The Ameritrap Chronicles

Just when you thought there were was nothing left to print about Cuyahoga County's Ameritrust Tower woes comes another piece about the flawed deal. This time a long overdue narrative in the June issue of Cleveland Magazine provides a thorough time-line of the whole plan to move County employees into the asbestos riddled tower on East 9th Street. The piece authored by Erick Trickey provides the most accurate rendition of the deal's conception and subsequent decay into a taxpayer funded real estate debacle (or fiasco) that I have seen so far.

The article does well to paint a picture of the lack of strategic thinking exhibited by Cuyahoga's commissioners on the whole Ameritrust scheme. There has been plenty of criticism from the PD and other media sources on this one but they all seemed to focus on a specific piece of the deal. An example of this being the obsession over one particular contract award to remove asbestos from a building that exudes big brother from its Brutalist visage.

Trickey carefully reconstructs the story of the doomed County plan from past to present, weaving facts about the internal debates and analysis in near perfect chronology. What is apparent is that there was plenty of reservation about the project from internal sources as well as paid advisers but the County administration didn't heed that advice until the project became inundated with potential cost overruns from mission creep.

After stumbling into a deal to sell away the building the County may be off the hook for the gigantic cost of developing the site. That is unless the deal with the developer falls through in which case two of the commissioners think the Count project would restart:

Today, a new county building is a low priority. But Hagan and Jones say the project might be revived if K&D can’t finance the purchase, or if the county locates the new convention center and Medical Mart on downtown’s Mall and expands the site to the west, where the county offices are...

Basically they won't be rid of this one until the ink has dried on the purchase agreement. Even then there's no guarantee that the developer won't have to come crawling back begging for more subsidies.