Advantage Cleveland Medical Mart!!!  :clap:  :clap:  :clap:

Advantage Cleveland Medical Mart!!!  :clap:  :clap:  :clap:

slow your roll son.  That only means NashVegas' mart has more hurdles and dysfunction than ours.

Ha ha ha!!!  Yea you're right, but I'll take less hurdles and dysfunction and call it an advantage.  :wink:

Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald forms medical mart oversight panel

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald has recruited a team of medical and civic leaders to keep tabs on the strategy of the medical mart under construction downtown.

 

FitzGerald wants the group to help recruit tenants and make sure the $465 million public project succeeds.

 

Despite recent statements by the project's general manager that the mart's focus has shifted toward continuing education, FitzGerald and panel members on Thursday insisted the building will remain a showplace of medical technology.

 

Yet no one will name a single committed tenant.

 

http://www.cleveland.com/cuyahoga-county/index.ssf/2011/10/cuyahoga_executive_compiles_medical_mart_oversight_panel.html

This is old news but in case anyone wants to read the "journalist's" take on the news from CleveObscene magazine.

 

http://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2011/10/24/nashvilles-med-mart-not-opening-in-2013

I haven't read the Scene since it was purchased by an out of town company and set up it's business model as a venue for Clevelanders to indulge in self-hatred.

"In case you forgot that Cleveland really sucks, just check it out in the Scene"

 

I did like the semi-back track when they said "possible change in business plan"

 

I am not a Scene admirer by any stretch (although they do have great restaurant news), but the last sentence from the above story had me laughing uncontrollably...

 

"This also means in some hospital basement somewhere some X-Ray technician is banging his head against a panel because he was really hoping Defibrilation Fest '13 would be held in a location where he could grab a tan in March and catch a country show. Sorry man, you might be heading our way."

 

Good sarcasm is good sarcasm.

 

 

^Gotta admit I chuckled at that line.

I think the "possible" preceding "change in business plan" was sarcastic as well.  If you're MMPI, you have to backtrack from those earlier quotes.  You just have to.  But no bells have been unrung... so MMPI's backtrack is still the story here, not Scene's.  MedCity points out that MMPI still has some explaining to do at their 11/9 meeting with the county.

 

Lots of interesting questions at this point.  According to the MedCity article, Nashville has announced six signed tenants so far, including a furniture company I'm familiar with.  Considering that construction here has been underway for some time, one might expect those tenants to come our way instead.  Or to have done so already.  At what point does Nashville give up because we won?  Why hasn't that happened yet?  I don't like the idea that a distant possibility in Nashville would still be competitive (at all) with a near-certainty here.  What if they do end up going forward, and they announce it around the time ours is set to open?  If I were them, that's how I'd do it.

 

The continued threat of competition reflects favorably on MMPI's original business model.  That's a good thing.  Mr. Casey's earlier comments obviously didn't advance our cause.  Unless... MMPI does a bang-up presentation next month and recaptures some mojo.  Perhaps announces a signing or two.  Or seven. 

 

If we're really doing this we need to win.  I'm hopeful to see what MMPI's offense looks like, and here it comes.  Go team!   

if Nashville tenants bail, they gotta go somewhere!

^ Depends on what they signed--they might be bound to Nashville, unless Nashville doesn't deliver. If bound, they can't bail and head north.

 

 

What we already knew.

 

 

*******************************************

 

In med marts competition, Nashville trails Cleveland

Published: Tuesday, October 25, 2011, 8:05 PM 

Laura Johnston, The Plain Dealer

 

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cuyahoga County's competitor in the race to build the nation's first medical mart has fallen behind.

 

Market Center Management had planned to break ground this year on a Medical Trade Center in Nashville, Tenn. But the company must secure leases for at least 60 percent of its 1.5 million square feet to get private financing, and that hasn't happened yet. So the company is likely to push back its opening at least to 2014.

 

"Although we have binding leases in place for space equal to half the entire Cleveland project, we will only break ground when we reach certain leasing levels," Market Center spokesman Cole Daugherty said Tuesday. "It's increasingly likely that a start date will happen next year, but we are fine with a longer runway if that helps ensure success."

 

 

Continued: http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2011/10/in_med_marts_competition_nashv.html

 

I have a hard time believing that the leases signed in Nashville would prevent a company from bailing and heading north if financing hasn't panned out and the construction schedule will be missed. If so, either they paid very little for the lease in Nashville to begin with (so it's a small loss to them if they bail now), they're a small company from the Nashville area and wouldn't consider coming to Cleveland anyway, or the company needs better legal counsel. If you're signing a long term lease for a significant amount of your marketing budget with a project this speculative and don't have any escape clause; I believe that is called a failure. It might cost them a few bucks to bail now, but compared to having a competitor displaying in Cleveland and them not having a display anywhere, I would think those companies will consider it, and will continue to think about it while Cleveland does construction and Nashville doesn't. If Nashville can get their financing in place by the time Cleveland opens, they'll probably prevent any/many companies from coming to Cleveland, if not, then we might get a few.

 

As a second thought though, if Nashville can't get financing, it's possible that some of the companies might decide that the whole medical mart concept is a failure and decide to continue marketing their products as they always have.

^It's hard to believe that the Nashville tenants don't have a straight-up termination right if their med mart people haven't broken ground and opened their center by times specified in their leases, which were drafted when the Cleveland process was well known. 

 

The funny thing is, I now wonder how much Cleveland's head start is really worth if it's only a year or two.  If MMPI is right that it will take years to build up a tenant base of high value product vendors to get their main business model off the ground (which is what they've said all along and is their explanation for all the loss leader, free, non-product leases that seem to be on tap so far), a lot of tenants may still wait to commit until both marts are built to see how things shake out.  So here's hoping the Nashville project just dies altogether and they find something else to do with their soon-to-be former convention center.

 

Probably not many want to publicly align themselves with this until the Dimora trial is over and there is no impropriety associated with it. That should be sometime next year?

Dang....  you all sound like the Nashville mart has CLE beat already without even having broken ground let alone get financing.

 

The Nashville development always sounded like a developer looking for a location.  They found one an now have to make Nashville seem like CLE.  Yes, they've signed a few leases and no doubt there are termiantion provisions.  The same lessees may even be at CLE too.  I'm sure MMPI has proprietary agreements/negotiations ongoing tht haven't been made public.  As I've said, the medical industry has an economy of scale in CLE that i don't think exists elsewhere.  Institutions/R&D/spin-off companies/venture capital - and this is beginning to grow exponentially.  If the concept doesn;t work in CLE, it ain't gonna fly in Nashville.

 

MMPI manages a furniture mart in NC (High Point).  There are other marts.  Hickory, NC to name one.  But none equal High Point.  We may see this with CLE also.  NAshville may have its mart someday, but i doubt it will be what CLE's is.  Whatever Nashville and the developer promise or say, its all empty if they don't build it.  Remember the NYC mart?  Where's that now??  They had leases signed too.  It was NYC!  They should have gotten financing without trying lol.  i don't know much about the Nashville developer but MMPI does this sort of thing for a living. 

 

 

It could also be that because this is a new concept, maybe prospective tenants want to see the actual space before committing to it.

There are a lot of us on here that have had involvement in major developments and "hot" stories which the media loves to continually report on.  How about a show of hands from those people who think the media accurately reported the facts on those stories throughout the process?  Personally, I can't tell you how many "get your facts straight" emails and letters I have sent to reporters.  Sometimes they just portray the facts in the wrong light or do not take into consideration or comprehend all of the factors.  But other times the stories are just flat out factually wrong.  I'm not sure what is going on here, but there is no way I am going to get all huffy puffy based on a few media reports.  Remember, the media, in a way, always had it in for this project.

There are a lot of us on here that have had involvement in major developments and "hot" stories which the media loves to continually report on.  How about a show of hands from those people who think the media accurately reported the facts on those stories throughout the process?  Personally, I can't tell you how many "get your facts straight" emails and letters I have sent to reporters.  Sometimes they just portray the facts in the wrong light or do not take into consideration or comprehend all of the factors.  But other times the stories are just flat out factually wrong.  I'm not sure what is going on here, but there is no way I am going to get all huffy puffy based on a few media reports.  Remember, the media, in a way, always had it in for this project.

 

I know what you mean.  One subject I do know about is aviation/flying.  The media (even the network "experts") get it wrong especially when it comes to accidents.  Based on the medias knowledge of flying/aviation, I certainly look with skepticism when it comes to other subjects.

As you should. Since I had to write an average of five articles per week for the Sun, I would spend maybe 1-2 days researching each story before writing it. Sometimes I was researching multiple stories, most with totally unrelated issues, at the same time and writing them one right after another on deadline day. Then I'd move on to the next stories. Sometimes if I was following the same story for a long time I might get to know something a little more about it, but most of my knowledge and information for most stories was superficial. The only way you're going to get to really know about an issue is to read articles for publications dealing with a specific industry or issue, such as aviation, or railroads, or specific medical issues, or certain kinds of law.

 

The world has gotten too complicated for most general media. If you want to know some basic headline news, like hearing that Muammar Gaddafi was killed, or that there was an earthquake in Turkey, or that Boeing finally launched the 787, then the general media is fine for that.

 

But if you want to know who killed Gaddafi or what that means for the region, read a publication specializing in Middle East security issues like http://www.mepc.org/journal. If you want to know what happened with the Turkey earthquake, try http://www.nationalgeographic.com/. And to learn about the launch of the Boeing 787, I'd probably turn to http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/.

 

As for the Medical Mart, where would I turn for news about that? Not the PD. I'd probably turn to http://www.medcitynews.com/

 

(see how I brought this back on topic? Truly magical, wasn't it...)

I wouldn't say the PD ever "had it in for this project" at all.  It turned on the county commissioners, sure, and one of their last acts was putting this through without a vote.  But the project itself has enjoyed mostly positive media coverage until that Scene article opened new issues with it.  Suddenly the PD is skeptical.  But local news stations still use shots of the construction site in their "things are looking up" montages.

 

If anyone believes the papers are flat out wrong about something-- anything-- we'd all love to know why.  Clear things up.  But why is the media always wrong, while local leaders and developers are always right?  I strongly doubt that this town's problems revolve around its newspapers.  But whenever they actually pose questions to power, like they're supposed to, they're cast as the bad guys.  They're the ones bringing us down.  I don't get that.  Ultimately they're not in charge.  If they're lying, or they're way off base, I have no problem with setting the record straight.  But we can't just dismiss every single unflattering report.       

^Wow...do I have to disagree with you that this project has received positive media coverage from the PD until most recently. 

^Wow...do I have to disagree with you that this project has received positive media coverage from the PD until most recently. 

 

So do I. Read the Cleveland News/Media Discussion from the beginning. It has a number of references to the PD's apparent dislike of the Medical Mart project -- which is probably the thread where most of this discussion belongs!!! ;)

^Wow...do I have to disagree with you that this project has received positive media coverage from the PD until most recently. 

I agree until MMPI selected the convention center site, then it went south

I agree until MMPI selected the convention center site, then it went south

 

Hmm, maybe that's because PD Publisher Terry Egger and Forest City Chairman Al Ratner are longtime sweethearts?

Yes, but we're rehashing old issues here.  Can we move on?

http://clevelandmedicalmart.com/about/live-web-cam/

When life (Medical Technology Companies unwilling to sing on) gives you lemons, you make lemonade.

 

http://www.clevescene.com/cleveland/take-your-pill/Content?oid=2752083

 

The new direction being taken by MMPI might not be a bad idea. If the medical mart project is unable to attract the right number of medical technology companies, then why not turn to medical continuing education. It makes sense: we have great medical institutions right in the city; they have great reputations. The Clinic, UH and VA could take up spaces and hold seminars, conferences that will attract people to downtown and the city. 

 

This might not have been the intent; but it is not a bad idea.

 

What do you think? 

I think we are getting a new convention center which we have needed for thirty years but nobody could come up with a plan to finance it until Tim Hagan tacked on the Med mart.  I could care less if it succeeds....we have a new convention center (for our use) and if the med marts does fly, so much the better.

When life (Medical Technology Companies unwilling to sing on) gives you lemons, you make lemonade.

 

http://www.clevescene.com/cleveland/take-your-pill/Content?oid=2752083

 

The new direction being taken by MMPI might not be a bad idea. If the medical mart project is unable to attract the right number of medical technology companies, then why not turn to medical continuing education. It makes sense: we have great medical institutions right in the city; they have great reputations. The Clinic, UH and VA could take up spaces and hold seminars, conferences that will attract people to downtown and the city. 

 

This might not have been the intent; but it is not a bad idea.

 

What do you think? 

 

MMPI operates some amazing venues all profit generators.  I think they know what their doing even if they are not communicating with the public at large.

Back to the construction:

It looks like structural steel has started at the Medical Mart.

 

http://www.clevelandmedicalmart.com/about/live-web-cam/

 

Back to the construction:

It looks like structural steel has started at the Medical Mart.

 

http://www.clevelandmedicalmart.com/about/live-web-cam/

 

They've been working on structural steel since mid September. They are making good progress though.

Just so I don't look like an idiot, yes I know there has been steel rising for the convention center.  But, there is steel rising for the Medical Mart building itself which is a new.

Just so I don't look like an idiot, yes I know there has been steel rising for the convention center.  But, there is steel rising for the Medical Mart building itself which is a new.

Oh, I missed that.

Some shots from today...

 

 

 

 

 

^Nice

Cool!  Seeing the roof take shape on Mall C reminds me what a neat engineering feat this is.  It's one thing to build a big column free space, but something else to cover that roof with heavy plantings and make it habitable.

What is the deal with the area holding the construction trailers?  I thought they would have moved those by now to demo the remander of Mall C.

Very nice.

I wonder if the "secret" tunnel from City Hall to the Convention Center facilities will remain intact when complete.

Poll: Public split on Nashville Medical Trade Center's prospects

 

Public opinion surrounding the proposed $250 million Nashville Medical Trade Center is largely split.

 

According to a nonscientific Nashville Business Journal poll, 47 percent of respondents believe the mart

will open in some fashion, while 48 percent believe the first-of-its-kind project will never come to fruition.

 

Earlier this month, the Dallas-based developers of the project, Market Center Management Co., said they would not begin construction this year, as they had said the needed to in order to meet a 2013 opening date.

 

http://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/blog/2011/11/poll-public-split-on-nashville.html

'while 48 percent believe the first-of-its-kind project will never come to fruition.'

 

Dont they mean "second of its kind" project?

We've come full circle.  Nothing to worry about... according to Falanga, MMPI just had some "miscommunications" about the essential nature of the project.

 

MMPI says med mart mission is still to showcase medical technology

 

http://www.cleveland.com/medicalmart/index.ssf/2011/11/mmpi_says_medical_mart_mission.html

 

 

We've come full circle.  Nothing to worry about... according to Falanga, MMPI just had some "miscommunications" about the essential nature of the project.

 

MMPI says med mart mission is still to showcase medical technology

 

http://www.cleveland.com/medicalmart/index.ssf/2011/11/mmpi_says_medical_mart_mission.html

 

 

 

Did that miscommunication occur before or after we voted on it?

We never voted on it.  The tax increase was instituted by the Cuyahoga County commissioners.

Ah, well. All better now.

Dream sheet :)

 

Med Mart Releases List of "Top-Tier Targets"

Posted by Vince Grzegorek on Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 12:30 PM

 

The Med Mart — which may sell hospital supplies, or offer continuing education, or become a big coffee shop where single doctors do speed dating — released its list of "top-tier targets" recently. These are the big name, big money companies that, if the Med Mart landed them, would lend an instant air of credibility to the project.

 

http://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2011/11/14/med-mart-releases-list-of-top-tier-targets

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

TARGETS: http://www.medcitynews.com/2011/11/cleveland-medical-marts-top-tier-tenant-targets/?edition=ohio

so they starting to put the roof back on the cc now? wow that is a significant progress point. those shots are just stunning.

Medical Mart structural steel is well above street level - from Lakeside Avenue:

 

That's an impressive photo with that backdrop representing 70 years of different commercial buildings.

From www.clevelandmedicalmart.com

 

 

 

Construction Update - 11/18/11

 

Project Updates :: November 18, 2011

 

The project continues in full swing with a focus over the next few months on structural steel erection and concrete work in the Medical Mart, Truck Dock, and Convention Center.

 

At Public Auditorium, demolition is complete and prep work continues for installation of replacement entry doors and construction of a new connection between Public Auditorium and the new Convention Center. Selective demolition of terrazzo slabs at the North Vestibule is in progress.  The new exterior doors have been ordered installation will start in December.

 

The construction team has completed installation of the 120-foot-long trusses forming the roof of the future ballroom north of Lakeside Avenue. Decking, detailing, and reinforcing installation continues on the future Mall C. The first two Mall level deck pours are scheduled to be completed this week.

 

Demolition work for the West 3rd Street Bridge deck replacement is 50% complete and will allow new deck construction to start in December. The ramp is scheduled to be out of service until February 2012, requiring all deliveries to the Convention Center to be routed to the temporary Lakeside ramp.

 

On the future Convention Center site, crews finished the final section for the 35-foot-high structural wall that stretches nearly 600 feet from Public Auditorium to the future Medical Mart. The adjacent St. Clair Avenue was repaved, striped and opened to two-lane traffic late Wednesday afternoon. Loading dock grade beams, mat slabs, and the new west wall concrete are complete.

 

Structural steel and metal deck erection are complete on the future East Concourse promenade and concrete deck pours are scheduled to conclude by the end of this week. Interior masonry work continues in the Exhibit Hall on the East Concourse.

 

Forming of the post-tensioned concrete slab over the truck dock has begun to allow for the first of three pours to start at the end of November.

 

On the Medical Mart site, the construction team reports that structural steel erection at the Medical Mart continues with two cranes from the East and West sides, working toward completion by the end of January, 2012.

 

Temporary heating prep work including piping and valves has continued to be put in place which will allow temperature sensitive activities to continue for the winter months ahead, carpenters will begin building temporary enclosures to capture the heat from gas torpedo heaters.

 

Fireproofing of steel underneath the future East Mall Drive will be starting in the new next few weeks.

 

The first nine Air Handlings for mechanical rooms on the East Concourse are scheduled to arrive by the end of November.

 

The construction team has made nearly 20 presentations on potential Construction Careers to 735 CMSD middle school students at 12 schools on Cleveland’s east, southeast, and west sides.  The program is a cooperative effort between the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, Hard Hatted Women, CEA, Turner, and MMPI and will resume after Thanksgiving break.

 

The Turner Medical Mart field office will bring in two new interns from the MC2 stem high school within the CMSD system, bringing the total intern count to eight since the project began in January, 2011.

 

MMPI served as a program sponsor and table host at the Northeast Ohio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce annual gala on November 4, 2011.

 

In the last month, MMPI has made presentations on community outreach to the United Pastors in Mission, Concord Baptist Church, and to nearly 100 attendees on November 16 at the East Cleveland Citywide Democratic Club Meeting at the Newbirth Complex. On the non-construction side, MMPI will present as part of “Your Changing Cleveland” to the APA Cleveland 23rd annual Planning and Zoning Workshop on November 18, 2011.