A long-debated medical merchandise mart will be built on the site of The Sportsman restaurant on St. Clair Avenue in downtown Cleveland. "I don't think there is a bump in the road that can dislodge us from future progress," Medical Mart Properties Inc. President Christopher Kennedy told a City Club of Cleveland forum on Monday.
Negotiations to acquire public land for a new medical mart and convention center continued, though the talks could push past today's deadline and through the weekend to arrive at a deal. The final price tag will be more than $17.5 million, according to Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson.
Supporters of the medical mart concept say furniture is a foundation that can attract and serve many sectors of the health-care market and draw conventioneers. Furniture makers would not only sell their products at the mart, but lend their products to create models of waiting areas, operating rooms, nurses' stations or other spaces where medical companies could demonstrate their products. But would the first phase of tenants command the attention of the health-care industry?
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.
Now, developer Scott Wolstein will in early February present his plan to developers to put the convention center and mart in the east bank of the Flats. "I'm not sure the back-ass of Tower City is the center of the urban core," Wolstein told the paper.