City tries to sway New Yorkers to relocate
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Susan Vinella
Plain Dealer Reporter
When 23-year-old Geoff Decker told some friends he was considering a move from New York City to Cleveland, his buddies "made some gross sounds" and basically told him he was crazy.
To New Yorkers, after all, there is no better place to live than New York. Hip, vibrant and teeming with young people. The city sells itself.
Cleveland, on the other hand, needs a little marketing help.
So city officials put together a sort of "Pick Me! Pick Me!" tour of Cleveland for Decker and about a dozen of his 20- and 30-something colleagues from PR Newswire who are visiting this weekend.
The communications firm intends to close offices in several cities, including Decker's Jersey City, N.J., office, and relocate staff to Cleveland and Albuquerque, N.M. Decker and his colleagues must decide if they want to move here.
To try to persuade them, city officials have taken the firm's employees on personal tours of Cleveland, highlighting the types of amenities that young, single professionals often find attractive: downtown living and entertainment, and accessibility to the office.
This weekend's tour is for the second of three groups.
Using a few thousand dollars in public money, the city hired limousine buses to chauffeur the groups around and created welcome baskets filled with hometown products such as Stadium Mustard, Malley's chocolates and Peterson's nuts.
The first tour group was taken to Crocker Park, the mall in Westlake. The city scratched that destination this time around, deciding not to highlight the idea that the best shopping is in the suburbs. Kevin Schmotzer, who is in charge of small-business growth for the city, said he plans to track which employees choose to live downtown and evaluate whether this kind of per sonal marketing should be used in the future.
The city's marketing effort has helped Alberto Alvarez, 28, decide to move here and rent a place in the Warehouse District. A big selling point: the cost of living, he said.
Alvarez said that in Manhattan, he and his brother pay $2,200 a month to rent a tiny apartment in Midtown. For the same price here, he can rent what in New York would be consid ered palatial, he said. "I was shocked at the cost of apartments," Alvarez said.
His colleague, Kim Cariello, 26, is still undecided on whether she will leave New York.
She has local ties: She grew up in Hudson, but she has always perceived Cleveland as a place for families and older people.
"I didn't see Cleveland as a happening place, as a fun city to live," she said.
This weekend's tour, with trips to the new Corner Alley bowling attraction on East Fourth Street and new apartments at Stonebridge in the Flats and Bridgeview in the Warehouse District, has changed her view.
"It seems like a young, fun place," she said.
Decker, too, is still trying to make up his mind, saying that he has been pleasantly surprised by what Cleveland has to offer.
"My decision is being made a lot more difficult because of the city tour," he said.
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: svinella@plaind.com
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