Today in Ohio, the daily news podcast of cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The city of Cleveland on Friday confirmed 11 cases of monkeypox in the city -- an alarmingly high number, as families prepare to send their kids back to school.

We’re talking about that latest infectious disease and its threat to the region on Today in Ohio.

Editor Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with impact editor Leila Atassi, editorial board member Lisa Garvin and reporter Courtney Astolfi.

You’ve been sending Chris lots of thoughts and suggestions on our from-the-newsroom text account, in which he shares what we’re thinking about at cleveland.com. You can sign up for free by sending a text to 216-868-4802.

Here are the questions we’re answering today:

How much plastic is in the drinking water of people served by the Cleveland waterworks?

Has monkeypox arrived in Northeast Ohio? Should people be afraid?

Cleveland has less than half the homicide detectives it needs to bring killers to justice. Why?

One of the people charged in Ohio’s enormous House Bill 6 corruption scandal got chewed out by a judge last week for one of his tactics in fighting back against what he believes are unfounded charges. What did former Ohio Republican Party chair Matt Borges do?

With electric vehicles coming on strong, some Ohio companies are preparing to meet some of the market demands that come with them. What are Cleveland Cliffs, Goodyear and FirstEnergy doing to get ready for this culture-changing trend?

How much is the overzealous policing in the days after the May 30 riot in downtown Cleveland going to cost taxpayers in the case of a Bail Project employee who was arrested twice without cause?

What is a stranded credit, and how does it figure in to a plan by colleges including Cleveland State and TRI-C to help students get past tuition debt challenges?

The Cleveland Planning Commission is excited about a revitalization plan for the long-suffering Buckeye neighborhood that was represented for years by the corrupt councilman Ken Johnson. What’s the plan?

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Read the automated transcript below. Because it’s a computer-generated transcript, it contains many errors and misspellings.

Chris: [00:00:00] It’s a steam bath out there as we begin the week in Cleveland. And we’re all hot on today in Ohio. The news podcast discussion from cleveland.com and the plain dealer. Courtney Affy is joining us for the week for the vacationing Laura Johnston, Lisa Garvin and Leila Tosi are here with me also. I’m Chris Quinn, you guys I’m hope are all sitting in air conditioning, Layla, your house renovations didn’t deprive you of cool air.

Leila: didn’t. That’s that’s one thing I’ve got going for

Chris: me. Okay, you needed it yesterday. And today it’s supposed to get cooler as the week moves on. Let’s begin how much plastic is in the drinking water of people served by the Cleveland waterworks. Lisa, this isn’t the PFAS. This is those little tiny bits of plastic that, that form, because we are surrounded by it in our lives.

And apparently it’s in our. It’s in our water.

Lisa: Yeah. There’s an estimated 15 billion pieces of [00:01:00] microplastics, which are plastics that tend to float. Um, they’re floating in all five great lakes. Ontario has the worst at 4.5 billion pieces lake area is right behind them with. 4 billion pieces of microplastics in the lake, but, um, Ohio state university, environmental engineering professor, John Lenhart is taking a $150,000 grant from the national sea grant program to test lake Erie water over the next two years, he’s gonna take samples from the Cleveland, the city of Oregon and the Ottawa county treatment plants.

And they want to identify, have a method to identify the different plastics and then measure their concentration. Both. And after water treatment. And then in phase two samples, we will be taken at various stages of the water treatment process to determine when is the best time to remove what Lenhardt is calling nanoplastic.

So these are even smaller pieces that you really can’t see with the naked [00:02:00] eye. Um, the Northeast Ohio regional sewer district does remove microplastics, which are slightly bigger, but they fall to the bottom of the tank. So they’re able to, you know, get rid of. Fall to the bottom, but they can’t eliminate those suspended nanoparticles.

Yeah. It’s a, it sounds like an interesting study. It’d be interesting to see, but yeah. Five, four, 4 billion pieces in lake Erie. That’s pretty amazing. Is there research that

Chris: shows how bad this is for us, or is it just more of a suspicion that we shouldn’t be ingesting that much plastic?

Lisa: Well, I think that, you know, there are a lot more studies being done.

I just read one this morning about how, how there’s, uh, microplastics in the Colorado high up in the mountains. And they don’t even know how it got there. Uh, polyethylene and polypropylene are the most common and we still have BPA, which is, you know, an estrogen mimicker that causes a lot of problems. But yeah, I think this is really becoming a problem.

I’ve also read. Attribution [00:03:00] that people ingest about a credit card sized amount of plastics every week. Wow. So plastic is everywhere. Wow.

Chris: And I guess you really have to have a powerful water filter to, to clear it out. So most people can’t do much about it. Well, I think

Lisa: what was interesting to me and there are health health issues involved with this.

I mean, they’re afraid that a microplastic piece might cause inflammation and trigger an immune immune attack on this foreign object. Also chemicals from plastics can leech into the body. And if you have BPA building up in the aquatic food chain, then people are eating that when they’re eating fish, but there are ways to get around it.

I mean, I found it interesting. The university. Houston, the university of Houston university hospitals healthy at, uh, blog says actually, a lot of fibers. If you have polypropylene and polyethylene clothing, those fibers shed thousands of fibers shed. Every time you do your laundry, I did not know that. So that’s getting into the environment.

So they’re [00:04:00] suggesting you wear natural fiber clothing, you microwave your food and glass or ceramic containers. Don’t drink bottled water. Um, this was another weird one, um, by loose leaf tea, instead of teabag and try to eliminate your single use plastics.

Chris: Yeah. The natural fibers in your clothes. Sounds like it’s a, it’s one of the smart things, because every time you wash your clothes, that’s going out with the waste water, which gets back into the system.

Good story by Pete CRO, our environmental writer. It’s on cleveland.com and you are listening to today in. Has monkey PS arrived in Northeast, Ohio in Layla, should people be afraid?

Leila: Well, I, I was less afraid until we started talking about it right before the podcast and learned more from Courtney about a press release that went out from the city of Cleveland.

I mean, so since Ohio’s first case was confirmed on June 14th, there have been 38 cases in Ohio, according to CDC data. And as of last week, a case had been identified in Lorraine county, that infected person was isolating. According to the county [00:05:00] public health department, but then Courtney, tell us what you learned.

Courtney: yeah, so, so on Friday we heard from the Cleveland public health department and they confirmed that there have been 11 cases within the city. So far, I had also heard on Friday that Cleveland EMS had transported its first patient. So it is definitely circulating in Northeast, Ohio, according to these

And that’s, I mean, so there have been about 7,100 cases confirmed this year in the us. And they say that generally the, the risk is low it’s, it’s certainly not the threat that COVID was. And, and it’s because it’s not airborne or anything of that nature, the virus can, can be spread and fluid or paused from monkeypox sore.

So you need to have pretty direct contact with someone who has monkeypox or touching objects that were used by a person with monkeypox. And, and luckily the monkeypox pules are pretty noticeable, unlike COVID that moves through society like a Phantom. So, uh, but. You know, it’s [00:06:00] terrible. And, and, uh, you know, I, I’m shocked to hear of how many cases have cropped up in Cleveland, just in a matter of days.

And so obviously it’s spreading and we should be concerned.

Chris: There’s a fear that as, as children go back to school where they’re very tightly packed and, and their kids, you know, they don’t really pay attention to the, to the social morays of adults that it could spread quickly there and then get into.

More homes and I, the government is trying to ramp up the vaccine production, but there’s really not enough of it right now. Uh, it’s odd that the city of Cleveland put that out late Friday. It’s almost like they didn’t want attention to it. Maybe they’re worried of causing some kind of panic Courtney,

Courtney: you know, I’m not, I’m not really sure what, what the idea was there could have just been late communication coming down.

Um, we’ll have to dive into it and see what’s going.

Chris: Yeah. We’ll have to do a story on that. That’s a, that to have one case in Lorraine, [00:07:00] like Lao said, it’s like, okay, you know, we can deal with that. But then to have suddenly 11 cases in Cleveland, you’re saying uhoh this, this is out there in a bigger way than we thought.

Look for a story later. It’s today in Ohio. Cleveland has less than half the homicide detectives. It needs to bring killers to justice. Courtney, why is that?

Courtney: Yeah, so just, just to note, there were 18 detectives in the city’s homicide unit, as of, you know, current current numbers and the justice department wants that number to be at 38.

So less than half of, of where the justice department says, we need to be. This has been an ongoing problem in Cleveland for years. I mean, I remember discussing this when I was on cops. What five, six years ago, this is a systemic issue. Some of it has to do with, with just struggles with staffing in general, the police departments around 200 [00:08:00] officers down overall.

But when we talk about the homicide unit being understaffed, There’s a couple factors at play here. One thing is that, you know, some of the people that move into the homicide detective roles get to be there based on seniority. They have their pick of assignments. Once you reach a certain seniority in the department and, and when those folks move into those roles, they only have a year or two left and then they retire.

So there’s a lot of turnover that way, by the way, we staff it. And then there’s some other factors with, with how the people get selected. But, but generally the understaffing we have yet to see like a really big concerted effort, uh, from the city to fix this problem for the long term. I think a lot of that would come through the union negotiation contracts and potentially boosting pay.

So these folks aren’t paid the same as other detectives to host of factors. It’s a perennial problem, and we’re not seeing it, um, improved by leaps

Lisa: and bound. That’s

Chris: a fascinating scenario [00:09:00] though, where you get the veteran homicide detectives for about a year and then they’re gone. Um, you would think that you’d because there’s some specialty specialization in investigating homicides that you’d want people doing it for a long time.

That’d get good at it. And, and that’s an odd system they have where people cycle in and cycle out. So. Right.

Courtney: And, and now only some of the detectives there will wind up there because of seniority. Other folks are selected by the chief. So sometimes those are younger guys and they stay around longer. But your point is a glaring problem with how we do this in Cleveland and, and we don’t have a fix.

Chris: I’ve always thought that the county would be served by a countywide detective bureau cuz the smaller departments, when they have homicides, they don’t have any expertise in investigating it. They often have to turn to BCI, but if you created an elite. Detective unit that serves the whole county to handle homicides and maybe rapes, think [00:10:00] about how efficient that would be, uh, to have that specialization.

But we don’t really talk about those kind of regional approaches Cleveland on its own has quite a few homicides though. What is the number so far this year?

Courtney: Yeah, we are at. Oh, shoot. I deleted my number I added up well, we are on pace to be about where we were at last year. We rounded out last year at 170.

Um, this year through July 23rd, we are at 83 homicides. So we’re looking to match those historically, uh, on the higher end numbers that we’ve seen the last couple years. So the violence isn’t tapering off hugely from the big spikes we started to see in 20.

Chris: So if they had 38 detectives and they had 170 homicides in a year, that sounds like that would be a manageable caseload, but they’re getting more than double the caseload, uh, which I’m sure is cramping their style and getting these things solved.

Courtney: Oh, [00:11:00] with, with 18 people, I mean, they’re overwhelmed. They just, from my experience a few years ago, when I was with them a lot, Overwhelmed they’re overworked. And you know, our solve rate is, is around 60%, but the thought is, you know, that that could go higher with more people and time and resources apply to each case.

Chris: Well, and, and think about it. That’s, that’s working out to, if there’s 170 through 180 cases, that’s 10 cases per year. Plus the cases they have from previous years that aren’t solved. And so that becomes a, an overwhelming caseload and it explains that. So rate good story. It’s on cleveland.com. It’s today in Ohio.

One of the people charged in Ohio’s enormous house. Bill six corruption scandal got chewed out by a judge last week for one of his tactics in fighting back against what he believes or unfounded charges. What did former Ohio Republican party chair, Matt Borgess do to incense the judge Lisa. [00:12:00]

Lisa: Yeah, federal judge Timothy Black of Columbus.

He admonished, um, admonished BOS for publishing the personal information of key witness. Tyler Furman in the house, bill six case. This was published on Borg’s personal website, where he is. He’s trying to, you know, Uh, shore up his legal defense, this information that was published include Furman’s driver’s license, social security number, his address, his then wife’s name.

And this information was repeated several times on Voges website. And once. In bold font, but judge black says it’s entirely incredible that it wasn’t intentional. He warned boards. Don’t do this again. Don’t do anything that would be, you know, seen as intimidating or harassing potential witnesses in the house.

Bill six case the Furman records came from his former job as a Franklin county auditor, which is obtained by BOS via open records request. But his [00:13:00] attorneys say. Franklin county was at fault. They failed to redact this information. And Borg’s attorneys said that they took it down immediately when they were notified that as we’ve seen, you know, Borgs has been really aggressive about taking his case to the media.

He’s created this legal defense website. He’s accusing the government of withholding and MIS portraying evidence against him. But I think he got caught right handed here.

Chris: Yeah. This was. I mean, we’ve questioned the wisdom of being so rabid in his attack, on the prosecution, but his belief is he’s innocent.

This is a wrongful prosecution, so he’s gonna hold them to account all fine. If he goes to trial and has acquitted all fine, but you can’t do this. And the judge is right. Anybody that’s done anything in the public realm knows you don’t put that kind of personal information out for public consumption. I don’t know what he was.

And, and if his answer is, oh, I, I didn’t do it. It’s like, okay, you’re not reading what you’re putting on your own website. That doesn’t make any sense. Um, [00:14:00] and, and he, you know, it’s not wise to tick off your judge. The judge is the impartial one overseeing the case. You really don’t want the judge looking at you.

Like you’re being sleazy.

Lisa: Yeah, I think this might backfire and, and like judge black said, he said, I can’t see this as a

Chris: mistake. Yeah, I don’t, I don’t either. We’ll see if he does it again. It’s today in Ohio, we have electric car drivers who listen to this podcast because every time I speak of my anxieties about how this works.

They send me emails to explain. It’s not what I think. And it’s better, which I greatly appreciate, or they come in on our, on my text account. So let’s talk about ‘em some more with the electric vehicles coming on strong. Some Ohio companies are preparing to meet some of the market demands that come with.

Them. What are Cleveland cliffs, Goodyear, and first energy doing to get ready for this culture changing trend Leila. This

Leila: was such a good story by Shawn, Shawn McDonald. He tells us that according to the us department of energy, less than a [00:15:00] 1% of the transportation sector relied on electricity as of 2020.

But every industry that touches on the electric vehicle trend is guarding itself for this future influx of electric vehicles. It seems so take Goodyear. For example, they’re already creating specialized tires for these vehicles, the electric or the average electric vehicle is heavier. Than a traditional vehicle.

So the tires need to withstand heavier loads. Electric motors are known for fast acceleration and they produce a lot of torque. So they need more durable treads with reduced rolling resistance so it can achieve better fuel economy. Goodyear also developed sound comfort technology tires with. Built in foam to reduce the noise that they make because electric vehicles are quieter than internal combustion engines that usually mask the sound of loud tires who knew apparently people who drive

Leila: and these innovations mean.

A lot of electric vehicle manufacturers [00:16:00] are choosing to put Goodyear tires on their new cars. So that is good on Goodyear. Uh, meanwhile, first energy, if 25% of vehicles in Ohio are electric, it would seriously impact the grid. So first energy is preparing the distribution system. Part of that planning. Is a future pilot program where drivers will use smart chargers that first energy can connect to, and it would give first energy data and also let the company delay and schedule charging based on usage patterns.

So that would reduce peak demand and get more energy through the grid with fewer upgrades. And that means that they can drive down electricity rates for customers because more power is being used overall at a lower cost to the system for upgrades. And then. Cleveland cliffs cliffs is the largest steel supplier to each automaker in north America.

And the switch to electric vehicles will mean more demand for steel because the average electric vehicle is 1.1 tons versus the one ton average for internal [00:17:00] combustion vehicles. I didn’t know that also you need, you need non oriented electric steel, a specialized material needed for electric motors and cliffs is the only steel maker in north America, supplying that steel for, for vehicles currently.

So all of these, uh, these companies are, are sort of orienting themselves for what they believe to be the future of, of vehicle manufacturing, which is gonna be electric. Apparently.

Chris: It’s interesting that they’re trying to make the tires quieter because one of the issues people have with electric cars is pedestrians.

Can’t hear ‘em coming. They’re much quieter than internal combustion engines. And they’re trying to figure out a way that you can hear them coming when you’re about to cross the street because they come up on you so quietly, the, the charging situation with first energy is interesting. What people are telling me is I raise questions about the three hours.

You have to sit to get your car charges. Nobody’s gonna do that. You’ll pull into a [00:18:00] shopping center, which will have a whole bunch of stations and why you’re in buying your groceries. You’ll be topping it off. And then if you go somewhere else, you’ll top it off there. Or you’ll top it off at home. But if first energy starts controlling, When that’s on, I don’t know how you’re gonna be able to top it off, but there are a whole lot of people think we should do a whole lot more discussion, maybe even a special episode where we bring in some experts to talk about this.

Cuz clearly they think we don’t know what we’re talking about and they do know a good bit more than, than we do. We’re raising the questions than they’re providing the answers.

Leila: I think that’s a great idea. And I do, I do agree with you that the charging is still is still that X factor. I, that is still the thing that would prevent me from, from going all in on an electric car.

I just still don’t see it.

Chris: The only thing that they acknowledge is still a problem is the long range driving. If you wanted to drive to Maine for a vacation, you would have to stop and charge your car for hours. You’d have to build in time to do that. [00:19:00] Cuz you’d run outta juice every so often. But for the, for all of your other errands, you, it sounds like everywhere you go, eventually you’ll you’ll.

Charge in your car. I don’t know you’re gonna pay

Leila: for it. Just be, but a lot of people don’t have a separate errand car and, uh, as a

Leila: driving car, we don’t have luxury of that.

Chris: I, I, I look, I, every time I’m, I’m not kidding. Every time I, I, we bring this up. People send in very helpful notes, thoughtful notes.

And so I, I think maybe, uh, but once we get beyond labor day and people are re-engaged, we’ll do a special episode and bring some people on who know what they’re talking about, and we can ask all our anxiety questions and they could set us at ease it’s today in Ohio. What is, or I’m sorry, wrong. One. How much is the overzealous policing in the days after the May 30th ride in downtown Cleveland, going to cost taxpayers in the case of a bail project employee who was arrested twice without cause [00:20:00] Courtney, this was one of the worst.

Things that happened. Post riot in the, the, the, we had Marshall law basically in the city and this poor guy got arrested twice, just doing his thing, going to get dinner and being downtown is completely wrong. What happened to him? How much is he getting.

Courtney: Yeah, Anthony body, he, he, he was working for the bail project at the time.

He’s going to be getting $30,000 from the city. This deal was approved by a judge on Friday. So it’s moving through it’s on top of another $45,000 that went to another person for a similar reason. So what we saw on the, on the day after the May 30th riots, as former mayor, Frank Jackson imposed this curfew for downtown, where they were really trying to limit.

Existing in the downtown space the day after the riots. But you know, Anthony body is a downtown resident and there were exceptions in that curfew for people traveling for legitimate reasons. He’s a, he’s a resident. He needs to come and go from his [00:21:00] home. And he, he had a job to do at the justice center.

His work, when the bail project had him bailing out all those folks who had been arrested the day prior, when, when, when the riots kind of happened. So he needed. To be coming and going and, and popping those folks loose from jail. He was done picking up lunch for the day at one point and was riding back across the Detroit superior bridge when he was.

Detained and cited by police for being downtown. Now, obviously it seems like he was downtown for a legitimate reason living and working there, but he was still arrested. And then later in the day, when he was headed back to the jail to continue his job, he was cited and arrested again. Now those charges were dropped, so it’s not like they moved through on the criminal side and the city’s settling.

Chris: it’s still you’ve taken away the guy’s Liberty for just being himself and being in downtown. It was, it was, it was really one of the [00:22:00] more ridiculous cases. Frank Jackson shut down the city very tightly after the riot to try and stop any flareups like you saw in some other cities, but this was a case where they were pretty much abusive to this guy.

I mean, can, I mean, imagine you’re going to your job and you’re picked up and arrested for doing nothing. Twice. So $30,000 seems like they’re getting off cheap it’s today in Ohio. What is a stranded credit? And how does it figure into a plan by colleges, including Cleveland state and Tri-C to help students get past tuition, debt challenges.

Lisa, I’d never heard of a stranded credit till I read this story.

Lisa: Yeah, it was very interesting. And a stranded credit are credits that a student earned, but they’re unaccessible because they haven’t paid their balances at a previous college. So they can’t, you know, get their academic. Transcripts and they can’t transfer to another school or continue their education.

So the Ohio [00:23:00] college comeback compact was funded by several nonprofits in an academic research firm. I FACA SNR. This will help students with these stranded credits so they can move on with. Their education it’s estimated there are 60,000 Northeast Ohio residents who have stranded credits at this time.

So eligible students will meet with their advisor at their current school. And once they’re enrolled, they can qualify to up to $5,000 in debt forgiveness, but they must complete at least one semester in which the former school will forgive up to $2,500 in debt. Or $5,000 for completing two semesters or earning a degree or certification.

So eight schools are involved in this CSU, uh, Tri-C Lakeland, community college, Lorraine county, community college, Kent state, the university of Akron, Youngstown state, and stark state college. So they will start, you know, Advising [00:24:00] their students that this is possible to free their stranded credits. So this

Chris: sounds a little bit like blackmail.

So I I’m a student. I go through the class. I do all the curse work. I pass, I get my grade, but the college won’t put that on my transcript because I owe money owe money. Is that basically the way why

Chris: Yes. Wow. That not true. that just seems wrong. Um, I get it. They need a hammer to get people to pay, but they could always put liens against them, but to not give them that’s well, I guess the city does this right?

If you don’t pay your parking tickets, they try and. Take your license away. It’s just a way getting you to pay, but that makes it hard for people to get jobs so that they can pay it’s counterproductive. If you can’t access your completed coursework, you can’t get the higher paying job. You can’t do the things that you went to school for in the first place.

Good thing that, uh, there’s a program to fix it, but I had not heard of it before. It’s today in Ohio today in [00:25:00] Ohio, the Cleveland planning commission is excited about a revitalization plan for the long suffering Buckeye neighborhood that was represented for years by the corrupt Councilman, Ken Johnson.

Laylo what’s the plan. So

Leila: it calls for, uh, anti gentrification strategies, including the encouragement of local ownership of rental properties and, and it calls for revive. Buckeye road, commercial district, south of shaker square for improving parks, transit, internet service, and lead abatement. Steve lit tells us that this is all part of a surge of philanthropy, government grants, and bank lending.

That’s flowing into Buckeye after decades and decades during which the neighborhood was under the representation of Ken Johnson. As you said, who’s now in prison for misusing federal funds among. His many of his other crimes. It’s, it’s a neighborhood where the population has fallen by 35% in the past two decades.

And nearly a third of the residents live in poverty. There a quarter of owner occupants, and, and more than half of [00:26:00] Buckeye’s renters are classified as cost burdened, which means that they spend more than 30% of their income in housing. And they’re hoping that this plan. Will attract new residents, build household wealth and revive Buckeye road all without gentrifying it, that means forcing longtime residents out.

Right? So parts of this new plan call for the construction of new affordable and market rate housing, improved internet service, better transit, more parks and public spaces. The stronger presence. Arts and efforts to create a stronger neighborhood identity. It calls for the creation of a community land trust, and a low interest loan pool.

And, uh, you know, there’s also this piece that envisions turning the Morland theater on Buckeye road, this vintage 1927 movie palace into an arts and innovation hub for creative and tech oriented companies. Um, so that. Is, uh, that’s exciting too. And all of this coincides [00:27:00] with more than 84 million worth of projects that are already underway in the area.

And, and that of course includes the shaker square, uh, deal, which, uh, which, uh, we can talk about too, but all of you know, so much, yeah, go

Chris: ahead. Before we get to that. I, what, what struck me about Steve Lit’s story was the comments by planning commission members. They see lots and lots of projects, but they, they did seem to be very impressed with this one.

Leila: did. Yes, they did. They were, they were very, uh, very excited about what this can do. And I think, I think also that has to do with how long this neighborhood has been. Depressed under the leadership of Ken Johnson and, and with sort of a, a dearth of, um, you know, the, the, um, uh, the. You know, the community development corporation that was, that was there before was, was not doing any, any services to that community.

So, um, this is a whole new [00:28:00] era for that neighborhood. It’s

Chris: a, it’s a microcosm of what happened with co county. When you have corrupt leaders. Exactly economic development fault. There’s nobody does business. He was as crooked as can be. He was crooked for years and he got away. But it really harmed his neighborhood as for shaker square.

We talked about that a good bit last fall, that, that the city was gonna, take a lot of money to, to buy that thing out of foreclosure instead of letting the market do it. Now it’s in the hands of nonprofits, right? Yeah. We have to see whether they’ll be able to do anything with it. Yeah. Right. The

Leila: new village corporation, which is a subsidiary of, of Cleveland neighborhood progress and Burton bell.

Development corporation, they closed on a deal, uh, funded by $12 million in low interest city loans to buy shaker square from the mortgage lender, will Wilmington trust, uh, the, the trust filed a $10.6 million foreclosure action against, uh, an affiliate of the coral company in 2020. So, um, so this is moving in the right direction to apparently.

Um, and, uh, so that’s all [00:29:00] kind of coming in at the same time as, as all this development as.

Chris: Yeah, they just don’t have a vision for what they’ll do with it. I still do wonder if ultimately this does end up in the hands of Brandon Kowski, who has been a visionary in converting part of shaker square in the nearby neighborhood, into an industry that helps people coming outta prison.

He wanted to buy it. He does, he couldn’t, but, but if somebody doesn’t come up with a vision, it can’t just be what it was, cuz it wasn’t thriving. If they don’t come up with a vision, I. They ultimately turned to Brandon who has been kind of heroic in his work on that side of town. Check out the story. It’s all on cleveland.com.

It’s today in Ohio. We’re not gonna get to the final question, Courtney. We’ll take it up tomorrow. Thanks Lisa. Thanks Courtney. Thanks Layla. Thank you for listening to this podcast.

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