Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Silverman / The Economy Is a Nashville Medical Trade Center Viable? How Will It Affect Convention Center Plans?
Posted by Jack Silverman on Tue, May 19, 2009 at 7:00 AM
"The customers are in Cleveland. The manufacturers want to hang around customers--not their peers. Manufacturers are going to Cleveland to sell into Cleveland Clinic, to sell to University Hospitals and sell to MetroHealth Medical Center. They're not cycling through Nashville to see their buddies.... What they've proposed to do--they've cut and pasted the content from our website. There's not any original thinking in there in terms of what they contemplate. They've tried to replicate a whole range of our projects. This is a threat we don't take all that seriously." (Mark Falanga, senior VP at Merchandise Mart Properties Inc., the company behind the Cleveland project) "I'm not terribly worried about the boast and the brag of those from Nashville. If we were building something for the Grand Ole Opry they would have the edge on us. [Zinnnggg!] But Nashville is not known as an epicenter for health care as we are.... We still have the upper hand by far. It's not even close." (Cuyahoga County Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones)One thing on which Cleveland and Nashville backers agree: The country can't handle more than one medical mart concept. As Market Center Management CEO Bill Winsor puts it, "Being first is a key element to victory." The race is on.
Comments (9)
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Man, are you guys against EVERYTHING that ever gets proposed for Nashville? I mean, the instant expertise on all topics is impressive, but why is your default setting always on "no?" Maybe you're right about this-- and the other proposals for the city--but you guys have such a dismal view of Nashville's potential. Where are y'all from anyway?
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Everyman, it's totally understandable why you might think Pith is against everything ever. Having said that, I'd like to think we're not completely kneejerk when it comes to all things Nashville.
Take the riverfront development plan. It's eco-friendly, relatively cheap, thoroughly vetted and will probably end up doing more positive things for the look and feel of downtown Nashville than any project in recent memory. We've written some on it in the past. But not to the extent that we've covered the Music City Center.
Why?
Because ultimately it's more fun to write about half-baked plans proposed in clear violation of logic. Especially when they'll end up costing a billion dollars. Writing about smart ideas just doesn't offer the same opportunity for jokes.
As for the Medical Mart issue, I think it's hard to argue that Jack's claiming to be an expert. That's why he has so many question marks; he doesn't know the answers.
What he does know is that other people, who actually do claim to be experts, say the country can only sustain one medical mart. Cleveland and New York are already years into planning. So to say the medical mart might not be right for Nashville is less a dismal view of the city's potential than it is a dismal view of some developer's hail mary claim that we can leapfrog the competition by building a 1.5 million sq. ft. building within a year.
If that's not worth questioning, I'm not sure what is.
I don't think we're against everything, Everyman. It's just that with the last two major proposals -- the convention center and now the medical mart -- we're merely swiping old ideas from elsewhere.
The If We Build It They Will Come Thesis behind the convention center has failed nationwide for years. The evidence against its success is so sweeping and profound you'd need to work for the visitor's bureau to buy into it. Nevertheless, we're very close to being the 106,753rd guy to make this mistake.
The medical mart thing is a bit different. The prevailing logic here is that whoever's first wins. I wouldn't worry about competing with Cleveland. I was home last week and started counting the number of charges/indictments/trials involving public officials over a 6-day period. Grand total: 6 different cases over 6 days. The city and state are far too corrupt and inept to make a legitimate competitor.
But I would worry about New York, which already has a multiyear head start in planning, and is the much bigger center and natural destination point for medicine. I'd also worry about how many marts like this are needed in the U.S., especially when they're all located east of the Mississippi.
Then you have to examine how these things actually tend to dampen medical conventions. Most trade groups make their money during conventions by selling booth space to the very companies that would be included in a mart. So it's only natural that they would avoid a city with a medical mart, lest they wish to gut their own revenue during their conventions.
Finally, whether they'll admit it now or not, the creators of the Nashville mart will someday come hat in hand for a huge welfare package from city and state. Cleveland, for example, is giving away nearly $1 billion in welfare for its mart (yes, they're morons). So Nashville will naturally need welfare to make its leases competitive. Paying for the entire project themselves puts them at a severe disadvantage -- it probably wouldn't even get off the ground.
So while it would be easier to play the cheerleader on these types of things, you know the city fathers, the Tennessean, and all the usual suspects will be on board with only minumal research (see the convention center). So I guess it's our obligation to examine the details and see if they work. In this case, there are a ton of red flags from the outset.
But if you want to get behind something like this sight unseen, more power to you.
Agreed, ton of red flags, but the bare outline of the proposal implied that funding would be 100% private.
"Finally, whether they'll admit it now or not, the creators of the Nashville mart will someday come hat in hand for a huge welfare package from city and state."
And if that happens, they should get a boot in the ass. I've been reading the Plain Dealer's series of stories about the medical market plans there, and it sounds like a massive taxpayer boondoggle.
The approach on the part of the state of Tennessee (and Metro, for that matter) has been that because we cannot offer a highly educated native workforce or existing infrastructure amenities, we have to bribe the hell out of companies who otherwise would move somewhere with better schools, transportation, etc. So rather than putting the money towards public education, or a decent transportation system or efficient utility network, we give land away, cut huge tax breaks, and purpose-build a "Saturn Parkway" or the equivalent and a big electrical substation. Works pretty well until we fail to educate the kids of the workers who moved here and have to bribe some other company.
Maybe for-profit healthcare is the kind of industry Nashville can own, and this medical mart is the natural place for it. But somehow I doubt that the developers aren't going to ask for big tax breaks.
Maybe this building, the Music City Center, and May Town Center can all transform into robots and join together to form some kind of boondoggle Voltron to do battle with Atlanta for municipal misstep supremacy.
Right you are, DG. The Cleveland plan is a lock to be a monster boondoggle, but it also changes the economic landscape for these kinds of deals because of the size of the welfare package.
The better plan is Brandon's, which is completely fresh. We'd be way in front of the pack when it comes to municipal Voltrons.
The Dinobots or Constructicons wouldn't stand a chance against just our Landports and sports facilities. Throw in public convention facilities and we will soon be paying homage to our new overlords and trying to interest them in our personal skill sets.
It's come to my attention I left out the Signature Tower -- Nashville's "size issue".
I dunno. Not attributing bad faith so much as bemoaning the lack of fresh thinking. Seems to me that anything of any size or scope or ambition gets shot down and ridiculed by the esteemed Pith panel as unworkable bullshit brought to us by the local bizpigs, blah, blah, blah. You've become way too predictable. It's hard to be a provacatuer-- if that's your goal-- if you're this utterly knee-jerk about everything. And I understand the Scene's role to challenge authority, etc-- it's why we read this damn rag even if I disagaree with 30% of what you write (60%?) (Is it your particular brand of lefty-ness that compels your view? Hell, I'm a lefty and and don't wind up in the same place as you guys on these things-- then again I've worked in government and feel keenly the imperative to grow our community in ways that are smart and sustaianble-- but growth we must have. Is it just the sophmoric tendency of bright guys with the license afforded by the alternative weekly format?). Find a contrarian somewhere and give her some column inches. But for god's sake you've got to give this city more credit.
