Crain's Cleveland Business

REAL ESTATE A Columbus developer has bought 20 acres for an apartment development at Geauga Lake.

TECH: Remote work, telehealth and more — what leaders expect in 2022. PAGE 10

PAGE 6 CRAINSCLEVELAND.COM I JANUARY 31, 2022

Bedrock sees small businesses as key

MICHELLE JARBOE/CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

BY MICHELLE JARBOE

Last week, Beth Azor was on the road, crisscrossing Greater Cleveland to sell retailers on space at Tower City.

“I want food, food and food,” she said, noting that the NBA AllStar Game festivities are only three weeks away. “We want to bring as much food as we can possibly fit.”

Azor, a Florida-based real estate consultant and investor, is part of a team trying to breathe new life into the moribund Cleveland mall. She and Bedrock, the property’s Detroit-based owner, are racing to fill empty storefronts before the All-Star weekend, which is expected to draw more than 100,000 people downtown from Feb. 18-20.

But Bedrock’s recent leasing push is about more than pop-up shops.

Most of the mall’s new tenants, a heavily local crop of businesses, plan to stick around.

TOWER CITY’S REVIVAL After 25 years, Cohen & Co. names new CEO

BY JEREMY NOBILE

Randy Myeroff says when he was tapped as CEO for Cohen & Co. in 1997 at 34 years old following 12 years in the firm, he was not ready.

“What I was ready for was to embrace the fact that there are no right answers,” he said. “You have to stay grounded in foundational principles and just embrace the journey. That’s probably what I’ve learned more than anything.”

NEWSPAPER

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 Listen to Ivy Greaner at crainscleveland.com/Landscape A patron steps onto an escalator at Tower City, where a half-court basketball installation recently popped up near the food court.

Hospitality industry ready for NBA All-Star Weekend

Long-term issues from COVID-19 pandemic remain

If Myeroff wasn’t ready to lead the business, he certainly grew into the role pretty well.

In the time since Myeroff became the Cleveland-based national accounting and advisory firm’s chief executive, Cohen has exploded into one the industry’s largest independent businesses — and don’t expect that independence to change anytime soon.

See COHEN & CO. on Page 17

See TOWER CITY on Page 16

BY JOE SCALZO

Chris Bellamy is set to become Cohen & Co.’s CEO effective June 1. | CONTRIBUTED

THE

LAND SCAPE

David Gilbert is confident Cleveland will be a hospitable environment for next month’s NBA All-Star Weekend. Indoors, anyway.

The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc with the city’s hospitality industry over the past two years, but the president and CEO of Destination Cleveland and the Greater Cleveland Sports Com-

mission believes the city’s hotels and restaurants will be adequately staffed for All-Star Weekend Feb. 18-20.

“There are some things we can and cannot control, but I feel good about where we are,” Gilbert said. “We’ve been working with a number of partners on this for many, many months and we’ve made an outsized effort helping See HOSPITALITY on Page 16

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GOVERNMENT

EDUCATION

Breakthrough Public Schools’ new CEO sees ‘time of transition’

BY RACHEL ABBEY MCCAFFERTY

Mayor Justin Bibb’s transition team announced that all positions in his cabinet and senior team, not part of City Hall’s civil service classification, would be posted publicly and would be open to any qualified candidate who applied. | CONTRIBUTED

Cleveland City Hall commits to an open and transparent hiring process

BY KIM PALMER

reimagine how City Hall operates, break down silos and better connect After winning the election in No- departments.”

The administration, Hara Auvil vember, then-Mayor-elect Justin Bibb announced a slate of advisory said, looked at best hiring practices groups stuffed with names from the from both other cities and the private private and public sectors selected to sector aimed at avoiding the appearhelp the candidate transition into of- ance of discriminatory practices or favoritism, while allowing existing fice.

As part of the recommendations, employees to apply for their jobs Bibb’s transition team announced along with any new candidates.

“Every candidate went through the that all positions in his cabinet and senior team, not part of City Hall’s same questions and each panel was civil service classification, would be diverse,” she said. “We used the same panel for every position. It posted publicly and would was very professional, the be open to any qualified way it was developed.” candidate who applied.

The overall philosophy in “Each position was evalhiring for the administrauated by the mayor and the tion, she added, is about team of advisers so that transparency combined each post was part of the with energy, and innovaoverall vision for the adtion with the right experiministration,” said Elise ence.

Hara Auvil, who was in “Change is important if charge of staffing during Hara Auvil done for the right reasons,” the transition and is now Hara Auvil said. chief administrative officer.

As the administration The first five positions — closes in on a month in ofchief communications offifice, many of the high-level cer, chief operating officer, positions have been identilaw director, finance direcfied and filled by a varied tor and chief human regroup with both publicsources officer — were and private-sector backquickly posted on Bibb’s grounds, including chief campaign website back in communications officer early December.

Smith Sarah Johnson, who came Those coveted positions often are set aside for political or from the Greater Cleveland Partnercampaign loyalists, with those deci- ship; former Cuyahoga County Insions often made well before an elec- spector General and current city law director Mark Griffin; the city’s chief tion is over.

By posting all the available posi- human resources officer, Paul Patton, tions, including those in the Cabinet, who previously worked as vice presithe Bibb administration eschewed dent of human resources at Metrothe perception at least that senior Health; and Cleveland’s new chief leadership and Cabinet positions operating officer, Bonnie Teeuwen, who came from the private sector were pre-ordained.

“We’re focused on combining wis- where she was director of transpordom with fresh perspectives to deliv- tation and municipal engineering er on our commitments to the resi- for Osborn Engineering.

Not all the positions at City Hall dents of Cleveland,” Bibb said in a statement during the transition, add- are open to all candidates. The maing that his administration “is fo- jority of non-managerial supervisocused on filling key positions … to ry positions are considered non-ap-

pointed government employees protected by a civil service law dictated by the state.

The public job postings, for non-civil service positions, are part of a trend seen in the private sector, an overall move toward increasing diversity, equity and inclusion, starting with the hiring process.

“All candidates are now looking for companies or organizations where diversity, equity and inclusion are infused from the top down and at all levels,” said Rebecca Smith, managing director at HC Smith, a Cleveland-based executive search and consulting firm.

Employers are searching for workers with different cultural, ethnic and even educational backgrounds, she said, as a means of bringing new perspectives to a company or organization.

Inclusive hiring, which strives for a balance of genders, ages, belief systems and experience, can be tricky, Smith said, as most people tend to bring their biases with them during the hiring process.

“Historically, people tend to hire other people who look like them, and if you want to get beyond that, you have to value that difference,” Smith said.

Nearly a month into the new administration, Hara Auvil said City Hall has been successful in bringing a diverse slate of applicants to the table as the wave of enthusiasm around Bibb’s election, even in a tight hiring environment, has made it easy to find people to fill the positions.

“I’ve never experienced the level of positive energy and desire for people to join this administration, and it is reflected in the people who have accepted positions,” said Hara Auvil, adding that bringing in highly skilled talent means the administration can “hit the ground running.”

Kim Palmer: kpalmer@crain.com, (216) 771-5384, @kimfouroffive

development and then on serving as an ombud for the company, ofBreakthrough Public Schools is fering advice to others as needed.

Johnson is a “longtime experiin a “time of transition,” said Ralph enced executive,” and BreakE. Johnson.

Johnson joined Breakthrough as through is “lucky to have him,” said CEO in October, taking over for John Zitzner, president of Friends Alan Rosskamm, the Cleve- of Breakthrough. Johnson’s work land-based charter school net- as an ombud means he’s a good listener, Zitzner said, and Breakwork’s long-serving leader.

The nonprofit, K-8 charter school through has a number of young network was formed in 2010, bring- leaders in need of a coach or mening the existing Citizens Academy, tor. He thinks Johnson’s people E Prep, Village Prep and Intergener- skills will help him be a good leadational charter schools under one er at Breakthrough, too.

Johnson’s professional umbrella. In the years development backsince, the Intergeneraground is something he tional schools have left plans to apply at Breakthe network, but the Citithrough. Not every teachzens and Prep options er needs to aspire to behave grown. Today, the come a principal, he said, network has 12 schools but he wants Breakacross the city. As of the through to support every end of 2021, the network one of its employees in enrolled 3,436 students, becoming who they Johnson said, putting it Johnson “want to be.” among the largest educaThe network also has been tion systems for K-8 students in working toward what Johnson Cuyahoga County. called “One Breakthrough,” which It’s not a startup anymore.

And that’s what appealed to is an effort to create a consistent Johnson, who joined the network curriculum across its schools and from management consulting firm models. The idea is not to make the Citizens schools model and the McKinsey & Co. “The best time to assume a man- Preps schools model exactly the tle of leadership at an organization same, but to take what works best is during a time of transition. I firm- at each and apply it more broadly, ly believe that,” Johnson said. he said.

This effort is one that started be“When an organization is in that liminal threshold place between fore Johnson joined Breakthrough, here and there or between was and but it’s one well within his wheelwill be, that liminal space right house.

At McKinsey, Johnson often there, that in-between place, that’s worked with organizations that the place to land and to land hard.”

Johnson said he knew that if he had networks like Breakthrough; was going to leave his work at McK- thinking about the “foundational insey, it was going to be for some- practices” of an organization and where that helped him lift people finding places within doing those up and create “choiceful futures,” particularly well was important, he said.

Spreading those best practic“THE BEST TIME TO ASSUME A es across an orgaMANTLE OF LEADERSHIP AT AN nization strengthORGANIZATION IS DURING A TIME OF ens the experience everyone.

TRANSITION. I FIRMLY BELIEVE THAT.” forJohnson also be— Ralph E. Johnson, Breakthrough Public Schools CEO lieves it’s important for organizahe said. And he wanted it to be at a tions to have strong, clear time, like now for Breakthrough, foundational values that people when his leadership could make a can use to make decisions. And those values should be communitangible difference.

In his time at McKinsey, Johnson cated with everyone in all levels of worked on a number of educa- the organization, including, at tion-related projects, including one Breakthrough, families of their stufor E Prep and, later, for the found- dents. And he said he thinks orgaing of Breakthrough. He was famil- nizations need “very clear and iar with the network on a personal very aspirational” performance level, too, as his son attended E measures, even though that latter part means the network will fall Prep for middle school.

Johnson worked at McKinsey for short at times.

Johnson wants to work on all about 26 years in total. He stepped away for three years to work on wel- those measures in his time as CEO, fare reform for Cuyahoga County. which he said he hopes is long.

The county had started that work Breakthrough has a lot of stakewith the consulting firm, and John- holders, he said, from the students son left to help build and run the and families it serves to the comwelfare agency he helped design. munities it resides in to the partThat was another time when John- ners who help support it.

“We’ve got to be good about all of son saw a moment of change and a chance to make a difference, and that,” Johnson said. took the opportunity.

When Johnson returned to McK- Rachel Abbey McCafferty: (216) insey, he worked in professional 771-5379, rmccafferty@crain.com JANUARY 31, 2022 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | 3

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Free print media publishers resist the transition to digital

BY JAY MILLER

Reports of the approaching death of print may be greatly exaggerated if the accounts of several local publishers whose products are given away at grocery stores, gas stations and libraries are accurate.

These publications have seen a drop in advertising revenue as people stayed home and stopped spending money — short term from the COVID-19 pandemic, long term from the movement of news and information to the digital world. But they are finding other ways to keep printing presses churning out their products. The publishers were reluctant to reveal too much detail about their audiences or their revenue. They did say, though, that revenue is coming from many sources, including memberships, events, sponsored content and, yes, digital extensions of their hard-copy publications.

And while they all have their feet online, they mostly believe print is still their first priority.

“We never felt the sky was falling,” said Brad Mitchell, whose Mitchell Media LLC in Hudson is publishing three slick magazines.

“There is still a need, and people respect print in our market.”

Mitchell Media, with a group of about 18 contractors, publishes Northeast Ohio Parent, Northeast Ohio Boomer and Beyond and Walden Life.

Mitchell started Northeast Ohio Parent in 2014 and followed up with Northeast Ohio Boomer in 2015. Walden Life came along in 2021.

The publications, like others covered here, aim at niche markets. The first two are aimed at audiences in Cuyahoga County and just beyond, while the third is distributed to the 600 households of Walden of Aurora, a residential community in Portage County.

Their article subjects range from children and the schools they might attend or want to attend to where to turn on family health issues or finding events and places to go — all with a focus on targeted readers, though maybe not a general audience.

Because the content sits so close to home, according to the 2021 Magazine Media Factbook, their readers are more likely to pay attention to ads and to believe the products advertised are of high quality and relevant to their interests. And their audiences prefer print to small screens.

Craig Brooks Sr., publisher of Triumph, which targets the region’s African-American community, agreed.

“I mean, it’s about grabbing something and holding it in your hands,” he said. “Sure, everybody’s on social media and playing with their phones. But how many people are truly using that? Are you going to read a (long) article on your phone?”

Brooks said he distributes 15,000 copies of Triumph in Cleveland and the surrounding suburbs.

“I started the company in 2008

and, of course at that time, everyone was saying that print was dead,” he said. “I mean, we’re here, it’s 2022 now, and nothing’s really changed for us.”

The Heights Observer, like Walden Life, is considered a hyperlocal publication, since it targets residents of Cleveland Heights and University Heights, two eastern suburbs with a combined population of 64,400 people living in 18,000 households. The Observer drops off 8,200 papers, down from 9,000 before the pandemic, at 250 locations a month. It’s a part of Future Heights, a nonprofit community organization that serves both suburbs.

Because of its small geography, its advertiser base is close to home.

So the publication seems to work for readers and advertisers.

“It’s fascinating to me that when we get our delivery of the Heights Observer in our library branches, they go like crazy,” said Sheryl Banks, marketing and community relations manager of the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Public Library. “I just know anecdotally people do take it. People do read it.”

Banks said the library has been advertising in the Observer for about three years. Nothing else reaches their target audience as efficiently, she said.

“Their pricing is just really hard to beat,” she said. “We get this big, beautiful ad for only like $450 a month, which is not that expensive. If I was going to try to advertise at a glossy magazine or one of the larger newspapers, there’s no way I would get that kind of a rate.”

Robert Rosenbaum, co-chair of the Observer project at Future Heights, said area churches make up a significant portion of the Observer’s advertisers, along with the community’s schools and other nonprofit organizations.

“We also do pretty well in home services, like construction, landscaping, that kind of thing,” he said.

“Those guys are looking for local markets, and a good number of those kinds of operators are a little old-fashioned in the way they operate.”

The Observer also has an online presence, but Rosenbaum believes the print product will make sense for advertisers for at least the near future.

“It’s cheaper for (advertisers) to run an ad in a print newspaper than it is for them to run an ad that is segmented by ZIP code on a large online website, whether it’s local or national,” he said.

Besides, Rosenbaum added, online is demanding on a publication’s workforce.

“Going online doubles your work and it doesn’t double your revenue, so it’s not an easy equation to just pick up and go online,” he said. “There’s a heavy, heavy capital investment that depreciates faster than a car. Whatever system you put in today is going to be obsolete in six months. And you get pennies on the dollar for your ad.”

Scene is one of those bigger papers the Cleveland Heights-Uni-

versity Heights library can’t afford.

But the 50-year-old alternative paper also has struggled, said publisher Andrew Zelman.

“We’ve weathered the pandemic as well as we can while having to make some changes and make some moves to adapt to it,” Zelman said. “But things are going OK overall, both at Scene and at the Euclid Media Group.”

Euclid Media Group was created in 2013 to buy Scene and three other similar publications. It now owns nine publications; Zelman is the group’s CEO. Scene halted print publication in March 2020 and returned three months later as a biweekly. At the same time as it halted print publication, it laid off five employees.

Remaining staffers took pay cuts, and the entire staff began to work remotely.

Zelman said Scene has turned to memberships and sponsored content to bolster revenue. In addition, Zelman told Editor & Publisher, a national publication that follows media, that Euclid Media Group had taken two rounds of federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans to help keep staff working and bring laid-off workers back.

It has also bolstered its online presence.

“Over the last 10 years or so we’ve been transitioning more and more to having an online presence with social media, the website and newsletters, and since COVID started, it’s accelerated even more,” he said. “When you are forced to, you have to adapt.”

The Real Deal Press adapted even before the pandemic hit.

The newsprint monthly that targets the African-American community in Cleveland and inner-ring suburbs went fully online in January 2020, said publisher Richard Andrews. The publication first published in 1991, though Andrews said it only lasted two years and was dormant until he resurrected it in 2014.

“Going online is great from a circulation and expense viewpoint; I wish that we had done it a lot earlier,” he said. “When we made the shift (online) fully in January of last year we had 23,000 page views that month. As of (Jan. 13 this year) it’s 31,000.”

While other publishers may not be ready to leave print behind, Andrews became comfortable with it after talking to a friend who had moved to North Carolina, but said he reconnects with Cleveland when he gets the Real Deal Press in his e-mailbox every month.

What struck Andrews was a phrase he used: “platform.”

“You know, you think of yourself, if you have been publishing for a long time or writing for a long time, you think of yourself as a newspaper,” he said. “Then (I’ve told people) we’re a digital news site. But when he said platform that took it to another level for me, a community’s platform.”

Jay Miller: jmiller@crain.com, (216) 771-5362, @millerjh

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HEALTH CARE

CoagCo enters distribution agreement with South Carolina company for nosebleed device

BY LYDIA COUTRÉ

had largely been marketing and selling its product in clinical settings, About a decade ago, Jeffrey Bind- like emergency rooms, said Susan er set out to find a better way to stop M. Palmer, chief commercial officer nosebleeds, which he was treating for CoagCo. Interest from the military and the with increasing regularity in his practice as an ear, nose and throat agreement with NAR “opened our eyes” to a brand-new market, Palmphysician.

There was rarely a day he didn’t er said: emergency responders and treat a nosebleed; occasionally, those treating people in the field.

For instance, if someone is sufferhe’d even treat several in one day.

Many of the patients were older ing a nosebleed after a car crash, it and/or on blood thinners, two fac- can be very difficult for a first retors that were contributing to the sponder to do an accurate assessrising trend of these cases, Binder ment without stopping that blood said. Packing the patient’s nasal flow. Having something like the cavity was time-consuming for him Coag it NP7 to easily and immediand uncomfortable for the patients. ately treat the nosebleed allows a “I remember driving home one responder to continue airway asday and thinking, ‘There’s gotta be a sessment and management. The better way to do this,’” said Binder, a product could also help reduce the self-described “tinkerer” who was exposure to blood-borne pathogens for EMS workers, Palmer raised by his grandfather, said, noting that nosea machinist. bleeds can be profuse at The mechanical tamtrauma scenes. ponade he ultimately creThe device uses a polyated was so effective and vinyl alcohol sponge deso much more comfortvice (PVA) that is attached able that one of his pato a handle, allowing for tients pushed him to try to quick insertion into the market it. Binder founded nasal cavity to stop noseCoagCo with Arthur “Tim” bleeds and speed patient Clements III, who now Palmer trauma assessment. serves as president and “Having this device, being able to CEO. Binder serves as chief medical use it quickly and effectively, and officer.

In January, the Mayfield Heights- basically being able to apply it and based medical device company an- then not have to worry about checknounced it had entered into a na- ing on that or going back to that, is tional distribution agreement with really important if a care provider North American Rescue (NAR), a has to look at and evaluate multiple manufacturer and supplier of wounds,” Cupelli said.

CoagCo will probably start selling life-saving medical and rescue solutions based in Greer, South Carolina. locally into the EMS systems, Palmer NAR — which supplies the mili- said. Not only did the agreement tary, federal agencies, law enforce- with NAR get CoagCo thinking ment and first responders — will dis- about its product’s applications outtribute CoagCo’s proprietary side of the clinical setting, but nosebleed device, Coag it NP7, a na- they’re also thinking about how it sal packing device designed for pain- may be useful beyond nosebleeds.

“The foray with NARS has made less insertion by secondary providers us look toward (how) this material for nosebleeds in a trauma setting. can hop from ENT to other spaces, ‘cause it’s such an ef“THE FORAY WITH NARS HAS mechanical tamponMADE US LOOK TOWARD (HOW) fective ade that maybe we could go THIS MATERIAL CAN HOP FROM into other blood-loss control products,” Palmer said.

ENT TO OTHER SPACES ...”

Binder, who retired as an ENT physician in 2018, said — Susan M. Palmer, chief commercial officer for CoagCo. that some hospitals may not have ENTs on staff full time “In the field, two things are typi- — or at all. In developing the Coag it cally very limited: time and space,” NP7 device, he wanted to create said Matthew Cupelli, director of something that offered ease of use product management for North for secondary providers, so that paAmerican Rescue. “A lot of times, tients wouldn’t have to be transsomebody is having to care for a pa- ferred or wait for a specialist.

“When you’re really bleeding, I tient, sometimes by themselves, and sometimes it’s in austere circum- don’t care where it’s from, but the stances. It might be at night; it might nose especially, it’s a frightening exbe in the middle of a dangerous perience,” he said. “I was trying to area. It might be, you know, not a find something that a secondary nice sterile surgical suite with some- provider can pick up, put in the body that hands you instruments, nose, and with a high degree of likeand several sets of eyes, and nice lihood, stop the nosebleed quickly, efficiently, minimally uncomfortlighting, and everything like that.”

So something like CoagCo’s nose- able, and then they can go home.” bleed device offers simplicity and Lydia Coutré: lcoutre@crain.com, quickness to render care, he said.

Prior to this agreement, CoagCo (216) 771-5479, @LydiaCoutre

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CORRECTION  A Jan. 24 page 19 article incorrectly reported the date of ISSQUARED Inc.’s acquisition of a Chardon office building. It was in late 2021.

JANUARY 31, 2022 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | 5

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GOVERNMENT

Team NEO hopes that success in 2021 breeds more success

BY KIM PALMER

Despite all the ups and downs in the economy, due to the volatile nature of the pandemic in 2021, Ohio and particularly Northeast Ohio has a lot of good economic development news to report.

Leaders at Team NEO, the organization tasked with the economic development of the region’s 18 contiguous counties, can point to 104 completed projects in 2021.

They represent the relocation of new businesses or expansion of existing businesses in Northeast Ohio, 7,469 Koehler new jobs, $439.3 million in new payroll and $1.5 billion in capital investment, in one of the most successful years to date, according to Team NEO’s annual performance and impact report, “The Foundation for Opportunity,” released Monday, Jan. 31.

“We have seen 80, 85 or 90 projects completed in Fuentes previous years, but this (past) year we saw the most, at 104 projects,” said Bill Koehler, CEO of Team NEO. “And we’ve had the second-highest year in job creation over the last five or six years — that is very significant as Northeast Ohio companies find their way through the pandemic.”

Last year’s success, Koehler posits,

also signifies sustained growth representing a generational opportunity, as Ohio and, in particular, Northeast Ohio, which makes up 40% of the state’s economy, is poised to take advantage of business opportunities the pandemic uncovered.

“The region is emerging strong from the pandemic, with manufacturers and essential businesses performing well and with a renewed focus on building effective supply chain solutions,” Koehler said. “We think that there is a reshoring story happening, people are moving here, creating new plants here and shifting more production here.

There is just more business potential, and it is creating new growth opportunities for us.”

Koehler and Team NEO are keen on capitalizing on the potential of businesses relocating to the area. In partnership with JobsOhio, of which Team NEO is a regional network partner, the organization supported the development of shovel-ready speculative sites and building development to fill the region’s commercial real estate gaps in Streetsboro, Mentor, Brooklyn, Stow, Sandusky and Mansfield.

The Ohio Site Inventory Program, which offers grants and low-interest

Uses of investments in 2021

51% Network coordination and business development transaction 20% Promoting the Northeast Ohio Region, Team NEO and the economic development system 13% Talent alignment and research 8% Emerging technology clusters 8% Priority sites and job hubs SOURCE: TEAM NEO CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS GRAPHIC

loans for speculative sites and building development, added 947,000 square feet of new industrial buildings; 850,000 square feet of renovated heavy manufacturing industrial buildings; and 192 acres cleared for future development, representing $89 million in investments for the region as of June 2021.

To date, Team NEO is on track to

have another successful year, as the program has vetted 24 applications for 1.2 million square feet of new industrial inventory and 150 acres ready for future development, representing a $66.5 million investment located in nine different counties.

Identifying and addressing gaps in the region’s commercial real estate inventory by working with experts in the fields of real estate, construction, development, finance and utilities have been an integral part of Team NEO’s success in attracting new business during the pandemic, Koehler contends. “We think the strategies are working, and it has helped that there has been more visibility of Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine and his office over the last two-and-a-half years through the pandemic,” he said.

That visibility is something Team NEO plans to make good use of this year with a strategic marketing plan developed with the help of the group’s relatively new Marketing Advisory Council.

The advisory group, which is made up of communications, marketing, business and site selection experts, provides an outside and diverse perspective offering “an unfiltered sounding board,” explains Carlos Fuentes, a partner at Shibui Designs, an integrated marketing and branding firm based in Cleveland, and one of the group’s members.

It makes sense for an organization like Team NEO to market the organi-

zation and the region’s success because it is all part of the value proposition and the differentiation of the region that will bring new business here, Fuentes said.

“From the Team NEO data, it really seems that Ohio and Northeast Ohio were incredibly successful in managing the pandemic, because we’ve had tremendous growth in terms of job creation, business attraction, business retention — so the message is all about transparency. Being transparent about the steps we’re taking and the results that came from them. This certainly seems worthy of pushing out there,” he said.

The digital revolution that has driven down marketing costs while allowing for targeting specific audiences allows organizations like Team NEO to use limited marketing dollars to hyper-focus on that audience and promote the region’s success to a target audience — C-suite executives and site selectors, Fuentes said.

“Executives, as they get inundated with messages. Team NEO is able to give them the facts, tell them what the statistics are. Tell them what the drive radius is. Tell them what our talent looks like and give it to them in bite-sized pieces,” Fuentes said. “We need to let people know that this is a fantastic place to live, to work, to grow the business.”

Kim Palmer: kpalmer@crain.com, (216) 771-5384, @kimfouroffive

REAL ESTATE

Geauga Lake lands apartment development, Meijer store

BY STAN BULLARD

Vision Development, a Columbus-based real estate developer, has bought a 20-acre site where rides once stood at Geauga Lake Amusement Park for a complex with about 330 units overlooking part of the namesake lake.

Through Vision Acquisition LLC, the developer of apartments and industrial properties shelled out $2.8 million in late 2021 for the site, according to Geauga County land records. Vision has yet to receive final approvals from the township to build on the site, although it has preliminary approvals.

P. Brent Wrightsel, president and CEO of Vision, said the company was pleased to find such a development site in Northeast Ohio, which he considers a market with “high barriers to entry.” He acknowledged that by saying that, he referred to the difficulty of finding large sites in the region’s suburbs that are zoned for multifamily development or sites in cities that are open to zoning changes for such projects.

“The history of the site is unique,” Wrightsel said. “We will build a highly amenitized community there. We will locate our outdoor activities, such as the volleyball court, places to watch the sunset, our gym and the patio of the clubhouse so they have views of the lake.”

Wrightsel said the company has developed 14 such multifamily communities and will call this one “VC at Geauga Lake Park.”

Jeffrey Markley, a township trustee,

said Vision had agreed to comply with the township’s requirements for building on the site. The project will incorporate one- to three-bedroom suites.

He also said the developer had spent substantial times working out the preliminary layout of 14 buildings on the site and access with the township’s police and safety forces. Vision has agreed to incorporate elements of the park’s history in elements of its project.

The three-story structures will overlook the lake and will border a stretch of lakefront at least 30 feet wide that will provide public access to the lake.

The township will require public access through the complex to the lake between various uses on the former Geauga Lake land. The multifamily development will have substantial frontage on Aurora Road and access from the proposed Big Dipper Lane in the park and Depot Road.

The developer acquired land that includes the concrete footings of several rides at the park, which will have to be removed. It also will have a slope to cope with in its designs.

“Over the last year-and-a-half, we have developed a comprehensive planning process for Geauga Lake,” Markley said. “They’re anxious to get started, and we’re anxious to see it get started. It’s bittersweet we still don’t have the amusement park there.”

Wrightsel said removing the foundations of the old rides is “expensive.”

Based on when the township approves its final plans, he said the company hopes to start preparing the site in May and have a leasing center at its clubhouse open by year-end. It will not

The roller coasters and fun times at Geauga Lake Amusement Park are long gone. Perhaps starting as soon as this spring a more than $50 million apartment project will go in where major rides once stood at the Bainbridge Township landmark. | CONTRIBUTED

phase construction of the project over time but will build all the suites — ranging from flats to townhouse-style designs — at the same time.

Dan Lhota, Vision’s chief operating officer, said the company has found it provides homes not only to young professionals, but to people who wish to stop spending their weekends doing yard work and to downsize after their children leave home.

“It’s a varied community,” he said.

The company has previously developed an apartment community in Green, so it is familiar with Northeast Ohio.

Wrightsel said, “There’s a lot of opportunity (in central Ohio), but we’re expanding our footprint outside the area and even out of state.”

Vision bought the land from an affiliate of Solon-based Industrial Commercial Properties, which acquired 377 acres in Bainbridge Township in 2020 from Sandusky-based Cedar Fair LP. The operator of Cedar Point shut the amusement park in 2006. The adjoining Wildwater Geauga Lake water park closed in 2016. Another big swath of former Geauga Lake Amuse-

ment Park land is being separately developed in Aurora.

Austin Semarjian, a vice president at ICP, said his company is pleased it found a developer who shares its vision for a high-quality development at the site, which it has dubbed the Geauga Lake District.

Other additions to the former amusement park include a Menard’s store, which may begin construction this summer, and Markley said the township approved preliminary plans for a Meijer in the project.

Meijer has pursued plans to develop at the former Geauga Lake park since 2015, long before ICP became the owner of the Bainbridge part of the park. Both would be on the Aurora Road part of Geauga Lake closest to the existing Four Corners shopping center.

Semarjian declined to comment on a proposed Meijer deal.

Meijer only discusses new projects when it can set an opening date for them.

Most multifamily development in Northeast Ohio has been located in downtown Cleveland, with baby steps

underway in downtown Akron, as apartment development boomed in the region the past few years while interest rates have been at low levels.

Ralph McGreevy, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Northern Ohio Apartment Association trade group, said he believes there is still substantial room to develop additional apartments in the region without the market becoming saturated.

“Imagine how many people that development will bring to Bainbridge, and how much of an improvement it is over the existing parking lot facing Aurora Road,” McGreevy said.

Bainbridge had a population of 11,400 in 2018.

Although hundreds of apartments have gone up in Northeast Ohio the last few years, the Yardi Matrix consultancy estimates occupancy in Northeast Ohio was 92% as of the end of 2021. In neighboring Solon, which has more apartments than surrounding communities, occupancy was 93% at the end of last year.

Stan Bullard: sbullard@crain.com, (216) 771-5228, @CrainRltywriter

6 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | JANUARY 31, 2022

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PERSONAL VIEW

Do you have the kindness gene?

CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

BY STUART MUSZYNSKI

EDITORIAL

On the rise T

he Cavaliers aren’t Cleveland’s only bounce-back story.

If you’ve been to Cleveland Hopkins International Airport lately, you’ll no doubt have noticed that it’s considerably busier than the dark, early pandemic days of 2020.

The quick story, by the numbers: The airport ended 2021 with a passenger count of 7.28 million, up 77.6% from 2020’s level of 4.1 million passengers.

Passenger numbers remain way down from 2019, when just over 10 million people flew through Hopkins. But as Cleveland. com pointed out, U.S. Department of Transportation figures show Hopkins’ passenger count now is at more than 72% of its pre-pandemic level — a figure considerably higher than the 68% national rate. (The cold and snow of the last half of January are a reminder that as much as we like Northeast Ohio, sometimes it’s quite appealing to head out of town.)

United Airlines, the largest carrier at Hopkins, helped drive a lot of the 2021 improvement with the addition of routes to leisure destinations such as Las Vegas and Phoenix. Alaska Airlines later this year is adding daily, nonstop service to Seattle.

As the economy continues to recover — data last week from the U.S. Department of Commerce showed gross domestic product expanded at a 6.9% annualized rate in the fourth quarter — those numbers should keep rising. Hopkins officials project that if things go well, passenger traffic could get to around 9 million this year and then back to the 10 million range by 2023. That’s all the more impressive given uncertainty in the business-travel market, where the pandemic has had a still-tobe-fully-determined effect on demand. Companies for two years have cut back significantly on travel as Zoom and other alternatives have reduced the need for in-person meetings, and it’s likely that officials at Hopkins and all airports will need to adjust to a world where leisure travel drives growth.

Against this backdrop of gradual improvement, Hopkins officials are in the early stages of executing a $2 billion overhaul that would create a larger terminal, four new concourses, more public parking and a direct connection from Interstate 71 into the facility.

Airport director Robert Kennedy told Cleveland.com that some enabling projects for the renovation, such as utility

work and demolition of old structures, may start later this year. That’s an encouraging sign for the massive project, though the hardest parts — getting Federal Aviation Administration approval, and then figuring out how to pay for it through a combination of airport revenue, bonds and federal grants — remain to be worked out for a plan where construction wouldn’t start until 2025 or 2026.

The timelines of operational improvements at Hopkins and the airport’s ambitions for the future are lining up, which is important as officials begin talking with airlines about updated rents and fees that will be part of paying for renovations. It will be important to balance that need for revenue with airlines’ need to keep fees under control — and keep the recent growth streak going.

Doing their part Northeast Ohio often talks a stronger game on regionalism, and public-private partnerships, than it actually plays. It was a gratifying exception, though, when Huntington National Bank and the city of Cleveland last week announced an initiative to help small businesses grow in the city and in neighboring communities.

The effort, called Entrepreneur in Residence Powered by Huntington, is a partnership between Huntington and 11 nonprofits in Cuyahoga, Ashtabula and Lorain counties. The nonprofits will provide small businesses with help in areas including business coaching, financial management, digital technology, marketing and revenue strategies. Several programs will help minorities and women. An Entrepreneur in Residence based at Cleveland City Hall will focus on minority business development on the city’s southeast side.

This isn’t a huge commitment in dollars — Huntington says it will invest “more than $500,000” in the program — but the creativity in selecting nonprofit partners with specific skills expertise to help small businesses is an encouraging sign.

The region’s post-pandemic rebuild can only benefit from this level of commitment to nurturing growth, particularly in underserved communities. More of this, please.

I was at a meeting with a business leader the other day, and he asked me if there are some people who do not have the capacity for kindness. No doubt, we all have seen these kinds of people — someone, even a boss, who abuses or powers down on us.

I asked him, “You mean, do some people have a kindness gene while others don’t?” He laughed and said, “Yes, Muszynski is kinda like that.” That got me thinking. president and With the worldwide backdrop of CEO of ValuesCOVID-19 variants that are spreading — in-Action as well as increased murders, carjack- Foundation. ings, insults, incivility in retail stores, rumblings in Washington, tensions in the workplace and violence on airplanes — it’s natural to think that kindness is not innate. But it is.

According to Kiley Hamlin, who conducted a study at the University of British Columbia, we are hard-wired for kindness. In her example, newborns were shown kind-looking and mean-looking puppets, and the babies immediately gravitated to the kind-looking ones. The desire for kindness, she concluded, emerges early-on.

What about meanness?

According to Dr. Daniel Goleman, who popularized the term Emotional Intelligence, around 5 years of age, innate altruism shifts toward selfishness. But, Goleman points out, selfishness can be reversed by reinforcing messages about kindness. He cites a University of Wisconsin study in which researchers gave children a sticker in a classroom “kindness garden” for being nice. Negative behaviors decreased and kindness increased with the frequency of the messages.

In Values-in-Action’s own Project Love programming in schools — including high schools with high levels of violence — reinforcing messages about kindness, caring and respect helped reduce suspensions by 67%, raise graduation rates 43% and eliminate in-school fights.

The Dalai Lama has said that compassion is innate and can be strengthened like a muscle. Practicing kindness, seeing it in our daily lives and having it reinforced by our peers, community and through messaging creates more kindness because it’s consistently practiced.

Now, back to the answer I gave the business leader. Kindness is in all of us; so is meanness. The circumstances of our lives can reinforce one or the other. If we are in an environment that boosts kindness through culture, core values, messages, rewards and recognition, kindness will thrive. If we’re in an environment where everyone is out for themselves, meanness will thrive. That’s the fickleness of human nature.

This dichotomy was demonstrated by the 1971 Stanford University prison experiment, in which Dr. Edward Zimbardo assigned roles of prisoner or prison guard to Stanford student volunteers. Within a few days, the so-called prison guards — otherwise good, wholesome students — became abusive and sadistic. Zimbardo concluded that circumstances, expectations and surroundings shape peoples’ behavior. Given the wrong environment, even good people can become real SOBs. When COVID-19 first emerged in early 2020, I sat in a finance leader’s office listening to his opinion on the virus.

“This will bring the world closer together,” he said. With the U.S. death count surpassing 850,000, countries vying for vaccine supplies, and people fighting over masks and vaccination, this comity has hardly happened.

See KINDNESS, on Page 9

Executive Editor: Elizabeth McIntyre (emcintyre@crain.com) Managing Editor: Scott Suttell (ssuttell@crain.com) Contact Crain’s: 216-522-1383 Read Crain’s online: crainscleveland.com

Write us: Crain’s welcomes responses from readers. Letters should be as brief as possible and may be edited. Send letters to Crain’s Cleveland Business, 700 West St. Clair Ave., Suite 310, Cleveland, OH 44113, or by emailing ClevEdit@crain.com. Please include your complete name and city from which you are writing, and a telephone number for fact-checking purposes.

Sound off: Send a Personal View for the opinion page to emcintyre@crain.com. Please include a telephone number for verification purposes.

8 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | JANUARY 31, 2022

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OPINION

DISCOVER WHAT’S POSSIBLE at Pleasant Valley Corporation

g n i r i H e r ’ e W

HR DIRECTOR

PERSONAL VIEW

2021 ended on high note despite challenges It appears 2021 ended better than it started, according to most middle market executives who participated in KeyBank’s latest Middle Market Business Sentiment Survey. But it’s not as simple as it seems on the surface.

The following are excerpts from KeyBank’s latest survey, which polls 400 owners and executives of businesses in the $10 million to $2 billion range on a quarterly basis about the impact of macroeconomic conditions and government policies on their businesses.

Optimism dips, but business still feels better than in January 2021 Since the beginning of 2021, pandemic surges, political volatility, and rising material costs have all affected how middle market leaders view the future for their business and the economy. The survey reveals that while outlooks remain somewhat optimistic at the company, state and U.S. economy level, they have declined compared to second quarter results — while still remaining above the tumultuous start of 2021.

At the company level, a robust 74% of executives had an excellent or very good outlook, compared to 81% in Q2 and 68% in Q1. Regarding outlook for the U.S. economy, very good and excellent responses decreased slightly from 61% in Q2 to 57%.

For companies that are doing well, the upswing is having an energizing impact on their future plans. Businesses with an optimistic overall company outlook are far more likely to anticipate expanding the scope of their operations within the next six months compared to those with a neutral or pessimistic overall company outlook. When considering the impact of the pandemic, those that are mostly operational and fully back to a pre-COVID-19 level of operation are significantly more likely to plan to expand scope of operations in the next six months.

What’s weighing on middle market executives?

Middle market executives who show a negative outlook for their companies continue to list the COVID-19 pandemic as the top concern, with little change from the previous quarter.

Higher rates of overall inflation and higher costs of raw materials are also top concerns for businesses, signaling the impact of supply chain disruption. They also identify higher labor costs, possibly higher tax rates and a potential economic recession in greater proportions than executives with a good outlook.

Material sourcing, costs and delays cause headaches While businesses have been trying to rebound from 2020’s historic crisis, continued supply chain challeng-

es have hampered their upward tra-

RESPONSIVE, REAL TIME jectory. Nearly half of -all middle COMMUNICATIONS market businesses feel that recent

Lamirand is market president and commercial sales leader with KeyBank in Cleveland.

supply chain developments in the past 12 months have negatively impacted them, with retail and transportation and logistics companies unsurprisingly skewing higher. Executives are noticing raw materials and commodities are less available and timely and that costs for materials and commodities are higher.

This impact is being felt on their bottom line — with smaller profit margins and decreased revenues — as well as decreased production

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and efficiency.

Middle market executives told KeyBank they are responding by identifying alternative suppliers of raw materials, combating shortages by carrying excess inventories, and increasing digital and automation efforts.

Attracting and retaining top talent remains top of mind Many middle market companies are investing in recruiting and retention efforts.

The survey found middle market executives with an optimistic overall company outlook are significantly more likely than others to find ease in both attracting and retaining talent. To compete in an exceedingly tight labor market, business owners are offering potential candidates competitive wages, flexible working hours, and health and wellness benefits. And for companies that expect difficulties attracting talent, those who are planning to add employees are more likely to offer options to work remotely, increased paid time off, new employee signing bonuses, and job training as ways to attract qualified talent.

Conclusion: Managing through highs and lows Middle market business owners have come through 2021 with greater efficiency, strong revenues, and confident plans for the future. But major economic forces — including a tight labor market, supply chain disruption and inflation — as well as impending tax policy changes are making recovery bumpier than they’d like.

As business continues in 2022, you may be planning for expansion, contemplating M&A, considering the automation of payment processes, or putting in place a succession strategy. Your banker can provide customized insights, real-time counsel, and a broad range of relevant and tailored solutions to guide your decision-making.

KINDNESS

IN CASE OF CYBER ATTACK...

FULL SERVICE

From Page 8

I had another take. “Meanness is a virus,” I said. “It spreads from person to person and can infect an entire culture. If meanness spreads like a virus, then so can kindness.”

With this in-mind, in 2020 Values-in-Action Foundation launched our Just Be Kind national movement and the Kindland Initiative in Northeast Ohio, encouraging people to document acts of kindness. Recently, we released the Just Be Kind app (www.justbekindapp.com) to make reporting easy — uniting entire communities, companies and schools through positivity and acts of kindness. Like the examples in schools, demonstrating the omnipresence of kindness will spark more kindness, activating our intrinsic wiring — the kindness gene — that we each have.

We can spread meanness or kindness, just like the coronavirus spreads from person to person. We’re in

www.vecteezy.com/free-photos

BY KELLY LAMIRAND

Send resume to hrdirector@pvccinc.com

INCIDENT RESPONSE In 2020 Values-in-Action Foundation launched the Just Be Kind national movement and the Kindland Initiative in Northeast Ohio, encouraging people to document acts of kindness.

control — meanness or kindness needs a human host to live. Then it spreads, because each individual pays-itforward. In the process, we infect or affect others.

I’m convinced the pandemic has a silver lining that can benefit society; not just medically, but humanly.

What are the variants of meanness in our society? How can we counter them with the vaccines of kindness?

How can we encourage our family, neighbors, friends and co-workers to activate their kindness genes? This may be the ultimate calling for each of us and a preeminent challenge to our community, country and world.

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GREEN INNOVATION Increased demand for renewable resources fuels growth in the anaerobic digestion market. PAGE 14 GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCK PHOTO

TECHNOLOGY

PREDICTIONS FOR 2022

Tech leaders expect changes to remote work, telehealth and more

O

| BY RACHEL ABBEY MCCAFFERTY

ne thing that’s certain about technology in 2022 is that it’s going to change.

Experts in the region are anticipating that challenges and changes brought on by the pandemic, like remote work and telehealth options, will continue to shape the technology sector this year. They’re also expecting continued advances in areas like virtual reality, smart devices and more. Read on for a look at what Northeast Ohio’s tech community will be watching for in 2022.

Interviews were conducted by phone and/or email and may be edited for space, grammar and style. See PREDICTIONS on Page 12

10 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | JANUARY 31, 2022

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FOCUS | TECHNOLOGY

Not even COVID could slow Akron's Bounce Innovation Hub

BY DAN SHINGLER

Pity the poor folks running a business incubator such as the Bounce Innovation Hub in 2021, right? A gathering place to network and collaborate? In the middle of a pandemic? Please pump the Purell, because who wanted anything to do with that?

Well …

That’s not how it worked out. At all.

Bounce boomed in 2021, its people, advocates and data attest, setting records for use and reaching an occupancy rate of more than 80%.

And we’re not talking about some school gymnasium or fancy little office building — Bounce is a bit more than 300,000 square feet of space in an Akron industrial building that’s more than 150 years old — not to mention it’s on a Main Street that’s been flooded with construction rather than traffic for much of the past couple of years.

“I think it was a great year,” said Bounce CEO Doug Weintraub. “We really accomplished everything we set out to do from a program perspective and helping companies find a home here at Bounce, getting the right people in the right seats, keeping the facility spic and span, and growing it and remaining full.”

To get to its current occupancy of 81%, Bounce signed up eight new tenants in 2021, bringing its year-end total to 50 companies that now nearly fully occupy most of its eight floors (a ninth floor has a small penthouse space, and the first floor is common space). It marks the third year in a row that the incubator has increased its occupancy by at least 10 percent-

Bounce CEO Doug Weintraub said 2021 was a “great year” — but now he wants an even better year in 2022 and said he’s not letting up on program and client expansion at the Akron startup hub. | DAN SHINGLER/CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

age points — from less than 50% occupancy when Weintraub took over in early 2018.

It’s grown, in part, by expanding its scope. Once home almost exclusively to technology companies, Bounce has branched out in an effort to serve a broader swath of the

Akron community, with a particular emphasis on minority- and women-owned businesses. Ace Epps, who was hired in 2020 as director of Inclusive Entrepreneurship, and the new programs he’s supported, have helped with that, said Weintraub and others.

reaction by people,” Black said. “But we sold more day passes this year than we’ve ever sold, which tells us people are impressed with the space … we just sold tons of them this year.”

Bounce also added eight new staffers in 2021, including James Hilton, who is senior director of entrepreneurial services; program coordinators Selina Garcia and Bryce Collison; and Entrepreneur in Residence Jeff Rockwood, to advise and help guide Bounce tenants to success.

With the new help and some new ideas, Bounce had more programs in place in 2021 than in any year so far, and with a record number of participants, Weintraub said.

In all, 177 clients participated in six entrepreneurial programs at Bounce this year, Black reported, including its intensive 15-week Mortar business accelerator program and its GROW (Generating Real Opportunity and Wealth) program that focuses on helping women and minority entrepreneurs turn ideas into successful businesses.

Hilton said he’s been pleased with the results of Bounce’s programming in 2021, but he plans to add more, including some that might be less intensive and intimidating for firsttime business founders, perhaps with less one-on-one instruction, to position participants for more advanced programs later.

“This year, we are contemplating what I’m tentatively calling ‘Program Lite.’ ” Hilton said. “I’m envisioning this as a more of a one-to-many program … right now, I’m in the very early stages of setting that up.”

See BOUNCE on Page 13

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Bounce is still signing up tech firms — software firm Graffle Labs and electronics hardware company Xadite Perceptions took space in 2021. But it’s also gaining tenants such as Lady Kate’s Stitchery, a fashion and design firm that also offers sewing instruction, and the vintage clothing purveyor Modern Traditions.

But perhaps getting some new tenants should come as no surprise.

Bounce, like almost nowhere else in town, gives its tenants the ability to social distance. Its spaces are often cavernous, and between them are hallways that are as wide as some roads.

What was surprising, even to some of the folks who run Bounce, was the popularity of the first floor — a mostly open common space designed largely for networking. It landed the Stray Dog Café as a tenant in September, which the staff at Bounce thinks helped with attendance, but the space had a banner year throughout 2021 generally, said Jeanine Black, Bounce’s chief marketing officer.

Bounce sells day passes for the first floor — a bit like a day pass at a gym, Black explained, enabling anyone to come and use the space, Wi-Fi, cafe and business services for $10 a day, or $40 for five days. The first floor had been remodeled in late 2019, and Bounce was hoping to attract 8,000 visitors in 2021. It got 10,801, and on top of that it sold 613 day passes.

That’s the most day passes sold in a year so far, and even Black seemed surprised.

“Even though there’s plenty of room to distance and constant cleaning here, I think there’s just a nervous

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FOCUS | TECHNOLOGY

PREDICTIONS

“With the Great Resignation and continued trends of retirement, many small to medium business are faced with challenges to replace their ‘IT guy’ with a single new person. We see trends where the majority of organizations with less than 500 employees are now fully outsourcing. Staff and IT are creating more forms to go beyond digital into database and automation of manual tasks to process digital information/requests/workflows.”

From Page 10

“The path to closing the digital divide has never been clearer. Advances in wireless technologies are helping to engineer cost-effective and quickly implemented solutions.

“There will be several hybrid networks arising, especially fiber with wireless, that will leverage strengths of both technologies to deliver more robust and scalable networks. We will continue to be challenged by a weak supply chain. We need public funds to be available as soon as possible, and we need to be landing key partnerships to be able to have access to vertical assets and others needed to deploy wireless networks.”

— Rolando Alvarez, director of technology, DigitalC

— Fred Franks, chief strategy officer, FIT Technologies

“WE SEE TRENDS WHERE THE MAJORITY OF ORGANIZATIONS WITH LESS THAN 500 EMPLOYEES ARE NOW FULLY OUTSOURCING. ” “On the smart cities end of the IoT world, one of the technologies that I think is ready for prime time — it’s been around for a few years but is really ready to solve a lot of problems — is a technology called LoRaWAN, which is low-power, wide-area network technology. So when you want to deploy, say, a smart cities device that’s going to measure temperature or traffic flow or something, you have to connect it to the internet over wired or wireless networks.

And in many cases the default is a cellular connection, which is very expensive for many applications where you’re not transmitting a lot of information or transmitting it very frequently. So technologies like LoRaWAN fit the bill there.”

“Increasing comfort with virtual engagement and heightened interest in consumer health will drive health care systems and insurance companies to adopt new business models. The pandemic accelerated the adoption of telehealth care with a 38-times increase in usage from pre-pandemic levels.

Telehealth has also revolutionized virtual mental health and behavioral health solutions, driven in part by the increased availability and reduced costs of digital consults.

These trends will continue as new technology investments are made to advance telehealth, digital therapeutics and its enabling infrastructure.”

— Hardik Desai, senior partner, investing, JumpStart

“This year, we can expect to see increased innovation around telehealth, particularly as it applies to addressing chronic conditions like diabetes. Local governments and nonprofits are also likely to be embracing more technology solutions to serve residents — fueling a new field of public interest technology. Both trends emphasize the need for addressing privacy and cybersecurity and having the right talent to do so. Nationally, we see greater emphasis on equity in tech, and we can expect to see innovative solutions toward that in the region.”

a ‘ g i i e h t fi a r

“In 2022, I’m expecting to see a lot of conversation on this concept everyone’s been talking about recently around the metaverse. It’s basically taking the technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality, extended reality and blending that to where people can now live in kind of a digital universe.

“Beyond that, it’s going to be really people talking about the continued build-out and growth and expansion of existing technologies and tech trends that we’ve already been seeing over the past few years. More growth in people adapting to electric vehicle cars over internal combustion engines. Blockchain finding real practical use as opposed to really niche uses. Additional advances in artificial intelligence and ethics around artificial intelligence.”

— Leon Wilson, chief of digital innovation and chief innovation officer, Cleveland Foundation

— Shilpa Kedar, executive director of digital and IoT innovations, executive director of the CSU T.E.C.H. Hub and co-executive director of the IoT Collaborative, Cleveland State University

“Overall, minimally invasive medical devices to treat areas such as pain have provided a valuable treatment option during these challenging times in our health care system. Solutions, such as the SPRINT peripheral nerve stimulation system, which is used for 60 days to provide significant and sustained pain relief in areas such as back, shoulder and knee, have demonstrated commercial demand as an important alternative to more invasive treatments, such as opioids or surgeries.

“In 2022, medical devices will continue to be enhanced to provide even simpler solutions for patients and physicians to effectively treat areas such as pain, while also using the devices to virtually connect physicians and patients with each other to monitor and support a patient’s treatment progress. The opportunity for medical technologies to connect physicians with their patients remotely may provide more efficient care and serve as a meaningful alternative to deferred health care that results from health care providers’ limited capacity and/or as an alternative to medication prescriptions that may result in serious side effects or addiction for patients.”

— Maria E. Bennett, president, CEO and founder, SPR Therapeutics Inc.

“Digital transformation will continue to intensify, causing increased market disruption. This will be particularly evident in areas where market dynamics were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, including supply chain management, education, telehealth and remote workforce.

Additionally, the global increase in venture capital activity will create new opportunities for tech startups to attract early-stage and follow-on capital into the region.

“Talent will continue to be a critical challenge and, as growing acceptance around remote work increases fluidity in the hiring market, there will be opportunities for affordable cities like Cleveland to attract top talent by promoting its tech ecosystem.”

— Nick Barendt, executive director for the Institute of Smart, Secure and Connected Systems and the co-executive director of the IoT Collaborative, Case Western Reserve University

“Forward-thinking organizations are increasingly identifying and employing solutions that they can rapidly deploy to help their people thrive in the more distributed, digitalized world we’re living in. Those solutions are helping enterprises achieve greater efficiency and security, automate processes further, ensure authenticity, and act more quickly and decisively.

“In the content services industry, those solutions include robotic process automation, in which software bots take on repetitive tasks, freeing employees to focus on higher-value activities and improve customer experiences. Or digital asset management, which enables organizations to better connect rich media files (images, videos) with related data and products throughout the digital supply chain. And those solutions are more frequently being deployed in the cloud, where the future of enterprise applications lies, for reasons of security, accessibility, performance, interoperability and ease of ownership.”

— Bill Priemer, CEO, Hyland

a p c u

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—

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— Jerry Frantz, chief investment and services officer, JumpStart

Rac

12 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | JANUARY 31, 2022

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u c t R c t n

1/27/2022 10:33:12 AM

f y n s f y s k t s e r r . t h t e

s o e d e y , -

e n r t s t ) s y e d f r -

FOCUS | TECHNOLOGY “Remote work will begin to wane and in its place will be more robust ‘on-premise’ collaboration technologies to blend social distancing with in-person interaction. The Great Resignation will begin to moderate with economic cycles, which will require hiring organizations to process many times more applicant information efficiently. More advanced technology and automation in this process will result.

“Organizations will increase the use of technology to test competencies and other potential employee attributes during the hiring process.

Routine consumer interaction will increasingly include Robotic Process Automation, which will approach and even exceed human interaction quality. Consumers will continue to increase to buy and use technology for managing their personal health, safety and security.

“Telemedicine will evolve to include VR/AR and AI to assist in self-diagnosis for routine illness and/or injury; a ‘pre-qualified patient’ approach will evolve to increase delivery speed and efficiency of health care delivery. Biometric clothing will continue to evolve to help individuals manage their vitals and other health matters.

“GPS/personal devices will evolve to allow for improved personal security. Consumers will increase their use of Personal Process Automation to automatically make decisions on their behalf with respect to their everyday lives. Cybersecurity will continue to be in the forefront as more personal information becomes digitized.”

— Doug Wenger, executive in residence, Greater Cleveland Partnership | GCP Tech

“Aside from the security items that many companies need to address, the supply chain is horrid with lead times in network or server hardware.

An outage of a network device, companies that are trying to stretch budgets on older hardware, or a project held back from 2021 could have a significant challenge for companies if they don’t get orders into their vendors. Storm7’s distributors and the manufacturing chain is ‘off the rail’ for lead times, and if you have a problematic device or component critical to your infrastructure, you may want to have a plan B!” — Dave Samic, chief technology officer, Storm7 Labs

“With demand for tech talent accelerated by the pandemic and with the explosion in remote work, Northeast Ohio companies are having to increasingly attract and retain top tech talent in a national job market. Demand for software developers will continue to far outstrip supply in 2022, but to solve this problem, more and more companies will invest in developing their own talent pipelines.

“They’ll look to counter the Great Resignation by investing in the employees they have — retaining and retraining them for much-needed jobs in tech. Here at Tech Elevator, we work closely with several firms who have been able to turn existing employees into in-house, full-stack software developers in just 14 weeks — solving for both pipeline needs and employee retention at the same time. We think reskilling is going to become a major initiative in tech in 2022.”

— Anthony Hughes, co-founder and CEO, Tech Elevator

“Continued interest in anything that’s automation, the pain points caused in part by the pandemic: workforce efficiencies, just not having enough workers, supply chain resiliency, and, with it, some ideas that maybe we should on-shore, also invite in new techs, code globally. I think that’s such a hot sector, where people are saying, what can you do to reduce my workforce needs or to automate processes that used to have to be dependent on humans? And now this provides us a much safer, quicker, cheaper, etc. solution.

“At the other end of the spectrum, also pandemic-tied, is I think right before the pandemic and then certainly through it, we saw this advent of consumers feeling very comfortable connecting to devices, particularly with wearables for physical performance, whether it be for monitoring glucose but also for the positive side of exercise, metabolism rates: you know, the Fitbits and all that. And I see that continuing, but I see it pushing into the non-physical side, into the behavioral and mental health enrollment side.”

BOUNCE

From Page 11

Rockwood, who runs the business-consulting firm Idlebrook Group from his home in Hudson, said he’s been impressed with what he’s seen at Bounce in his first year, in terms of both the programs and their participants.

“What I’m impressed with at Bounce is they have so many cool programs, like Mortar, to help all kinds of entrepreneurs,” Rockwood said. “They truly embrace the empowerment of diversity and minority entrepreneurs, and it’s impressive.”

But of course, any incubator is judged by one thing at the end of the day — are the eggs hatching?

On that front, too, Bounce had a good year, said Weintraub and others.

In July, Bounce tenant Akron Ascent Innovations, a company developing new adhesive technologies based in part by studying the stickiness of gecko feet, announced a deal to sell its assets to a strategic buyer. In August, the skincare company OY-L graduated from Bounce and set up shop in Hudson with a retail store called Orange Rose Apothecary with an on-site lab on Main Street. And finally, in December, the virtual reality company Immersive Cure, which uses its technology to help seniors, veterans and other carebound people, was acquired by a similar but larger company, MyndVR of Texas.

By Any Means Necessary, a clothing company based in Bounce, wasn’t bought, but it reportedly hit another milestone,

with sales topping $1 million in 2021.

Those exits and successes, along with the increase in programs, participants and staff, have helped Bounce get noticed, too.

Funding is up, said Bounce chief operating officer Jessica Sublett, with new support coming in 2021 from Huntington Bank, The Burton D. Morgan Foundation, the city of Akron and others.

“We’re just on another level now.

We are where we were supposed to be headed. We’re able to be a lot more impactful with a broader scope,” Sublett said. “Seeing what

success, isn’t going unnoticed elsewhere around Akron, either.

“They’re doing well and becoming more important,” said Elyse Ball, executive director at the University of Akron Research Foundation, who works with entrepreneurial programs such as the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps program and with local investors through the ARCHAngels (Akron Regional Change Angels) Network.

Ball credited Bounce with doing a good job of using its big spaces to provide laboratory space for entrepreneurs who need it, while at the same time broadening its services to help “WE DON’T HAVE AN OFF BUTTON. non-tech businesses SO WE’RE JUST GOING TO CONTINUE and serve a broader community of entreTO EXPAND, FILL UP THE SPACE, preneurs.

CHEER FOR SOME SUCCESSFUL EXITS, “I think they’ve done just a really good KEEP THE PROGRAMS UP AND ADD job of making the enTO THE PROGRAMS TO SUPPORT tire Akron community aware of what they ENTREPRENEURS.” have to offer and, — Doug Weintraub, Bounce CEO through that, bringing more people togethwe have at year-end to present to er,” Ball said. our board is really awesome.”

But if the staff at Bounce thinks Sublett’s been at Bounce longer it’s now time to rest and reflect on than anyone — she’s a holdover their success, they’d better keep the from the Global Business Accelera- celebration short. Weintraub said tor that occupied the space before he’s keeping his foot, and their feet, Bounce even existed, albeit a bit on the gas pedal in 2022. less successfully.

“We don’t have an off button,” She credits the broader scope Weintraub said. “So we’re just gothat Weintraub has put in place. ing to continue to expand, fill up “Now, we’re committed to serv- the space, cheer for some successing all kinds of businesses, while ful exits, keep the programs up and the GBA was serving just tech,” add to the programs to support enSublett said. “We really are trying to trepreneurs.” form a community around entrepreneurship.”

Dan Shingler: dshingler@crain.com, That, along with Bounce’s recent (216) 771-5290, @DanShingler

Become a Leader in STEM and Manufacturing

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Designed in partnership with the Women in Manufacturing Association, our robust virtual program will provide you with access to world-class professors and coaches, connect you with other women in your field and help you develop leadership skills that create a lasting impact for you and your organization.

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Email signatureprograms@case.edu or call 216.368.1503 for more information.

— Joseph Jankowski, chief innovation officer, Case Western Reserve University

Rachel Abbey McCafferty: (216) 771-5379, rmccafferty@crain.com JANUARY 31, 2022 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | 13

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FOCUS | TECHNOLOGY

Safeguarding the environment one digester at a time Northeast Ohio company is at the forefront of potentially world-changing technology

One of Quasar Energy Group’s anaerobic digesters in Cleveland’s Collinwood neighborhood. | CONTRIBUTED

BY DOUGLAS J. GUTH

Increased demand for renewable resources — coupled with rising energy costs and a global movement to reduce greenhouse gases — is fueling growth in the anaerobic digestion market. An Independence company is at the forefront of this potentially transformative technology, offering alternative waste treatment methods across high-profile industry sectors.

Quasar Energy Group designs and builds anaerobic digesters, essentially industry-scale machines that convert solid waste such as manure and food processing scraps into methane gas and carbon dioxide. Simply keeping organic waste out of landfills is beneficial for the environment, proponents note, as decaying materials release methane into the air and contribute to climate change.

Anaerobically digested waste creates biogas, a renewable energy source used to power engines and generators. Biogas can also be harnessed for vehicle fuel and has similar applications as natural gas, said Quasar president and co-founder Mel Kurtz.

Quasar is currently constructing nine, 3 million-gallon digester plants in four states, with hundreds of millions of dollars already on the books for 2022. The company, which garners about $60 million in revenue annually, handles everything from manure generat-

ed by feedlots to biosolids produced by municipal waste-water treatment plants.

“Last year was our best year ever, and 2022 will be even better,” said Kurtz, who has 50 employees across the company’s Ohio footprint. “People are interested in carbon capture as a way to offset the petroleum industry.”

Quasar works with corporate behemoths such as Exxon and BP in managing their Carbon Intensity Score, a greenhouse gas measurement gaining traction globally as sustainable processes dominate corporate activities.

“Global warming is an issue whether you believe it or not,” Kurtz said. “The market is demanding resources to protect the environment, and anaerobic digestion is a big way to do that.

Captured methane is an alternative to petroleum products — let’s say natural gas has 70% cleaner emissions than gasoline. You have these giant petroleum companies, the federal government and research entities measuring the impact. We’re the ones who provide the supply chain and lab services to make it work.”

A technology to change the world Quasar, launched in 2006, views waste reduction as a natural biological development, akin to the processes taking place within the human body. Anaerobic digestion has the potential to reduce global

greenhouse gas emissions by upward of 13%, according to a 2019 report from the World Biogas Association.

“You put energy in, you get energy out, and we are capturing that energy before it goes into the pipeline,” Kurtz said.

The company focuses mostly on the agricultural and waste-water treatment sectors. Per the EPA, there are over 16,000 municipal waste-water treatment facilities in operation nationwide, many of them needing immediate help in treating the massive amounts of

can capture methane gas, which is then converted into electricity through an on-site microturbine.

The electricity runs the plant, while unused power is put back into the electrical grid system.

The Bellaire plant also creates Class A biosolids used to fertilize food-growing farmland. Previously, the plant only produced the type of biosolids utilized for animal feed.

Quasar partnered years ago with Ohio State University’s Wooster agricultural campus for various laboratory services,

“THAT’S WHEN CHARACTER COUNTS MOST. WE’VE BEEN THROUGH THESE BATTLES TOGETHER (WITH OUR SUPPLIERS), AND DECIDED WE WOULD MAKE EACH OTHER IMPORTANT. WE HAVE A GREAT SUPPLY CHAIN, GOOD TECHNOLOGY, A FABULOUS LAB AND LOTS OF OPERATIONAL EXPERIENCE.” — Mel Kurtz, Quasar president and co-founder

domestic sewage produced.

In anaerobic digestion, complex bacteria breaks down organic matter to produce biogas or a leftover “digestate” used for fertilizer or animal bedding. Multiple organic materials can be combined in a practice known as co-digestion, ideally increasing biogas production from low-yielding or hard-to-digest waste.

Quasar recently retrofitted existing digesters at the East Ohio Regional Wastewater Authority plant in Bellaire. The plant now

among them the study of the biomethane potential of feedstock.

Compact on-site digesters “stress test” larger systems to determine changes needed for optimal digester potential.

Kurtz pointed to evolving technology as one of the reasons for Quasar’s ongoing success. Over the years, the firm adopted complex fluid dynamics to improve digester efficiency, while automation allows engineers to predict maintenance cycles for a tank’s internal pumps and blowers.

Although Quasar has encountered challenges within its supply chain — particularly as the pandemic slowed down deliveries — longtime relationships with a half-dozen vendors have eased what could have been a more painful transition.

Kurtz said, “That’s when character counts most. We’ve been through these battles together (with our suppliers), and decided we would make each other important. We have a great supply chain, good technology, a fabulous lab and lots of operational experience.”

Low carbon fuel standards set

by California continue to keep Quasar busy, a boon further bolstered by an anaerobic digestion market that's forecast to reach $15.3 billion by 2025, according to a Medgadget industry report. In a world where “climate change” is now a household term, Kurtz expects his services to be leading the way for decades to come.

“We’ve gotten millions of research dollars from the federal government to do this work,” Kurtz said. “These are competitive proposals to win contracts, which you get because what you’re offering is a good solution for the government’s objectives. Our guys have done a great job, and shown this is not some dirty or unnecessary industry. I’m proud of what we’re doing.”

Contact Douglas J. Guth: clbfreelancer@crain.com

14 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | JANUARY 31, 2022

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FINANCE

Encore Funding charts path to becoming the next Advance Partners

BY JEREMY NOBILE

With a duo of small acquisitions, the entrepreneurs behind Encore Funding are taking the first steps toward growing the Cleveland-based lending business into Advance Partners 2.0.

Encore is a portfolio company of Pepper Pike family office AdCap Management Inc. It was launched as an alternative lender in September 2020, broadly focused on middle market businesses with a need for growth capital.

It’s made a few investments since its inception, including one last spring in Cleveland Kitchen, the makers of Cleveland Kraut.

AdCap was started in 2018 by Joel Adelman after he sold Advance Partners — then a provider of financing and services for small staffing firms, including payroll management — to Paychex Inc. in 2015 for $296 million.

AdCap-backed Encore is closing on roll-ups of two businesses this week that underscore its pivot to and refocus on the staffing industry, in which Adelman has seen success in the past.

The two companies acquired by Encore are TemPay, a Cleveland payroll provider for temporary

staffing agencies, and Millennium Funding of Buffalo, New York, an alternative lender providing working capital to the staffing and transportation sectors.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

With complicated labor-force dynamics driving Adelman demand for staffing services, and M&A in this sector poised to pick up for the same reason, the timing couldn’t be much better.

Nonetheless, a practical reason Encore is seeking these deals now is because of the expiration of a non-solicitation agreement that had been in place following the Paychex deal that put Adelman and his team on the sidelines for several years with regard to the staffing space.

“Over the past six to 12 months as the landscape has reopened for us,” Adelman said, “I would say me and my original management team, we loved what we used to do and always thought one of these days we should dip our toe back in the water in our specific vertical, which was helping companies that provide contingent labor.”

TemPay was founded in 1994 by Larry Holstein. The business has nine

employees and has been busy, with revenue doubling during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The firm doesn’t have enough people to keep up with the work in front of it.

Holstein is running 90% of sales himself. Some of his business partners have been picking up back-office work, such as underwriting, to take up some of the slack.

“I’ve been in this business for 28 years, and the industry is just going crazy right now,” Holstein said. “A lot of the surge in this business is coming from health care companies that need nurses.”

Holstein said he regretted turning down three previous buyout offers from Adelman in the past.

“I wasn’t going to miss this opportunity,” he said. “Joel has proven what he can do in the industry. I think I’ve proven what I can do. And I think combined, there is no stopping us. We will become a major force in the industry shortly.”

Millennium is led by founders John Benkovich and Tim Sardinia, who will continue overseeing daily operations of their business, as Holstein will do with his.

What’s particularly attractive

about Millennium, Adelman said, is its focus on the transportation and logistics industry, where workers are in high demand. It also has a Canadian customer base.

With the two deals, Encore grows to about 35 employees, 130 clients and an estimated $600 million in annual fundings. (The business model for these staffing firms is to fund payroll costs upfront that they are reimbursed for later.)

Advance Partners represented about $2 billion in annual fundings when it was acquired by Paychex.

That entity’s growth was achieved 100% organically, with no acquisitions.

This all marks a meaningful growth spurt for Encore. And there will be more opportunities ahead.

“In some ways, it used to be dirty word to have to use staffing,” Adelman said. “Today, it is the norm.

Companies need to augment their workforces. And it is so brutally competitive in recruiting now that the industry of staffing is one of the leading industries in the country.”

Neil Stallard, CEO of Fairview Park-based The Reserves Network, which focuses almost exclusively on the manufacturing industry, said the work available for staffing firms is at a peak, his business included.

This will create other opportunities for consolidation as smaller agencies struggle to keep up with demand.

“All of us in the staffing industry are pretty much in the same boat,” Stallard said. “It is great to have this problem as every company is hiring, though, because it does create a lot of opportunity. And that helps with a lot of M&A activity in the market. Now is a good time to sell, because bottom lines look healthy, if not the best they’ve ever been.”

As far as other targets in the future, Adelman said Encore — which is his personal primary focus within AdCap right now — will be opportunistic with deals, which still could include non-staffing and non-transportation businesses.

“I do want to find the next Cleveland Kitchen,” he said, noting he’s very open to supporting other local entrepreneurs.

Regardless, Adelman and his team have sights set on replicating the past success realized with Advance Partners.

“This should be another jewel for Cleveland,” Adelman said. “We are expecting significant growth.”

Jeremy Nobile: jnobile@crain.com, (216) 771-5362, @JeremyNobile

THE WEEK NO MORE TALKING: Merger talks between Northeast Ohio law schools at the University of Akron and Cleveland State University officially ceased, with both institutions deciding to remain independent. UA president Gary Miller said alongside a Thursday, Jan. 27, statement signed by officials from both institutions that the universities have “mutually decided to discontinue discussions of a potential combination between our two law schools,” the University of Akron School of Law and Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. The schools in August 2020 announced they would begin considering a potential merger. An exploratory committee was formed featuring faculty, students, staff, alumni and legal community members who would weigh in on various aspects of what a merger could look like and how it might work. “With great respect for these (stakeholders’) views, we have mutually decided to discontinue discussions of a potential combination of our two law schools,” the school officials wrote last week. “However, we will continue to explore opportunities for strategic collaborations with each other. The successful program of cross-registration in selected courses between the two law schools, now in its fourth semester, illustrates the potential for innovative cooperation.”

HOME IMPROVEMENTS: The Guardians are staying in Cleveland — officially. The organization announced it has finalized a new lease agreement through 2036 — with the potential for 10 additional years to 2046 — as well as bond financing for Progressive Field improvements. The agreement follows legislative approvals from Cleveland City Council and Cuyahoga County Council late last year. Progressive Field renovations will occur over the next several years, with the earliest work begin-

year-end, from about 20 now. “We’re very excited about the growth,” Bennett said, which is possible because the company recently completed its largest fundraise to date, a series B round that was oversubscribed at $37 million.

Merger talks between law schools at the University of Akron, above, and Cleveland State University officially ceased. | CONTRIBUTED

ning after the 2022 season concludes, the team said. Those enhancements include transforming the Terrace Club in left field, reimagining the upper deck concourse, creating a larger, more engaged social space in the seating area behind home plate, and clubhouse/front office building renovations work.

A LITTLE HELP HERE: Huntington National Bank and the city of Cleveland announced a joint initiative with 11 other community, financial and civic partners designed to support entrepreneurs and small businesses in underserved areas throughout Cuyahoga, Lorain and Ashtabula counties. The program, “Entrepreneurs in Residence Powered by Huntington,” will be funded by a $500,000 investment by the bank, Sean Richardson, Huntington’s

regional president, announced Wednesday, Jan. 26. “We know that access to capital is a key part of helping small businesses grow and thrive,” Richardson said at a news conference at City Hall. He said the program “is designed to leverage the expertise of our nonprofit partners to help small businesses expand their skills.” One of the arms of the program will be headed by Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration in partnership with Cleveland Neighborhood Progress. It will use the funding to focus on minority business development on the southeast side of Cleveland, including neighborhood retail assistance and storefront development for the Lee-Harvard, Mount Pleasant and Union Miles neighborhoods.

ON THE GROW: SPR Therapeutics, a privately held medical device com-

pany, has dramatically expanded its headquarters office at Metropolitan Plaza in Highland Hills as it prepares to start hiring people as part of efforts to expand sales nationally for its primary product. The company has signed a long-term lease for 29,000 square feet, an expansion of 21,000 square feet from its current 8,000-square-foot office in the building, according to a news release from CBRE, which represents the building at 22901 Millcreek Blvd. The additional room makes the company a full-floor tenant on the building’s fifth floor. Maria E. Bennett, SPR Therapeutics founder, president and CEO, said the company needed the room because its staff here will double to 60 from 30 over the next year as it adds people to handle the expansion. The company plans to boost its number of sales territories to 50 by

TAKING CHARGE: Jones Day, the largest law firm in Northeast Ohio, has announced the appointment of John Saada Jr. as partner-in-charge of its Cleveland office. In that post, Saada succeeds Heather Lennox as leader of the local office for the Cleveland-founded firm. This comes as Lennox, who had served as Cleveland partner-in-charge since 2016, becomes practice leader of the firm’s global business restructuring and reorganization practice. Saada, a partner in the firm’s private equity practice, has worked in Jones Day’s Cleveland office for nearly 30 years, starting as a summer associate in 1992. He represents private equity and venture capital funds in their formation and governance and the organization and documentation of fund sponsors’ internal firm arrangements and compensation matters.

STORAGE SPACE: Giant Eagle, the main occupant of a sprawling cold-storage warehouse in Solon, has taken over operations at the 360,000-square-foot facility. On Thursday, Jan. 20, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services posted a notice on its website about a mass layoff at the complex. But 233 workers did not actually lose their jobs, a city official said last week. Instead, building owner and prior operator Lineage Logistics transferred those employees over to Giant Eagle, the Pittsburgh-based grocer that has long used the space to store frozen foods and bakery items. A human resources representative at the warehouse, at 6531 Cochran Road, also confirmed that transfer to Giant Eagle.

JANUARY 31, 2022 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | 15

TOWER CITY

From Page 1

“We didn’t do this in preparation for the NBA,” said Ivy Greaner, Bedrock’s chief operating officer. “The NBA happens to be an opportunity for a very significant activation event. It happens to coincide with our plan.”

Since Bedrock bought the mall in 2016, it has been unclear what, exactly, that plan is.

Tenants have continued to trickle out of the 366,000-square-foot space, which sits atop downtown’s central train station and is connected to offices, apartments, hotels and Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. And Bedrock, part of Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert’s Rock family of companies, has gone through major leadership changes, including a complete overhaul of its C-suite.

Greaner, who joined the business in late 2020, acknowledges that Bedrock still does not have all the answers.

But in July, the company announced plans to remake Tower City as a marketplace, a less insular hub for shopping, dining, entertainment and events. Executives are working with an architect to reimagine the building and land behind it, stepping down to the Cuyahoga River.

That waterfront vision will take decades to realize. Conceptual plans for the mall, though, could be ready in 12 to 18 months. “In my perfect world,” Greaner said, “in 24 to 36 months, we’re putting the proverbial shovel in the ground to start making things happen.”

Meanwhile, the landlord isn’t sitting idle. Bedrock has signed more than a dozen leases at Tower City in recent months. And a few temporary tenants have signed on for the All-Star Game.

Complex Networks, a New Yorkbased media and entertainment company, partnered with Bedrock to open a pop-up shop in mid-January. Another installation, a basketball half-court called NBA Ice Buckets, now straddles the mall’s deactivated main fountain.

Denzel Garner cleans Dayja Eberhardt’s boots at the new Shoe MGK outpost at Tower City. | MICHELLE JARBOE/CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS PHOTOS

The NBA is offering patrons a shot at prizes, including game tickets.

The bulk of the new leases, though, are longer-term arrangements with homegrown businesses.

Bedrock won’t discuss durations or pricing, but the privately held company has the bandwidth to be flexible — and ample square footage to work with. Occupancy at the mall had dwindled to roughly 15% by last spring, when Bedrock and its consultants kicked off their leasing campaign.

Once the incoming tenants open,

the space should be 50% to 60% full, Greaner said. The company is walking a careful line, trying to bring activity to the property without making any commitments that will hamstring a more holistic redevelopment push.

“We’re here to do things. We’ve got people committed,” she said, referring to Bedrock’s growing local leadership team and the company’s work with the city and other partners. “I think we’ll be able to show the community that we’re not lip service at this point.”

Since taking on the Tower City assignment last year, Azor has met with

HOSPITALITY

From Page 1

hotels and restaurants, in particular, prepare ahead of time for what needs to be done.

“I think people feel like they’ll be prepared.”

That wasn’t always a slam dunk.

The city’s hospitality industry had staffing issues even before the pandemic began, and the Delta and Omicron variants have added to the unpredictability — and the health risk — over the last few months. The industry’s staffing issues require long-term solutions, but most Cleveland-area businesses are able to handle short-term events like All-Star Weekend, said Sean Watterson, who was recently appointed as senior consultant, Hospitality Talent and Strengthening Workplaces, by the Cleveland-based Fund for Our Economic Future.

That means visitors will get a warm welcome, regardless of the temperature.

“One of the hardest things about COVID is the instability and unpredictability, and All-Star Weekend is at least predictable,” said Watterson, the president and co-owner of the Happy Dog, a bar and music venue in Gordon Square. “If you know you’re going to be busy and people know it’s going to be a good shift, you can find people. People know it won’t be a crapshoot and they won’t be sent

more than 700 businesses. She swiftly subscribed to local newspapers and magazines, mined social media and cold-called entrepreneurs. National retailers bring creditworthiness and resilience to properties, she said, but it’s the local tenants who add character.

Erica Malone opened a brick-andmortar outpost for her boys’ clothing brand, Jaxon’s Closet, at Tower City in October. She celebrated with a kids’ fashion show in the mall’s main concourse. More than 400 people attended.

The 38-year-old mother of three

launched her label online in 2019, after struggling to find appealing clothes for her youngest son, Jaxon. Last year, she reacted to an Instagram post about Tower City from Steph Floss, the DJ for the Cavs. Then Azor reached out.

Nostalgia played a part in Malone’s decision to move into the mall. As children, she and her sisters dressed up in matching outfits to accompany their mother on Friday shopping trips downtown.

Traffic at the property is scant today. But the shoppers Malone sees,

“IT’S AWESOME FOR THE CITY WHEN WE GET THESE EVENTS, AND THE MORE CONSISTENTLY WE GET THEM, THE BETTER OFF WE’RE GOING TO BE.”

work over the next three years.

“Like other industries, the longterm solutions have to involve employers saying, ‘What can we do to meet people where they are, to have the kinds of jobs available that people need to support their family?’ ” said Paul Herdeg, the county’s director of development. “That’s a challenge.”

A recent survey by the Ohio Restaurant Association found that 68% of respondents have seen a decline in customer traffic and 82% are having difficulty staffing due to employees contracting COVID-19.

That’s forcing many businesses to either close or adjust their hours. Making matters worse, nearly half of respondents (47%) have seen a double-digit increase in food costs.

Add in the industry’s other challenges — the work can be demanding, the hours are often bad, the schedules (and the income) can be inconsistent — and it’s clear this problem isn’t going away any time soon.

“It’s one thing to be able to plan and take special measures for a big event like All-Star Weekend, but it’s another thing to reach the level of service that everyone needs, locals as well as visitors,” Herdeg said.

“That need is very great, and it’s a situation that existed before COVID.”

— Sean Watterson, owner of the Happy Dog

Sean Watterson, owner of the Happy Dog on Cleveland’s West Side, is leading a group focused on helping speed the recovery of the area’s hospitality businesses. | CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

home.”

The GCSC expects All-Star Weekend to pump $100 million into the area’s economy, with much of that money going to the city’s restaurants, bars, nightclubs and hotels. Those industries have been hit hard by the pandemic, as Watterson can attest.

The Happy Dog was closed for 15 months during the pandemic and closed for another three weeks in late December and early January, losing

out on regular business, as well as holiday parties.

That’s what makes events like AllStar Weekend so key, Watterson said.

Servers and bartenders can make extra cash, which helps make up for slower days — or, heck, slower months.

“It’s awesome for the city when we get these events, and the more consistently we get them, the better off we’re going to be,” Watterson said.

Jaxo

“The Greater Cleveland Sports Commission has been killing lately with the NFL Draft and the MLB All-Star Game, not to mention the college stuff.”

But, Watterson said, consistent business is crucial, especially for the smaller, independently owned businesses that give Cleveland its character.

“Those places people have on their Cleveland bucket list when they visit, we need to make sure they get through those uncertain periods so those jobs are there consistently,” he said. “And we also have to figure out collectively what we can do to make jobs in the hospitality sector more appealing so we aren’t in this position of having a brittle labor market when it comes to hospitality.”

Cuyahoga County recently authorized $1.45 million for the Fund for Our Economic Future to specifically address labor/worker needs in the service industry, with $350,000 of that going to support Watterson’s

Joe Scalzo: joe.scalzo@crain.com, (216) 771-5256, @JoeScalzo01

16 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | JANUARY 31, 2022

P016_P017_CL_20220131.indd 16

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Jaxon’s Closet owner Erica Malone talks about the design of her boys’ jackets. The store is named after her youngest son, who is shown in the picture on the wall.

including guests from the nearby Ritz-Carlton Cleveland, are looking to buy, not just to browse.

“I think that we definitely need a major retailer here,” she said. “But the direction that they went in, with bringing in smaller companies, the Cleveland-based companies, I think will jump-start it. Because we have a lot of support in our own city.”

Edika Stallworth, the 33-year-old owner of Peach Fuzz waxing and threading studio, took over a storefront near Dunkin’ Donuts in December.

Her offerings at Tower City are more

COHEN & CO.

From Page 1

With more than 650 employees between 10 offices in seven states and projected revenue of $125 million for its 2022 fiscal year (which ends in May), Cohen slides into the company of the 50-largest accounting firms in the country, according to industry rankings by Accounting Today.

Now, with 25 years as CEO under his belt — a rarity in this industry — and the business in good shape, Myeroff is ready to pass the leadership reins.

Picking those up is Chris Bellamy, who joined the firm in 1999 and was appointed president in 2020. Bellamy becomes Cohen’s next CEO effective June 1. At that time, Myeroff will become non-executive chairman.

“We are in a great place with a great platform and a great position in the marketplace,” Bellamy said. “Demand is definitely strong with all the uncertainty out there. The next 10 years will evolve at a much more rapid pace than the last 10 years. And we don’t have the opportunity to sit still.”

“The market is off-the-charts complicated,” Myeroff said. “It’s certainly confusing domestically with the uncertain regulatory environment, the pandemic … and what we do is really challenging, really meaningful and highly valued. So we are at a moment in time where there’s a lot of demand for what we do. We could grow at a

limited than at her Lakewood location, which opened in 2015. But she sees a chance to grow downtown, while getting valuable experience in a mall environment.

“I’m hopeful that it will be a longterm location, especially with all the plans, the new tenants coming into Tower City,” she said. “I feel like every mall-type setting needs that good old eyebrow place.”

As newcomers move in, some mall mainstays still are leaving. The conjoined Bath & Body Works and White Barn Candle Co. stores recently shut

their doors. Rainbow, an apparel chain, vacated its space. But DTLR, a national retailer that sells sneakers and clothing, just renovated and reopened its shop on the mall’s lower level.

Bedrock is negotiating with a selfie museum, a gallery-like space that provides backdrops for photos, Azor said.

Her Tower City wish list also includes co-working, girls’ clothing, womens’ shoes, mens’ apparel, a nail salon, a spa and a pet-grooming business.

Right now, though, she’s focused on food.

Last year, Bedrock tried to bring in a

seasoned market-hall operator to fill the food court with local and national brands. The pandemic and the sluggish return of downtown office workers made that strategy a hard sell, though. So the company changed its approach, pursuing one-off leases with Northeast Ohio operators to boost the dining lineup for All-Star weekend.

“Now we’re literally just doing handto-hand combat with all the relationships we’ve created,” said Greaner, who hopes to announce a cluster of foodcourt tenants soon.

The vacant restaurants, including

pace we’ve never even imagined before, but we hold it back because we can’t possibly meet the level of demand.”

In Cohen’s case, that’s a good problem to have. Like other growing firms in the accounting space, Cohen has so much work ahead of it that the company can choose who it wants to work with.

Nonetheless, capitalizing on the potential opportunities ahead is what Bellamy will have his sights set on.

As president, Bellamy already has made an impact.

He has helped steer the firm into growth for newer practice areas, including alternative assets, technology and life sciences, among others. The firm suggests that it may be the largest auditor of digital assets and cryptocurrency in the Myeroff country.

But one of the most key ingredients in Cohen’s secret sauce is its ability to attract and retain people, said Allan Koltin, CEO of Chicago’s Koltin Consulting Group, which works exclusively with accounting firms. That will be of significant importance as the business looks to future growth.

Koltin has worked with Cohen since 1982. The firm and its founder, Ron Cohen, marked Koltin’s first client in public accounting.

“Cohen & Co. is one of the few top-

100 firms in the country that has actually figured out the war on talent,” he said. “They have more young leaders pound for pound than any firm in the country. They are that good.”

Reconfiguring the management structure at Cohen was an effort led

by Bellamy.

The result is a dynamic that gives more leadership opportunities to younger professionals. The firm has a number of initiative and geographic leaders today. Many are in their 30s.

Almost all are under the age of 45.

Bellamy himself will be 45 when he officially steps up as CEO in a few months.

This focus on younger-but-experienced professionals carries on a tradition that has been ingrained in the Cohen culture since the firm was established by a few 20-somethings decades ago. And it will likely pay dividends as the firm looks to attract additional people, Koltin said.

The firm conducted a CEO search, though it declined to say how many people it may have interviewed for the post.

As far as Koltin is concerned, though, there is no better fit than Bellamy.

“Chris has won the trust and respect of partners in that firm. He is a very humble individual and also a student of business and our profession,” Koltin said. “He is well-read,

very connected and a deep thinker.

In today’s accounting profession going through the fourth industrial revolution — you didn’t always need as deep of a strategic thinker — but in today’s world you really do.”

Bellamy said Cohen does not see itself as a serial acquirer. Indeed, much of the company’s growth has come organically. One of the last big deals Cohen completed came with the 2017 roll up of Baltimore-based private fund auditors Arthur Bell.

Koltin, however, expects Bellamy to be “more aggressive” in M&A. The deals they look out will not be so much for expanding market reach, he said, as much as it’ll be play for talent.

An embrace of remote work at Cohen will only further support those efforts. In a post-COVID world, Cohen is operating a hybrid work environment and is more than happy to hire good people who can work virtually for any office. Not all firms are keen to this dynamic. But those who are have a leg up in those talent wars, Koltin said.

The company has no specific targets to reach beyond its usual goal of 10% to 12% annual growth, though it is in the midst of adding 60 jobs at its Youngstown office.

But the firm will be opportunistic when it comes to deals in the market.

With its stellar growth and promising outlook, perhaps someone would want to acquire Cohen?

the former Hard Rock Cafe, will have to wait. Tenants have looked at them, but it’s unlikely that pop-up concepts will emerge for those spaces — and be able to renovate them — by mid-February.

So far, Bedrock’s leasing consultants have concentrated on the middle and back sections of the mall. Many of the storefronts near Public Square won’t be available until summer. They were damaged by a flood in June, when a leak at Terminal Tower upstairs dumped a cascade of water into the property.

The scaffolding installed for the flood repairs finally is starting to come down.

Nothing — not that scaffolding, not a global pandemic — seems to deter local businesses, Azor said.

“It’s the Cleveland entrepreneur optimism and work ethic,” she said. “The story is like none I’ve ever experienced.”

On Feb. 19, the day before the AllStar Game, more than 100 vendors will pour into Tower City for a Black Business Expo. Tables will line the walkways on all three levels of the mall.

Bedrock is providing the space rentfree, said organizer LaRese Purnell.

Purnell, the co-owner and managing partner of a downtown Cleveland accounting firm, launched the Real Black Friday initiative in 2015 to boost awareness of Black-owned businesses He expects the Tower City expo, a rare free event on an otherwise highpriced weekend downtown, to generate $500,000 in revenues for participants.

He plans to return to the mall in August with an annual business showcase that typically draws 300 vendors.

“Right now, there is nothing for an outside person to come and shop at in downtown Cleveland. ... I would love to see it be that place,” he said of Tower City. “And what I’m excited about is when I see these minority-owned businesses going in, that they actually have access to be a part of this now.”

Michelle Jarboe: michelle.jarboe@ crain.com, (216) 771-5437, @mjarboe That’s probably true. But don’t count on the firm to sell. Myeroff and Bellamy don’t tend to entertain those inquiries. To be sure the business is “fiercely independent,” Koltin said.

That’s notable, too, because of what has played out in the Northeast Ohio market within the CPA space.

The Big 4 all have a presence in the Northeast Ohio market. There used to be a prominent but littler four in this region as well, though.

Those would have included Skoda Minotti, which was acquired by Marcum in 2019; SS&G Inc., which was acquired by BDO in 2014; and Hausser & Taylor, half of which was sold to American Express in 2000, while another portion splintered off as Maloney + Novotny seven years later following a severing of ties with RSM. Cohen, the fourth in this local group, is the only one to have retained its full independence through the years.

According to Crain’s research, it’s now the second-largest accounting firm in Northeast Ohio.

“I believe Cohen will be a top-30 firm before we blink, or at least in the next couple years,” Koltin said.

“I say all the time that you can’t land the plane, you’ve just got to keep going,” Myeroff said. “We are just so excited about where we are today.”

Jeremy Nobile: jnobile@crain.com, (216) 771-5362, @JeremyNobile

JANUARY 31, 2022 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | 17

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PEOPLE ON THE MOVE

Advertising Section To place your listing, visit www.crainscleveland.com/people-on-the-move or, for more information, contact Debora Stein at 917.226.5470 / dstein@crain.com

ARCHITECTURE

ARCHITECTURE

CONSTRUCTION

FINANCIAL SERVICES

FINANCIAL SERVICES

Bialosky Cleveland

OSPORTS

Tober Building Company

Ancora

Ancora

After 20 years of service and leadership, Brandon Garrett has been promoted to Partner and equity shareholder at Bialosky Cleveland. Brandon holds a B.S. in Architectural Engineering Science with a talent for construction science and project management. He manages scheduling and staffing while leading restoration, adaptive re-use and mixed-use development projects. Projects include Crocker Park Phases I-III, The Van Aken District, Muskingum University, and Library Lofts at Circle Square.

OSPORTS is excited to announce the addition of Robert Hayes, joining the practice as Senior Vice President.

Hayes is a highly respected design and construction industry veteran that brings with him nearly 4 decades of transformative leadership and industry expertise. At OSPORTS, Hayes will lead the operational and business development efforts, alongside directors Geoff Aiken and Thom Chuparkoff, executing strategies that will enhance client experience and expand service offerings.

Eric Jacobs joined Tober Building Company in 2022 and serves as Director of Business Development. His 20 years of experience in capital equipment sales and sales management in healthcare focused on large system strategies growing inpatient/ outpatient diagnostic care solutions. Eric is passionate about developing client success and people, personally and professionally. He sits on two Akron, Ohio non-profit boards for pediatric cancer patients and their families.

Ancora is happy to announce that Conor Sweeney has been promoted to Director of Alternatives Research. Conor joined the firm in 2018 to support the Alternatives group as an analyst. Prior to joining Ancora, Conor served as an equity analyst for KeyBanc Capital Markets and Longbow Research after earning a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, majoring in both finance and economics, from John Carroll University. Our congratulations to Conor on his new role.

We are happy to announce that Patrick Sweeney has been promoted to a Director and Portfolio Manager for the Alternatives group. Patrick joined Ancora in 2013 in an institutional marketing role before transitioning to the Alternatives group in 2015. Prior to joining the firm, Patrick worked as a corporate banking analyst at PNC Financial Services after receiving a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, majoring in finance, from John Carroll University. We offer Patrick our congratulations.

LAW

NEW GIG?

McCarthy Lebit Crystal & Liffman Co., LPA

Capital Advisors, Ltd. is pleased to announce that Louis Preseren has joined the firm as Wealth Management Analyst. Louie will be responsible for client case management consisting of monitoring and facilitating money flows, portfolio construction and trades, and meeting and communicating with clients. In addition, he will provide senior management with both investment and financial support. Prior to Capital Advisors, Ltd., Louie was a Client Service Associate at Carver Financial Services.

Porter Wright Cleveland partner Rebecca Kopp Levine has been elevated to serve as co-chair of Porter Wright’s Workplace Safety Practice Group. Becca works with clients across the region to help them reduce risk and improve the productivity of their workforces. She defends and manages workers’ compensation claims and represents clients before the Industrial Commission and the Courts of Common Pleas. She regularly advises on day-to-day workforce issues and employers’ legal obligations to their employees.

REAL ESTATE

IRG Realty Advisors LAW

Ulmer & Berne LLP Sarah Katz joins Ulmer as an associate in the firm’s Product Liability Practice Group, where she focuses on product liability litigation and the defense of pharmaceutical, medical device, and mass and toxic tort claims. She is experienced with all aspects of litigation and dispute resolution, and handles key aspects of complex litigation including motion practice, discovery, and trial preparation. She earned her J.D. with honors from Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

NONPROFITS

Youth Opportunities Unlimited Youth Opportunities Unlimited is pleased to announce Debi Pence-Meyenberg has been named its Chief Operating Officer. She comes to Y.O.U. from America SCORES Cleveland, where she served as executive director since 2007.

Debi earned a Masters Degree in Nonprofit Administration from John Carroll University and B.A. from Bowling Green State University.

18 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | JANUARY 31, 2022

Michele Kiernan has been promoted to Vice President, Asset Development Manager at IRG Realty Advisors.

Over her 25 year career, Kiernan has been instrumental in many development projects, assisted with property acquisitions and more. She has demonstrated the knowledge, skills, experience, and tenacity required to drive successful development projects.

Kiernan leads the redevelopment of high profile projects including Cleveland’s I-X Center.

• Plaques • Crystal keepsakes • Frames • Other Promotional Items

C O N TAC T

Capital Advisors, Ltd.

Preserve your career change for years to come.

LAW

PRODUCTS

FINANCIAL SERVICES

We are pleased to announce that Jonathan Wolnik, Esq., has been promoted to Principal at the firm, effective January 1, 2022. In his legal practice, Jonathan counsels individuals and businesses on all matters of federal, state, and local tax compliance, including planning and dispute resolution at both the federal and state levels. He assists his corporate clients with organizational structuring, drafting agreements, transactional advice, and in all areas of regulatory compliance.

Jonathan also has experience working with clients on complex mergers and acquisitions, in both national and international markets. After completing his BBA and MBA degrees at John Carroll University, Jonathan earned his JD at the University of Akron School of Law.

Laura Picariello Reprints Sales Manager lpicariello@crain.com (732) 723-0569

COMPANIES ON THE MOVE

ADVERTISING SECTION

To place your listing, visit www.clevelandbusiness.com/companymoves or contact Debora Stein at 917.226.5470 / dstein@crain.com MERGERS / ACQUISITIONS

MERGERS / ACQUISITIONS

August Mack Environmental and Compliance Technologies, Inc. Cleveland, OH 317-916-8000 www.augustmack.com

August Mack Environmental, Inc. (August Mack), a full-service environmental, health, and safety (EH&S) consulting firm, is pleased to announce the acquisition of Compliance Technologies, Inc. (CTI), an EH&S consulting firm, of Cleveland, Ohio. This acquisition will help both companies to further develop the Cleveland market and expand capabilities to support new clients while providing current clients with the expertise, innovation, and commitment that they have come to know.

Enterprise Title Agency Painesville, OH 440-942-7352 www.enterprisetitle.com

Chicago Title Company, a member of the Fidelity National Financial family of companies, announced the acquisition of Enterprise Title Agency, Inc. of Painesville, Ohio. Enterprise Title Agency, Inc., a family run agency, provides Residential, Commercial and other Real Estate services throughout Northern Ohio with some of the best title professionals in the industry.

Donald J. Denny Sr., current President of ETA, will continue to manage the operation.

“Enterprise Title Agency, Inc. has been serving the greater Cleveland real estate market since 1992 and is a well-respected, client-centric business focused on providing all clients local expertise and highly customized services that exceed their expectations,” said Donald Denny Sr.

crainscleveland.com

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REGISTER AT CRAINSCLEVELAND.COM/SPORTSFORUM22

REPORTERS

TUESDAY, MARCH 15 AT 9 A.M. There’s no hotter place in Cleveland in 2022 than Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. Join us at the Cleveland Marriott Downtown at Key Tower for a panel discussion about the resurgent Cleveland Cavaliers, the 2022 NBA All-Star Game here in Cleveland, upcoming events at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse and in Northeast Ohio, and more.

MODERATOR

PANELISTS

Stan Bullard, senior reporter, Real estate/ construction. (216) 771-5228 or sbullard@crain.com Lydia Coutré, Health care/nonprofits.

(216) 771-5479 or lcoutre@crain.com Michelle Jarboe, Enterprise reporter.

(216) 771-5437 or michelle.jarboe@crain.com Amy Morona, Higher education.

(216) 771-5229 or amy.morona@crain.com Jay Miller, Government.

(216) 771-5362 or jmiller@crain.com Jeremy Nobile, Finance/legal/beer/cannabis.

(216) 771-5255 or jnobile@crain.com Kim Palmer, Government.

(216) 771-5384 or kpalmer@crain.com Joe Scalzo, Sports business.

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Events manager Missy Chambless, (216) 771-5388 or missy.chambless@crain.com Integrated marketing manager Cody Smith, (330) 419-1078 or cody.smith@crain.com Sales manager Mara Broderick, (917) 612-8414 or mara.broderick@crain.com Sales and marketing coordinator Shannon Smith, (440) 281-6397 or shannon.smith@crain.com Account executives Laura Kulber Mintz, Loren Breen, Kaylie West People on the Move manager Debora Stein, (917) 226-5470, dstein@crain.com Pre-press and digital production Craig L. Mackey Office coordinator Karen Friedman Media services manager Nicole Spell Billing YahNica Crawford Credit Thomas Hanovich CUSTOMER SERVICE

JOE SCALZO

Sports Business Reporter for Crain’s Cleveland Business

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CEO of the Cleveland Cavaliers, Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse and Rock Entertainment Group

DAVID GILBERT

President and CEO of Destination Cleveland and the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission

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Development of a breast cancer vaccine, now in trials

Support for 170+ cancer research projects

Free eye care for at-risk children

Education of tomorrow’s healthcare leaders

Thank you.

As a 100-year-old nonprofit organization, Cleveland Clinic relies on your contributions to power our mission. Ten years ago, we launched the Power of Every One Centennial Campaign with the goal of raising $2 billion.

Our campaign now concludes with 800,000 gifts totaling nearly $2.6 billion. Your generosity is enabling us to innovate care in profound ways that will save lives in our community and around the world.

Your support is advancing the study of a vaccine aimed at preventing the most lethal form of breast cancer.

Your donations are facilitating Vision First, which provides free eye exams and has given 7,500 eyeglasses to children in underserved communities.

Your contributions to VeloSano are propelling more than 170 research projects aimed at developing cancer cures.

Your gifts are innovating technology at our Health Education Campus, where today’s students prepare to be tomorrow’s healthcare leaders.

These are just a few examples of what you have enabled. Whatever the size of your gift, it mattered. Every single dollar was invested in our mission.

You have created a tremendous impact on our care, which spanned 100 million patient visits over the last decade. With your dedication, we will continue to drive research, make discoveries, advance medical education and save lives.

On behalf of Cleveland Clinic’s caregivers, our patients and their families, thank you for your world class support.

Sincerely,

Tomislav Mihaljevic, MD Chief Executive Officer and President Cleveland Clinic

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