Cleveland City Council President Blaine Griffin, whose Ward 6 abuts Shaker Square, respects what Brandon Chrostowski has accomplished with his EDWINS enterprise, but does not want to engage the politics of division.  He sees the proposition that it’s either coats for kids in Mt. Pleasant or a real estate development deal at Shaker Square as “a straw man argument” meant to undermine honest debate.

“You can’t negotiate neighborhood against neighborhood,” Griffin emphasized when interviewed for this article. “You can’t pit neighborhood against neighborhood. That is the epitome of parochialism. We won’t get anywhere as a city.”

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• The Saga of Shaker Square, Part I

Griffin pointed out that “coats for kids, meals for kids have nothing to do with real estate deals, economic development deals and trying to get return on investments,” which in the case of Buckeye-Shaker have already been substantial with more slated moving forward. “The County has sole responsibility for providing the social services safety net. The City’s job is to stabilize neighborhoods and provide better city services,” Griffin explains. “Ask why the County isn’t putting more money into social services.”

Griffin not only supports the legislation that centers community development agencies in charting the future of Shaker Square; he was the driving force in prioritizing the issue within Mayor Frank Jackson’s administration back in 2020. Contrary to Chrostowski’s characterization that this has been a rushed process, work on finding a solution to the Square’s challenges began nearly two years ago when it became known that the Coral Co., the Square’s owner, was in financial trouble and unable to secure refinancing in the midst of the pandemic.

At that time, Griffin began conversations with Shaker Square residents and the departments of economic and community development about how to best stabilize the property and make it attractive to a buyer. He also engaged nonprofit community development corporation Burton, Bell, Carr Development, Inc., (BBC), which a year or so before agreed to add the Buckeye-Shaker and Larchmere neighborhoods to its service area portfolio.

“This is what we do,” shared BBC Executive Director, Joy Johnson. “[Community development corporations] were created to support and revitalize real estate development in challenging neighborhoods. So, this is our mission. This is why we exist.”

With BBC partnering with New Village Corporation to help craft a solution, the missing link was bringing the mayor on board. Jackson was not an easy sell. Chuckled Griffin, “…it took me almost six months to convince the mayor!”

Mayor Jackson wanted three considerations met before he would ok Griffin’s plan:

1) The plan could not be a simple bailout of Coral Co. but had to anchor Shaker Square for a future sale.

2) The city would get its money back.

3) The city would continue to have a voice at the table throughout the entire process.

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Blaine Griffin is president of Cleveland City Council || Photo /mxoentertainment.com

Normally the council member in whose ward a property exists has a pronounced say in the public decision-making process. But Ward 4 councilman Ken Johnson was preoccupied with superseding troubles of his own, given his arrest in February 2021 on fifteen federal criminal charges. After Johnson was suspended from Council in April, the seat was vacant for another two months Anita Gardner was appointed as the interim council member in June.

In late July, with a Ward 4 representative finally seated, Griffin began transitioning out of the process by facilitating a meeting at Moreland Courts to promote rapport among the key players. In addition to residents and Griffin, the meeting included interim council member Gardner, BBC’s Joy Johnson, Terri Hamilton Brown, a consultant with New Village Corporation, and Tania Menesse, CEO & President of Cleveland Neighborhood Progress. The language that eventually formed the basis of the proposed legislation had not been formulated as of the meeting date, but the conversation then helped to inform it.

Less than six months later, Gardner would assert that she was left in the dark in the rush to push through legislation to use public funds to rescue Shaker Square. She claimed not even to know about the legislation even though she signed on as a sponsor. Gardner further questioned the need to invest in Shaker Square when other parts of Ward 4 are more deserving of public funding.

If that last argument sounds familiar it’s because it reflects the talking points of EDWIN’s CEO, Brandon Chrostowski, who told me that he is on the phone with Gardner every day.

Perhaps that is why she did not have time to respond to my three requests for her side of the story. Had we spoken, I would have asked Gardner how she squared her yes vote a few weeks earlier to award $435 million in public funds to renovate a downtown ballpark, including its corporate offices, but went thumbs down on $6 million for her own turf. I would have asked her why the interests of a billionaire sports team owner superseded that of the coatless children of Ward 4 just a few weeks before she killed the Shaker Square legislation.

To Chrostowski’s concern about the all-too-real issue of food insecurity in Ward 4, I would have asked if Gardner is willing to risk losing Dave’s grocery store if the delayed capital improvements to its space are not completed sooner rather than later. (Part of the obligation of New Village Corporation under the legislation is to raise additional money to make the necessary capital improvements and repairs to the property.)

Finally, I would have asked Gardner what responsibility she had to educate herself on the issues discussed in that July private meeting at Moreland Courts. What obligation did she have to take the lead?

[Editor's Note: We reached out to Ward 4 Councilwoman Deborah Gray to get her position on the proposed legislation when she was still councilwoman-elect. She declined repeated requests for comment, saying that she was "studying" the issue and would get back to us when she had "something to say."]

What has made the proposed rescue especially daunting is that to date, Shaker Square’s mortgage holder says it will accept no less than the full $10.6 million owed, plus interest and fees. The bank apparently has no problem letting a significant piece of real estate languish until conditions improve. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson in the movie Chinatown, “It’s only Ward 4.”

Chrostowski’s early bid reportedly came in closer to the appraised value of the property. BBC and New Village twice enlisted straw buyers who each bid $9 million: one in July and the other in October. Both offers were rejected.

While a deal that was almost two years in the making can hardly be called rushed, time has now become critical: disrepair and the tab for fixing it are increasing while the property languishes in receivership. The proponents of the legislation want to stop the clock and the further deterioration of the property.

There is also serious concern among many residents of the Shaker Square area that, like numerous properties in Ward 4, this core community asset could end up with an absentee owner who has no stake in the upward mobility of Southeast Cleveland. Often it takes years to compel property maintenance compliance from out-of-town owners who have no connection to the community, let alone to Cleveland.

The nonprofit partnership sought out a local developer to take over ownership, to no avail. It was then that New Village Corporation and BBC concluded, “this is our job” and got to work devising a strategy.

Admittedly, there are many people who are predisposed to see the legislation as a land grab by New Village Corporation and BBC. There is also the persistent belief that the Shaker Square proposal is a back door entry to subvert the will of the people by closing off Shaker Blvd as was proposed to much resistance in 2019.

Some community development corporations have failed to serve their constituents well and are deserving of suspicion. BBC is certainly not one of them, and not just because its charter specifies that 51% of its board of directors must be residents of its service area.

Notwithstanding a witches’ brew of suspicion, conspiracy theories and alternative facts, it seems clear that the community development corporations have no desire to hold Shaker Square any longer than necessary. New Village Corporation’s Hamilton Brown is adamant in her denial of both conceits. She unequivocally went on record with the assurance that should the legislation be adopted, the partners will not close off Shaker Blvd. As for the notion that New Village Corporation and/or BBC have designs on owning and operating a shopping center, that, too, defies reality. “We don’t have an appetite to own Shaker Square long term,” said Hamilton Brown. In fact, she says her board would not sign off on the project without presentation of an executable exit strategy.

Council President Blaine Griffin describes himself a big picture guy. While he has a deep understanding of Cleveland’s historically ward-centric model of governance, he also recognizes its limitations as the city navigates deeper into the 21^st Century.

Terri Hamilton Brown of New Village Corporation also sees the limitations of territorial thinking. “Wards are abstract constructs based on political subdivisions based on population,” she says, “not how people come together.” Echoing Griffin, she finds the either/or deflection straw man tactic to be hackneyed. She points to other cities that manage to serve both commerce and the poor. Like Griffin she rejects that it has to be “this or that. The city is too big. We are capable of doing both. The city will remain only poor if all we have are poverty programs."

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 Updated February 22, 2022 at 1055.