Dateline: Circa 2007

Location: Cleveland

Mental State: Not getting it

The latest "IT" project is: take your pick.

 We have Steelyard Commons. Flashy name. I wonder how many meetings were wasted on this bright idea. This was hatched on Mayor Jane "I'm smiling take my picture" Campbell's watch and was hugged and petted so much I thought Lenny would burst out at any moment and ask Jane/George if he could put it in his pocket. The key thing to remember is that if it wasn't for this project Mayor Campbell wouldn't have any legacy at all. By the way she doesn't live here anymore so don't bother wondering how she feels about the whole thing. Now, what I want to know, as a tax payer and resident of Cleveland is: who wanted to build a mall on an industrial wasteland? O.K., so your at the meeting and maybe there's a lull, so you cough into your hand and say " how's 'bout we build a mall on some totally polluted land that nobody else wants?". Eyebrows raise, people nod and your in charge of the project. Because it's a PROJECT. First get the feds (grants. us. taxes. remember?) to pay for scraping all that contamination off and throwing it away (where?). Then the site has to be improved. Roads to and from, sewers, grading power and other utilities (I think we paid again, because it was such a good idea. You know, to bring Cleveland back. Public money. Ours Taxes. Get it?) Then the actual building, paying average people average wages to build it so who will come? Wal-Mart, that's who (after tax abatement luring, of course). 6,000 people applying for what, 300 job's? State of the economy. Now, somebody made a bundle off this whole deal and it wasn't Joe construction worker or Jane bricklayer. Maybe Jane's a bad example, or a perfect example because the people at the top who own the land or the building company's make all the money off something like this and give some back to the "Jane's" (politicians). Meanwhile, the potential customer is probably somebody living in the area, not from, I don't know, Akron. Anybody farther out than 20 minutes are not going to visit, and come to think of it, anybody looking for a job isn't going to want to drive that far either. So, this information seems to infer that the potential customer may in fact be somebody who is already employed at Steelyard Commons. Possibly at Wal-Mart, a store that isn't known for lavishing livable wages on there employees. So, at the next "meeting" , why doesn't somebody suggest some sort of coupon system whereby the individual employees of the mall could benefit from selling things to each other? Either that, or at least install tip jars so that when they decide to put parking meters down there like everywhere else, they'll have money to put in the meters. Of course, to avoid the parking meters, some of those nice "state of the art" red light and speeding cameras would blend in well, don't you think?