The Committee of Finance, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion convened on July 15, 2026, to consider a packed agenda including a controversial six-month extension of the Flock Safety automated license plate reader contract, a resolution to begin eminent domain for a new fire station, a moratorium on data centers, a settlement with Brook Park over the IX Center, and ADA improvements to City Hall. The meeting lasted several hours with extensive debate, especially on the Flock Safety and IX Center items.
All right, this committee of finance diversity equity and inclusion is reconvening. We did have one other guest that's here for development. We're gonna go ahead and do that part. This is ordinance number six six two that's twenty twenty-six by council members Davis, Santana, and Griffin by departmental requests and emergency ordinance authorizing the mayor and the commissioner of purchases and supplies to acquire and reconvey properties presently owned by Starline Stone LLC and or its designee located at four oh one Stone's levy for the purpose of entering into the chain of title prior to adoption of tax increment finance financing legislation authorized under section fifty-seven oh nine dot four one of the revised code for the Bed Rock Rock Entertainment Amphitheater Project. Uh director and your guests. Uh good afternoon uh to the chair and to the committee. Um excited to present this project to you. Uh with me is Nora Romanoff from Bedrock Development. Uh her and her group are uh leading this uh organization or this development. Uh and with that, I will get into the slides about this chain of title. Uh so Starling Stone LLC is an affiliate of Bedrock. Um, and so they have acquired this property at four oh one Stones Levy, uh, which is on the east bank of the Cuyahoga River, just across West Third Street from the uh Peak Performance Center that has kind of been that first uh construction project as part of the activities uh Bedrock is doing to redevelop the uh riverfront. Um Cosm is also a project being led by this group, so a lot of activity being driven by Bedrock and the Rock Entertainment Group here in downtown Cleveland. Uh if you look at the current site conditions, um there's our are a couple existing structures. Um the easternmost warehouse has been demolished, um, but there are some sort of older industrial um buildings there. Uh it does have general industry zoning, um, and so this is really sort of if you think about uh the kind of whole riverfront development strategy that Bedrock brought to the city. This is like one parcel outside of what was originally thought of. And so that's why we're coming to you today for this chain of title. Uh basically just expands the geographic scope of the work they're doing down the riverfront. Um so this project, it's uh tremendously exciting. Uh, it'll be the construction of a new sixty two hundred seat uh riverfront amphitheater. Uh this is a uh rendering that was provided to the city planning commission back in April uh kind of gives you an idea of uh the seating, uh the stage, and the layout. Uh that kind of just describes those uh those things. Live Nation will uh operate this uh so from uh an economic perspective, hope to be drawing in regional visitors from outside of the city and county to this venue. Uh and this will create approximately sixty new FTE jobs on three point one million dollars in annual payroll for the city of Cleveland. Uh and so as the as this piece of kind of the larger TIFF goes, um, we estimate that the thirty-year value of this TIFF would be uh just under ten million dollars, uh and that the benefits uh to uh CMSD would be just over sixteen million dollars. Uh those jobs would be a boon to the uh income tax base of about seventy-seven thousand dollars a year, uh which leads to a net increase of uh eighteen point three million dollars uh in revenues to the city and CMSD over the course of the term. Uh in terms of the community benefits uh tied to this. So this is part of the larger development agreement that the city in Bad Rock uh previously agreed to and was legislated. Uh and with that came arguably the most robust community benefits agreement. Uh City of Cleveland has uh been a part of. And so this will fold into that agreement. Um with that, I'm happy to turn it over to uh Nora if she would like to add anything uh and answer any questions. Thank you. All right, please proceed. Sure, to uh to the chair and to the committee, good afternoon. Thank you for having me. Um to the note on site plan, maybe I'll just provide a little bit of um can site context. Um in this picture, we're looking at Stone's Levee and West Third Street in the flats. And so if you can picture the Lorraine Carnegie Bridge, this is just north of the Lorraine Carnegie Bridge and the lower portion of West Third and Stone's Levee, Stone's Levee turns into then the Eagle Bridge, or soon to be. Um, and that was a portion of the note. Thank you to Mr. Bruno for summarizing our project so nicely appreciated. Um I wanted to also mention that this project, along with our other um efforts down in this area, include um the reconstruction of Stones Levy and Central Avenue, which joins the reconstruction of our portion of West Third Street, and then the re-establishment of the Eagle Bridge, which is currently under construction right now, um, as well as all of the affiliated utilities. Okay. All right, thank you. Uh Councilwoman Santana, you uh moved this to committee at a whole. Yes, I did it, but through the chair, didn't we hear this in DPS? Sorry. Uh to the chair to the councilman.