pavlescak to manufacturing manager; Bryan Disterhof and Jason Tichy to design engineering.

MARKETING HITCHCOCK FLEMING & ASSOCIATES INC.: Greg Pfiffner to associate creative director.

KNOTICE: Stephenie Vanchoff to account executive; Matt Sloan to production specialist; Patti Renner to copywriter; Susan Botson to onboarding specialist; Daniel Spohn to database administrator/developer; Kristen Curtis to marketing coordinator.

MUNICIPAL CITY OF SHAKER HEIGHTS: Tania Menesse to director of economic development.

Greene

Ostanek

Neundorfer

REAL ESTATE ABODE LIVING: Carolyn Karas to marketing associate.

SERVICE INFOCISION MANAGEMENT CORP.: Curt Cramblett to vice president, new business development.

MIDWEST DIRECT: Sean Gebbie to national sales manager.

NEUNDORFER INC.: Steve Ostanek to president, chief operating officer; Mike Neundorfer to chairman, CEO. NORTHCOAST CONFLICT SOLUTIONS: Joyce A. Banjac to vice president, chief strategist for organizational markets.

O’SULLIVAN CONSULTING: Ronald Ochoa to director, CareTracker implementation; Joseph Maruk to senior consultant and trainer, CareTracker implementation.

BOARDS NONPROFIT BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS: Jennifer Anzalone to development officer.

ARTISTS ARCHIVES OF THE WESTERN RESERVE: Herbert Ascherman Jr. to president.

CLEVELAND FOUNDATION: Caprice Bragg to senior vice president, gift planning and donor relations.

CLEVELAND LEADERSHIP CENTER: Marc Byrnes (Oswald Cos.) to chair.

MONTEFIORE: Roberta Brofman to director of nursing and clinical programs, post-hospital care center.

Send information for Going Places to dhillyer@crain.com.

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Regulators have eyes on Geauga Savings’ parent Maple Leaf Financial ordered to raise capital ratio

By ARIELLE KASS akass@crain.com

Sporting a capital ratio lower than the bank for which it’s supposed to serve as a “source of strength” has caused federal regulators to require a new capital plan for the holding company of Geauga Savings Bank.

Maple Leaf Financial Inc. has been ordered to create a capital plan to raise its tangible capital ratio, Maple Leaf president and CEO Allen Lencioni Sr. said. The company has until Aug. 31 to submit a plan, effective for the period from Sept. 30, 2010, to Dec. 31, 2012.

Mr. Lencioni, who also is president and CEO of Geauga Savings, said he does not know what the new capital level is required to be, and no figure is given in the order. The company’s level is currently around 4.75%, he said, while the bank’s is around 10%.

“The irony here is that the bank doesn’t really need a source of strength,” he said. “The bank is stronger than it’s been in five years.”

The July 8 order by the Office of Thrift Supervision amends a March 27, 2009, cease-and-desist order the company received. Mr. Lencioni said while the new requirement “doesn’t really change my world,” it is not

something he expected.

“I did not walk away from the examination thinking I would have to write a capital plan,” he said. “I wrote a cash flow plan. … I thought we were done with this.”

Mr. Lencioni said he expects to reclassify some debt, converting it to equity. In the longer run, he would like to see Geauga Savings make money and give it to the holding company in the form of dividends. The bank currently is close to break-even.

For a closely held bank like his, Mr. Lencioni said, raising capital is a near impossibility. But he said once the new requirements are met, he will consider eliminating the holding company, which is costing the bank more than it is benefiting it.

Geauga Savings has begun offering online banking and is in the midst of launching new products that Mr. Lencioni said he hopes will help it grow. It also is allowed to compete on rates now, something that was not the case immediately following the initial 2009 order.

None of that will be affected as a result of the new requirements.

“It doesn’t change the way we operate our bank, or what the goals are,” Mr. Lencioni said. “It just creates another hurdle.”

■

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C

Caprice Bragg, the Cleveland Foundation’s senior vice president of gift planning and donor relations, in the European art room

aprice Bragg was on her way to a career in the corporate world as a tax lawyer at KeyCorp Management Co. when a friend, who worked at the Cleveland Foundation, asked her a question.

“The question was, ‘Did you ever think about using your technical skills for the good of the community?’”

Ms. Bragg recalled recently.

“Although I was happily employed at the law department at Key, it was just enough to hook me.”

She started as a gift planning officer in 1999, became director of gift planning in 2003 and then took her current job in 2004.

“It’s part of my DNA to look for ways to give back,” Ms. Bragg said.

“So the opportunity to combine my technical background with a way to be helpful to Cleveland is what attracted me to the Cleveland Foundation.”

It’s the job of Ms. Bragg and her staff to make the community aware of the philanthropic opportunities at the foundation. They also help donors plan their giving and understand the tax and financial consequences of their choices.

“We have thousands of funds that support different facets of the community,” she said.

The rocky economy of the last few years and uncertainties in estate tax law have had an impact

Caprice Bragg Senior vice president of gift planning and donor relations The Cleveland Foundation on gift giving to the foundation, but Ms. Bragg believes the community’s strong history of philanthropy will prevail.

“People are still giving,” she said.

“I’m humbled every day and grateful that people still think about and care about their community.”

Ms. Bragg is also involved in a variety of her own charitable works.

She is on the advisory committee of the MC STEM High School, a school on Cleveland’s East Side that focuses on science and medicine; on the board of the Black Professionals Association Charitable Foundation; and on the advisory committee of Lake Ridge Academy in North Ridgeville, where her two sons have been educated.

Professionally, she is a past president of the Estate Planning Council of Cleveland and is active in other professional organizations

in the legal and philanthropic communities.

In her free time she is active in her church and enjoys art.

“Art is my first love and I enjoy our museums,” she said. “I like to wander through the galleries” of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Her boss at the foundation, president Ronn Richard, praised the job Ms. Bragg and her team do in bringing new money into the foundation.

“Caprice is the consummate professional and her dedication to serving charitable donors is exemplary,” he said. “We’re incredibly fortunate to have her.”

Ms. Bragg was born in Akron and graduated from Oberlin College with a bachelor’s degree in government.

She earned her law degree from New York University and then returned to Cleveland to be close to her future husband, who was working in Oberlin. The couple have lived with their two sons in North Olmsted for 20 years.

She continues to believe that philanthropy can and should play an important role in the community.

“We as a community must continue to build wealth and innovate around wealth creation and entrepreneurship,” Ms. Bragg said.

“That sows the seeds for what ultimately can be deployed for charitable needs.”

— Jay Miller

This year, we’ve paired our honorees with the sparkling Cleveland Museum of Art. Enjoy.

Each summer, our Women of Note section matches a dozen of the region’s leading business women with one of Northeast Ohio’s cultural treasures.

◆◆ PHOTOGRAPHY BY JANET CENTURY ◆◆

I

f you want to hear great things about Laurie Brlas, you’re better off on these pages, or maybe talking to one of her colleagues, than you would be talking to her.

As chief financial officer of one of Cleveland’s largest companies, and one that’s part of the S&P 500 Index, Ms. Brlas has made more than a little success out of life. But she’s not one to brag.

Asked about her high school career, for example, and she replied “pretty normal.” She was just a regular student at Lake High School in Hartville.

But you have to remember, Ms. Brlas is the financial voice of a public company in an age when such voices must watch what they say more than Army generals. You have to ask just the right question, like, “Were you valedictorian or anything?”

“Oh, yes, I was,” Ms. Brlas replied, as if confirming that she passed plane geometry.

When she went on to Youngstown State University, it was more of the same — a perfect grade point average. Not one to dally when there’s really no need, she finished her accounting degree in three years.

After that, she went on to take both the CPA and CMA, as in Certified Management Accountant, exams. She said she had the highest score in the United States on the CPA test and the highest in the world on the CMA, which she took a month later. And, yes, Ms. Brlas said, she is a tiny bit proud of those

Laurie Brlas Executive vice president, chief financial officer Cliffs Natural Resources last two accomplishments. But even they don’t tell the whole story.

“If I tell someone I went to Youngstown State, people say ‘Ehhh.’ If I say I finished first on the CPA exam, people say ‘Wow!’ But neither of those things says who I am,” Mr. Brlas said.

What might say a little more about her, she says, is that her degrees at Youngstown State and from Lake High School came more than 10 years apart. In between, Ms. Brlas stayed at home so she could raise her two children, now both in their early 30s and working on their own careers.

“I didn’t go to college until I was in my 30s,” Ms. Brlas said.

Fortunately for Ms. Brlas, re-entering the classroom was like a former cowboy getting back on a horse, and she had no trouble acing her classes. Then, it was off to the races in the corporate arena, where she navigated the field with equal grace.

She worked for the accounting

firm Deloitte in Cleveland, then Corning Clinical Labs in New Jersey.

But she missed Cleveland, she said — and its lake, where she enjoys boating — and came back to work at OfficeMax and then sterilization equipment maker Steris Corp., where she also became CFO. Today, Ms. Brlas has more than 20 years of financial experience under her belt and helps run one of the world’s largest mining and natural resources companies.

The accounting came easy, she said. She saw her first ledger when she was about 12, and her mother kept the books for the family’s manufacturing business. What’s been more important, Ms. Brlas said, has been to fully understand the business behind the numbers.

Her boss says she’s done just that.

“While Laurie’s knowledge around traditional CFO disciplines such as disclosure, accounting and finance is exemplary, she also has a demonstrated ability to rise above what are the straight numbers to see larger business and industry trends,” said Cliffs chairman and CEO Joseph Carrabba.

“She is a business partner helping to shape our strategic direction and building suitable processes and organizational structures for a company experiencing meteoric growth, including Cliffs’ ascent into the Fortune 1000 and S&P 500,” he said.

But then, that’s probably all just another day at the office for Ms. Brlas.

— Dan Shingler

Laurie Brlas, the executive vice president and CFO of Cliffs Natural Resources, in front of a portrait of Dora Wheeler by William Merritt Chase, in the American art/1800-1925 room

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Phyllis Brody

Inajo Davis Chappell

Co-founder Creativity for Kids

A

s a young stay-at-home mother in the mid-1970s, Phyllis Brody was troubled by what she called the “turkey syndrome.”

Her two children would bring home art projects that encouraged uniformity and rule-following, typified by the hand-traced outlines that millions of American children color to look like turkeys around Thanksgiving time.

Ms. Brody, herself an artist, found a compatriot in fellow mom Evelyn Greenwald, and the pair started working together to infuse greater creativity into their children’s artwork — first within their classroom, then gradually in after-school and lunchtime sessions throughout the Cleveland Heights-University Heights school district.

“When we introduced children to creative experiences where there was no end goal, where they didn’t have to make it look like something,” recalled Ms. Brody, “something magical would happen.”

Parents took notice and began asking where they could buy kits that would replicate that kind of open-ended creative experience at home. That interest was all the prompting the two women needed to start Creative Art Activities Inc. — later renamed Creativity for Kids — out of Ms. Brody’s basement in 1976. They packaged kits of art materials ranging from feathers and

Partner Ulmer & Berne LLP

I Phyllis Brody, the co-founder of Creativity for Kids, in an Impressionist room, featuring Monet’s famous “Water Lilies” painting pipe cleaners to popsicle sticks and wood blocks with suggestions for possible activities.

“Adults need to make something look a certain way, not too messy, use the right colors — that’s what we were the antithesis of,” Ms. Brody said. “That’s what gave us the motivation and passion to persist even though we were not business people at all.”

They debuted their products nationally at the 1978 American International Toy Fair, where Ms. Brody said the likes of Creativity for Kids had never been seen.

“People didn’t know whether to take them seriously,” said Lisa Brody, Ms. Brody’s daughter and public relations manager for Cre-

ativity for Kids. “No one saw them as competition, but they knew how to tap into something with parents and kids that other companies weren’t doing as successfully.”

By the following year, Playthings Magazine had created a new toy category called “Creative Activities” with Creativity for Kids as the sole company listed.

“It was a very pioneering thing at the time,” Phyllis Brody said.

While the market for creative kids’ activities has exploded, Creativity for Kids — with Ms. Brody as the creative force behind it — has remained a leader, snagging such honors as the Oppenheim Best Toy Award and the Parents’ Choice Award. Today, Creativity for Kids

products with such names as “The Pop-Up Book of Me” can be found on retail shelves worldwide.

“The fact that creative play is so much a part of children’s lives now, I feel really great about that,” she said.

In 1999, the company gained the attention of German art supplies maker Faber-Castell, which acquired Creativity for Kids and made its Cleveland facility the headquarters of Faber-Castell USA, installing Ms. Brody as chief creativity officer.

While Ms. Greenwald retired in 2004, Ms. Brody remains active two days a week in special projects for Creativity for Kids. They include a new partnership with The Cleveland Institute of Art that uses student illustrations for coloring books.

“It was a fantastic collaboration,” said Richard Konisiewicz, CIA’s director of corporate, foundation and government relations. “She worked with these students almost as an adjunct professor, teaching them to be professionals. (She’s a model for) the business sense you need to get your work published.”

Ms. Brody currently serves on the board of the Hanna Perkins Child Development Center and founded a group in 2008 called Women Connect for Change, to help women become more politically active.

But Ms. Brody spends most of her spare time reconnecting with her own art, working in collage and encaustic — or hot wax — painting mediums. And true to character, she’s open-ended about where her art may take her in the future.

“I don’t want to have an end goal with it,” Ms. Brody said. “The real joy for me is just getting up in the morning and taking out my materials and doing whatever it is I’m so moved to do.”

— Jennifer Keirn

t’s not just that Inajo Davis Chappell marches to the beat of a different drummer. It’s that for her, the drummer might as well be playing the tambourine.

“There’s nothing about me that’s typical,” said Ms. Chappell, chair of the nonprofit and school law groups and co-chair of the diversity committee at Cleveland law firm Ulmer & Berne. “I can do anything on any given day. I march to my own arrhythmic, erratic, crazy beat.”

And Ms. Chappell knows something about beats. The daughter of two music teachers who taught in the Cleveland schools, she has a piano in her home and plays to relax.

Much of her time in school, though, wasn’t spent in the classroom.

A graduate of Hathaway Brown School and Yale University and with a law degree from Columbia University, Ms. Chappell worked as in-house counsel to the business unit of the Cleveland Municipal School District, as it was known at the time, for more than five years after a three-year stint at Ulmer & Berne.

She worked with purchasing,

Inajo Davis Chappell, a partner at law firm Ulm

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procurement, food and other businesses, and said it was one of the “most interesting and most fun jobs” she had because it was always something new.

“I felt like we were helping kids,” she said.

But seeing little room for growth, Ms. Chappell returned to Ulmer & Berne.

There, she managed to build a broad-based practice that touched on any number of specialties. Ms. Chappell has experience in real estate acquisition and financing, community development projects and construction; does public and corporate finance and contracts and commercial law; and works with school contract preparation, competitive bidding compliance and special education, in addition to the groups she chairs.

“I never want to be pigeonholed in only one area. It would just bore me to tears, frankly,” she said. “I tend to be a slightly obsessive person. I’m a little bit fanatical. I’m very tenacious, very driven, very self-motivated.”

Ms. Chappell said in addition to her aptitude for problem-solving, and the gratification she got from doing so, some of those qualities were the basis of her interest in law. They also helped her become a partner at the firm in 1999.

And after spending years volunteering and serving on the boards of a wide array of organizations, Ms. Chappell said she formed her legal practice in a way that allowed her to focus on the educational and social service work she enjoys on a more regular basis.

Ms. Chappell said she still finds her work with the school district to be particularly rewarding. Her

husband, John, is a special education teacher in the Cleveland schools. The couple live in Solon.

Though she was born in New Orleans, Ms. Chappell was raised in East Cleveland. Both her Louisiana roots and her parents’ profession have left her a fan of jazz and Broadway musicals, she said. She tries to make it to New York to see several musicals a year.

While Ms. Chappell was recruited by several Wall Street law firms out of law school, she said she preferred visiting New York than living there, and considers Cleveland to be home. She was a board member at Hathaway Brown, where as a student she was encouraged to march differently and taught to be intellectually curious and “highachieving, but not obnoxious.”

These days, much of her time that isn’t spent at the law firm is spent working on the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, where she was just appointed to a second term. Ms. Chappell also chairs the Ohio Board of Voting Machine Examiners. She has considered running for office herself, some day.

A political science and AfroAmerican studies major at Yale, Ms. Chappell said she always has been a political junkie, but isn’t sure if she wants to be in the throes of the political world.

Jane Platten, director of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, said one of Ms. Chappell’s best qualities is the “reality” of who she is. In her company, there is “no guessing,” Ms. Platten said.

“She has her own opinion, her own thinking, she stands on her own,” Ms. Platten said. “It serves her very well.”

— Arielle Kass

Marilyn Chase Chief brand management officer Liggett Stashower

M

arilyn Chase always has been effective at sending a message.

Right after graduating from Cuyahoga Heights High School in 1971, she took an entry-level secretarial job at a manufacturing plant Marilyn Chase, the chief brand management officer at Liggett Stashower, in the armor in Cuyahoga Heights where court, which features European arms and armor she was the only woman employee. She continued After working as a secretary at ness-to-business and consumer her career climb from there without the manufacturing plant for about accounts, has served as the CEO’s a college degree, which has taken three years, Ms. Chase moved to managerial right arm and is the her to her current role as chief JBRobinson Jewelers in Cleveland go-to person when problems arise. brand management officer at as an assistant to company owner “She has this innate ability to Cleveland marketing agency Liggett Larry Robinson’s assistant. While assess and identify problems and Stashower. she was there, she used her creative navigate through different person“I think the progression was writing skills by writing radio copy alities,” Mr. Nylander said. extremely methodical,” said Ms. for Mr. Robinson — a practice that Though Ms. Chase said her Chase, 57. “It’s all about choices. evolved into an advertising role. career with Liggett Stashower has Being from a family of seven, I had “I think I would’ve ended up in been enriched with experience and to go to work after high school. But that position anyway, but probably professional relationships, her 23 my career has been an evolution of faster if I had had a college degree,” years there have not been without having good solid writing skills and she said. challenges. building on that.”

She then became an editor of The biggest adjustment, she Colleagues say Ms. Chase is internal newsletters for three said, was the digital revolution that affable and approachable, which years at Revco Drug Stores (now began in the mid-1990s. During are key reasons why she is so effecCVS), where she also managed those days, people were not as tive in her job as a liaison between store openings nationally, and for comfortable adapting to change the executive staffs of Liggett’s five years was a communications and the way the Internet altered clients and her firm’s brand strategy manager at Master Builders how companies do business. Now, team.

Technology in Beachwood — though, change on a daily basis “She sets the tone of the process,” which now is BASF Construction not only has become a reality, it’s Liggett CEO Mark Nylander said.

Chemicals . embraced, she said.

“She is a skilled practitioner and is Since Ms. Chase joined Liggett Meanwhile, she helped oversee always at the top of her game while Stashower in 1987, she has directed the process about three years ago developing and nurturing relationSee CHASE Page W-5 some of the agency’s largest busiships.”

Congratulations to our partner Inajo Davis Chappell, a member of Women of Note, Class of 2010.

We are proud of Inajo for being part of this year’s distinguished class of talented female business leaders.

Established more than 100 years ago, Ulmer & Berne LLP is a large Midwest

m Ulmer & Berne LLP, in the Art in Britain/1600-1870 room Kip Reader 216.583.7380 kreader@ulmer.com

SPECIALTHANKS Crain’s Cleveland Business would like to thank the staff of the Cleveland Museum of Art, including assistant director of communications Christa Skiles, for accommodating this year’s Women of Note.

This year’s luncheon, sponsored by CBiz and presented by Reminger and Cleveland.com, will be held this Thursday, July 22, at Executive Caterers at Landerhaven in Mayfield Heights.

Tickets still are on sale, but are going fast.

Contact Laura Franks at (216) 7715388 to purchase tickets.

We’ll have coverage, including a photo slideshow, of the luncheon at our web site, CrainsCleveland.com, on Thursday afternoon, and for information on past Women of Note classes, visit http://tinyurl .com/234rmrd.

W-3

www.ulmer.com

law firm with the reach and depth to serve the needs of local, national and international businesses.

Cleveland

Columbus

Cincinnati

Chicago

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Patricia A. Gazey, the president of North Coast Logistics, in the European art, romanticism to realism/1800-1880 room

Patricia A. Gazey President ◆ North Coast Logistics Inc.

T

he world of trucking and warehousing used to be a man’s domain. It’s not Patricia A. Gazey’s fault she was better at running it than most men — or most anyone else, for that matter.

The owner and president of Brook Park’s North Coast Logistics has stored, shipped, tracked and delivered a lot of stuff during her time in the business. Much of that stuff has been food, which requires special handling and shelf-life management.

Ms. Gazey has worked for juicemaker Ohio Pure Foods in Akron as well as butter behemoth Land O’ Lakes, for which she managed 13 facilities. Prior to striking out on her own, she was a vice president for a unit of GATX Corp., which leases

equipment to industrial freight handlers. At that company, she also worked in logistics and was in charge of more than 2 million square feet of warehouse space.

The Canal Fulton native conceded it’s not an easy business, getting the right things from the right sources at the right time, back out on command with the same effectiveness.

“The customer is basically giving you the problems they don’t want to handle,” she joked.

Eighteen years ago, Ms. Gazey said, she decided she wanted to keep handling other people’s problems, but her way, without working for anyone but her own customers. She and a partner bought a Brook Park warehouse operation and founded North Coast Logistics. The partner since has been bought out, and Ms.

Gazey owns North Coast outright.

Under her command are seven facilities with 85 employees, six in Ohio and one outside of Chicago.

Ranging in size from about 75,000 square feet to 400,000 square feet at its Brook Park headquarters, most of the company’s customers still deal in retail food items, but others are in a variety of industries, including medical devices and industrial products, Ms. Gazey said. A fleet of company-owned trucks serves about 50 customers.

Ms. Gazey says she’s never felt any discrimination in her business — customers and colleagues have respected her business acumen.

She spent a good deal of her early career as a single parent and says her daughter has inherited her drive and willingness to take the right risks to succeed.

But even her present-day competitors give her due respect; they say anyone who has succeeded in the logistics business in the past few years deserves respect.

It has not been easy, as inventories were jerked around and the whole world stocked, destocked and then started restocking its supplies, said Bob Shaunnessey, co-owner of Partners Warehouse in Elwood, Ill. He is also a longtime friend who was Ms. Gazey’s boss at GATX. “There have been several severe recessions, particularly in the supply chain business,” he said. “She’s noteworthy for her survival skills and ability to thrive.”

Mr. Shaunnessey said Ms. Gazey succeeds because she’s tenacious, follows through and knows how to listen to customers and properly address their needs. That’s why he sends people looking for logistics work to her on a regular basis.

Except, he said, in the Chicago area — but only because that’s one place where he’s among those trying to compete with Ms. Gazey.

— Dan Shingler

CONGRATULATIONS Laurie Brlas, our CFO, Colleague and 2010 Woman of Note

WWW.CLIFFSNATURALRESOURCES.COM

Monica Green, a principal at Westlake Reed Leskosky, in an Impressionist room featuring a sculpture and painting by Edgar Degas

Monica Green Principal ◆ Westlake Reed Leskosky

W

hen Monica Green visited the Grand Canyon for the first time in the 1990s — after her husband Steve Rosenberg’s urging for the umpteenth time — she found the landmark’s vistas had a profound effect on her viewpoint as an architect.

“People whisper when they visit the Grand Canyon,” Ms. Green said.

“It made me want to think deeply about preserving our environment.

That is probably why I got so involved in LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design).”

Ms. Green was part of the cabal of Clevelanders who early in the 2000s launched what became the Northeast Ohio Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Coalition trade group. She also was the first architect to become LEED certified in Ohio.

The LEED involvement changed not only her own practice and helped the region’s realty and corporate communities embrace sustainability, but it shaped the culture of Westlake Reed Leskosky,

where her passion for sustainability became part of the corporate culture.

Bill Doty, president of Doty & Miller architects in Bedford and one of the region’s most highprofile green promulgators, recalled that other architects and members of the startup green building group called Ms. Green the “green goddess.”

“She’s a green purist, from top to bottom. There is no green-washing with Monica,” Mr. Doty said. “She used to bust my chops about getting LEED certified before I did.

She would say, ‘I have mine, what about you?’”

Ms. Green’s focus on sustainability helped Westlake Reed establish a value system incorporating sustainability, said Paul Westlake, managing principal.

“This is one of the reasons she became a principal here,” Mr. Westlake said. “She trained the staff. She helped educate clients.

She has worked as a design architect, a technical architect and a supervisor of other architects. She

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is now our head specifications writer, where she serves as our filter for sustainability for all of our projects.”

Moreover, Mr. Westlake said, Ms. Green has worked to improve the firm as a workplace and has set a goal for the firm to gain notice as one of the nation’s best places to work.

Ms. Green said specification writing — which sets what materials and systems will be used throughout a building — determine how “green” a building becomes even more so than design. A specifications book for a recent U.S. State Department project in Washington, D.C., occupies 16 inches on the bookshelf of her office in the Huntington Building in downtown Cleveland.

Ms. Green was instrumental in obtaining the LEED certification for the $44 million renovation of the Howard M. Metzenbaum U.S. Courthouse in Cleveland in 2005.

She also worked on environmental design aspects of the recent Cleveland Food Bank warehouse in Collinwood and PlayhouseSquare’s IdeaCenter and Hanna Theater rehabilitation projects, and dozens more around the country.

In all, Ms. Green said, she has worked on eight Westlake Reed projects in downtown Cleveland that combined LEED with existing buildings.

“It makes me feel very good about the future of the city,” she said. “It means that these buildings will be here to be a part of the future of the city.”

Although Ms. Green grew up in a creative family — her father was a pastry chef, her mother plays piano and her sister is a potter — there was nothing in her background that led her to become an architect, a goal she set as a young girl growing up in Canton.

While she was attending high school, a male guidance counselor tried to dissuade her from pursuing architecture as a career because few women were in it in the 1970s.

“That made me all the more determined,” Ms. Green said.

She and her husband live in Moreland Hills with three cats. Her favorite leisure activities are reading and cross-country skiing.

In a nod to that love of reading, this architect’s favorite spot in Cleveland is the Eastman Reading Garden at Cleveland Public Library’s Main Branch.

“It is such a nice place in our city.

I love to eat lunch there,” Ms. Green said. Ironically, the reading garden is a green space between two downtown buildings.

— Stan Bullard

Chase continued from PAGE W-3

when the firm blended its advertising and public relations services to become more of an interactive agency.

“We couldn’t have silos,” she said.

“We were missing the bigger picture.”

As chief brand management officer, Ms. Chase is responsible for helping clients establish overall brand strategies, rather than simply a new advertising or public relations campaign.

“Our new business efforts in the last two years are the best I’ve seen in the agency,” she said.

Ms. Chase also is a founding member and champion of Friends of Conservation Lower Zambezi,

Valerie Lyons, the chief of the power and in-space propulsion division at NASA Glenn Research Center, stands in front of the European art/1525-1825 room

Valerie Lyons

She never became an astronaut, but she did land in the same solar system: Today Dr. Lyons is chief of the power and in-space propulsion division at NASA Glenn Research Center.

She oversees a division of more than 165 scientists and engineers working on different technologies — such as electric and chemical propulsion systems, solar cells, fuel cells and energy storage systems — meant to get rockets into orbit and power whatever NASA sends into space.

Her duties include leading strategic planning for the division, making sure it has the right people in the right places, serving as a liaison between the division and senior management and informing NASA leaders of new technologies NASA Glenn is developing.

Dr. Lyons spent more than 20 years at NASA Glenn before taking her current position in 1997. She has authored more than a dozen research papers on combustion and the reduction of emissions from aircraft engines, but nowadays she leaves the technical details to her researchers.

Dr. Lyons also spent seven years as deputy chief of the combustion technology branch, a year as chief of NASA Glenn’s facilities management branch and rotated through several other management positions at the center. She tries to convey that broad perspective to the researchers in her division.

“I’m trying to get them to know the people in the other branches and talk to them about what we’re doing,” she said.

Dr. Lyons grew up in Byram, N.J. Her parents couldn’t afford to pay for her to go to college, but through her uncle, a chauffeur, Dr. Lyons met a New York lawyer involved with a scholarship fund that would pay for her to attend Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. After earning a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering, she won another free ride to get her master’s in the subject at the University of Michigan.

Back then, she still wanted to be

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an astronaut. She applied twice in her 20s, and was rejected each time.

She thought obtaining her Ph.D would help, and she did so, earning her doctorate in mechanical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley. By the time she was married and had kids, she gave up on the dream. Even space tourism is likely out of the question.

“Now I get too motion sick,” she said.

Dr. Lyons grew to like working with researchers, though, being a fan of “far-out crazy people.” She also has a passion for getting children, particularly girls, interested in science and technology careers.

She has spoken to junior high and high school students on the topic and for several years has organized a science summer camp, which both of her adult children, Jason and Jamie, have attended. Jamie, who attends Ohio State University, even claims it helped inspire her to go to medical school, Dr. Lyons said.

According to Dr. Lyons, people tend to “overdo the math thing” when selling engineering as a profession, which scares away many of them.

“You’re trained to solve problems.

You’re trained to think in a logical way,” she said.

Dr. Lyons even inspired one of her friends to pursue engineering.

When Dr. Lyons met Priscilla Diem about 30 years ago, Ms. Diem was surprised to meet a female engineer and soon decided to give the profession a try herself. She eventually joined Dr. Lyons at NASA Glenn, though they never worked together, and today she is a consultant to technology companies.

Dr. Lyons said she enjoys scuba diving, skiing and knitting. Ms. Diem added that Dr. Lyons is a good cook and a good friend.

“She’s a very generous and warm person. She’s fun,” Ms. Diem said.

— Chuck Soder

Chief, power and in-space propulsion division NASA Glenn Research Center

L

ike many aerospace engineers, Valerie Lyons knew she wanted to work with flying machines when she was 10.

Back then, though, she didn’t know what an aerospace engineer was. She just wanted to be an astronaut. And astronauts, according to what she found in the World Book Encyclopedia, often studied aerospace engineering in college.

“I’m like, ‘Whatever that is, I’ve got to study that,’” she said.

which works to protect wildlife in the Lower Zambezi National Park in Africa. Ms. Chase has visited the area four times, advocating against poaching and educating Africans on living in harmony with wildlife.

She also is a board member of University Settlement, which provides social services to residents of the Broadway/Slavic Village neighborhood. Ms. Chase promotes awareness of American Cancer Society’s DetermiNation, a marathon program that benefits cancer research, on behalf of a close friend and her late husband, Don Holub, whom she lost five years ago to a battle with cancer.

Ms. Chase lives in Brecksville and enjoys hiking and writing.

— Kathy Ames Carr

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

JULY 19-25, 2010

Heather Moore

Ann Nerone

Founder ◆ Heather B. Moore Inc.

President ◆ Ballast Fence

T

nn Nerone still shakes her head and chuckles when recounting the details of how she got into the fencing business.

Mrs. Nerone, owner of Ballast Fence in Warrensville Heights, had been working part time for seven years, doing bookkeeping and other jobs while raising her two children, Nick and Theresa. Her husband, Tom, who owns excavation specialist Nerone & Sons, told her there was an opportunity for women in construction; Mrs. Nerone had worked prior to the birth of her two children at retail company Cole National, so she was a touch skeptical.

As it turns out, that whole woman thing was a relative molehill as compared the other obstacles she’s faced since incorporating in 1993.

“Being a woman in construction was not the biggest challenge,” she said. “It’s being competitive, and delivering what you say you will.

Customers don’t care if you’re purple; they care about completing projects and (contractors) not being a detriment.”

With a push from Greg Reynolds, who now serves as Ballast’s vice president of operations, Mrs. Nerone gravitated toward the fencing industry, where she said there were few competitors at the time. Mr. Reynolds, she said, had the fencing industry experience — he promised her he’d bring in $500,000 in sales the company’s first year — while she could provide the business leadership. (Mr. Reynolds had been working at a larger company and had done work at Mr. Nerone’s South Miles Road office.)

He came up a little short, Mrs. Nerone said, but Ballast still is going strong today. Among other things, it provides fencing and installation to commercial builders; the company currently is working on the new taxi structure at Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport and with the Northeast Ohio Re-

he woman on the phone explained that her mother recently had died, and that she wanted a charm to memorialize her.

“Forever Missed” was the insignia she requested of jewelry artist Heather Moore, whose Heather B. Moore Inc. in Cleveland Heights creates personalized fine jewelry sold through 150 retailers around the world.

“I said, no,” recalled Ms. Moore, “we already know that.”

Instead, she engaged the woman in conversation. What were your memories of your mother? How was your relationship special? The woman shared a memory of her six siblings good-naturedly debating whom their mother loved best, and Ms. Moore knew she had her hook: “Loved Me Best” became the woman’s treasured pendant.

“It’s all about sharing your story,” said Ms. Moore of her jewelry pieces. “It’s about telling people what made you be the person that you are.”

Indeed, Ms. Moore’s jewelry has earned international notoriety — her pieces have landed on the necks of celebrities such as Beyoncé and Paula Deen and on TV shows such as “Gossip Girl” — by taking personalization far beyond select-

A

Heather Moore, the founder of Heather B. Moore Inc., in the European art/mythology, history and portraiture room from-a-menu choices.

Each sale is a consultation, in which customers may request Moore-designed fonts for handstamped lettering, inset jewels and metals ranging from sterling silver to various colors of 14-karat gold.

Just last month, Ms. Moore won top honors in the gold category at the prestigious Couture Design Awards for a selection of work that included a gold cuff bracelet that recreated the last letter she received from her late sister, Wendy.

Congratulations to Victoria Tifft President and CEO of CRM for being named one of the twelve 2010 Women of Note by Crain’s Cleveland Business.

CRM is a full service Contract Research Organization specializing in the support of clinical research and product development for biologics, drugs, and devices.

Our capabilities include: x Data Management x Clinical Monitoring x Clinical Site Selection x Regulatory Compliance x Early to Late Stage Clinical Trials

“She took an art form and made it highly personal,” said her father, noted entrepreneur Dan Moore, president of Dan T. Moore Cos. in Cleveland. “She has a very keen mind about people, and that’s what has been strong for her (in her business).”

Ms. Moore started her art career as a glassblower, but began working with metals as an assistant to renowned New York artist Judy Pfaff.

During that time, making jewelry was Ms. Moore’s weekend diversion.

“It was meditative,” she said.

By 1994, she decided to launch her own jewelry company with a line that combined glass and sterling and was picked up by such retailers as Barney’s and Neiman Marcus.

When her grandmother’s longtime home in Cleveland Heights went up for sale in 1999, Ms. Moore and her artist husband Thomas Frontini moved their young family and businesses here.

“It was a big change,” she said.

“But we love it here. Cleveland’s like a gem.”

Today, Ms. Moore is a mother of four who operates her 30-employee company out of that Cleveland Heights home, where engravers, metalworkers, marketers and graphic designers can be found in every cranny from attic to basement.

Under such space constraints, she is preparing to move her expanding company into a converted warehouse in Midtown Cleveland.

“Everyone who works here sees the insane potential of this company,” she said. “This company can outgrow every single person who works here. We want to be able to say, ‘Yeah, we were the founders.’”

It’s exactly that successful combination of art and business that so impressed David Deming, the recently retired president and CEO of The Cleveland Institute of Art, from the first time he visited Ms. Moore, a 1993 CIA grad.

“I was so impressed not only with the creativity and the innovation, but the business-mind side,” Mr. Deming said. “She became a great example (that) you can have a very creative mind … but to have a successful career, you need to know how to run a business.”

Mr. Deming has brought Ms. Moore in as a speaker for CIA students many times to deliver exactly that message.

“The kids get excited about it,” he said. “For decades, art schools never did a very good job of preparing students for what the business side of their career would be.”

In a field that, like fashion design, tends to be trend-oriented, Ms. Moore works hard to create jewelry that can become family heirlooms, passed down through the generations.

“We are so far away from trend.

I’m tired of that,” she said. “I don’t want them to ever think it’s ‘last season.’ I want to make pieces that people are collecting.”

— Jennifer Keirn

Ohio Title Corp

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

JULY 19-25, 2010

Pat StropkoO’Leary Executive director Hospice of Medina County

P

Ballast Fence president Ann Nerone in the American art/1875-1925 room gional Sewer District. “(Mrs. Nerone) is one of the classiest people I’ve ever worked with,” said Bobby DiGeronimo, secretary of the 54-year-old Independence Excavating. “She’s really diligent about understanding the scope of the work. She’s a very aggressive female entrepreneur; there are some companies you have to work with, and some you want to work with. She’s in the latter.”

That’s not to say there haven’t been some bumps, she said: It’s difficult to find experienced labor; the company is low on the subcontractor totem pole and paid, timingwise, accordingly; and the risk — liability on jobs, unreliable customers, etc. — is at an all-time high.

Add in out-of-state competition and contractors who normally don’t bid on fencing work vying with Ballast for the same jobs, and it’s a tough row to hoe.

at Stropko-O’Leary used to whisper to patients that it was OK for them to die.

“I saw people being resuscitated that had no business being resuscitated,” she said. “We were condemning them to life in an institution.”

That was early in her 47-year career as a registered nurse. Then, in the late 1970s, her beliefs materialized in a new treatment called hospice care, which strives to make people comfortable at the end of their lives. In 1983, she became a hospice nurse at Parma Community General Hospital and began managing the program four years later.

Ms. Stropko-O’Leary now is executive director of Hospice of Medina County, which cares for an average

of 150 patients each day. Her employees try to help patients live their last days as they want to live them and to die peacefully.

“We die as we’ve lived, and it’s our job to make sure that your dying is what you believe it should be,” she said.

Since she took over the reins in 1993, Ms. Stropko-O’Leary significantly has expanded Hospice of Medina County.

Initially, 10 employees took care of fewer than a dozen patients each day. Today, 140 employees care for patients at Hospice’s Medina and Barberton locations, conduct bereavement services for those left behind by deceased loved ones, and provide home health care and palliative care — all of which are services she has added during her tenure. Hospice of Medina County also opened a thrift store in 2006 to provide clothing for patients who can’t afford it.

Such growth has caused Hospice of Medina County’s tiny office to become severely cramped, so Ms. Stropko-O’Leary spearheaded a campaign to build a $9.6 million, 33,000-square-foot home for it on state Route 18 near Interstate 71 in Medina. The new location is slated to open next May 31.

Though construction is well under way, Ms. Stropko-O’Leary’s work — and that of her organization

T

nical Research Management, in the American art/1800-1925 room

— is nowhere near finished. She continuously meets with local nonprofits to determine how they can work together.

Beth McGuire, director of bereavement services at Hospice of Medina County, said Ms. Stropko-O’Leary’s personality enables her to anticipate the community’s needs.

For instance, Ms. Stropko-O’Leary envisions a referral service where her organization would provide the names of approved, local contractors to area residents.

Additional counseling services also are necessary, she said.

“I know full well how grief affects people, because I’ve been doing this for so long,” said Ms. Stropko-O’Leary, who still tears up when talking about her love for her job. “People just don’t understand.

You don’t get over those things; you integrate them into your life.”

Though death is somewhat of a taboo and uncomfortable subject for Americans, she sees it as an opportunity for the terminally ill to say goodbye to loved ones and get their finances in order. Hospice workers are able to affect the lives of many people, she added.

“It’s been a vocation to bring about understanding that there’s a better way to do this,” she said. “We don’t have to be hooked up to machinery.”

— Shannon Mortland Pat StropkoO’Leary, the executive director of Hospice of Medina County, outside the museum’s south entrance with The Thinker, part of which was blown off by war protesters in 1970

“This is an industry where you have to stay on your toes, no doubt,” Mr. Reynolds said.

Mrs. Nerone has a sounding board in her husband, whose father founded Nerone & Sons in 1955 and who works in an office adjacent to Ballast’s. Mrs. Nerone said she solicits advice from her husband, but may not use it; she admits those conversations took some getting used to for the couple, which now has been married for 29 years. “(Ballast’s) growth has been a slow, steady climb,” Mrs. Nerone says. “You’re only as good as your last job in this business.”

Mrs. Nerone, who lives in Highland Heights, said she and her husband enjoy golf and traveling — as you read this, she’s in France with her daughter — and she also sits on the board of the Ohio Contractors Association.

— Joel Hammond

o find the origins of Clinical Research Management — a $40 million-a-year contract research organization in Hinckley with 300-plus employees — well, you’ve got to start small: with the microscopic parasite that causes malaria.

Company co-founder, president and CEO Victoria Tifft, a Hinckley native and University of Akron graduate, took her biology degree in 1987 and headed to Togo, West Africa, where she worked in the medical field.

“Part of my job was to prevent the contraction of malaria,” Ms. Tifft said,“which I contracted a few times.”

Following her return to the United States and a stint cataloging fish for the Smithsonian Institution, Ms. Tifft put her bug for infectious disease study to work, founding Clinical Research Management with her husband, Quinten, and pursuing a contract with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

It was right up her alley.

“They were working on creating a clinical trial center, and one of the things they work on is malaria,” Ms. Tifft said.

One of two Army contracts Clinical Research Management landed in its first year, the deal with Walter Reed formed a

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Victoria Tifft President/CEO

Clinical Research Management, Inc. solid foundation for steady growth from its Maryland headquarters.

Then, even as business was booming, Ms. Tifft and her husband rolled the dice in the mid-1990s and decided to move the company headquarters to Northeast Ohio, where they managed affairs from a home office in Hinckley.

Eventually, Clinical Research Management moved out of the Tiffts’ home and into its Ridge Road headquarters. A big government contract landed two years ago led to an 80-person jump in the employee roster, and the company now has offices in a neighboring building as well.

While the majority of her employees are on the East Coast — about 280 of the company’s 320 employees work in the Maryland office or in military facilities in the Washington, D.C., area — Ms. Tifft still puts Clinical Research Management’s reputation and experience to work in boosting this region’s biomedical and bioscience profile.

In 2008, she also pulled together her contacts and resources at Case Western Reserve University, University Hospitals Case Medical Center and Johns Hopkins University to win a seven-year, $16 million contract from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for testing anti-infection agents.

BioEnterprise Corp. president and CEO Baiju Shah says a big part of Ms. Tifft’s success lies in her team-building ability.

He’s also a fan of Ms. Tifft’s efforts in landing deals such as the 2008 contract that gave CWRU and University Hospitals parts in the seven-year drug testing program.

“To have somebody come back and leverage her network not just for the benefit of herself but for the broader community has been significant,” said Mr. Shah, whose organization helps Northeast Ohio bioscience companies grow.

Ms. Tifft calls Northeast Ohio’s range of specialty laboratories, hospitals, universities and research centers “astounding” and says the collective pluses “can be leveraged to bring more work to the area.”

Ms. Tifft and her husband have two sons — Matthew, 14, and Morgan, 9 — and a 7-year-old daughter, Maggie.

— John Booth

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

WWW.CRAINSCLEVELAND.COM

CAC: Historic tax credits boost plan continued from PAGE 1

involved in the CAC deal for $45,504 in county court for unpaid legal fees — nearly half of it incurred for work involving the CAC Building.

The case is pending before Judge Joseph Russo.

The CAC Building’s ownership also owes $518,000 in current and back property taxes and assessments for the Downtown Cleveland Alliance, according to county tax records.

A big plus: tax credits A big inducement for Mr. Weingart’s group in securing the CAC Building is the $4 million in Ohio Historic Preservation Tax credits approved in 2007 for the planned renovation project. Mr. Weingart said he’s negotiating with a lender to obtain loans for the project, which also would benefit from federal New Markets Tax Credits.

The credits provide another equity source that increases lender appetite for such development loans, which are scarce in the real estate credit crunch.

Rather than create 103 apartments as envisioned by Mr. Mann, Mr. Weingart said he wants to put a hotel with more than 160 units in

the CAC Building. The landmark club’s fitness center and pool would serve as an amenity for hotel guests and the community.

Reached by phone last Wednesday, July 14, Mr. Mann said he was on a conference call and would not discuss the lawsuit settlement or the projects. He did not return four other calls from Crain’s.

Mr. Mann has been a quizzical figure since he surfaced in 2005 as the buyer of first one, then two more empty office buildings on the north side of Euclid Avenue just east of East Ninth Street; those buildings run from 1001 to 1101 Euclid. He has rebuffed requests for detailed interviews. Most news about his activities comes from county and state records.

Tax bills overdue Industry insiders say Mr. Mann is in talks to dispose of those buildings along with the CAC Building, which is on the south side of Euclid. County tax records show Mr. Mann’s partnership owes more than $300,000 in current and back taxes on the properties on the north side of Euclid.

Cuyahoga County had considered in 2006 providing a $1 million

brownfield loan to aid the makeover of the three buildings on the north side of Euclid. County commissioners adopted a preliminary measure in 2006 to allow Mr. Mann’s groups to issue $25 million in tax-exempt housing bonds to advance his plans. However, he never followed through with the issue and county officials said they have not seen him since.

James Herron, the county’s chief development officer, said the loan applications never proceeded, as Mr. Mann was not able to obtain loan commitments.

“I don’t think he has the ability to do it,” Mr. Herron said. “It seems the investors he relied on went away.”

Moreover, that was in 2006 — a few years before the real estate credit crunch set in. However, those buildings still have state OKs for $5.8 million in historic tax credits.

Waring Investments did not return three phone messages and two e-mails; its attorney, Robert Weltman, did not return three calls.

Mark Schlachet, the Cleveland attorney for Mr. Mann’s partnerships, declined comment, as did Marc Krantz, managing partner of Kohrman Jackson.

■

JULY 19-25, 2010

Unpaid: Students, needing experience, in tough spot continued from PAGE 3

Indeed, Ms. Weinzierl said the requests for unpaid labor have risen not just at Akron, but among her colleagues around the country.

Many employers are not aware of the potential illegality of what they’re proposing, Ms. Weinzierl said, and one has come back to revise a job so that it offered minimum wage. But Ms. Weinzierl said she expects some students may be taking advantage of connections to take work even if it doesn’t pay.

“Our students are anxious to get experience,” she said. “Some, where it’s financially feasible for them to do such a thing, may.”

Jennifer Blaga, director of career planning at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University, also said she’s seeing more unpaid internships offered.

The Department of Labor outlines six criteria that are required in order for an internship to qualify as unpaid. They include intern training that would be similar to an educational environment and a conclusion that the employer does not immediately benefit from an intern’s work and may be impeded by it, as in cases where an intern requires instruction that takes up time other employees would be spending on work.

Ms. Blaga said she brings up those criteria with students, who in turn are discussing them with potential supervisors. In addition to the three law firms Ms. Blaga said had inquired about Cleveland-Marshall students’ interest in unpaid internships, she has heard that some companies are looking for law students on an uncompensated basis.

“It’s a pretty hot issue,” she said.

“Students are taking anything they can get.”

Some are bartending or working other part-time jobs so they can afford to get the unpaid law experience that will help build their résumés, Ms. Blaga said.

“A large and increasing number of students are able and willing to work for free,” she said.

Opportunity knocks Steven Larson, a second-year law student at Cleveland-Marshall, said he participated in a six-week unpaid program at the Reminger Co. law firm, along with one other student.

The firm also is hosting two more students in a second six-week

session and had a third split his time between the first and second six-week session.

Mr. Larson said his work at Reminger allowed him to “dip my toes in the water a little bit and see how a law firm really operates.” He spent much of his time shadowing attorneys and seeing what paid law clerks do, writing motions and memoranda. He said he also was able to assist with research projects and to help prepare presentations.

“I’m grateful for the opportunity to have this experience,” he said. “In this market, there’s really nothing available.”

Bethanie Ricketts, a Reminger associate who runs the firm’s law clerk program, said the firm couldn’t bill clients for anything done by the summer interns. Instead, the incentive was to provide opportunities to students who might not otherwise see the inside of a law firm.

“Financially, there really was no benefit to us at all,” she said. “It’s a way to give back to the legal community a little bit and hopefully help them out with their next job.

So many people are just looking for something.”

‘Everything’s tougher’ Kelli Curtis, assistant dean for career services at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law, said in an e-mailed statement that the school “supports students who secure unpaid opportunities by offering a variety of summer fellowships.”

Many she listed are focused on specific work, such as fellowships for human rights or environmental law.

Ms. Curtis wrote that CWRU’s firstand second-year students “have been successful in securing summer employment” and the school’s employment rates have been consistent with past years. She said the career services office “is working hard to help students and graduates navigate today’s legal hiring landscape.”

As for those students who are closer to graduation, ClevelandMarshall’s Ms. Blaga said she has seen some “hesitation” from employers looking to hire law clerks because they are “cautious about (the students’) expectations.”

“They say they’d prefer not to hire third years,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s ever easy to get a job as a (thirdyear law student) cold, but it’s more difficult now because of the pressures.

Everything’s tougher generally.” ■

Fathom: Clients accept SEO’s value continued from PAGE 3

unit Mr. Fox was leading.

Fathom SEO isn’t the only local company expanding its search engine marketing practice. For instance, Rosetta, a New Jerseybased digital marketing company that employs hundreds in Northeast Ohio, grew its search practice to $14.3 million in revenue last year from $9 million in 2008, said Chris Boggs, who is both director of search engine optimization at Rosetta and president of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization.

Mr. Boggs attributes some of the industry’s continuing expansion to a growing acceptance of search engine marketing in the business community.

“They’ve started to become more attuned to the entire ecosystem,” he said.

A bad experience with another search engine marketing company made Alon Weiner, vice president at Post-Up Stand Inc. of Maple Heights, leery of Fathom SEO at first. However, since the maker of display products for trade shows and corporate events started working with Fathom SEC five years ago, it has seen big improvements in search engine rankings, web traffic and online sales.

Mr. Weiner lauded its staff, noting that he has worked with 10 Fathom SEO employees over the years.

“They’re always a little bit ahead of the curve,” he said.

■

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CRAINâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

WWW.CRAINSCLEVELAND.COM

21

LARGEST ASSISTED-LIVING CENTERS RANKED BY NUMBER OF RESIDENTS(1)

Name Address Rank Phone/Web site

Number of residents

Number of Number of Number of living units RNs (FTE) LPNs (FTE)

Total staff (FTE)

Profit status

Monthly rate in dollars ($)

Year founded

Ownership Administrator

1

Woodside Village 19455 Rockside Road, Bedford 44146 (440) 439-8666/www.horizonbay.com

205

229

NA

NA

85

profit

1,995-2,995

1988

Horizon Bay Jill Ann Risner

2

Abbewood Senior Living Community 1210 S. Abbe Road, Elyria 44035 (440) 366-8980/www.centurypa.com

162

165

NA

NA

85

profit

1,700+

1986

Century Park Associates Inc. Jeff Nieberding

3

The Briarwood - Assisted Living Center 3700 Englewood Drive, Stow 44224 (330) 688-1828/www.thebriarwood.com

149

160

7

16

121

profit

2,760

1991

The Briarwood Ltd. Jon Trimble

4

Wiggins Place 27070 Cedar Road, Beachwood 44122 (216) 831-2881/www.wigginsplace.org

124

114

1

0

30

nonprofit

2,714-4,179

2004

Board of trustees Nancy Sutula

5

Stone Gardens Assisted Living 27090 Cedar Road, Beachwood 44122 (216) 292-0070/www.stonegardens.org

122

116

11

1

66

nonprofit

3,355-5,509

1994

Board of trustees Ross Wilkoff

6

The Gardens at Westlake 27569 Detroit Road, Westlake 44145 (440) 892-9777/www.gardensatwestlake.com

108

95

0

6

50

profit

2,530-2,880

1988

Spectrum Retirement Communties Christina Melaragno

7

Rockport Independent and Assisted Living 20375 Center Ridge Road, Rocky River 44116 (440) 356-5444/www.rockportretirement.com

106

125

1

3

14

profit

1,575-3,015

1995

Rockport Retirement Ltd. Penny Kelly

8

Judson at University Circle 2181 Ambleside Drive, Cleveland 44106 (216) 721-1234/www.judsonsmartliving.org

103

107

6

6

45

nonprofit

4,700-5,900

1906

Judson Services Inc. Cynthia H. Dunn

9

St. Augustine Health Campus-Towers Assisted Living 7821 Lake Ave., Cleveland 44102 (216) 634-7444/www.staugustinemanor.org

102

99

2

5

43

nonprofit

800-2,317

1996

Catholic Charities K. Patrick Gareau

10

Berea Lake Towers Retirement Community 4 Berea Commons, Berea 44017 (440) 243-9050/www.berealaketowers.com

98

94

2

3

35

profit

2,100-3,800

1989

Robert M. Coury Trust Tammy Cummins

11

The Inn at Belden Village 3927 38th St. NW, Canton 44718 (330) 493-0096/www.theinnatbeldenvillage.com

97

91

1

6

60

nonprofit

2,880-4,650

2000

The Cathedral of Life Ministries Nanette Gammill

12

Sunrise of Willoughby 35300 Kaiser Court, Willoughby 44094 (440) 269-8600/www.sunriseseniorliving.com

96

90

0

4

65

profit

2,853

1999

CNL Brian Appleby

13

Marymount Place 5100 Marymount Village Drive, Garfield Heights 44125 (216) 332-1070/www.villageatmarymount.org

94

104

1

4

21

nonprofit

2,028-3,461

1988

The Village at Marymount Peggy Mathews

SOUND SOLUTIONS FOR ASSISTED LIVINGS Contact Mike Mullee + mmullee@maloneynovotny.com + 216.363.0100

14

Mulberry Gardens 395 S. Main St., Munroe Falls 44262 (330) 634-9919/www.seniorlivinginstyle.com

93

86

1

8

58

profit

2,895

2004

Hawthorne Retirement Maryann Ervin

15

Anna Maria of Aurora 889 N. Aurora Road, Aurora 44202 (330) 562-6171/www.annamariaofaurora.com

92

100

2

2

20

profit

3,500-4,000

1982

Robert Norton, George Norton Aaron Baker

15

Brighton Gardens of Westlake 27819 Center Ridge Road, Westlake 44145 (440) 808-0074/www.sunriseseniorliving.com

92

104

1

4

65

profit

3,000-6,000

1999

Sunrise Senior Living Inc. M.J. Giovanetti

15

Emeritus at Mentor(1) 5700 Emerald Court, Mentor 44060 (440) 354-5499/www.emeritus.com

92

85

NA

NA

30

profit

2,900-4,500

1999

Emeritus Senior Living Terry Sombat

18

Wellington Place 4800 Clague Road, North Olmsted 44070 (440) 734-9933/www.wellingtonplace.net

90

87

2

15

36

profit

2,250-5,460

2001

John T. O'Neill Rick M. Meserini

19

Kentridge at Golden Pond 5241 Sunnybrook Road, Kent 44240 (330) 677-4040/www.kentridgeatgoldenpond.com

87

91

2

12

90

profit

2,500-4,200

2005

Inn at Golden Pond LLC Sandy Warner

20

Harbor Court & Annie's Place Memory Care 22900 Center Ridge Road, Rocky River 44116 (440) 356-2282/www.theharborcourt.com

85

118

4

4

60

profit

2,450-2,875

1988

Harbor Court Ltd. Tina Lilly

20

Hearthstone Assisted Living at Lorain 3290 Cooper Foster Park Road, Lorain 44053 (440) 960-2813/www.hearthstoneassisted.com

85

133

0

5

30

profit

1,695-4,000

2000

Hearthstone Senior Services Carrie Pavlas

22

Vantage Place Inc. 3105 Franklin Blvd., Cleveland 44113 (216) 566-8707/http://vantageplace.com

81

86

2

10

30

profit

877.50-1,775

NA

23

The Fairways 30630 Ridge Road, Wickliffe 44092 (440) 943-2050/www.brookdaleliving.com

78

80

2

11

65

profit

3,500-4,200

1998

Brookdale Senior Living Inc. Jeffrey Knight

23

Kemper House Mentor 8155 Mentor Hills Drive, Mentor 44060 (440) 256-5200/www.kemperhouse.com

78

60

NA

NA

45

profit

4,380-4,950

2001

Betty Kemper Chera Ihnat

25

Fountains on the Greens 1555 Brainard Road, Lyndhurst 44124 (440) 460-1000/www.greenscommunities.com

77

82

5

6

48

profit

2,900-4,900

1996

Kindred Healthcare Carol Rose

26

Elmcroft of Medina 1046 N. Jefferson St., Medina 44256 (330) 721-2000/www.elmcroftal.com

76

80

NA

NA

60

profit

2,500

1999

Senior Care Corp.

Chrissy Kacirek

26

Light of Hearts Villa Inc. 283 Union St., Bedford 44146 (440) 232-1991/www.lightofheartsvilla.org

76

90

2

2

40

nonprofit

2,362

1989

Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati and Sisters of Charity Health System Arlene C. Jaroscak

Source: Information is supplied by the companies unless footnoted. Crain's Cleveland Business does not independently verify the information and there is no guarantee these listings are complete or accurate. Individual lists and The Book of Lists are available to purchase at www.crainscleveland.com. (1) All information as of May 1, 2010. (2) Previously Summerville at Mentor.

Vantage Place Robert L. Royer Jr.

RESEARCHED BY Deborah W. Hillyer

20100719-NEWS--22-NAT-CCI-CL_--

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11:57 AM

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Contact: Phone: Fax: E-mail:

WWW.CRAINSCLEVELAND.COM

JULY 19-25, 2010

REAL ESTATE

Genny Donley (216) 771-5172 (216) 694-4264 gdonley@crain.com

OFFICE SPACE

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For advertising opportunities contact Genny Donley gdonley@crain.com 216-771-5172

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BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY

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FOR SALE Daisy Hill Greenhouses & Florists

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Owner retiring from long-established greenhouse, garden center and florist business located on 5 acres in Daisy Hill Farms, Hunting Valley. Turnkey operation includes 40,000 square feet of greenhouses, with additional temporary houses, multiple storage and retail sales areas. Historic property includes 3-bedroom colonial house and beautiful lake views.

Contact: Terri

Landerhaven Traditionally Trendy

The Cleveland Treatment Center (a non profit agency) is soliciting proposals from qualified CPA (persons and firms) interested in performing the financial audit for fiscal year 2010. Specific requirements and/or information can be obtained from J. Joel Nacion , Fiscal Director. Email donj89@yahoo.com or call 216-861-4246 and ask for copy of Audit Requirements.

For Assessments www.flynnenvironmental.com

DON’T FORGET:

FOR SALE

Crain’s Cleveland Business on-line @ CrainsCleveland.com

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For all the latest business news...online

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Crain’s Executive Recruiter Chief Executive Officer The Cleveland Leadership Center, a not-for-profit corporation, is seeking its next CEO to lead its mission of building and engaging a continuum of civic leadership programs and engagement opportunities. The successful candidate will direct strategy, business development, operations, talent management, financial stewardship and stakeholder relations. We are seeking 10+ years of appropriate leadership experience including functional experience with marketing, business development, communications and revenue generation.

This search is being led Pro Bono by Huxtable Group Search Partners. Candidates should mail a hard copy inquiry, including resume or CV, to the firm at 619 Linda Street, Suite 101, Cleveland, OH 44116 no later than August 4, 2010.

A full position description is available at www.cleveleads.org.

FINANCIAL ADVISOR TRAINEE Are you looking for a career change?

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Dates: 6/24, 7/29, 8/26 Time: 6:30 pm (estimated duration: 1hr) Location: Downtown Office, 14th Floor Conference Room One Cleveland Center 1375 East 9th Street Cleveland, OH 44114-1798

Association Executive Director Report to the Board of Directors and lead active trade association in the consistent achievement of its mission and financial objectives. Provide leadership and promote active broad participation by volunteers including meetings, events, educational opportunities and membership. Represent the programs and point of view of the organization to agencies, media and the general public. Maintain budget and marketing responsibilities.

Send cover letter, salary requirements and references to enzo@enzoco.com To place your Executive Recruiter ad Call Genny Donley at 216-771-5172

Crain’s Cleveland Business On-line Executive Recruiter gives more!

O u r o n - l i n e c l a s s i f i e d s e c t i o n n o w i n c l u d e s l o g o s a n d h o t - l i n k s f o r e - m a i l a n d w e b s i t e s . A l l E x e c u ti v e R e c r u i t e r a d s w i l l s t a y o n l i n e f o r o n e m o n t h

20100719-NEWS--23-NAT-CCI-CL_--

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4:13 PM

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JULY 19-25, 2010

CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

WWW.CRAINSCLEVELAND.COM

23

THEINSIDER

THEWEEK JULY 12 – 18 Goodbye to The Boss: George Steinbrenner, the iconic owner of the New York Yankees who had his roots in Northeast Ohio, died last Wednesday of a massive heart attack at the age of 80. In a case of what could have been for Cleveland, the man who was born in Rocky River led a failed attempt in 1972 to buy the Indians from Vernon Stouffer. Instead, he bought the Yankees a year later. He would come to be known as “The Boss” for his hands-on management style and for butting heads with players and managers. During his tenure, the Yankees won seven World Series and 11 American League championships. Before buying the Yankees, he worked for his father’s lake carrier business and would amass his fortune by shaping and running Cleveland-based American Shipbuilding Co.

Calfee makes a move: The Calfee, Halter & Griswold law firm plans to put a different stamp on downtown Cleveland’s office market by occupying all of the former WKYC Building, 1401 E. Sixth St., in a $30 million project that includes construction of an adjoining, 190-space parking deck. Calfee is bound for a classic building dating from 1916 instead of another downtown skyscraper or a suburban building. Calfee agreed to a 20-year lease, said Steve Calabrese, who heads Rockwell Property LLC, an investor group that owns the building, which originally housed East Ohio Gas Co. and was the former home of WKYC-TV, Channel 3.

The Illinois connection: The Cleveland Clinic inked an affiliation agreement with Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield, Ill., west of Chicago, to work together on its heart care program. Under the agreement, patients at the 313-bed Central DuPage will have greater access to heart surgery clinical trials and the Clinic’s treatment protocols. It is the first hospital the Clinic’s cardiac surgery program has partnered with west of Ohio.

Busy Eaton: Eaton Corp. made two significant announcements, with the bigger of the two involving its operations in China. The diversified manufacturer signed a letter of intent with Shanghai Aviation Electric Co. and Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China to supply the cockpit panel assemblies and dimming control system for Commercial Aircraft’s C919 aircraft program.

Eaton said total value of the program is estimated to exceed $425 million, based on an anticipated volume of 2,500 aircraft. Separately, Eaton said it acquired EMC Engineers Inc. of Denver for an undisclosed price. EMC Engineers is a provider of energy efficiency services that had 2009 sales of $24 million and employs about 155 workers.

Jobs roll out: Novelis, an aluminum rolling and recycling company that announced over the winter it would be moving its North American headquarters from Cleveland to its corporate headquarters in Atlanta, will take some employees to Georgia with it. Novelis said 62 of its 191 full-time employees accepted offers to transfer to Atlanta. Another 70 will be laid off and 59 are not affected by the move.

This and that: Five employees from Stifel, Nicolaus & Co.’s investment banking office in Cleveland — including managing directors Charles R. Crowley and Michael C. Voinovich — joined Paragon Capital Group. … KeyCorp said Barbara R. Snyder, president of Case Western Reserve University, was elected to the company’s board. … Sherwin-Williams Co. entered into an exclusive supply agreement with M/I Homes of Columbus to supply the homebuilder with paints and coatings in various markets.

REPORTERS’ NOTEBOOK BEHIND THE NEWS WITH CRAIN’S WRITERS

The hole story on Presti’s doughnuts

A mentor joins his pupil’s firm

■ Presti’s doughnuts are back.

The fried sour cream doughnut had a devoted following when they were sold out of a tiny shop on Mayfield Road in Little Italy. Open all night, it was on the way home for Case Western Reserve University students and the late-night crowd spilling out of nearby bars.

The Presti family has been in the bakery business in Little Italy since 1903. By the late 1990s, Charles Presti Sr. had two operations: the doughnut shop, which eventually was owned by his son, Charles, and the bakery run by daughters Claudia and Sheila.

Charles Jr. sold the small store and the doughnut-making equipment in 1999 and the daughters moved to a new café farther west on Mayfield in the late 1990s.

The new owner of the doughnut shop continued for a time as Gilly’s Not Just Doughnuts, adding a downtown location on the edge of Cleveland’s Warehouse District, where the doughnuts became a morning favorite at Crain’s. That business closed in 2006.

“Every day customers come in and ask for doughnuts,” said Claudia DiBartolo, Charles Presti’s daughter. However, the bakery lacked the special equipment needed to make fried-cake doughnuts. “It’s totally different from a bakery, it’s a whole separate operation.”

But she finally broke down and bought a doughnut-maker. The doughnuts went on sale this month. — Jay Miller

■ The founder and president of a Cleveland marketing firm has hired his former boss, who previously worked in various executive positions at McDonald’s Corp. for 32 years.

Roy T. Bergold Jr. has joined Clevelandbased Dorsey & Co. as its managing director of communication and creative strategy to help the firm expand its marketing consulting services.

Mr. Bergold helped foster at McDonald’s more than 30 years ago the marketing career of his new boss — Julius C. Bergold Dorsey Jr. “We were a bit of an odd pair — an ad VP and an ad supervisor two years out of Michigan State,” Mr. Dorsey said.

“I cannot tell you what an honor it is to be working with Roy again, especially as the compaDorsey ny is at a point where it is poised for growth,” he said. — Kathy Ames Carr

WHAT’S NEW

BEST OF THE BLOGS

COMPANY: CWP Technologies, Cleveland PRODUCT: Tile Diamond Ceramic Floor Cleaning System Here’s a basic fact of life: It’s not fun to get on your hand and knees to clean ceramic tile floors.

CWP Technologies’ answer to this is the Tile Diamond floor cleaning tool, which is what the company bills as one of the first handheld tools on the market that cleans both tile and grout.

As such, CWP Technologies says, its complete Tile Diamond floor cleaning system cuts in half the number of tools and chemicals needed to give a proper cleaning to tile floors.

The Tile Diamond tool features two types of bristles for cleaning. The red, diamond-shaped bristles are used to clean hard-to-reach grout areas of tile, while the gray bristles clean the tile surface.

An 8-inch cleaning head allows the brush to maneuver into tight spots, such as behind toilets, the company says.

The complete floor cleaning system includes CWP Technologies’ no-rinse Tile & Grout Cleaner that’s safe around non-tile areas and leaves no residue upon wiping up the excess fluid with the system’s microfiber towel.

For information, visit www.CWPFloorCare.com.

Send new product information to managing editor Scott Suttell at ssuttell@crain.com.

Stimulus efforts sure don’t stimulate this CEO ■ Daniel Hurwitz, CEO of Developers Diversified Realty Corp. in Beachwood, is optimistic about an improving retail environment but

Excerpts from blog entries on CrainsCleveland.com.

Come for medical care, stay for the tourist destinations ■ More employers and insurers are offering financial incentives to encourage workers to consider “domestic medical travel” to places — including Cleveland — where better-quality, less-expensive care can be found, according to a July 7 story from Kaiser Health News and USA Today.

By steering workers to facilities with highquality care and lower prices, employers say they can reduce their costs 20% to 40% — more than enough to cover the travel expenses,” Kaiser and USA Today reported.

The story notes that employers with domestic travel programs say they save money in part by negotiating a single rate, which includes the fees for surgeons, anesthesiologists and all medical care up until the patient is discharged.

“This is one of our ways of trying to bend the cost curve,” said Bob Ihrie, senior vice president in charge of employee programs at Lowe’s.

The national home-improvement retailer “has a three-year deal with the Cleveland Clinic to send the medical center willing employees and their dependents who need treatments such as open-heart surgeries, valve repairs and pacemakers,” the story noted. Lowe’s may add orthopedic surgeries to its travel program, according to Mr. Ihrie.

Kaiser and USA Today say Lowe’s negotiated flat-rate fees with the Clinic for complex cardiac procedures. Lowe’s is not charged extra if a patient is re-admitted to the clinic for care resulting from the surgery. But the retailer “agreed to make additional payments for patients whose medical needs are so complex that they exceed normal ranges, such as a patient

not about government stimulus efforts.

Mr. Hurwitz told an International Council of Shopping Centers Next Gen meeting June 22 he saw something at this year’s convention he had not seen in a long time: retailers hunting for stores they want to open this year.

However, Mr. Hurwitz — who noted his remarks were as a honcho with his industry group rather than as CEO of Developers Diversified — likened federal stimulus efforts to giving a 10-year-old a Milky Way for a sugar high.

“In Ohio, we’re paving roads that don’t need to be paved,” Mr. Hurwitz said. “We have a stimulant-driven economy, not a job-driven economy. We need jobs to sustain us. We have a federal government that likes jobs but does not like employers.” — Stan Bullard

Empty feeling to grow just west of Public Square ■ A collection of parking lots northwest of Cleveland’s Public Square that visionaries tout as a site with redevelopment potential will be a bit more wind-swept by winter.

Kerry Chelm, president of Chelm Properties Inc. in Solon, said he has applied for city permits needed to raze the parking garage on the northeast corner of West Sixth Street and Superior Avenue. In need of substantial repairs, the garage closed months ago.

Mr. Chelm’s late father, Irving Chelm, acquired the garage in 1988 in a partnership that included Forest City Enterprises Inc. It was viewed as a potential skyscraper site.

Network Parking will manage the resulting lot until the time is right to develop it, Mr. Chelm said. — Stan Bullard

who might have multiple problems,” according to the story.

“Already, one Lowe’s employee had three complex heart procedures while hospitalized under the new program,” Kaiser and USA Today reported. “Lowe’s asked benefit firm Mercer to calculate the cost of those procedures if they were done under the company’s standard insurance plan. Mercer estimated $531,000. Under the agreement with the Cleveland Clinic, Lowe’s paid $469,000.”

Banking pros see quality operators at PNC ■ There’s abundant respect in the banking community for PNC Financial Services Group, according to blogs at The Wall Street Journal and Fortune.

A Deal Journal blog post speculated that bank M&A activity is back, and that large regional players including PNC “are in the sweet spot for making acquisitions.”

The big regional banks’ balance sheets are strong, they have raised billions of dollars in new capital and they “fly under the too-big-to-fail radar,” according to Keefe, Bruyette & Woods analyst Chris McGratty.

Fortune took a look at why Canadian banks generally are in so much better shape than their American counterparts. (Fitch Ratings said that’s because of “solid capital and liquidity levels; conservative overall risk management practices partly associated with a relatively concentrated market structure that allows close and clear regulatory supervision; a relatively stable housing market; and the diversification derived from the banks’ universal model.”)

Toward the end of the piece, Fortune noted that Deutsche Bank’s update on U.S. banks and brokers says the bank is bullish on only five American banks, including PNC.

20100719-NEWS--24-NAT-CCI-CL_--

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