For three hours on a Thursday night in late June, a tiny oasis of Cleveland flickered into being on the thirteenth floor of Washington DC’s National Press Club. 180 people, mostly young professionals with Cleveland connections, came to hear about the benefits of living, working and playing in Cleveland. They came to hear about jobs, to network, to listen to Cleveland businesspeople talk about the city. They came on a whim or because their significant other wanted to go. And they left with a wealth of information about a city on the rise.
The Cleveland business community was out in force. Baiju Shah, BioMotiv CEO and Global Cleveland Board Chair, spoke at length. Lee Krume was there from JobsOhio, Global Cleveland’s biggest jobs partner, and Jack Schron was there from Jergens, Inc. and the Cuyahoga County Council. Representatives of Shaker LaunchHouse, the Group Plan Commission, Progressive and the Gay Games also spoke.
From the beginning, the D.C. event was supposed to be like stepping into Cleveland, and it was. Every attendee got a Malley’s chocolate bar, and browsed through an extensive Community Center with dozens of different organizations represented, each one giving information about living, working and playing in Cleveland. Posters around the room illustrated the relative cost of housing between DC and CLE. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame generously contributed a behind-the-scenes tour of its archives as one of the night’s three prizes. Cleveland Whiskey donated a case of its finest liquor. And a Washington Nationals loge seat, courtesy of Forest City Enterprises, found its way into the hands of a happy recipient.
After the speeches had been made, the prizes handed out, and the last Malley’s bars handed to the departing guests, the staff packed up the remaining materials from the event and headed back to our hotel. The Press Club staff cleaned up whatever mess we’d left behind. Cleveland in DC was no more, for the moment. But Global Cleveland left the idea of itself behind. Affordable housing. Low cost-of-living. Lots of jobs. Friendly people. Great atmosphere. A wonderful place to live, work and play. It’s a seed, the idea of Cleveland, that we hope will bear fruit in the minds of our attendees, and those of the people they tell. We’ve only taken one step so far outside our city, but that step has planted the idea of Cleveland in people’s minds.
