With the Med Mart there are no statements that Health Care will get better. Nor that it will benefit Cleveland locally other than business increase in secondary ways...like Taxi Drivers will be happy. I think another dimension to the Med Mart that needs to be explored is how the huge promotional arms these companies already have will want to use such a centralized service. They don't operate this way and I wonder why would they want to. These corporations already have huge promotional staff so do they like and forsee the benefits from such a facility. What are their business conclusions as to whether or not to build and why? Currently they are able to enter into the very exclusive places directly such as medical offices and board rooms, do they even need a showroom floor. Plus there are aspects of having a showroom floor that doesn't help out the field of medical services with the goal of getting any better. Yes they could do more forums and possibly info services but these tend to be manipulatively worthless when pushed together with sales presentations. Besides that they make a lot of money providing these directly back to the medical facilities. So why wouldn't the focus be on creating another facility that caters to the need to instruct and educate (which is obviously a sales tool in and of itself). But a convention hall based on such sales seems to move in the opposite direction that the industry has been taking...esp with the internet and related technology.

It's the alternative energy sector that is going to need showrooms where people can go and gawk at what needs to be put in front of them for their very future. The Medical industry has a very different path of creating very diverse apparatus and tools that get evaluated by peer process and trial, and I can't imagine huge crowds of people flocking to see them.

Fantastic article -  I'm going to contact them for their methogology.

These are the type of studies conducted around the world all the time that may be used to gather insight for how things actually are here, and how to change for the better.

How would this same study find NEO?!?! Probably the same type of conclusions... but we need proof.

One study that I think would be worthwhile is on the impact of Foundations on regional community development - I suspect the same type of sad conclusions would surface there, for here.

Disrupt IT

East West Gateway sounds like our NOACA, but with finance included. NOACA is another toothless agency that takes up the time of agency directors, municipal leaders and elected officials and staff, apparently to no good end. No cooperation (which seems to be a hallmark of NEO).

Clearly NEO is mired in shit because no one is asking the right questions, no one has the balls or the financial wherewithal (that'd be me) to bring a suit against the corrupt politicians.

The people who want to remain here eventually bend over ahead of them hoping for a dime, bowing and scraping. Others move away.

They all must go - every last conniving politician at the county and city (each one of the ridiculously huge number of them).

But they won't. They'll keep on crafting their shiny lapel pin projects with tax dollars and giving money to their crony buddies. 

Bellhops and cabbies and servers... is this the best we can do? Not good enough because convention business is OVER and no matter how much money we give to a private company, no matter how many of our sacrosanct public edifices we turn over to them (trips to Chicago by some bloggers or not), nothing worthwhile will come of this BILLION dollar investment. Just like St. Louis.