UH, HERE? It's unclear if this riverside site behind Tower City will be the home of the new Convention Center, as many are assuming.

If you'd asked any Cuyahoga County resident six months ago what they thought about building a Medical Mart in Cleveland, they likely would've looked at you blankly. We're now hearing that Dr. Toby Cosgrove, director and CEO of the Cleveland Clinic, proposed the project, a permanent showroom to display and sell medical supplies and equipment, early last year.

But it wasn't until this June that the volume was amped up, when the three Cuyahoga County commissioners announced it as the latest in a long line of economic silver bullets, backed by the drum-beating of the Greater Cleveland Partnership, the Convention & Visitors Bureau of Greater Cleveland and the Plain Dealer. CVB president Dennis Roche said in a July letter to members, "The medical mart is a transformational project. This could potentially be the biggest thing to happen for conventions, trade shows, hotels, restaurants and entertainment venues in a generation."

But we were told that in order to attract this miracle-worker, the county had to commit to building a convention center - and we had to do it now, or risk "losing" the project. (Those around for the Rock Hall roll-out will recognize the rhetoric; the get-it-done-now-worry-about-it-later attitude is a significant part of why the inductions are not held here.) Something almost no one had heard of the month before was now essential, a "last chance" for the Cleveland area. The commissioners said they were planning to vote on a sales-tax hike for the required convention center in less than two months, following a pair of required public hearings. That done, the Medical Mart would then materialize.

But deciphering details of the project - Where will it be? How much it would cost? Who would pay for it? What would the actual benefits be? - is turning out to be more difficult than figuring out what's going on in Dick Cheney's office.

The hearings were held on July 19 and July 26. But few details were provided at these hearings; they were actually simply opportunities for citizens to come up to the mic and say what they thought, though to what end was not clear. Immediately following the second, the commissioners voted to pass the tax increase that they say will raise $42 million annually to cover the costs of the convention center.

At both sessions, about one-third of the two-hour time was given to Christopher Kennedy, president of Chicago-based Merchandise Mart Properties Inc., the entity that wants to bring the medical mart to Cleveland. Kennedy's PowerPoint presentation (viewable online at merchandisemart.com/clevelandmedicalmart/text/index.html) was essentially a promotional piece for MMPI, a company that manages convention and trade-show facilities around the country, and a pitch for why it should run not only the Medical Mart, but also the new convention center (funneling some of that new sales-tax money to Chicago).

But who pays for the Medical Mart is singularly unclear. Kennedy mentioned that MMPI spent $500,000 "researching" the market and referred to another couple of million dollars it might spend, but whether it would have a major role in funding the project is unclear. In passing, Kennedy referred to a "private developer" ready to commit a few million more. An August 4 Plain Dealer story stated, "Financing for the Cleveland project would come from both the developers and the county sales tax."

Since the county sales tax, we've been assured by the commissioners, is earmarked strictly for the convention center, presumably "the developers" are paying for the Medical Mart. But it's unclear who these developers are, although this, from the MMPI Web site, might offer a clue: "Cleveland-based Forest City Enterprises first posited the idea of a medical mart in Cleveland in the mid-1980s. Forest City proposed converting one of its Tower City holdings, the former US Post Office building, into a showplace for medical products."

A June 20 Plain Dealer story said that "All parties have deferred to officials of the Chicago-based company [MMPI] for site selection. The old Higbee building on Public Square is the preferred site for the Medical Mart with the new exhibition hall going behind Tower City Center." Both are owned by Forest City. Yet when citizen-speakers at the hearings referred to this as the chosen site, Commissioner Tim Hagan was quick to grab his mic to deny that a site had been picked. And MMPI senior vice president Mark Falanga told tradeshowweek.com last month that the Higbee building is a possibility, but added, "It's premature to talk about actual location. We are evaluating other possibilities."

HAGAN ALSO ADMITTED at a hearing that the convention center would be a loss leader, and that the Medical Mart would be the lure that would keep the center in business. The project's local promoters have repeatedly said that with the Medical Mart, Cleveland "could" attract "as many as" 50 medical-related trade shows and conferences annually, with over 300,000 visitors a year (that's 6,000 per week on average) and create $330 millon in "direct economic impact."

The figures actually came from MMPI. Kennedy's presentation says there are 571 medical-industry events that mostly rotate locations, and assumes each would come to Cleveland once every 10 years. At first glance that seems like a rational and conservative estimate.

On July 25, at clevelandmedicalmart.wordpress.com, a promotional Web site for the project set up by the GCP and the CVB, CVB employee Lorelei Sugano offered a link to http://meetings.primediabusiness. com/search.asp as evidence of the wealth of potential business. She says there are 705 medical meetings and conferences on the list for 2007, and that she counted 170 not associated with a particular institution or locale. But Free Times counts close to 300 on this list that would seem extremely unlikely to consider Cleveland even every 10 years for various reasons, including routinely meeting in various international locales. That would include gatherings of groups such as the California Society of Anesthesiologists, the Toronto Academy of Dentistry and the Virginia Health Care Association, or a series of seminars sponsored by the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, all held in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where the university is located.

It's unclear exactly how Kennedy arrives at his 571 figure - if the longer list overlaps his or includes other events. Still, the list provides a window into what these convention and meeting planners are looking for in a location, and it should give some pause to project supporters. It strongly suggests that Cleveland might be better off building domed golf courses.

MMPI's Christopher Kennedy

As Kennedy said in his presentation, trade show attendees "want to be in places with warm weather, terrific amusements and great attractions. Cleveland frankly lacks the assets of such a destination city."

A rundown of the list bears him out. It's a roll call of sunny climes.

There's Las Vegas and Orlando, of course, the two top convention destinations in the country. They're followed by other Florida locations, San Diego, San Francisco, Atlanta, Savannah, Phoenix, New Orleans, Hawaii and resorts like Hilton Head, Sanibel Island, Alta and Cancun.

Washington, DC is big, likely for reasons unique to that city, with 30 events listed. (But earlier this year, the Washington Post reported - in a news story titled "Convention Center Not Living up to LoftyGoal" - that despite promises, "convention attendance is dropping ... and conventioneers are filling fewer hotel rooms than expected.")

Of the 400-odd 2007 meetings that are not location-tied or international, almost 300 are meeting this year in warm-weather or resort-style locations or in DC. Even groups you might expect to be considering Cleveland now are giving it a pass; Case Western Reserve University's Clinical Update in Infectious Diseases, for instance, was at Sanibel Island, Florida in April. The Cleveland Clinic, a major proponent of the Medical Mart project (although not, apparently, interested in paying any share of it), already holds many of its seminars and workshops in Cleveland at the InterContinental Hotel's Conference Center on its own campus, while staging others in California, Arizona and Florida, where it has a branch.

The bulk of the up-north business goes to three cities: Philadelphia and Chicago, which have massive facilities that Cleveland's apparently won't rival, and Seattle. And on July 28, the Chicago Tribune sounded yet another warning: The country's largest convention hall, McCormick Place, is hurting for business. The article quotes an economic development expert as saying, "When Las Vegas and Orlando offer weather, sun and fun, as opposed to Chicago, which offers centrality, clearly there is a major selling job needed in this saturated market."

And what are they planning on doing about this? According to the article, "With McCormick Place's latest addition, Chicago is aiming squarely for the lucrative association and medical meeting segment of the business coveted by so many."

So Chicago is gearing up to go after the very same business that Cleveland is.

And so is New York City. A few weeks ago, developers in NYC announced plans to build a sparkling new medical-supplies showroom in Midtown Manhattan across from the existing Javits Convention Center. Cheerleaders of the Cleveland project spun this as yet another reason to rush rather than slow down to consider the impact a similar facility elsewhere might have. But they have not explained why being first would count for anything.

Nor have they explained why the chance to look at medical equipment after a long day of meetings would be a bigger draw for the average doctor than New Orleans' nightlife, Las Vegas' casinos or Breckenridge's slopes or Hilton Head's golf courses.

"We believe that a great offset to the lack of destination quality in Cleveland," Kennedy said in his presentation, "is to provide a climate where manufacturers and their customers can be more productive and conduct their business in a more meaningful way." But if that were the only reason conferences were held, resorts and places with legalized gambling wouldn't be running away with all the business.

The first time he gave this pitch to Clevelanders, Kennedy said that luring 50 medical-related events annually would be an "unprecedented success for a new trade-show facility." During the Q&A, Libertarian Paul Conroy challenged him, saying, "I heard Mr. Kennedy speak of 50 conventions being unprecedented. I want to know what's realistic."

The following week, Kennedy substituted the word "tremendous." But "unprecedented" still appears in the online version.