CAN WE GET OUT OF THE CONVENTION BUSINESS?

Submitted by Roldo on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 08:27.

The latest figures show that the Cuyahoga County Commissioners quarter percent increase of the sales tax has produced $61,853,863 for the Medical Mart and Convention Center. Oh boy.

 

Is it too late to get out of the boondoggle? We’d still have the dough. Think of what other good it might do for our community. That’s $61.8 million sitting around.

 

The word continues to be that the convention business isn’t a successful place for the investments of communities. Just as we’re adding to the problem.

 

 

An article in Next American Cities, a national publication seeking solutions to improve U. S. cities, gives a balanced but “thumbs down” assessment of the rush to build new convention centers.

 

“At any given moment, the average American convention center is buzzing with accountants, motivational speakers, comic book collectors and other hordes of professional and enthusiasts – adding up to 12,000 events a year. As the demand for space in which to buy, sell, make deals and exchange information has boomed, formerly modest meeting halls have ballooned into space that could swallow a typical Wal-Mart whole,” writes Josh Stephens. The article is entitled “Unconventional Thinking – Why Cities Shouldn’t Buy into the Convention Center Economy.”

 

But here comes the rub. He goes on to write: “Since 1993 American cities have invested more than $23 billion in ever-larger boxes that now number more than 320, and since 2000 the country’s total convention space has increased by 25 percent to nearly 90 million square feet, which collectively eclipses the commercial space in all but two of America’s largest central business district.

 

 

Too much space for too little use.  So why do we add to it?

 

“The story of convention centers is that, for all cities do to distinguish themselves, the convention industry treats cities not as places but rather as spaces – fungible, interchangeable and characterless. Even though convention centers are marketed with Platonic conception of cities (palm trees, skyscrapers, longhorns, slot machines), the convention economic is one of placelessness.

 

Yes, any old box will do. So why come to Cleveland? For medical products?

 

He writes: “Convention center do not respond to market signals quiet so rationally. With fixed footprints, they generally cannot downsize, and as wholly-owned subsidiaries of urban America, they cannot outsource. Their chief solution, then, is to expand. A 420,000-square-foot expansion of Houston’s George R. Brown Center was projected to yield nearly 600,000 room-nights in 2005, but a 2006 audit found that it was generating roughly 220,000 annual room-nights. In 2003 Washington D. C. completed an $850-million expansion, as of 2007 annual convention-related hotel bookings were roughly 25 percent below projections, and the convention center’s 2007 loss was estimated at $22-million. In cities from Los Angeles to Boston to Baltimore, the story is much the same. The current economic crisis is, of course, bound to make matters worse.”

 

Yes, promises of gold are easy. Finding the gold, not so much.

 

Can we stop our train wreck? No, they’re speeding it up.

 

For the full story go here: http://americancity.org/magazine/article/unconventional-thinking/

 

 

 

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Medcity News WCPN I do not

Submitted by None on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 15:07.

Medcity News

WCPN

I do not know what to say; maybe this could help: http://www.medicalmanufacturingsummit.com/

I have a few ideas to book events at the facility, I have not done any work in a while maybe it time again for that? There is literally a smorgasbord of opportunities.

At this point I suggest that an advisory/facilitating body be built around that facility, which should include heads of the local hospitals and universities. It should also have representation of continental airlines and RTA, ODOT, Ohio Board of Regents  as well.

The region truly does need to have a state medical school and the facility at Rootstown NEOUCOM should be relocated here.

 

 

http://www.neoucom.edu/

Metro needs to look close at it roll in community based health care and then make alignments with academia in that realm. Teaching and practicum, in a cost effective manor. It all needs to be in alignment in the region as for community care and then specialty care that reaches beyond the local market.

The State needs to stop attempting to please everyone, it needs to focus on rebuilding the major metropolis and now.

Stop calling it a silver bullet stop thinking of it that way, build around and off it. It is about all the aspect of health care all working synergistically and pragmatically.

If anything people should be looking at getting products manufactured here, the local market could be using local products. They need to discus one local aggregate purchasing system and then examine it for local production and then international marketing through the convention center.

They could find and define a certain area and then offer incentives to manufacture health care product there. That’s about building in low cost models to aid in reducing health care overall costs. Low wages and low cost, healthcare, low cost housing….or you can just let foreign nations do it and pay all the bill for people doing nothing!

It is about building a local market that is sustainable and then selling it as a model to others, and also the products and staffing as well. The system all aspects and all products an entire system for a regional population of a metropolitan area. A training and supply center.

I agree with your approach

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 15:55.

I like the plan to bring life and activity to the old convention center and Mall, and much prefer this to what has been planned for downtown in my memory, and certainly over what was going on for years, wasting money on a bogus Convention Bureau that wasn't trying to market Cleveland to the world, with plans for the free film studio in our convention center, and the certainty of eventually having to pay for something similar somewhere downtown, and deal with the aging convention center/mall dead zone... there are costs to develop this, but there were opportunity costs to not reinventing that aborted area of downtown, and future costs certainly for addressing failing facility and infrastructure issues, that are worse.

If we had better economic analysts and leadership in town, we could build a better economic model pro and con and understand and maximize what we are getting for our money. The lack of that capability is a major weakness of this community and region. But, it is not too late to build a model for measuring the impact of planned developments going forward, and to benchmark them relative to known data now and from the past.

Our #1 core industries here now are embedded in healthcare and related clusters, so the MedCon does make sense to me, if we do exactly what Oengus suggests and leverage every opportunity for synergy and community benefit. I could see a medical school in the old Cleveland School Admin building, right by the MedCon, and figure out how they fit together, with all the other medical school and healthcare powerhouses in town. Let's see some doctors downtown, for a change.

I'm very interested in seeing the healthcare industry scale in unique, diverse ways here as I see this as the best place in the world to create the core medical information systems that will reinvent healthcare, improve the human condition and the planet, and transform our global economy.

To me, it's all about the IT.

Disrupt IT

Bringing people in, what are

Submitted by None on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 17:44.

Bringing people in, what are you bringing them here for?

The region needs to take good hard look at itself, what can make the region a center for health care manufacturing?

That’s about costs of doing business here, how does it compare and what are the soft costs and what are the hard costs.

I could go on and on about the relativity of wages and the costs of living. The goal of the best healthcare for less is related to having a very low cost of living.

Aggregate purchasing and then incentives locally, the price we pay and then the price outside of the region. Does that make sense offering incentives to manufacture with contracts to purchase at a discounted price. Assimilating everyone into one systems, much like Wal-Mart does. But it has to be done locally thats tough because internationally we are not that competitive. We may be able to get control of product designs but we need to be able to offer cost effective products can they be made locally?

The profit or margin on manufacturing should go back to research and development. That what the CCF does, it feeds it back to keep updating the system. However in manufacturing it is about improving the product and researching better ways, thats biomedical research.

That’s what I would like to book is lecture series at the convention center, how do other socialized systems address these and other issues. Compare and contrast processes across systems.

I would also like to see an an initiative for a first medical school or nursing school with international training standards.   The clinic is already setting up hospitals in other countries.

It all has to match up in propensity, the costs do, what can be offered and the costs. Having low cost communities offers that, not high priced inflating values. It is about affordable sustainable communities. Practical and highly desirable, affordability in a open market system in order to reduce the inherient cost of the supply chain.

That’s why we also need a state college of architectural design, that is all about affordable designs that are highly sustainable and cost effective.

What happened to the board of regents and the big plan for the universities? ZZZZZ?