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LETTER to The Editor of The Plain Dealer, 11-11-07, by Joseph W. Kunzelman
``Who will stand up to preserve more land?
In response to the Oct. 17 [2007 PD] article "Farming done here from now, forever":
Thank you, Jarvis Babcock and family, for the generous, unselfish gift of 1,018 acres that surely would have been destroyed by developers.
I live in Avon. We have seen judges and city administrators allow aggressive developers to carve our city up like a big, fat turkey: "Ah, more retail. This will solve all our problems." These self-centered, power-hungry individuals and companies have destroyed acre after acre of woods and trees while driving our last little bit of wildlife up on to Interstate 90 to be slaughtered.
Did anyone really think that the I-90/[Nagel] Road interchange was not going to happen? Does anyone honestly believe that this will not continue to open the door for more businesses and residents to leave Cleveland, Lorain and the inner-ring suburbs?
Unfortunately, nobody has the guts or the money to stop this travesty.
Where are the Babcocks of Avon and the rest of Northeast Ohio?''
Joseph W. Kunzelman, Avon
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[Regarding the impact of the Nagel Rd. interchange, one of the most important things is to NOT DESTROY Detroit Road. The key to solving that problem is having alternative ways to go from Jaycox to Nagel, besides Detroit: south marginal -- Middleton - Avon Rd.; north marginal -- Chester - Clemens; both interchange marginals opening on Bradley.]
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NEWS ARTICLE from The Plain Dealer, 11-3-07, by Joan Mazzolini, Plain Dealer Reporter
``Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals compete with their expanding medical centers
Cleveland's two huge hospital systems are in a competitive game of leapfrog, hopping from one suburb to the next in pursuit of the well-insured patients ...
But it's an expensive endeavor to chase patients, or try to poach them from other hospital systems.
And the recent moves have the two Cleveland systems butting up against other hospital systems in Summit and Lorain counties that don't seem that pleased by the closeness.
"There are four hospitals that are in Lorain County and none operating at capacity," said Jim Simone, vice president of finance for EMH Regional Health Care System. The Elyria hospital will be celebrating its 100th anniversary next year.
Simone said the Clinic's plans for a new big medical facility in Avon will "make it difficult for all of us to survive."
"There's not a need for it," Simone said. "We don't need more facilities. There's only so many chest X-rays you can do, even if you put X-ray machines on every corner." ...''
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: jmazzolini@plaind.com
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NEWS ARTICLE from The Plain Dealer, 12-25-07, by Michael Scott, Plain Dealer Reporter
[Smog Sprawl]
``AVON -- As development spreads, bad air follows, critics say Smog sprawl - it could be coming soon to a suburb near you.
Smog sprawl is the environmental notion that air pollution trails after residential and industrial development as it surges out from the city center to once-rural suburbia and beyond.
In other words, as we move out to the country, we drive longer and farther to get to work, we pump out more pollutants along the way and foul up the fresh air we drove out there for in the first place ...
[Northeast Ohio] is already under federal mandate to reduce air pollution -- both ozone and particulates -- by 2009, putting virtually every transportation or commercial/industrial development decision under an increasingly detailed environmental microscope.
But there's not always a clear-cut answer when balancing the transportation needs of one growing community with the broader concerns of the region.
That's why planners have to consider, for example, whether the privately funded and fast-tracked interchange to be built in Avon will add to air pollution in that Lorain County suburb -- and the entire region.
Critics are certain that it will.
"This is a community where they're putting in a new interchange and where they're planning low-density, automobile-dependent land use," said David Beach, director of the Center for Regional Sustainability of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. "That's hardly a sustainable approach in an age of climate change and scarcity of energy resources." ...
The city's population surged from about 7,000 to more than 17,000 in just more than a decade. Further, it ranked as the 67th-fastest growing community in the nation from 2000-07, Mayor James Smith said. The community already has two I-90 exits: Ohio 611 on the western end and Ohio 83 near the center ...''
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: mscott@plaind.com
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Commentator 1 wrote:
``Methanol and oil from algae are probably our way out of the Kazakh War of 2020, just a little more than 12 years from now. The greed of the owners of oil wells, if we don't do something about it, will plunge us into a destruction that will make the sub-prime crisis look like a Sunday-school picnic. Also, push now for commuter rail so we have some way to get around when the Straits of Hormuz are blocked and every pipeline in the Middle East is blown up.''
[For more, see "Crossing the Rubicon" by Michael C. Ruppert
On the web see www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/index.shtml]
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NEWS ARTICLE from The Plain Dealer, 1-26-08, by Joan Mazzolini, Plain Dealer Reporter
``Clinic loses battle with Beachwood schools for records in tax case
The Cleveland Clinic must turn over financial information that the Beachwood Board of Education requested to make its case that the hospital's Cedar Road facility should not be exempted from property taxes, the Board of Tax Appeals ruled yesterday ...
The board's decision should move forward a case that has languished for two years, after the Clinic appealed the Ohio tax commissioner's decision that the property is taxable.
The commissioner ruled that the Clinic's Cedar Road facility was an office building for physicians where little if any charitable care is provided and that it is not eligible for a property tax exemption.
The Beachwood schools had challenged the Clinic's request for property tax exemption. Ohio law allows school districts, which receive the bulk of property taxes, to challenge exemptions.
Districts with large Clinic facilities, such as Independence, Willoughby- Eastlake and Solon, have followed Beachwood's lead. The outcome of the Beachwood case will affect their challenges ...''
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: jmazzolini@plaind.com
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NEWS ARTICLE from The Morning Journal, 3-23-08, By SCOT ALLYN, Morning Journal Writer
[New Interstate 90 interchange at Nagel Road is scheduled for completion in 2010]
``AVON -- ... The Nagel Road interchange was approved by the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency Oct. 12 [2007] ... The project, estimated to cost more than $20 million, is scheduled for completion in 2010 ...
TranSystems Corp., a traffic planning consultant, is creating the final engineering drawings for the interchange with the Ohio Department of Transportation ... This alone costs $1.7 million ...
The drawings should be done in April [2008], and the city will seek bids to do the work then. Many requirements of the Federal Highway Administration, including environmental, archaeological and other studies had to be performed ...
Avon Mayor Jim Smith said the city had to fight a tiring battle with Cuyahoga County authorities for permission to build the interchange, whose costs will be paid by the city and the Jacobs Group, a developer who owns 212 acres near the site, [and by the citizens of Avon because taxes that would have gone to Avon now will have to be used to pay off the TIFF bonds sold to pay for (how much?) of the interchange.]
"It took a lot of energy out of us, and took focus away from other things," he said. "It put a lot of stress on everyone here, and it felt like they didn't want the city of Avon to progress." ...''
More Documents Relating to the June 8, 1998, Decision Against Avon
Newspaper Record of XXXXX/Jacobs in Avon
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