CLEVELAND, Ohio — Merchandise Mart Properties Inc. will subsidize the first 25 companies that take up residence in its Cleveland medical mart, a company executive said Thursday.
Vice President Mark Falanga said MMPI would use short-term leases and “whatever it takes” to attract the first 25 businesses into its showroom, most likely medical manufacturers.
Those initial companies are the critical first phase in attracting conventions to the new medical mart and adjoining convention center. The medical mart portion should open sometime next year.
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MMPI executives spoke at a pair of public forums on Thursday meant to assuage concerns that the company and local government have been secretive about the process to choose and design the medical mart complex. Cuyahoga County Commissioners last month endorsed a site for the convention center and medical mart: the area in and around Cleveland’s existing convention center.
If the new convention center and medical mart captures the expected 60 trade shows and 100 conferences a year, it could draw 300,000 visitors annually to the city and generate $330 million in direct economic impact, Falanga said. The project also could create as many as 5,100 jobs — most of which them in secondary markets, like hotels and restaurants.
Those figures are based off the belief by MMPI that they will be able to capture about 10 percent of the total annual medical trade shows in the country (570) and five percent of all annual medical conferences (2,000).
Subsidizing early tenants would reduce the risk for business to try a new concept, namely the creation of a convention-style medical marketplace. At one of the forums, Falanga also displayed a list of more than two dozen companies with medical products that his firm had targeted as potential first tenants. The list included IoA Healthcare Furniture, the pharmaceutical services company OmniCare , and nursing-home supplier Samarion.
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MMPI is also reviewing the list of conventions it hosts in other cities and is considering diverting some of those conventions to Cleveland. The company also will pursue other shows not related to the medical industry.
But, Falanga said, the Cleveland convention center “will live or die on the sucess in the health-care marketplace.”