Frank Porter Jr. Interview, 9 August 2007

Abstract

Frank Porter Jr., of Central Cadillac-Hummer, discusses the history and role of the company in Cleveland's Midtown Corridor. He discusses the company's origins, the changing environment around the company, and its relationship with Midtown Cleveland Inc. Other topics include the debate over the configuration of the Innerbelt Freeway, the impact of the automotive industry on the area, accomplishments of Midtown Cleveland, and the impact of the Euclid Corridor Transportation Project on the Midtown area. Porter also recalls his childhood memories of the Cleveland area.

Interviewee

Porter Jr., Frank (interviewee)

Interviewer

Bell, Erin (interviewer)

Project

Midtown Cleveland

Date

8-9-2007

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

76 minutes

Recommended Citation

"Frank Porter Jr. Interview, 9 August 2007" (2007). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 910015.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/303

Related Resources

Midtown Cleveland @ Cleveland Voices

Transcript

Erin Bell [00:00:00] This is Erin Bell. I’m here with Frank Porter Jr. of Central Hummer Cadillac. Today is August 9. Just go ahead by stating your name, date of birth, and place of birth.

Frank Porter Jr. [00:00:11] Okay. My name is Frank Porter. It’s Frank H. Porter Jr. I was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on 1–10–45. So I’m 62 years old.

Erin Bell [00:00:28] I meant to ask you this before the interview started. Are you related to the former county engineer?

Frank Porter Jr. [00:00:33] No way. We’re not related in any way, shape, or form.

Erin Bell [00:00:36] I couldn’t remember what his first name was, but I thought it was.

Frank Porter Jr. [00:00:39] His name was Albert, and he went to jail, and he has no relationship.

Erin Bell [00:00:45] I didn’t know that. Okay. So I read recently in Crain’s about some family land holdings you guys had in the eastern suburbs that you were developing. Can you tell me about those lands? They said it was a historic plot of land.

Frank Porter Jr. [00:01:02] Actually, this goes back, and since we’re talking about Euclid Avenue, this goes back a lot of years. My grandfather started in the automobile business with central Chevrolet, which was at around 70th and Euclid Avenue. And he started a Chevrolet store with the help of Motors Holding, which was the financing arm of General Motors, just one day before the stock market crashed. And talk about perfect timing. And he worked very hard and was very diligent and built the company up to be one of the largest Chevrolet dealers in the state of Ohio, eventually. And then they paid off General Motors from the money that he borrowed from them. And he was developing a used car lot. This actually probably goes after World War Two. He and my father were in business then together at the Chevrolet store. Two things happened. One, they were offered an opportunity to become a Cadillac distributor, because the current distributor, when they weren’t producing cars anymore during the war, said that he didn’t want to be in the business. And so they took over the servicing of all Cadillac automobiles out of kind of the back end of their Chevrolet shop, which was its 70th and Carnegie, on 70th Street between Carnegie and Euclid. And then after the war was over, General Motors then came back to them and said, if you would build a new state of the art showroom, we will allow you to keep this distributorship. So that was when they built the facility that we are still in, at 2801 Carnegie Avenue. But the other thing that occurred, there was a piece of land near the Chevrolet store, and they wanted to procure it. And the guy that owned it said, well, I’ll sell it to you as long as you also buy a piece of ground that I’ve got way out in the country on the corner of Chagrin Boulevard and Warrensville Center, right where route eight comes in. And so they. That was the only way that he would sell the property. So they ended up buying this used car lot, but they also ended up with this piece of property way out in the sticks. And that eventually, then they developed that and built a. My dad built a. An eleven story office building on that piece of ground called Tower East. But it’s interesting, that was the way that they ended up with that piece of ground in the middle of nowhere. So does that answer the question, or. It’s kind of going around the block. Sorry.

Erin Bell [00:04:20] No, that’s fine. I guess I was really wondering why Craine’s referred to it as a historic piece of land. I was wondering if there was some kind of.

Frank Porter Jr. [00:04:33] No, actually. All right. There’s another piece of land that we also owned out at I-271 and Chagrin. And that was historic in that it was part of the Van Sweringens Holdings. And the Van Sweringen Company was the company that developed the Terminal Tower, much of Shaker Heights and Pepper Pike and Beachwood. They laid out the street grids for a lot of those communities back - this would have been back in the very early twenties or even longer ago than that. So they were in the railroad business, but they were also in the land business. And this was the - they met ill terms with the stock market crashing, and their fortunes kind of disintegrated, and they ended up. Actually, the land holding company ended up with some parcels that they had not sold, and they were sold at auction to pay for the taxes, the real estate taxes, which were way past due. And my father bought those parcels, bought that entire group of land back in the early fifties. And the large parcel was partially in Pepper Pike, partially in Beachwood. And this was before 271 went through. It was probably about 400 acres. No, probably about 300 acres. And the freeway came through and took close to 200 acres of it. There was 100 acres left in Pepper Pike, and there was about 50 acres left in Beechwood. And the parcel in Pepper Pike we tried to develop for many, many years and had a long extended lawsuit with the city of Pepper Pike because they didn’t want us to build what we thought was the highest and best use for the property. And we also ended up having to have a lawsuit with the city of Beechwood on the other side, trying to develop some commercial activity. We won the lawsuit with Beachwood, and by the time we had won it, the project that we wanted to do had gone away. We also built an office building there, Enterprise Place. And that’s actually the residue of that property, is where we have just finished building a Hummer dealership and are operating a Hummer dealership. And there’s about 15 more acres to the that we’re developing there now. On the other side of the road in Pepper Pike, there was 100 acres. And that ended up going through 22 years of lawsuit. And we finally, in the Ohio Supreme Court, after winning a number of lower court decisions, were overruled very politically. So we sold that property to Forest City, and that’s where Sterling Lakes is now under construction.

Erin Bell [00:07:57] What was Pepper Pike’s objection? What was the problem with your plans? According to them?

Frank Porter Jr. [00:08:04] Pepper Pike - it was a one acre - Pepper Pike was developed with wells and septic systems. And because of that, there was a one-acre minimum that that was needed to build a house on. Because of the proximity of the freeway and because of a number of reasons, we needed city water and we needed city sewers to be able to do a project on this hundred acres. And it was our contention that because of that, we needed a lot more density than what one acre would allow. And so we needed to have somewhere in the neighborhood of close to three families per acre versus one family per acre. So that was what this lawsuit was over that. And we felt that you couldn’t develop it all in housing. You needed some commercial, you needed some multi connected town housing kinds of things, and then single family.

Erin Bell [00:09:19] Let’s go back and talk about Central Cadillac, and could you basically just kind of give me a rundown, some dates where it begins, some important things in the middle up to the present?

Frank Porter Jr. [00:09:35] And we’re now talking about Central Cadillac.

Erin Bell [00:09:37] Yes.

Frank Porter Jr. [00:09:37] Okay. Well, as I mentioned earlier, we have been a Cadillac dealer for this year. It’ll be 65 years. I’m the third generation. My grandfather was the original dealer. And we started originally at 70th and Euclid Avenue, across from the Chevrolet store that my grandfather owned. And this would be on the south side of Euclid Avenue. And then after the war, in 1949, we built the building that is located now at 2801 Carnegie. That was the latest state of the art facility. And because we were a distributor and distributed cars to really all the other Cadillac dealers in northeastern Ohio, we built a pretty good sized facility that has served us well over the years as the business has grown shrunk and grown and shrunk, as is typical, I guess, in the automotive business. But that was really the first brand new facility that was built after the war. And it was well engineered and well organized to the point that the building still serves us very well. It has gone through three remodelings since that time. But it continues to be state of the art and does a very good job for us.

Erin Bell [00:11:13] How has that Carnegie area changed? It seems like to put a dealership there right after World War Two is very different than having a dealership there at the present. And so what does it mean to be in the city to you guys?

Frank Porter Jr. [00:11:33] Well, we are the largest Cadillac dealer in the state of Ohio. And we’re the largest Hummer dealer in the state of Ohio. It’s still a very viable location. It works very well for us. There are several reasons why it works, why we are successful in an urban area when there aren’t a lot of auto dealers in urban areas anymore. Number one, I think it’s a testament to our great employees. I think we do a good job. But probably more importantly, we have a very viable downtown area that some cities are not that way. And probably more importantly than that is the freeway system that is very. It’s not overburdened and it gives us immediate highway access. So people from anywhere in Cuyahoga County can be at our doorstep within 25 minutes at max. So a lot of our customers passed by another Cadillac dealer to do business with us. Plus, of course, we’re very convenient to the downtown market. And there’s still a lot of people that live in the suburbs and work downtown.

Erin Bell [00:12:58] Do you think it adds like a level of prestige also to be in the city? Because like you said, it is somewhat rare. And it’s also a testament to how long you’ve been there because you really don’t see new dealerships springing up.

Frank Porter Jr. [00:13:14] Well, it’s interesting to see how many of our current customers are grandchildren of people that have done business with us for a lot of years. I don’t think there’s a level of prestige to be in the city per se, but we try and do business in a very professional manner. We do it in a very quality manner that hopefully sets us apart from most auto dealerships. And based upon that, hopefully people search us out and try and do business with us.

Erin Bell [00:13:57] You mentioned highway access. What is the current situation with the Innerbelt? There’s some talk about reconfiguring it and closing some exits.

Frank Porter Jr. [00:14:08] It’s interesting because we, central Cadillac was built before the Innerbelt. There was a school actually next door to us. And when the Innerbelt was built, it just happened to be that the exit ramp rolled right off almost into our parking lot on either Prospect or Carnegie. So it gave us tremendous access to the new freeway system that was building up around Cleveland in the fifties, and it has served us well over all these years. There is a move afoot in the second reconstruction of this freeway system that is going to close the exits on either side of us, and we’re fighting along with Midtown to preserve the freeway access that we think is so critical to our success and also to the success of Midtown. So stay tuned for the results of that. It’s still in process.

Erin Bell [00:15:18] So what is the argument for reconfiguration?

Frank Porter Jr. [00:15:22] The argument on ODOT’s part, which is the Ohio Department of Transportation, and basically they are leaning on the rules and regulations of the Federal Highway Administration, where most of the money is coming from for this project, which, by the way, is now priced at $1.5 billion – a lot of money – is that they are concerned about the closeness of the entrance and exit ramps. This creates weaving patterns and creates potential accidents, makes the throughput slower than what they would like. One of our arguments is that the highway system works very well, gives great access to many important corridors of downtown Cleveland, and it’s okay for the throughput, maybe to be a little slow at times to gain that access. But ODOT says that it’s not acceptable, and they cannot get funds from the federal highway administration without closing all these exit ramps and eliminating all the weave patterns that they claim are so dangerous.

Erin Bell [00:16:48] Yeah. The only ones I’ve ever noticed that seem dangerous to me are closer to downtown over by Jacobs Field. When you’re coming up onto the 71 exit, those are blind, but I’ve never noticed any accidents or anything over by your exit. That’s surprising to me. I didn’t know that.

Frank Porter Jr. [00:17:14] Well, ODOT will be very quick to pull out a whole sheet of accidents telling you that this stretch of highway is the most dangerous in the state of Ohio. I’ve lived there on the freeway system, not maybe live there, but I spend more of my waking hours there than I do at home, and I very seldom see an accident. So I think there are a lot of accidents at dead men’s curve, which was poorly designed, and there’s some other accidents, maybe fender benders. We’re leading off of 77. You know, that’s kind of a pinch section there. But overall, I think the system works very well and has for a lot of years.

Erin Bell [00:18:07] I also read that you pretty much had support from city hall on this issue. All the midtown businesses that have been fighting against the reconfiguration configuration of the Innerbelt. City hall is pretty bunch been with you guys all along, is that correct?

Frank Porter Jr. [00:18:25] I think that the councilmen have been, have seen our point of view and have been very vocal, particularly the downtown councilman, because he really sees what is potentially a disaster for downtown. That’s Councilman Joe trying to think of his name right now. Yeah, Cimperman. Right. He’s been very vocal and has really helped lead the charge. The mayor’s office has been fairly quiet on the whole process, has kind of waffled back and forth. So cities, I guess you can say that city council has been in our camp. I’m not sure the mayor has.

Erin Bell [00:19:21] Okay. Another issue that has affected car dealerships in the area was some proposed fencing regulations. It didn’t affect you because you were a new car dealership. But do you have any opinions on that situation? Can you describe that?

Frank Porter Jr. [00:19:43] Yeah, this goes back probably ten years ago, probably because of a lot of used car lots, particularly on the near west side, that were thrown up on vacant land and without a lot of attention being paid to what it looked like. And then to protect their inventory, they would throw up chain link fences and kind of haphazard, haphazard situations to address security that were very unsightly. And so the city passed an ordinance that said that you had to have so much of a buffer if you were going to put up any fence that had to be where it was facing the highway, it had to be a wrought iron type of fence. They now make an aluminum fence that looks like wrought iron. And the city, you know, I think what they’ve done is tried to improve the, you know, the visual quality of a used car lot. And a used car lot is not something that is particularly beautiful to look at normally. And I think that this ordinance probably helped a lot.

Erin Bell [00:21:02] So it was eventually passed?

Frank Porter Jr. [00:21:04] Yes, it was passed and is in effect. And if you notice, we just did a major reconstruction of our dealership, and all of our fencing has now been switched to the wrought iron fencing. And I think it, it matches what else is around. And it looks pretty good.

Erin Bell [00:21:24] Definitely looks nice. This is one of the nicer buildings on Carnegie really. What do you think?

Frank Porter Jr. [00:21:30] And we don’t have any fencing in front of our used car lot because we want people to be able to come in and view our cars at off hours when we’re not open. There are a lot of dealers that are worried about security. We’ve had very few security problems in our location. Matter of fact, our insurance company says that we have fewer security issues than do a lot of dealerships that are in suburban locations.

Erin Bell [00:22:05] So I’m sorry, I kind of lost my place here. So describe for me the area around your dealership on Carnegie.

Frank Porter Jr. [00:22:18] It’s, I think, the area, I’ve been in the business now almost 40 years. If I think back to what our area was like 40 years ago versus what it’s like today, I would have to say that our area has improved in those years. There’s more retail business in the area. There’s properties have been fixed up. There’s a lot more attention paid to what the area looks like, I think. And a lot of that is due to what Midtown has been able to accomplish. Before Midtown, there was a nonprofit organization called the Upper Prospect Area Association, which kind of melded itself into Midtown. That goes back to probably maybe 32 or 35 years ago that might have operated for eight to ten years prior to Midtown, and was really started in conjunction with a street remodeling situation that was paid for by the city with, I think, state funds. And it actually came about because of the historic district. And that was when upper prospect was designated as an historic area, and that was by the landmarks commission of Cleveland.

Erin Bell [00:24:02] And then so Midtown comes in and takes over for them around 1980 – [crosstalk].

Frank Porter Jr. [00:24:08] 25 years ago this year.

Erin Bell [00:24:11] So 82 roughly.

Frank Porter Jr. [00:24:12] Correct.

Erin Bell [00:24:13] Okay. Can you tell me about that? You were there at the beginning of that, were you not?

Frank Porter Jr. [00:24:18] I was right, actually. There was a fellow who owned one of the apartment buildings on prospect by the name of David Bloomquest, who had been very active with the Upper Prospect Area Association, and as were we. And we always, we felt like we would, every time we would make a step forward, we would find ourselves sliding backwards because we were just dealing with an area that basically encompassed upper prospect. And we really didn’t have stakeholders or control outside of that area. So as we would improve something, something would flow in from the street over one, over or two blocks away that would seem to disrupt the improvements that we were making. So it got to be frustrating after a while. And we really needed to, we thought, bite off a bigger area of the east side of Cleveland so that we could have our arms around the business area and really make some progress. So we actually sat down with Mort Mandel, and he said, it’s interesting that you’re here, because I ran into Tom Ralston, who was in the investment business and was just moving his office out to something like 40th and Chester. And we were talking about how we really needed to do something to improve this area. And so they were the ones that kind of put together a group of stakeholders and some outside experts in maybe some areas that we didn’t have expertise within the stakeholder group. To start the original Midtown then called Midtown Corridor. And that was put together with an outside. We hired somebody who came out of University Circle by the name of Peggy Murphy. And Peggy was our first executive director, and she kind of helped spearhead, get everyone together and spearhead the whole process.

Erin Bell [00:26:44] Are the boundaries of midtown. Was that devised by RTA, like some of the other districts in Cleveland?

Frank Porter Jr. [00:26:56] No, it was actually. The boundaries were set up by Midtown. And they were. We were. I think we were one of the first, if not the first, nonprofit redevelopment corporation in Cleveland. And we kind of staked out 22nd street as a boundary, and that’s kind of where the downtown area seemed to finish. And so we said, well, we’ll take over that turf. And we tried to then kind of carve out an area that was basically business, that was made up mainly of businesses, because we were a business driven operation, rather. You know, we didn’t spend a lot of time. We didn’t have a lot of residential. We didn’t have a residential component. And so we strictly revolved around business. And that basically then went from Cedar over to Chester and out as far as 55th Street. And then after several years, we decided that we really needed to also address the area between the Clinic and our easterly border, because there was kind of a no man’s land there. And again, that was kind of spilling over, and we really needed to address what was going on there. So we then talked to some stakeholders up on Upper Carnegie and Upper Euclid. And so we extended our boundaries all the way out to, I think it’s 76th or 78th, something like that. And so that’s our easterly boundary. And then we. Then we also did the same thing over in the Payne area. We expanded our boundaries and went further to the north there to kind of pick up some areas that weren’t covered by other nonprofit organizations as they developed.

Erin Bell [00:29:00] By stakeholders, you mean business owners, generally.

Frank Porter Jr. [00:29:05] People that either have a business, maybe they don’t own the property, maybe they just have the business in the area, or it could be a landowner, a property holder, that maybe he doesn’t have a business there, but he’s just leasing his property. So anyone that has a tie to the area.

Erin Bell [00:29:23] Are there any private homeowners?

Frank Porter Jr. [00:29:28] There are some. Not a lot, but there are a few private owners, I think, of the row houses on Prospect are individually owned, and all of the owners of those row houses over the years have been members of our organization. And then there were some apartment buildings that had a residential mix, and typically, the owners of those apartment buildings have been members of the association.

Erin Bell [00:30:04] So how has the housing stock changed in the Midtown area? You mentioned that there wasn’t that much at the beginning.

Frank Porter Jr. [00:30:10] There was not. Up on Upper Euclid, from about 70th Street to the east, there has been a bunch of new housing that has been built, and that’s an area that our master plan calls for some, some residential development, and there’s actually some office or there’s some warehouse. There’s some warehousing that is being converted now on Euclid Avenue just to the east of 70th Street. Between 70th and 71st, that will have condominiums. I think there are like 100 condominiums in the old Victory building. And of course, there’s been a lot of, there’s been a ton of new housing that’s been developed off of, to the south of Cedar, you know, on our southerly border.

Erin Bell [00:31:14] How does Asiatown fit into the Midtown boundaries? Is that part of it?

Frank Porter Jr. [00:31:22] There are some components of Asiatown, and actually, we are doing a study right now. Midtown and the Asian community are doing kind of a master plan of that area from Perkins and Payne over to our northerly border. So I think there’s a, and there’s a big residential component over there.

Erin Bell [00:31:47] Of course, another thing that I’ve noticed, actually know some people that have opened a gallery just west of the Asiatown. And I read recently that Bill Busta is also opening a gallery in the Midtown area, although I don’t recall where. Who is art dealer William Busta? Are galleries part of that master plan? Is there an arts component to that? Like, you see that with Tremont and Ohio City and a little bit in Detroit Shoreway? Is that a conscious thing or just like a fortunate coincidence that that seems to be happening?

Frank Porter Jr. [00:32:32] No, I think that that could be very much of a component of the retail businesses that have sprung up on Prospect and Carnegie have been driven to a great extent by the traffic off of the freeway, and they tend to be more convenient fast food operations and car repair kinds of facilities. But as a residential community develops, I think there could be, there could be a development of an art component of that. As a matter of fact. Coticchia, Don Coticchia is an artist and has several buildings in midtown. And he had a studio, which actually he now has a studio. I think he’s moved everything over to Tremont, but he had a studio early on, on Carnegie. Now I think it’s a preschool.

Erin Bell [00:33:49] So what do you see as the major. Well, first of all, are you still involved with Midtown?

Frank Porter Jr. [00:33:54] Yes.

Erin Bell [00:33:56] As a board member or.

Frank Porter Jr. [00:34:00] I’m a past chairman of Midtown. I was chairman for a couple years. I was head of the development committee. I’ve worked very diligently over the years on the membership committee. I right now am a co-director of the development committee along with a prior past chairman, Dan Sussen. So, yeah, I’ve been very active with Midtown right from the inception and probably will as long as I’m at Central Cadillac.

Erin Bell [00:34:42] I didn’t ask you too many questions about Midtown. If you were like, oh, there’s a thing from the past.

Frank Porter Jr. [00:34:46] No.

Erin Bell [00:34:47] Okay, so what do you see as the majority, the major accomplishments of Midtown at this point?

Frank Porter Jr. [00:34:55] I think Mort Mandel used to like to say that Midtown is all about hometown people addressing hometown problems with hometown solutions. And I think that just that whole process, people getting together, talking about shared problems and coming up with common solutions works. They also work as a buffer to kind of work your way through, at times a very difficult city administration. You know, when it comes to new construction or it comes to repairing things, it’s just sometimes very difficult to work with city hall over the years. And Midtown has been a conduit to help ease that process. We also obviously have spent a lot of time talking about ways to improve our area. We have done master plans. We actually have changed the zoning now in our area. So any new construction needs to come before not just the city planning and zoning department, but also our design review committee. So we have a say on what happens, and that’s a very important part of development in an area. So I think they made a huge change to our area of the city, a change that wouldn’t have occurred without it.

Erin Bell [00:36:47] So the design review committee at Midtown Cleveland is actually empowered to make decisions on behalf of the city for new development or in cooperation with the city. How does that work?

Frank Porter Jr. [00:37:02] It works in cooperation, but the city is still responsible for enacting the zoning codes on any new construction. So they have that process, but then the developer has to then come also before our design review committee made up of people that, many of them architects, that have an opportunity to say, yeah, that’s good design, or it’s not good design. Is it something that will last and that’ll add beauty to the area or it’s not? And if it’s not, we make suggestions as to how they might improve it.

Erin Bell [00:37:45] What are some other goals that Midtown has for the near future or the long term?

Frank Porter Jr. [00:37:52] Well, we’ve always had several key committees, we kind of call them the core of our business, and that is to take underutilized property and find new owners for it. So property is better utilized. We’ve always tried to improve the visual quality, an area that gets painted by the impression that somebody has of an area as much as it does the actual facts. So, you know, it’s important to have the area look clean. And that’s the other component of all that is safety. So visual quality, safety, development, those are kind of our key goals, our core goals, if you will, as an organization.

Erin Bell [00:38:53] You talked about some underutilized properties, and it occurred to me that in Youngstown, there, have you heard about the plan in Youngstown? They’re basically just tearing down buildings that aren’t being used at the time and saying, well, we’re just going to be a smaller city and we’re going to come to terms with that. Some people propose that Cleveland do something similar. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Frank Porter Jr. [00:39:17] I have read some things about the Youngstown plan. I haven’t read that much about it. I think that probably somewhere between where we are and where Youngstown is, is probably the right place to be for Cleveland. In the downtown area, there’s a huge transition going on from offices and warehouses to residential. The tape, the CD that I left with you about the old automobile businesses that were in downtown Cleveland and the near ring areas around downtown are fascinating to listen to. And it really shows you how much business can change, and obviously a city is going to change with that. So I think that some of our old buildings can find new uses. We certainly have been successful doing that. In the Midtown area, there’s been a lot of development, redevelopment of old facilities into new facilities that work pretty well. So I don’t think we should go through and tear down a bunch of buildings and just say we’re going to be a smaller city. Look at the number of people that are moving back into Cleveland. If you come up with a plan that makes economic sense and you can, you can bring people back, and that’s happening in the city of Cleveland right now. What happens with a core city is going to affect the entire area, and it’s very important that we preserve that core city.

Erin Bell [00:41:12] I absolutely agree. And it reminds me of the argument for a regional form of government. Can you talk about that if you would endorse such a thing?

Frank Porter Jr. [00:41:25] I very much would endorse a regional type of government. We’re partially there, but we haven’t jumped on the true bandwagon like, say, Columbus has or to maybe a lesser extent Cincinnati. But we have regional sewer division district, the regional water district. There are a lot of economies. There are a lot of economies of scale to say that many of our services that we provide to the regional area of our part of Ohio should be regionalized. And with that certainly comes government. There’s a tremendous amount of redundancy that occurs, and that adds cost, and it makes us non competitive and oftentimes non productive.

Erin Bell [00:42:31] How do you. Well, let’s go back. Midtown seems like it’s trying to really brand the area within the Midtown borders with t-shirts, banners, other kind of things that kind of promote the idea of Midtown as a cohesive whole, as a place. What are some other ways that Midtown is working on doing that or even talk about the existing ways that they’re trying to create a sense of place?

Frank Porter Jr. [00:43:09] Well, I guess a sense of place. You know, early on, when we were calling ourselves by the name of Midtown Corridor, we all of a sudden woke up with the realization that a corridor tends to be a very narrow piece of ground that people drive through rather than to. And we think that we can be a destination. We have a high group of. We have a number of businesses in our area. We have access, very good access to downtown Cleveland. We have available parking, you know, which is difficult in downtown Cleveland. We’re kind of a near ring. We’re a near ring to Cleveland. So to that extent, I guess we try and promote ourselves as a good business district to relocate to, as a place that you can get in and out of quickly, that your customers can get to you quickly. If you’re in the delivery business or you’re in the transportation business, you can get to and from most of northeastern Ohio pretty quickly. So it’s a good place to do business.

Erin Bell [00:44:33] So, the Euclid Corridor Project, what do you think will- What has been the impact thus far on Midtown?

Frank Porter Jr. [00:44:42] Well, this is something Midtown’s been actively involved in for probably twelve years, maybe even longer than that. I can remember when I was chairman, which was probably ten or tw

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