Cleveland Plans to Flatten the Flats

The site of Cleveland’s first industry, a corn-alcohol contraption producing 2 quarts a day in the late-eighteenth century, is now the site of one of the most clear-cut abuses of eminent domain nationwide.  Yet, it is industry, city officials say, that developer Scott Wolstein’s envisioned $230-million residential and commercial redevelopment project, including a luxury boat marina, will spark—despite the fact that the City is kicking out thriving businesses against the will of the owners.[1]

Slated to seize and bulldoze 21 properties on the east bank of the Flats—a section of Cleveland along the Cuyahoga River—the proposed project depends on $87-million in public subsidies from federal, state and local grants.[2]  This week, the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority confirmed its intent to engage in eminent domain abuse by voting to condemn any property for which so-called negotiations fail.[3]  The Cleveland City Council also gave its stamp of approval for the project and the use of eminent domain to acquire properties within the designated redevelopment area.[4]  But small business owners in the area say they want to keep their slices of the American Dream.

Since 1960, Carl Barricelli has accumulated 30 acres of riverfront land for his family-owned Ontario Stone Corp, an aggregate supplier of stone for Cleveland’s parks, among other customers.  The City’s threats to condemn his property are particularly damaging because ships unload materials for his business in the area the developer plans to take.  Tony George, who owns several buildings on the East Bank including the Heaven & Earth dance clubs, passionately maintains that despite the City’s claims, business is not dead—the area simply attracts a predominantly nighttime clientele.[5]  Samsel Supply owner Mike Samsel said, “We’d lose our business.  We’d be out of business.  We’d lose 50 jobs right off the bat.”[6]  Samsel sells tools and hardware to its clientele.

In October 2005, the City designated the Flats as “blighted,” a designation easily abused under Ohio’s notoriously egregious urban renewal laws and Cleveland’s own “blight” statutes.  Ordinary neighborhoods can be considered “blighted” under the state’s broad and sweeping laws that define “blight.”  In Lakewood, for example, City officials designated beautiful homes as “blighted” because many of them did not have two full bathrooms, three bedrooms and two-car garages.  That’s why it’s not surprising that City inspectors say 19 of the 23 buildings in the Flats area are in “substandard” condition, as are 3 of the 7 parking lots.  The City is ignoring that many of the buildings are historic, and home to bustling mom-and-pop businesses.

Wolstein, to whom the City essentially has rented its eminent domain powers, made the situation as clear as it is immoral.  He said, “We’ll negotiate with [the owners] and see if we can work it out, and if we can’t, [we can] resort to eminent domain.”  In other words, he will simply take people’s property if they do not agree to sell.  Not to mention the fact that Wolstein already owns approximately 70 percent of the proposed 20-acre development site—more than enough land to build.[7]

The situation in the Flats brings attention to the unholy alliance between land-hungry developers and tax-hungry city officials.  The question is not whether development has the potential to bring new energy to the historic neighborhood; it is whether that possibility is reason enough to take people’s beloved homes and businesses from them through the government’s power of eminent domain.  The answer, in moral and constitutional terms, is unambiguously no.  That is why it is particularly important for Ohio to enact eminent domain reform that tackles the state’s broad and sweeping blight language and protects homes, businesses, places of worship and farms from being taken for private profit. 

Fortunately, many of the property owners facing the government’s wrecking ball are standing up for their fundamental right to keep what they already rightfully own.  After all, the Flats was built through private investment without governmental interference—and it is sure to continue if the government backs down from its abuse of eminent domain.