Transcript
[00:00:05] Anthony Flint: Welcome back to the Land Matters podcast. I’m your host, Anthony Flint. Of all the post-industrial cities in the US and around the world, Cleveland, Ohio, has perhaps had the most ups and downs, oscillating between decline and revival. The city’s come a long way since those dark days of the Cuyahoga River catching fire, and it has been a pioneer in revitalizing its industrial waterfront, led by the establishment of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Now Cleveland has another chance to re-envision the lakefront and make better connections with the rest of the city, all the while addressing persistent issues of equity and uneven economic opportunity in many neighborhoods that are still struggling.
To talk about all this, we have the honor of having a special guest on the Land Matters podcast, the mayor of Cleveland, Justin Bibb. He’s the latest municipal chief executive to be interviewed as part of our Mayor’s Desk series — Conversations With Local Leaders Solving Global Problems. We’ve caught up with many inventive mayors in this series, but Mayor Bibb has been getting a lot of attention for his creativity and policy innovation and has been described politically as quite a rising star.
Some quick background. Before becoming mayor, he worked for President Barack Obama during his time in the US Senate. Served as an education and economic policy advisor for Cuyahoga County and also held leadership roles at Gallup, KeyBank, and Urbanova, focusing on civic innovation and data-driven strategies. A native of the Mount Pleasant neighborhood in Cleveland’s Southeast Side, he’s a proud graduate of American University with a degree in urban studies and has also pursued advanced studies in social policy and economics at the London School of Economics and earned both a MBA and a law degree at Case Western Reserve University.
Before we begin our conversation, just an additional quick note about the many connections that have linked Cleveland and the Lincoln Institute. Our founder, John C. Lincoln, was an inventor and entrepreneur there at the turn of the last century and established the Lincoln Electric Company, which is there to this day. John Lincoln was interested in the ideas of the political economist Henry George and heard his first speech by Henry George right there in Cleveland, which famously had its fully Georgist mayor, Tom Johnson.
John Lincoln eventually moved to Phoenix as he launched all his philanthropic efforts, but the Lincoln family remained involved in many civic affairs. Twenty years ago, the Lincoln Institute also premiered the Making Sense of Place documentary series with a feature-length film looking at Cleveland’s efforts to engineer a renaissance to bounce back from hard times. We’ve also stayed closely connected with the City Club of Cleveland and its great tradition of civic engagement and its lecture series, which now includes the Kathryn J. Lincoln Speaker Series, an educational deep dive focused on effective urban planning, inclusive community development, and investment in ethical leadership.That’s named for Katie Lincoln, chair of the board of the Lincoln Institute, who is John C. Lincoln’s granddaughter.
So our fates are in some ways interwoven. The bottom line is we continue to be interested in what’s happening in Cleveland, and that’s why we’re so grateful for this opportunity. Mayor Justin Bibb, thank you for joining the conversation at Land Matters, and for being part of our Mayor’s Desk interview series.
[00:03:46] Mayor Justin Bibb: Thanks for having me, Anthony.
[00:03:47] Anthony Flint: Well, as I mentioned, decades ago, Cleveland was really a pioneer in redeveloping its waterfront. I think the most recognizable project is the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but also the Browns Stadium. Now the Browns are moving to the suburbs. Tell us about that and how will the new redevelopment that’s envisioned be different?
[00:04:08] Mayor Justin Bibb: Well, we fought the good fight to keep the Browns playing good or bad football on our lakefront, but the political winds were not in our favor, and now we have a historic opportunity to maximize Cleveland’s lakefront for once and for all. I’ve joked often since I became mayor four years ago that every mayor since Tom Johnson, for the last 100-plus years has had a lakefront plan in Cleveland. We’ve done some things in piecemeal, but we’ve never had a bold, unified vision for really reinvigorating what I call America’s North Coast.
This next chapter is really about making the lakefront a destination for residents, a destination for tourists. Really, we want this to be a model for America on how a legacy American city like Cleveland can be a two-waterfront city. Not only are we redeveloping the 50-acre site where the Browns Stadium currently sits, we’re also undergoing a nearly $4 billion transformation of our riverfront, really led by the great partnership we have with Dan Gilbert and the Bedrock family of companies. That’s about a $5 billion effort to make Cleveland a dual waterfront city.
Excited about the progress that we’re making. We’ll break ground on the lakefront in the fourth quarter of next year. We already have broken ground, and construction is underway on our riverfront. Folks from around the world will be coming to Cleveland soon because we will be one of the best two-waterfront cities, not just in America, but around the globe in the relatively near future.
[00:05:38] Anthony Flint: When you say the two waterfronts, orient us a little bit. That’s the lakefront and the Cuyahoga River?
[00:05:45] Mayor Justin Bibb: Yes, that’s correct. Cleveland is so unique that we sit on two bodies of water – [Lake Erie and] the Cuyahoga River, which has a storied history in Cleveland and across the country. I sit in the office of the late, great Carl B. Stokes, who was the first Black man and the first Black mayor to lead a major American city. His photo is right behind me and on my chair here at City Hall.
I’m willing to bet when he ran for mayor in the mid-1960s, he didn’t run to be a climate mayor. At the time, industry was not doing right by its cities. They weren’t doing right by its waterways. Our river caught on fire. As a result of that, Carl B. Stokes confronted this crisis. After that crisis happened, he did a nationwide pollution tour, which helped create the Clean Water Act, which then led the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, as we call it today.
Cleveland has a storied history, and 50 years later, our ability to clean up the Cuyahoga River is a model of resilience across the country, and now it’s seeing a nearly $4 billion investment right now through our partnership with Bedrock.
[00:06:48] Anthony Flint: Just pivoting here for a second, what’s your view on the use of government-owned land for creating things like permanently affordable housing, other improvements? You’ve got a fair amount of government-owned land there. What are the prospects for that?
[00:07:02] Mayor Justin Bibb: We are the largest landowner in the city, and we have thousands and thousands and thousands of vacant lots that we have failed to put into productive use. We’re really excited about the work we’re doing to put our assets to work in a more productive way. Currently right now, we are attracting a world-renowned global modular housing manufacturer, MMY. They’re bringing one of their manufacturing headquarters to Cleveland, going to create 150 good-paying jobs, and our new business district called the Midline, which is the largest redevelopment project in the city’s history, a 350-acre site.
That’s one example of the work we’re doing through our site readiness fund for good jobs, where we’re converting a thousand acres of brownfield vacant land, predominantly in the heart of Cleveland’s inner city, and making those sites shovel-ready to go. Not only is it good housing policy to really address our cities’ and our nation’s housing affordability crisis, it’s also a good industrial policy, because as the nation works to have more resilient supply chains, as we see these trends are re-shoring, take shape, it’s important that cities activate these sites and attract these jobs of the future and the present to make sure that America’s industrial future is competitive long-term.
[00:08:19] Anthony Flint: Following up on this idea of repurposing land — there are so many opportunities. Tell us a little bit more about the East Side neighborhoods and the use of different land-based financing to encourage redevelopment and repurposing.
[00:08:35] Mayor Justin Bibb: Yes, Cleveland’s East Side has a long, storied history. My grandparents came up here from the segregated South for jobs in the steel mills and jobs in the auto plants, as well as many immigrants from around the world, particularly from Eastern Europe, who came to Cleveland for those jobs, because Cleveland was a walk-to-work city, and a lot of those jobs were concentrated in Cleveland’s East Side.
For generations, that part of the city has not gotten its fair share of investment. One of the things that we’re doing is we’re using the same taxing tools that we’ve used to spur nearly $5 billion of investment on the waterfronts. We’re using those same tools to attract private investment to the East Side of Cleveland. We’re thinking about vacant parcels differently. We’re activating those vacant lots for shovel-ready job sites to attract good-paying jobs, to put the working class and the middle class back to work in Cleveland.
We’re also using those sites to really address our housing crisis. Particularly in the St. Clair-Superior neighborhood, we are deploying a new housing innovation district to really unlock brand new homeownership and new single-family homes for the future of the East Side of Cleveland.
[00:09:41] Anthony Flint: You mentioned the Site Readiness Initiative. I’m wondering, what have you learned from that experience, and any tips for other legacy cities or cities otherwise on this idea of looking at underutilized industrial land?
[00:09:57] Mayor Justin Bibb: This isn’t just about vacant land. It’s about talent. It’s about infrastructure. It’s about building a resilient manufacturing ecosystem that really builds on the strengths of Cleveland’s economy, so we’re really excited about this. We believe we can attract 2,500 good-paying jobs to the Midline. It costs about $100 million of capital to clean up. It’s 200 acres of vacant land that we’re transforming, and we’re putting about 1.5 million square feet of commercial space back to the market.
For any city to compete, you need two things: you need land, and you need talent. When I took office, we didn’t have any sites, 10 acres or more, to attract or retain companies in the city. Now we have the land, we have the talent, and we have the strategy to compete in the global economy.
[00:10:44] Anthony Flint: You mentioned there’s a modular homes manufacturer that is going into one site. That’s a pretty neat trick.
[00:10:51] Mayor Justin Bibb: Big deal. MMY is the first company to call the Midline home. As I said earlier, they’ll be bringing 150 good-paying jobs to the city, and they’re going to help us build, in six to eight weeks, new homes in Cleveland that are affordable and within reach for our residents. Also, because of our location and the Great Lakes and Lake Erie, we can be a net exporter of modular homes to Canada. We think this will be a game changer for Cleveland’s economy long-term.
[00:11:17] Anthony Flint: Finally, you’ve done a lot of work in climate and climate resilience, but do you think of Cleveland as a climate haven? If so, what needs to be done to take advantage of that kind of interest? Also, are you worried about gentrification?
[00:11:32] Mayor Justin Bibb: I absolutely believe that Cleveland is a climate haven. I believe our climate resilience as a city is second to none. We have access to fresh water. We have a temperate climate, four seasons actually in Cleveland. Although we were, like many cities in the US, exposed to the Canadian wildfires and the air quality, no real hurricanes, no wildfires in Cleveland. When you look at our coastal peer cities, Cleveland has a unique, I think, competitive advantage.
To protect it, number one, we need to make sure we have a resilient housing infrastructure, which is what we’re focused on. We need to make sure that we continue to have an economy that’s growing. We also need to make sure that when we think about climate change and think about this work around environmental justice, that is squarely focused on the cost of living crisis, and that’s our effort.
Now, gentrification means different things to different people. But we have a growth mindset in Cleveland. We need to grow the pie, but also support and uplift existing residents. Our economic philosophy is in all of the above approach to make Cleveland a city where the American dream is alive, within reach, and affordable. That’s the goal.
[00:12:39] Anthony Flint: Mayor Justin Bibb, thank you again for your time. It’s been a pleasure.
[00:12:42] Mayor Justin Bibb: Thanks for having me.
[00:12:43] Anthony Flint: Well, that’s a wrap on the Land Matters podcast. You can find extensive content about Cleveland and legacy cities on our website, that’s lincolninst.edu. Just navigate to the impact area called Land and Communities. You’ll also find the Making Sense of Place documentary series at the website, which includes recent updates on many of the initiatives we looked at 20 years ago. On social media, our handle is @landpolicy.
Please go ahead and rate, share, and subscribe to Land Matters, the podcast of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. For now, I’m Anthony Flint, signing off until next time.
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