"We know that people discovered us, because we hosted the [2012 Democratic National] Convention, and we've been able to secure other conventions because we hosted this," said Michael Smith, president and CEO of Charlotte Center City Partners in Charlotte, North Carolina.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Hosting the Republican National Convention in 2016 will not only shine the spotlight on Greater Cleveland, but it also will help vault the city to the major leagues in ways that will endure long after the convention is gone.
At least, that's what Wednesday's panelists told a sold-out lunch crowd of more than 260 people at The City Club of Cleveland on what they can expect the region to gain from the experience.
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Michael Smith, president and CEO of Charlotte Center City Partners in Charlotte, North Carolina. Michael Smith, president and chief executive of Charlotte Center City Partners in Charlotte, North Carolina, which hosted the 2012 Democratic National Convention, said: "We know that people discovered us, because we hosted the Convention, and we've been able to secure other conventions because we hosted this," he said.
Getting picked to host a convention is a huge bet with the potential for major payoff, "but for cities like Charlotte and Cleveland, it's a good bet," he said. Smith said he meets with institutional investors who would not have spoken to him pre-2012, and Charlotte regularly shows up on national lists that it would not have made in the past.
Subtracting out the politics, Charlotte saw being a host city to the convention "as a game changer" that meant "we were going to be changing leagues as a city," Smith said. "We wanted to introduce our city to the world." City officials focused on highlighting what outsiders already knew about Charlotte, as well as the great things about Charlotte they did not yet know.
"There's a lot of long-ball thinking that goes into this," Smith said. He urged Clevelanders to focus on long-term goals and aspirations that go well beyond the week of the convention, such as economic development, job growth, and more residents. Work with groups like the convention and visitors bureau (now called Destination Cleveland) and the chamber of commerce, "give everybody an assignment, make it as specific as possible, and then let them go," he said.
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Joseph Marinucci, president and CEO of the Downtown Cleveland Alliance The other two panelists were: Joseph A. Marinucci, president and chief executive of the Downtown Cleveland Alliance; and Terrance C.Z. Egger, executive chairman of Cleveland's RNC Host Committee, and former president and publisher of The Plain Dealer Publishing Co. Egger was filling in for R.T. Rybak, former mayor of Minneapolis, who was home with the flu. The panel was moderated by WKYC Channel 3 Anchor Kris Pickel.
The Republicans' announcement last summer that they had unanimously chosen Cleveland to host the RNC in 2016 acted as an accelerant to hasten major construction projects in Downtown Cleveland, from the renovation of Public Square to the lakefront North Coast Harbor Pedestrian Bridge, said Robyn Minter Smyers, partner-in-charge of the Cleveland office of Thompson Hine LLP law firm and a City Club board member.
But Clevelanders will get to enjoy the benefits of those and other projects long after the convention is over.
Friday of that same week last summer, LeBron James announced he was coming home to Northeast Ohio, setting off a national curiosity about what on earth was going in Cleveland, Egger said. That has opened up an opportunity "to tell stories not just about the convention and visitors, but about life here." The pendulum about Cleveland has swung more widely than about any city in decades, he said.
The onslaught of national media expected for the RNC, the second-biggest media event outside of the Olympics, mean even more opportunities for stories about Cleveland, he said.
Marinucci said 2014 was a tremendous year for Cleveland, with residential occupancy levels of 97.8 percent despite the addition of 456 new apartments. Downtown Cleveland kept 3,578 jobs and attracted or retained 44 businesses in 2014, including the newest Heinen's in The 9 building, which Marinucci called "arguably the most beautiful grocery store in the world."
He said the reconfiguration and beautification of Public Square will become "the face of downtown" for the RNC and the rest of the country. "Although we think Downtown is well served now, it's going to be exponentially better," he said.
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Terrance C.Z. Egger, executive chairman of the Cleveland RNC Host Committee Egger said: "It's not about a political event; it's not about a one-week event, it's really about the long ball" and ways to promote Cleveland as an enduring brand. "That is the pay day." He compared it to the bipartisan, public-private effort to score one of the major political conventions, saying: "It was just a lot of good people" working toward the same goal.
If RNC delegates go home saying, "'Wow, I didn't know that about Cleveland,' 'What a great party,' and that's it, we've failed," Egger said. "This gives us an opportunity to do things that we otherwise might not do."
He reminded the audience that Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said at Destination Cleveland's annual meeting last week that "we are going to make sure that we have a major event every summer here in Cleveland, a signature event."
Smith said that rather than renting out their houses and bolting when the Republicans come to town, residents should stay and welcome them to Cleveland. "When guests come to town, you want them to meet Cleveland," he said.
In Charlotte, the Democratic National Convention spurred road projects, capital improvements, expansion of broadband and wifi services, more police motorcycles, and increased capacity of local police, fire and other first responders, all of which remain today, he said.
Of the 35,000 people who went to Charlotte in 2012, about 15,000 of them were credentialed media, Smith said. That's three times the number of media covering the Super Bowl, Egger said. "Give them B-roll; give them everything they need," Smith said.
Smith said residents and downtown workers need to understand that it will be harder to get around during the convention. In Charlotte, people were urged to bike, walk, use public transit or carpool to work that week. "The community has to agree that this is a priority for all of Cleveland, and we are all going to make sacrifices," he said.
Egger said that when Cleveland was vying against Dallas for the RNC in 2016, the Republican committee members said that "the X-factor was the people here, the people they met on the street who said, 'We want you here.'
"After it was over, they told us: 'It wasn't even close,'" he said.