I'm still checking to figure out what parts of Grandview were hit, but this morning on my street we all found a single sheet of paper under our windshield wipers. The title was “Citizens voting out Ray DeGraw for Mayor”. The first major WTF is – what does this have to do with voting today, there are no local Grandview races, certainly not for Mayor. Is this someone who is against Issue 50? The charter amendment that is mostly technical cleanup of the language in the city charter?

I'll post a scan of the sheet later, but on first read it appears to be a scattergun blast at issues this person or group is trying to link to DeGraw. Parking during the snow emergency, something about the Grandview theater closing, a Grandview Yard money complaint (the only issue on the page that might be a legitimate complaint), and an incoherent rant about the bike race.

Some odd crazy in this. Who still thinks that an anonymous pamphlet under the windshield is a way to influence the public's opinion? Unless it had the scoop on a provable scandal, this is just static that does nothing but waste paper.

(later) This is just speculation, but the person or persons who put out the anti-DeGraw pamphlet may be in violation of Ohio election law. During an election cycle (and with the election for Mayor approaching, it is inside the cycle), all political posters and pamphlets must say at the bottom the name of the group who paid for the message, and a valid address. This was not done.

Info on the person who did this is needed, please use the feedback link to the left. Anonymity will be given to all who request it.

It's not the violation of the Ohio election law that upsets me as much as the trash on the ground this caused. The area covered was big, at least First Ave to Third, top of the hill to past Grandview Ave. That would require hundreds, if not a thousand sheets of paper, some of which are now blowing in the wind. What a waste.

Later - the area where the pamphleteer struck was bigger than I thought, I got a report of them on Mulford at the top section near Glendale. Scary thought - this was done by a group. A group who thought that the nonsense on that paper was worth spending a night passing out? Weird.

We want to develop a design that is evocative of the 20's, but with a more modern palette. We are also considering adding decorative elements from some of the (now long closed) theaters that used to dot Grandview, eg the Boulevard, The Arlington, etc.

Part of the discussion the city council is having about the Grandview Yard project is the cost of the publicly paid construction that will go into the development. The total cost for these has been estimated at $162 Mil. That is heavy money (Area Dist. cost only $53 Mil.), and it raises the question – is all of it appropriately being placed on the taxpayers? There has been some discussion of these costs during city council meetings, but questions remain. The subsidizing of parking is an issue that needs to be brought to the top of the discussion.

More after the jump.

The Trustworthy Hardware was a fixture on 5^th, and struggled after the move to Goodale Boulevard. Still, with the closing of the Grandview Ace Hardware near Kroger, it was the only hardware store in the area, and was developing a customer base at the new spot.

The story of the closing was told to me by the manager as he stood in the nearly empty store this Tuesday, it went roughly like this:

“We had a great Saturday, the place had a constant stream of customers. Almost as good as the old 5^th location, so we thought we were headed back into the grove and had survived the transition.”

“On Sunday, I got a call – did you know there was a semi backed up to the doors of the store? I booked down to see what was up, and was met by a bank guy. He said the store was bankrupt and they were cleaning it out. They stripped the shelves, which we had finally completed setting up and stocking. They took all the items that could be sold for a few dollars, anything that was easy to throw in the truck. It was fast and dirty, and left the place in a shambles. They left us some stuff that we can maybe sell and get a few bucks, but it is basically the dregs of the store. Who knows if it is even OK for us to be selling this stuff, it doesn't belong to the store owner any more, and the bank didn't want it.”

“And speaking of the owner, what a chump. He hasn't called us to tell us anything for two weeks, never gave us a hint that the store was ready to go under. Just boom, stripped, out of a job. We probably will never see our last paychecks. I don't even know why I'm here, I guess because I don't have anyplace else to go.”

American business in late 2008.

A quick Wednesday update:

The store has been stripped even more, I can't say that it's worth a trip for anyone except the hardcore hardware bargain shopper.

I talked with Dave, the manager, he is living in the economic twilight zone.

The store has a "under reorganization" sign on the door. Apparently the owner has called from Cinci and is telling them that he is going to find some way to get stock shipped up and keep the place running. No telling if this is wishful thinking, it would have been nice for him to do a workout with the bank before the place was stripped.

The landlord is telling them they should close, he doesn't want someone to walk off with the fixtures. He suggested they should be contacting an area hardware store and try to work out a deal so the Grandview store can be a new location to an existing hardware, maybe Zettlers or something.

So Dave says he will try to keep open for a few days. If you are going, make it fast.

(closed now, no telling when or if it will reopen.)

The development committee decided to punt the vote on the resolution that would allow NRI to pay less than the prevailing wage during construction of Grandview Yard. They will meet before the issue is taken up by the full city council next Monday.

The discussion of the resolution was filled with legal questions (many needing to be answered by the city's lawyer, who gave a lot of his interpretation). The issue is clouded by the actions that the Governor has taken on prevailing wage. Strickland took the position that the state laws had always required prevailing wage for all parts of state funded construction, even if it was partial funding, and he was going to enforce the law. NRI says that they are working under the assumption that the rules as they were interpreted in the past should be the rules that govern future construction. Probably the final outcome will be decided by packs of highly paid guys in suits.

Of note – no council member stood up for workers, and said that prevailing wage should be paid, no matter what NRI though the rules should be.

A second piece of legislation is a preliminary terms of agreement on the funding for G.Y. It has a lot of general wording that doesn't answer important questions, like what the terms for the TIF will be. The cost of public funding is listed at $162 Million (in comparison the Arena District cost 53 M in public funds).

Beyond the question of where all that money will come from, the question was asked by council member Gladman “given the economic problems we have right now, when can we expect the construction to start?” Mayor DeGraw said “maybe 2010 or 2011”. And he is the guy who is cheerleader for the city and can be expected to be over optimistic. The conversation then shifted into putting the city in a position to be on the cutting edge of the new development after the recession is over.

The reality is that retail must sign on the dotted line before G.Y. can proceed. That's not happening now. Crystal ball experts needed.

Issue 50 will be on the ballot this November, a charter amendment for the city that has no controversy and should pass without problems. It does propose one change that was brought up by the Headapohl affair, a controversy started by his resignation that had no clear solution under the old rules.

Dan Headapohl was the council president from January to October 2006, but a new job with the city of Columbus left him with a difficult choice. He was clear during his interviews for the job that he he was a Grandview council member, and no mention was made of a problem. After months on the job someone in the HR department found out that a rule said a city council member could not hold his position. He might have asked for Columbus to give him special dispensation, but would have to spend months without pay while the wheels turned. He decided to resign the council seat.

Unfortunately the city charter had not foreseen this contingency, it only said that the president would be elected in January, and didn't specify when a new president would be elected in case of a resignation. It also didn't specify when the replacement council member would be appointed, before or after the election of the new president. In this case, the council simply decided to hold the election for president immediately, and Steve Reynolds was elected.

I speculated in a post about the possible outcome if the rivalry in the council had been at a higher level (read some meeting notes from back during the Sexton years for some angry meetings). It was clear that vice president Von Jasinski would assume the presidency after Headapohl's resignation, but things could have gone much differently. VJ could have used his new position to declare that the correct action was to defer any election for the president until after the new council member had been appointed (in the hopes of appointing a friendly new member to promote VJ permanently to the presidency). Angry council members could have accused him of stealing the presidency, lawsuits and fists could have flown.

Well, maybe. It would have been an exciting night in the council chambers.

The Oct. 1 TVN reported in the police beat that officers were called to a boy scout meeting because a foul-mouthed boy had been swearing. Investigation by the police found that the kid had just been giving a report on world war one airplanes, and had not researched the correct pronunciation of “Fokker Aircraft”.

Two banks were robbed last week on West Fifth Avenue. Although the police don't think they were connected, it completes a trifecta after the Fifth Third band robbery earlier this year. The robber at the Chase Bank was thwarted by the old dye-pack exploding, suggesting that even the simplest rule for robbers (check for the dye-packs) was not done. With this level of stupidity in the Columbus crime syndicate, I think more desperadoes will be striking the banks. A reward for info on the criminals has been offered. Maybe I can have a second job just patrolling the local banks and watching where the dopes go after the hits.

I have been trying to get info on the development at the corner of Grandview and 33. The story in the Sept. 23 TWG was interesting but short on details. “Plans include demolition of a vacant Chinese restaurant to make way for the new development on a 1.1-acre site at 1080 Grandview Ave.”, to be developed by the Metropolitan Partners. Eyeballing the property I'm guessing that drive-in restaurant would be using the old Chinese restaurant land alone, and not include the hotel land currently being cleared.

Why is Metropolitan using the name “Grandview Station”, the name that the Bear Creek developers used for their much larger failed development? An older article in the dispatch quoted Metropolitan's Bill Dargusch on the Kaplin tract “It's got a lot of hair on it.” If Metropolitan doesn't intend to use Kaplin, and is still talking with the owner of the hotel land, why steal the name of a development that had a completely different plan?

The online information for Metropolitan Partners is confusing. Is the Columbus company part of the Seattle, WA based company? Why does www.metropolitan-partners.com redirect to Continental Retail Development?

There was lots of tree damage beyond the power outages, caused by the Sept. 14th 08 tail of hurricane Ike.  I shot just a few examples on a bike ride around the city. Makes you wonder if this will be the start of a change in the enforcement of tree trimming in the city.

Sure those big old trees are pretty, but if this storm happened in the winter and the power outages prevented furnaces from working, it would have been real bad. As in “evacuate the city” bad, for however many days the power took to get back on. And the property damage beyond the power outage was big - what if someone was killed by a tree (like Randy Shaffer was)? Look for the city to get more picky on trimming your trees, to prevent a repeat of this damage.

Governor Strickland was at Marshall's and was giving pledges to help the city. I didn't see him when the news cameras were rolling, but this might have happened when he came back later -

“I have toured your city and have seen the destruction first hand. I will be asking Washington to help with a package of federal assistance in order to get this city on the mend. I know that the residents of Grandview are resilient, and will ...”

The two guys at the bar sat up and clicked their beers together at the mention of Grandview. The rest of the bar continued to ignore him. A blogger stepped up with a camera.

“Sure you can take my picture. Want your picture taken with the Gov?”

The Gov walked over to the fish pond and looked down. “Hey, Fred, come look at this. The fish have a tunnel that they can swim up to go into the next room. Huh. Hey fish, do you need disaster relief?”

The fish had no comment.

(According to this article, Marshall's had about $10K loss from the outage).