LlamaLawyer

In a recent speech, Jon Husted mentioned that there is a datacenter looking at moving to NE Ohio because there's the existing power generation capacity in place. He said the site they're looking at locating to has a 1 million square foot brand new building on it, and the datacenter company is considering just razing the brand new building and putting their datacenter in there because their need is so immediate. Anyone have an idea who or where this is?

I feel like this is sort of off topic, but I just have to point it out. Ohio voted for Trump by a smaller margin than TX or FL (or for that matter Iowa, or any other state other than the seven swing states). Sherrod Brown's race was much closer than Ted Cruz's. We are a bluer state than Texas. Just to reiterate because everyone is talking about Texas being a future swing state that is turning blue. We are bluer than Texas. We voted +12 Trump. That sounds like a crazy margin, but it's a fairly normal margin for a purple state in a dramatic election victory. In 1988, HW won by +11. Then Clinton won twice, including by six points in 1996. That's a 17 point swing in eight years. Literally the only thing that stops us from being competitive is the failure of the Ohio Democratic Party to get its act together. In my opinion, the party has run maybe three truly strong candidates in statewide races over the last 15 years. The party is basically nonfunctional. I tried to and couldn't get a Yes on Issue 1 yard sign. In last year's August election, it was like pulling teeth to find a No on 1 yard sign. This is low hanging fruit. The Ohio Republican Party on the other hand is very functional. Mike DeWine is a good governor. John Kasich was a good governor. Jon Husted is a good Lt. Governor, and he will probably be a good gubernatorial candidate in 2026. The Democrats need to stop pandering, develop a clear platform that doesn't consist of three hot button issues, and clearly reject radicalism. Most importantly, Democrats need more truly dynamic and inspiring candidates. This is a problem with the party at the national level, but it's even worse here in Ohio.

I agree with this. You gotta just roll your eyes at the "population projections" that are basically just drawing straight lines based on very recent trends. I am always reminded of this comic. Look, we control our own destiny. Fate is just what we allow to happen.

At a recent speech, Jon Husted mentioned that Ohio is going to announce soon a company that will be building $24 billion of data centers in the state. Anyone have info on this? That's an investment the size of Intel.

That is very good news. It removes the supermajority. When they drew the current ridiculous statehouse maps they drew a whole ton of D +1 districts that were effectively tossups. The consequence is that in a true blue wave election, democrats should be able to pick up lots of seats (but picking up a majority would be almost impossible). The 2026 elections and 2030 elections will be critical. Ohio is still very much a purple state, even if people don't see it that way. Trump won here by a smaller margin than he did in Texas or Florida or Iowa. Actually, I am pretty sure that besides the seven swing states, Ohio had the smallest margin of victory for Trump. Now sure, that margin was +12, but swings on that order of magnitude can easily happen over several years. in 1988, Ohio voted for HW Bush by a +11 margin. Then in 1992, Ohio voted Clinton by +2, and in 1996, Clinton by +6. That's a 17-point swing to the left in 8 years. Put simply, Ohio Democrats need to get their act together right now. Frankly, it's their fault that the state is deeply red, and only they can fix it. Some of the republican leaders in the General Assembly are pretty out there, but the executive branch is staffed with some very reasonable people cut from the same basic cloth as Mitt Romney. DeWine, Husted, Yost. They're all basically very normal and conservative politicians (I'm omitting LaRose, lol). In 2026, Husted probably runs for governor. He's a very normal, likeable guy and he would be a strong candidate. Democrats need to run very strong candidates at the top of the ticket to keep it competitive. This is something they have failed to do. In 2018, Sherrod Brown outran Cordray by 8 points. In 2022, Tim Ryan outran Nan Whaley by 9 points. Who controls the executive branch after the 2030 election will determine how redistricting proceeds.

Would be incredible to land this. Realistically, the best locations would be close to NASA Glenn or close to Wright Patterson. 5 million square feet is over 100 acres. I'm assuming that's just the building, not including parking etc. I would question whether there's a suitable site anywhere in Cuyahoga County. Medina or Lorain would be more likely.

I think the AG intervention is a pretty big deal. More from a political perspective than a legal perspective. The constitutionality of 9.67 is pretty unclear to me (I'm not a constitutional expert). It's not obvious to me that it is unconstitutional, but the arguments against it are very good and reasonable. It's the kind of case that could potentially go to the Supreme Court. We really haven't had many dormant commerce (dormant commerce is about states discriminating against or burdening interstate commerce essentially) cases in the last decade, and so I think the views of the four newest justices are to be determined to a large extent. But regardless, the state AG intervening doesn't necessarily change the basic legal picture in a meaningful way. But from a political perspective, the AG's intervention suggests that some substantial part of the Republican apparatus in Columbus may be seriously unhappy with what Jimmy is doing. It was not previously obvious to me that this is the case, since Jimmy is pretty aligned with Republicans generally. Yost has been a fixture in Columbus for more than a decade, and (while I don't know him personally) I think it's very unlikely that he's out on a limb here doing something that all his Republican colleagues in Columbus disagree with. This suggests Jimmy may have an uphill battle in terms of getting the state to contribute to funding for Brook Park--which is a big deal in my mind.

As I reflect, it looks like other midsized cities are missing. The BoA numbers don't include Salt Lake City or Pittsburgh or Kansas City for example. I don't know how they picked the cities, but it's clearly just a sample, not a full list.

The Bank of America numbers *feel* more real to me than the census estimates. At least, I feel that there has been a slow but noticeable increase in general busy-ness in the east side suburbs over the last couple years. This is just a general vibe check based on things like, how long do I have to wait in lines for carryout, how much traffic is there, how much foot traffic is there, etc. I'm curious why Cincinnati isn't on this chart and how it would stack up. Also, I think it will be interesting to see how Columbus's continued growth affects Cleveland going forward. I do expect Columbus to maintain a much higher rate of growth than us due to massive international and interstate migration. Columbus is "getting expensive" (I say that with quotes because it's really not right now), but in a few years with continued growth like this, it's pretty plausible to me that it could actually become pretty expensive--not in a LA or New York kind of way, but perhaps in a Denver kind of way. I wonder as the cost of living differential between Cleveland and Columbus continues to grow if/when the point will come that the net flow of migration is from Columbus to Cleveland as opposed to the other way around. There are obviously a lot of young adults who grew up in Cleveland and have parents there but live in Columbus now.

I love every part of this plan (concept of a plan? 😜). I've said before that Brook Park is not the end of the world, and I really believe it. But seeing this planned out strengthens my belief that Burke is an obviously superior location from a land use and urban planning standpoint. The plan looks like an actually good version of Soldier Field. How many other stadiums are walking distance to water, walking distance to museums, walking distance to downtown, surrounded by a ballpark district, and walking distance to a huge park? I also love the vision for the greenspace. I truly believe the best use (for now) for the majority of Burke is to just plant grass and trees, put in a few walking trails and picnic benches and leave it at that. It is relatively cheap and leaves the door open to other uses later. And in the meantime it creates a relatively wild and forested urban park, which is something many big cities already have, like Washington Park in Portland or Mount Sutro in San Francisco, or Griffith Park in LA. I am not terribly optimistic about these plans coming to pass, but I do have this wild fantasy that maybe Bibb and Haslam have been playing 4-d checkers and the public dispute is an attempt to create leverage so that Burke can be shut down in five years instead of twelve. I really don't think that's what's happening, but I would love to be wrong.

They’re just extrapolating the current rate of change forward, right? If so, big whoop. We know which counties are gaining / losing, and producing a report on “what if everything keeps happening just like it is now for 30 years” doesn’t tell you much.

https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/oh_cleveland_msa.htm September BLS numbers look pretty good. New all-time peak in the Eds/Meds category. Overall numbers are approaching the 2019 pre-covid peak. At this rate, God willing, we'll finally hit a new peak next summer.

If Jimmy does that, it would be completely stupid in my opinion. It's like getting into an argument with your spouse about whether to move and saying "well if we can't agree, I'll file for divorce." It's the kind of "leverage" that sows permanent seeds of distrust and degrades your bargaining position in the long term.

Wow, we have some kind of weird inferiority complex about team relocations because it happened once in the 90s, once in the 40s, and once in a movie. The Browns moving to Brook Park is not remotely the same as moving to Baltimore. The Browns are not moving; the Guardians are not moving; the Cavs are not moving. Only in our own minds are we near the top of the list of cities that are likely to lose a franchise. All three of our teams have very decent attendance. NFL: NBA: MLB:

I'm actually kind of shocked/skeptical on this and don't know how they calculate it. No cities in upstate NY? Cincinnati beats out both Chicago and Milwaukee? Every city on the list seems like a great place to be, but hard for me to believe that's actually the top 10.

I think this is totally correct. There are three unleased spaces. One is 4,000 sq. ft., but the other two are only about 1,200 each. It seems very reasonable to be patient and cautious about the 4,000 sq. ft. space, but the other two spaces are so small, they ought to be less risk averse for them.

I get the impression that the developer is being very patient about finding long-term stable tenants. They probably don’t want some random startup coffee shop that could fail in 18 months.

I've wondered for a while if that's part of what's going on behind the scenes. If Jimmy is in the right small suburb, he's basically King Kong and has so much leverage that no local official can (or would be willing to) get in his way. In Cleveland, there's a strong mayor and city council that will always be breathing down his neck.

Well, not that long ago, the area north of the stadium was full of warehouses. I've candidly never understood the argument that the stadium gets in way of properly utilizing the lakefront, because there are about 20 developable acres north of it. As you can see from the renders the city put together, you could have a pretty nice little district developed north of the stadium without moving it.

I agree with all of this too, except that I think one can forget that not all of Burke is really "lakefront land." I don't think anyone would call Battery Park "lakefront land," But the big neon letters that say "Battery Park" are actually only 300 yards from the water, not the sand, but the water, at Edgewater. See below: The distance from the waterfront to the interstate measuring across Burke is almost 600 meters. See below. And the above is the part of Burke that's closest to downtown. If you go farther east, there are places where the lakefront on Burke is more than 700 meters from the highway. So I think there are lots of potential layouts where fit a stadium plus tons of parking onto Burke without jeopardizing any of the "lakefront."

As I've reflected more on the Browns' move, I continue to believe that the Brook Park location is fine, but that a Burke location would be better overall. Jimmy's statement specifically calls out the idea of using Burke and basically suggested his only problem with the idea is the timeline. I hope that if Bibb and Ronayne really want Burke closed anyway (which it seems like they do) and if Jimmy would be interested in the space assuming it's ready soon enough (which it seems like he is) that the administration does some *serious* work with Mayor Pete and others to see what's possible. Because the reasons that closing Burke should take 10 years are frankly BS. And I mean that seriously. They are completely made up reasons. Not by the administration mind you, but by other people. The only reason that it would take 10 years to close Burke instead of, say, 2 or 3 is that a few people decided it should be that way. If the runways at Burke spontaneously turned into cheese, nobody would get hurt. No planes would fall out of the sky. Schedules would be disrupted for several weeks, not several months. People would adjust and everything would be fine. And that's assuming and instantaneous change with no time to plan. The reason the administration can't just shut down the money-pit airport is 99% because of BS red tape, not any real world limitations. Something like this (on a much smaller scale) came up a week ago when Elon Musk was trying to deliver Starlink to North Carolina areas affected by the hurricane. Some obscure regulation or policy said he couldn't do it. He got pissed, called up Mayor Pete, and *poof* problem solved, now Starlink gets delivered. So, as I said above, I think moving to Brook Park is not the end of the world. But if Mayor Bibb, Sherrod Brown, and Chris Ronayne really want the Browns to stay downtown, I hope, *hope* they are having some intense conversations with Mayor Pete and others because, truly, all it would take to make this happen is for a few motivated people to say "these rules suck; let's make some new rules." Those motivated people may have to include congresspeople and senators. But if Bibb, Brown, and Ronayne really mean what they're saying, they should work to get it done.

I would want to see numbers of how much Haslam can theoretically get from a TIF district in Brook Park. That's basically county money, not city money. Cleveland already has a TIF District that includes the area the stadium occupies, and it's pretty clear they are NOT willing to just write a blank check giving Haslam all the money he wants from the TIF district. The deadline to adopt a TIF ordinance is the end of this year. I haven't looked at the law in a while and don't remember exactly how it works, but could Brook Park theoretically just designate its entire area as a TIF district and give all the money (again, it's mostly county money) to the Haslams? If so, there could be a lot of money at play here.

To be fair, it's not really a $2.5 billion investment by Haslam that's being contemplated. It's a $1.2 billion investment by Haslam, plus about $1.2 billion of Ohio taxpayer money, plus about $1.2 billion in money from whatever investors are going to build out the ballpark village. I agree that the Browns moving to Brookpark is not likely to be a huge economic blow for the city, and what Haslam is doing is not nearly the same as what Model did. But I completely understand why Bibb is taking the position he is, and I think it's very smart. The city made a very reasonable offer, which Haslam rejected, and Bibb is obviously not pulling punches but is also leaving the door open. Bibb is coming out with all of this two hours before the Guardians play in front of a national audience, and I think there's a good chance this gets talked about more as a result. Haslam needs a bunch of money from other people to get a new stadium done. So to the extent Bibb can add credence to the (very justified) notion that Jimmy H is a less-than-fully-honest counterparty for a transaction, that puts a lot of pressure on the Browns and therefore increases the chance that the Brookpark deal falls apart and the Browns have to stay in Cleveland. That's clearly what Bibb wants, and I'm not sure it will happen in any event, but this seems like the approach most likely to get it.

Well there is definitely a difference between refugee and immigrant, with refugee being a subset of immigrant. Still, lots of Ukrainians would qualify for refugee status, so I'm wondering why more aren't under that category. There's a special category for Ukrainians, but by the same token, there's a special category for Afghans, and they're counted.

https://www.cleveland.com/news/2024/10/cleveland-area-is-home-to-nearly-a-third-of-the-refugees-who-came-to-ohio-in-the-last-year.html Interesting article. The number for Cleveland proper is even higher than I would have expected. For context, if Cleveland added exactly this number of refugees every year for a decade (assuming no other net population change) it would represent 3.6% population growth over the decade. I'm a little surprised about there only being 54 Ukrainians listed for the entire state of Ohio. That feels significantly too low. Are most arrivals coming through some means that doesn't register on this count? @KJP any thoughts?