O-I's shock may wake city to action

2/13/2005

Eight bite-size Lemmon Drops to nibble on while mapping out your Valentine's Day strategy:

  • Perhaps now Toledo will put downtown development on the front burner. It has no other choice, really.

    Thank you, Owens-Illinois Inc., for being so honest about the possibility of moving your world headquarters from downtown to the Levis Development Park in Perrysburg.

    It almost seems surreal that O-I would consider abandoning the 32-story building at One SeaGate. It is the jewel of Toledo's skyline.

    To lose O-I, which has 340 employees at its downtown headquarters, would be a devastating blow for the city. The prestige of having a Fortune 500 firm call Toledo home is invaluable in "selling" the city to outsiders.

    As someone who works two blocks from O-I, I can relate to those who believe it's more of a pain than a pleasure to work downtown. After all, it barely has a pulse.

    Owens-Illinois gave Toledo a much-needed wake-up call.

  • I'm thinking if the University of Toledo men's basketball team played its home games in a new downtown arena, attendance for Wednesday's contest against rival Bowling Green State University would have been more than double the 5,829 at Savage Hall.

  • Say what you will about Ohio Supreme Court Justice Alice Robie Resnick's arrest for drunken driving, but at least she pleaded guilty and moved on. The process, from arrest to sentencing, took one week.

    Compare that to the timeline of the 2003 drunken-driving case against then-Lucas County Treasurer Ray Kest. The process, which ended when Mr. Kest pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, took 25 weeks.

    Justice Resnick took "full responsibility" for her actions, just as she said she would do.

  • Ohio's "temporary" sales-tax increase -- it went from 5 percent to 6 percent in 2003 -- is supposed to expire on June 30. However, instead of returning it to 5 percent, as scheduled, Gov. Bob Taft has proposed that it be set at 5.5 percent. The budget wrangling has yet to begin, but if 5.5 percent is the starting point, is there any doubt we will wind up at 6 percent again?

  • Now that voters in the Lake Local School District have, for the second time, reneged on a public "promise" to pass a school-funding proposal, the school board -- which, in response to a public outcry in August, decided to restore extracurricular activities at a cost of more than $700,000 -- should, as punishment for being so gullible, hold its next meeting in the back of a turnip truck.

  • Prospective tenants for The Shops at Fallen Timbers are being told that the 130-acre retail village will open in 18 months. Depending on your perspective, the development will join with Westfield Shoppingtown Franklin Park and Levis Commons to form the Axis of Retailing or, given that all three are outside the I-475 loop around the heart of the metro area, the Axis of Urban Sprawl.

  • A challenge for the Ohio Turnpike Commission: Given that the turnpike's unionized toll collectors and maintenance workers have agreed to a three-year contract, thereby averting a strike, how about pledging not to raise tolls until 2009?

  • Memo to Wal-Mart: The read-between-the-lines message you sent from Canada -- that you will be closing the store in Jonquiere, Quebec, which in September became the first unionized Wal-Mart -- was received loud and clear here in the United States.