Cleveland gets a bad rap. But Terry Coyne, executive vice president of industrial with that city’s Grubb & Ellis office, doesn’t think it’s fair.
Coyne calls Cleveland a great place to live. And he has plenty of reasons to back this up: The city boasts affordable housing. It has a thriving health-care and medical market, with some of the country’s best hospitals. It has an unexpectedly diverse arts and culture scene.
And, most importantly of all, the commercial real estate market here is on the upswing, Coyne said. And that’s especially true of the city’s industrial market.
In the last three months, Automated Packaging bought a 177,000-square-foot building from Playtex Manufacturing, Cleveland Steel Container moved to an 86,000-square-foot building and Winston Products moved to a 113,000-square-foot building, all in the Cleveland area.
To make matters even better, American Greetings — the folks responsible for so many of those Valentine’s Day and anniversary cards lining the shelves at your local supermarket — announced today that it will keep its headquarters in Northeast Ohio, after having previously flirted with leaving the area.
“A lot of people don’t realize what a great place Cleveland is,” Coyne said. “We have a lot going for us in Cleveland.”
So why does Cleveland — not to mention other Midwest industrial-based cities — get such a bad rap?
Maybe it’s unfamiliarity. The folks living on the East and West coasts don’t think too much about the Midwest. And when they do, they usually picture factories belching out black smog.
But the Midwest is so much more.
Hollywood understands this. Just look at Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley, two sitcoms from my younger days. They were both set in the decidedly Midwest location of Milwaukee. Roseanne was set in a suburb of Chicago, while rumor has it, though I can’t vouch for this, that Married with Children was set in one of the south suburbs of Chicago.
And then there’s The Drew Carey Show, set in Cleveland. Carey was so proud of this that his show’s opening contains the immortal song “Cleveland Rocks.”
Maybe it’s time viewers in the rest of the country pay more attention to their sitcoms: The Midwest is where it’s at. And, yes, Cleveland does rock.
– Dan Rafter
go tribe!