Archive for November, 2007
Tyler Village Visit
After a quick call to my friend Michael DeAloia, he suggested that I call Dave Fleming of Tyler Village. He remarked that he had worked with another company to get them moved in there last year.
I did a quick drive-by and thought the location was good, so I figured it was worth a call.I called Dave Fleming and discovered after about 10-seconds that we already knew each other. His brother is Geoff’s room-mate. Small world!
We set up a time to go look at about 3,000sq of space. They have 2-3 options for us, and we know where he lives, so we’re expecting he’s not out to get us.
Tyler Village has a LOT planned for the next few years. You can read more about the place on their website. Here are a few pics from their site.
Here’s the current reality. Not too shabby, but a bit off of the vision.
Overall, this was our early winner. We still need to look a more spaces, but I think we’re on the right track here.
Can Cleveland Help?
There was an article in the Plain Dealer recently that was talking about the drain of talent and people from Cleveland. I thought “Cool, I’ve got a high-tech company, and want to move to Cleveland!” I figured they’d be more than happy to help my company relocate from Solon to Cleveland!
Wrong!
It turns out, there is VERY little to entice small companies like mine to move to the city. Here’s a list of what the city can do to help. I’d talked to them last year when I bought SparkBase to see what they could do. I couldn’t move the company at the time, but I figured it was only about 11mos later, so it couldn’t be that different. Wrong again. Here’s what changed.
Last year: $25,000 in interest-free loans for every job that I created for the city.
Now: That’s gone.
Last year: $75,000 low-interest loan with a $5,000 grant for moving the company to Cleveland.
Now: Nope. Nothing.
Last Year: Various Tax Abatements.
Now: Nada.
Here’s what they CAN do…
Give me a low-interest, 1 year loan on 40% of the cost of moving the company and build-out. So if we spend $100,000 on the new space, they’ll lend me $40,000 at 3% under prime for one year. To GET this magnificent deal, I need to fill out 3 sets of forms, present it to a committee, a second committee if it’s one of the 15 of 200 they look at on a quarterly basis, and yet another meeting with the Mayor if it’s chosen. Thanks, but I have better things to do with my time to save $600 in interest. (On a 1-year loan none the less!)
I really hope our city can get a Mayor that understands simple things like…a non-school tax abatement doesn’t hurt schools.
Here we go…
Welcome to the SparkBase “New Office” blog!
This is where we’ll be writing about our move to Cleveland and the trials/tribulations that happen along the way. We’ll take you through what we look at, who the players are, why we choose what we do. Hopefully, we’ll end with a big party that everyone can come to!
So here we are. It’s November 15th 2007, I know where my son is, and we’re ready to get started. Let’s see what we come up with!