A visitor column on GeekWire warning Seattle to not turn into “the subsequent Cleveland” has taken on a lifetime of its personal — culminating in a telephone name Thursday morning between the writer of the piece and the mayor of Cleveland himself.
On the decision, Mayor Justin Bibb acknowledged the teachings of Cleveland’s decline, many many years in the past, however pushed again on the framing and focus of the piece, asserting that the actual story is the town’s ongoing revival. He mentioned Seattle needs to be being attentive to Cleveland for various causes than the column urged.
“We didn’t pivot quick sufficient, and the world left us behind,” Bibb mentioned. “And now we’re a comeback story of reinvention and resilience. And I believe there’s rather a lot the nation can be taught from what we’re doing.”
Bibb mentioned the previous nationwide narrative of Cleveland as “the error on the lake” is drained and outdated.
“The brand new story that’s rising is Cleveland goes to steer America when it comes to how we take into consideration our industrial revival,” he mentioned. “We’re making issues in America once more, making issues in Ohio once more, and I need Cleveland to paved the way.”
Seattle tech veteran and angel investor Charles Fitzgerald, who wrote the unique column, mentioned his intent was to match Seattle at the moment to Cleveland at its peak, to not take a shot on the trendy metropolis.
“We’re type of fats, dumb and pleased,” Fitzgerald mentioned of Seattle. “My purpose actually is to get folks to get up and put together the town for the subsequent act, and remind them that prosperity is just not assured.”
Classes from Seattle’s previous: Bibb, a self-described scholar of historical past, mentioned he’s studied Seattle’s personal restoration from the Boeing bust of the early Seventies, when somebody famously put up a billboard studying, “Will the final particular person leaving Seattle prove the lights.”
Seattle responded by leveraging its analysis establishments and using the know-how growth, he mentioned, and Cleveland is now attempting to observe its personal model of that playbook.
“I envy issues round progress,” Bibb mentioned. “These are the issues I wish to have sooner or later in Cleveland, and I’m attempting to create the baseline so we will have these issues.”
Fitzgerald agreed. “I believe the cities are extremely analogous,” he mentioned. “We’re on the prime of the world at the moment, Cleveland was on the prime of the world. … And we’ve the identical danger within the sense that we’ve over-performed, and so we’ve bought additional to fall.”
Fitzgerald’s column, printed Tuesday, drew parallels between Seattle at the moment and Cleveland within the Nineteen Fifties, when it was one in every of America’s largest and most affluent cities. Bibb responded with a LinkedIn submit that drew a whole lot of reactions, defending Cleveland’s comeback and welcoming Fitzgerald to go to.
GeekWire linked the 2 by telephone on Thursday morning. Hearken to highlights from the decision on this bonus episode of the GeekWire Podcast.
Olympia and Columbus: For the Seattle tech neighborhood, the column was a part of a broader debate over the area’s financial future within the midst of the AI frenzy and new efforts by lawmakers in Olympia to boost taxes on high-income earners and companies in ways in which many fear will undercut startups.
Bibb spoke to Cleveland’s expertise in Ohio in feedback on the decision. Requested about Cleveland’s relationship with its state capital, Columbus, he mentioned that regardless of being a blue metropolis mayor in a purple state, the partnership on jobs and the financial system has been sturdy.
“We don’t tax company income. We have now nice R&D tax credit statewide,” he mentioned. “We wish to compete with the most effective of them, from South Carolina to Texas to Washington to California. We wish to guarantee that Ohio is a simple place to do enterprise, and that Cleveland is a metropolis that’s shifting on the pace of enterprise.”
Extra broadly, Bibb cited billions in investments reshaping Cleveland, together with a $1.6 billion airport modernization, a $4 billion tax increment financing district to redevelop the town’s waterfront, and Sherwin-Williams bringing 5,000 staff into a brand new downtown skyscraper.
He pointed to aerospace, superior manufacturing, and the town’s health-tech sector, anchored by the Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve College, as engines of the revival.
A Seattle actuality examine: After all, Seattle has its personal strengths, together with parallel establishments such because the College of Washington and Fred Hutch Most cancers Middle, together with the AI and cloud computing operations of Microsoft and Amazon, and energy in areas akin to fusion vitality, area, and biotech.
In a submit Thursday on LinkedIn, Jacob Colker, co-founder of the AI2 Incubator, pushed again on what he known as the “breathless narrative” of Seattle’s decline, citing the area’s huge focus of AI expertise and capital, its dominance within the area financial system, and its rising fusion and biotech sectors.
“The sky isn’t falling,” Colker wrote.
However Fitzgerald’s argument is much less about Seattle’s present strengths than about whether or not native and state leaders are doing the fitting issues for the subsequent section of progress. Fitzgerald mentioned a number of folks have already requested to affix him on a visit to Cleveland, taking the mayor up on his supply — no less than when the climate will get hotter.
“I like that,” Bibb mentioned. “There isn’t any higher place than our respective cities, Cleveland and Seattle, to indicate the nation what’s doable.”
