City Hall has put a number on the empty drug store on West Boulevard that’s become a political hot potato. In mid-February, the City of Cleveland sent what it called a non-binding letter of intent to negotiate for the property, starting at $725,000.
The vacant building near Cudell Park has turned into a rallying cry for neighborhood activists and council candidates, causing headaches for City Council. Initially, the owner sought a zoning variance to build a gas station but met opposition from the Board of Zoning Appeals.
Then Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration stepped in with the idea of buying the land and building a new firehouse. Council Member Danny Kelly, who represents the area, is supportive.
The city’s letter is dated Feb. 12. Signal Cleveland obtained the letter through a public records request.
The $725,000 figure matches what the current owner, Shaker Madison LLC, agreed to pay in late 2023, records show. According to a purchase statement that outlined the deal, Shaker Madison paid $575,000 for the real estate plus another $150,000.
City Hall is willing to go $300,000 higher if Shaker Madison can document that it paid that much for personal property on the site, according to the letter. That would bring the total amount up to $1 million.
Earlier this month, Cleveland Commissioner of Real Estate Susanne DeGennaro told City Council that there was no purchase agreement for the site.
Samir Mohammad, who worked with Shaker Madison on its zoning appeal, argued that the city’s letter wasn’t a real offer. The owner is still waiting on the zoning change at the site. Mohammad said the zoning board “railroaded” the owner by denying the change. (An appeal is pending in common pleas court.) Legislation to alter the zoning has been introduced before City Council, but hasn’t received a vote.
“There’s been really no real negotiations or no offers until after the zoning change,” Mohammad told Signal Cleveland.
Polensek unleashed
If you’re a public commenter planning to hurl verbal sticks and stones during a Cleveland City Council meeting, be ready to duck when council returns fire.
Darrell Houston, who owns a Lee-Harvard car wash, discovered that when he took aim at Ward 8’s Michael Polensek two weeks ago.
“It’s time for you to retire, bruh,” he told Polensek, who was first elected in 1977. “You don’t have a clue to what’s going on in the community at all.”
Then he said that the Collinwood council member would end up with Basheer Jones, the former council member who was sentenced to prison time this year. (Houston offered no evidence to back up his accusation. In a follow-up interview, he declined to go into detail about the comment.)
Polensek had to wait until the end of the meeting an hour later to swing back. He called Houston a “punk ass.”
That was not the last word. Houston addressed a four-page letter to Council President Blaine Griffin to protest the name-calling. At the next council meeting, Houston told council that a taxpaying citizen shouldn’t be called anything other than his name.
Polensek spoke again, saying that he was fed up with many of the comments he had been hearing week after week. He sounded like a man relieved of his burdens.
“I was emancipated last week,” he said. “I was set free. And I’m not taking nothing no more from nobody. Nobody.”
Just before the meeting, he said, he spoke on the phone with George Forbes. As council president, Forbes was no stranger to salty language during the less restrained days of the 1970s and 1980s.
Polensek said Forbes reminded him that he had legislative immunity, the idea that lawmakers can’t be sued for what they say during a legislative session. That meant that he didn’t have to sit back and take accusations and “libelous comments” from others, he said.
“We know that the characters that are out here want to rip us apart, tear us apart, divide us. They’re a minority, a clear minority. They don’t represent squat in this city,” Polensek told his colleagues. “And remember, my brothers and sisters: We have legislative immunity. Don’t take it. We ain’t taking it no more.”
If there’s one thing Houston and Polensek have in common, it’s this: Both men say that people at City Hall have applauded them for taking the microphone.
DigitalC passes City Hall audit
Broadband nonprofit DigitalC emerged unscathed from a City of Cleveland audit that double-checked the company’s internet sign-up numbers.
By the end of 2024, the nonprofit had installed internet at 2,801 households, according to a memo prepared by the city’s internal auditor, Natasha Brandt. The audit did find data entry errors in other numbers prepared by DigitalC as part of its $20 million city contract but no intentional skewing of figures.
That last point is important because Brandt’s office received a complaint from former DigitalC employees about the nonprofit’s numbers, according to the memo. Brandt told City Council this month that she met with the former employees about the complaint. In the end, the audit did not find anything amiss.
Auditors “did not find any evidence of fraudulent installations in the data provided by DigitalC to verify the complaint,” the memo said.
The nonprofit had signed up more than 3,900 households by the end of March and has since crossed the 4,000 mark. Even Ward 13’s Kris Harsh — who didn’t want the city to pay DigitalC until after the audit — sounded pleased.
“Contrary to anyone’s opinion, I’m very excited to see this progress,” he said. “This is exactly the type of ramping up that we wanted to see.”
Discovered by Documenters: Metroparks billboards
The Cleveland Metroparks scored years of free advertising in a long-running conflict over a billboard beside I-480. Since 2010, there’s been a billboard on property near the Rocky River Reservation and Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport.
But a Metroparks deed restriction prohibits advertising on the land. After a lawsuit threat, the parks system, Clear Channel and the property owner struck a deal to relocate the billboard on the property and give the parks some ad space.
That deal came up for renewal this month.
The Metroparks and the new billboard operator, Lamar Advertising, hammered out a 15-year deal that will give the parks almost $2.2 million in free ads until 2040. Read Documenter Tucker Handley’s notes here.
