The Fork In The Road

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Mark Kindt
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The Fork In The Road

Postby Mark Kindt » Wed Jun 12, 2019 1:06 pm

Developers Will Transform Lakewood

Various candidates for elective office in Lakewood have dropped-off their literature to my home. I commend each of them for committing themselves to public service.

Not unexpectedly, their campaign literature has the usual kinds of well-written fluff -- much of it about maintaining various community values that we celebrate as residents of Lakewood.

In this Deck essay, I am going to attempt to quantify and evaluate the impending development that Lakewood is experiencing and will continue to experience.

If you are a resident who supports wide-scale economic development for Lakewood as an overall improvement to the City, you will be gratified by the likely events of 2019.

If you are a resident who, like me, has a healthy skepticism about wide-scale "canned" economic development for Lakewood, you will be disappointed by these events.

The Lakewood that we enjoy and celebrate is in the midst of serious changes that affect a broad range of quality of life issues for its residents.

In this Deck essay, I will try to bring some of those issues into focus for broader community discussion.


Amy Martin
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Re: The Fork In The Road

Postby Amy Martin » Wed Jun 12, 2019 4:09 pm

4 major developments will be happening concurrently along Detroit Road in a 1 mile stretch - St. Ed's expansion, Spitzer development, One Lakewood, and Barry Buick development. I can't imagine how Detroit Road will be able to handle the amount of construction vehicles and extra traffic that these 4 construction projects will bring.


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Jim O'Bryan
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Re: The Fork In The Road

Postby Jim O'Bryan » Thu Jun 13, 2019 9:25 am

Amy Martin wrote:4 major developments will be happening concurrently along Detroit Road in a 1 mile stretch - St. Ed's expansion, Spitzer development, One Lakewood, and Barry Buick development. I can't imagine how Detroit Road will be able to handle the amount of construction vehicles and extra traffic that these 4 construction projects will bring.



These developments will take, as Mr. Kindt has said, Lakewood in a new direction. One based on tourism, instead of being the best place to raise a family. As predicted years ago, Lakewood goes from home based economy, to bar based economy. From Lakewood to the West Bank of the Flats in the 80s.

I am always amazed by people that pick a town to move that they love, then drastically try to change it to a town they once read about or visited.

Never ends well.

But if you look closely you will see that the Mayor is trying to lock up as much as possible before leaving the office. Contracts and agreement being rushed through with long life built into them. The Mayor now realizes residents are on to his lies, will probably not elect Lil' Mike (Sam) so he has taken matters into his own hands. That's right, "The worst Mayor in Lakewood's history" is locking us in to his flawed and lie based dreams of Lakewood.

Pretty screwed up.

.


Jim O'Bryan
Lakewood Resident

"The very act of observing disturbs the system."
Werner Heisenberg

"If anything I've said seems useful to you, I'm glad.
If not, don't worry. Just forget about it."
His Holiness The Dalai Lama
Mark Kindt
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Re: The Fork In The Road

Postby Mark Kindt » Thu Jun 13, 2019 10:27 am

Amy Martin wrote:4 major developments will be happening concurrently along Detroit Road in a 1 mile stretch - St. Ed's expansion, Spitzer development, One Lakewood, and Barry Buick development. I can't imagine how Detroit Road will be able to handle the amount of construction vehicles and extra traffic that these 4 construction projects will bring.


Thank you, Ms. Martin.

We will call this issue "Construction Congestion".

It reminds us that major developments on Detroit Avenue may also lead to congestion issues after these projects are completed.

A traffic study related to One Lakewood Place has already been completed and is available on the City's website.


Mark Kindt
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Re: The Fork In The Road

Postby Mark Kindt » Thu Jun 13, 2019 10:46 am

By Now, You Know My Perspective

If you have even vaguely followed my previous Deck posts you will understand from my perspective, that our local elected officials and those who consider themselves to be civic leaders have already taken the City pretty far down the wrong path.

My previous arguments are documented with public documents, statistics, analysis, and tables and charts. It is not my intention to repeat those arguments here.

My goal in this series is simply to attempt to identify the magnitude of changes that residents should expect and to support this with information that can be verified from public sources or your own direct personal experience.

A transformation of Lakewood is now underway that has changed and will continue to change our City in ways that most of us could never have imagined just 5 years ago.

And, 5 years from now, many of us will be asking ourselves how did we let this happen?


Mark Kindt
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Re: The Fork In The Road

Postby Mark Kindt » Thu Jun 13, 2019 4:26 pm

Take A Quick Look At What's Coming

Three major projects that represent more than $150,000,000 in new real estate development in Lakewood.

All sources are public.

This is a snapshot.
Estimated Value of Future Investments -- Solove and Carnegie.jpg
Estimated Value of Future Investments -- Solove and Carnegie.jpg (171.56 KiB) Viewed 22557 times


Richard Baker
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Re: The Fork In The Road

Postby Richard Baker » Thu Jun 13, 2019 4:35 pm

I'm sorry, I don't understand how a mayor can lock Lakewood into long term commitments without the approval of city council. I must have missed that class in third grade civics.


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Jim O'Bryan
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Re: The Fork In The Road

Postby Jim O'Bryan » Thu Jun 13, 2019 5:24 pm

Richard Baker wrote:I'm sorry, I don't understand how a mayor can lock Lakewood into long term commitments without the approval of city council. I must have missed that class in third grade civics.



Richard

Believe me I get it.

We have 4 on council greasing the skids, and three providing a modicum of questioning as of late. But too late.

All I know is if they were on council during 2014, 2015, and 2016, they have no place in elected office or on any board where they have a fiduciary duty to others.

Nope, got to find other ways to help people. :roll:

.


Jim O'Bryan
Lakewood Resident

"The very act of observing disturbs the system."
Werner Heisenberg

"If anything I've said seems useful to you, I'm glad.
If not, don't worry. Just forget about it."
His Holiness The Dalai Lama
Richard Baker
Posts: 349
Joined: Mon Oct 10, 2005 12:06 am

Re: The Fork In The Road

Postby Richard Baker » Thu Jun 13, 2019 5:53 pm

[quote="Jim O'Bryan"][quote="Richard Baker"]I'm sorry, I don't understand how a mayor can lock Lakewood into long term commitments without the approval of city council. I must have missed that class in third grade civics.[/quote]


Richard

Believe me I get it.

We have 4 on council greasing the skids, and three providing a modicum of questioning as of late. But too late.

All I know is if they were on council during 2014, 2015, and 2016, they have no place in elected office or on any board where they have a fiduciary duty to others.

Nope, got to find other ways to help people. :roll:

.[/quote]



Thanks, I didn't know. What are their names?


Bill Call
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Re: The Fork In The Road

Postby Bill Call » Fri Jun 14, 2019 7:05 am

Thanks to Mayor Summers the road ahead is closed.

He has successfully boxed in the next administration. Millions in City funds have already been transferred to private foundations, all available land has been set aside for high rise development and the City is obligated to pay ongoing subsidies to the Cleveland Clinic and Carnegie Development.

Hopefully, the next Mayor can let the people know the extent of those subsidies.


cmager
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Re: The Fork In The Road

Postby cmager » Fri Jun 14, 2019 11:59 am

Jim O'Bryan wrote:But if you look closely you will see that the Mayor is trying to lock up as much as possible before leaving the office. Contracts and agreement being rushed through with long life built into them. The Mayor now realizes residents are on to his lies, will probably not elect Lil' Mike (Sam) so he has taken matters into his own hands. That's right, "The worst Mayor in Lakewood's history" is locking us in to his flawed and lie based dreams of Lakewood. Pretty screwed up.

The name Summers should forever be known as a disgrace for dishonoring and destroying that which he touched in the City of Lakewood.


Stan Austin
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Re: The Fork In The Road

Postby Stan Austin » Fri Jun 14, 2019 3:25 pm

a quick intermission in an important topic---"When you come to a fork in the road- take it." Yogi Berra :mrgreen: couldn't resist


Mark Kindt
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Re: The Fork In The Road

Postby Mark Kindt » Sat Jun 15, 2019 8:50 am

Economic Development At Any Cost

What we are witnessing is a long-term agenda of economic development no matter what the cost to the City, the residents, and the taxpayers.

Mr. O'Bryan and Mr. Call are right. This is all "baked-in" now.

Lakewood is on the wrong path.

How do we know? Well, it's all vividly depicted in the public documents that the City fought for years to prevent citizens from seeing. It is chronicled in the pages of the public interest lawsuits brought against the City. Both professional journalists and citizens have written detailed descriptions of policy decisions made over the past 4 or 5 years.

Let me make one simple observation.

We each now face steeply increased water/sewer bills for the next 5 years. Had the City not decided to completely give-away the liquidated value of Lakewood Hospital to others, there might have been sufficient funds available to the City to minimize that water/sewer rate increase to a much smaller amount.

One way or another, we each pay for the cost of the wrong path.


Bill Call
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Re: The Fork In The Road

Postby Bill Call » Sun Jun 16, 2019 7:16 am

Mark Kindt wrote:What we are witnessing is a long-term agenda of economic development no matter what the cost to the City, the residents, and the taxpayers.

Mr. O'Bryan and Mr. Call are right. This is all "baked-in" now.



I often wondered why the Lakewood residents who where on the Hospital board stood by silently while the Hospital was looted of its assets. Why would they support a deal that was so bad for the City? Why would they support moving 1,500 high paying medical jobs to Lorain County? Why weren't they standing up for their community?

I realized later that many of those people where moving to Avon and Avon Lake so they WERE standing up for their NEW communities.

Mayor Summers and his pals have left the City with few options. How many of them will be leaving?

The people of Lakewood have no control over the $70 million or so in City money transferred to private foundations and few options for future growth.

Mayor Summers and his pals have obligated the City to pay millions in operating subsidies to One Lakewood.

What other land mines are there?


Mark Kindt
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Joined: Sat Dec 03, 2016 11:06 am

Re: The Fork In The Road

Postby Mark Kindt » Sun Jun 16, 2019 9:43 am

Yes, Cheer-leading Is Easy

It's easy for our elected and appointed officials to cheer-lead about how inevitable all this was and is. We will be hearing a lot more of that, too, I'm sure...

The dollars and the documents tell a much different story. I've already documented that, so I'm not going to repeat myself here.

A simple observation:

Why can't public property be used for public purposes?

Witness the new McKinley Place development. Maximum residential density built on public land. Don't get me wrong, I'm not objecting to residential development on privately-owned land.

Do we really need to have public land conveyed to developers for private development. Are there no public uses for public land?



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