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Next week local property owners will be fighting for the right to continue owning their own property in the face of an astonishing land grab on the part of an uber-developer in cahoots with the city of Cleveland and the Cleveland-Cuyahoga Port Authority - and nobody seems to care.

Since the local fishwrap seems to have been co-opted by the developer and Port Authority, here’s a brief synopsis of what I’m talking about:

A few years ago under former Mayor Jane Campbell’s watch, Scott Wolstein starting buying up buildings and lots adding to his limited hold on the city of Cleveland’s Flats’ district. After acquiring these properties, he boarded them up, stopped paying taxes on them and pushed the district toward squalor.

In contrast a group of local business and property owners in the district worked to maintain their properties, operate their businesses and pay their taxes. Their livelihoods were connected to the district and while they watched businesses shutter around them, they worked to keep the Flats alive.

Unfortunately for them they didn’t know that Bart Wolstein’s son decided to get out from under his old man’s shadow and put his thumb print on the city of Cleveland. He planned to do so in the form of redeveloping the Flats and he needed everybody’s property to make it happen. Instead of including the remaining property owners in the project (they offered to develop their properties to the Wolstein plan’s standards), Wolstein intended to buy them out at deflated prices that he would dictate.

Wolstein found a sympathetic ear in the Campbell administration as it clawed desperately to show evidence that the mayor was doing something to improve the city as she struggled with a serious electoral challenge for her office (one she would eventually lose). The city provided unfailing support for the Wolstein project and at the same time gave none to subtle nudges to the remaining property owners by performing “surprise” building inspections of their buildings under the auspices of code compliance. Too bad for the city that the property owners were found to be in compliance (they same could not be said of the Wolstein-owned properties).

As the word of the Wolstein project spread, the property owners found it harder and harder to operate their dwindling operations. Everybody knew the Flats was dying (especially since Wolstein was providing self-inflicted euthanasia) and soon they were forced to close.

What next?

Wolstein enlists the Cleveland Cuyahoga County Port Authority (an unelected governmental body that controls huge streams of funding) to assist him in acquiring the hold-out parcels and buildings. Instead of forcing Wolstein to make real offers and engage in substantive negotiations with the remaining property owners who have struggled for years, paying their taxes and maintaining their properties, they give the one person who didn’t pay his taxes for almost five years the sweetest deal in county history - $105 million in public subsidies to help finance the project. And since Wolstein’s project means big money for many of the board members at the Port Authority, they quickly agree to authorize the use of eminent domain to motivate the hold-outs to take Wolstein’s discount offers.

The hold-out property owners refused to give in. They long ago abandoned the hope of participating in the projects, and now only want fair compensation for their very valuable properties. Instead of coming to agreement with these property owners, Wolstein and the port have taken them to court. In the last year the Port has spent millions of dollars of public money in attorney fees to try and force the owners to sell. Recently one of the remaining owners opined that if Wolstein had instead simply offered some of that money as compensation for his property - the deal would have been done long ago.

Where does that leave us? Next week in the courtroom of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge John E. Corrigan where undoubtedly more public money will be spent to support a millionaire’s desire to screw the little guy.

This case is an outrage. Regardless of how you feel about redeveloping the Flats, how can anyone justify rewarding a millionaire tax cheat at the expense of law-abiding citizens?