A plan for a possible gas station near Cudell Park — one that appeared to have died out last year — is again fueling debate before Cleveland City Council.
The fight is over less than an acre of land on the corner of West Boulevard and Madison Avenue. But it has taken on outsized political proportions.
It pits some council members against Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration and a vocal group of West Side activists. It is spilling over into this year’s municipal elections. And it shows just how much power council members can have over what gets built in their wards.
At the center of the tussle is a former CVS that has been vacant for years. The owner, Shaker Madison LLC, sought a zoning variance last year to build a gas station plaza with a pizza place, a convenience mart and a bank.
The Board of Zoning Appeals denied the variance. Supporters and opponents made their cases during Cleveland City Council public comment sessions throughout the year. The matter seemed to be settled with news that the city was considering buying the land for a new fire station.
But this week a council committee voted to override the board and advance the zoning change, despite opposition from the Bibb administration.
Ward 11 Council Member Danny Kelly is pushing for the move as a step toward filling an empty property in his ward. He said a gas station wasn’t the only option and the fire house was the best solution.
“I want this building occupied,” Kelly told his colleagues at a hearing Tuesday. “I have three vacant drug stores in my ward. I’m trying very hard to get them not vacant. It is not easy.”
Foes charge that a gas station would clog up an already confusing intersection and doesn’t belong near a park and a school. One person who opposed the zoning variance at Tuesday’s hearing was Andrew Defratis, who is running against Kelly. Nikki Hudson, a leading voice against the zoning change, is also running for a council seat.
“Children would have to walk past this gas station in order to get to school, in order to get to the park, in order to get to the rec center,” Hudson said on Tuesday. “It is a very dangerous intersection.”
The dispute has also put a spotlight on council’s campaign donors. Last year, council members received an email crying foul about campaign finance reports showing that Kelly and Council Member Anthony Hairston disclosed donations from people with ties to local gas station businesses.
(The email was sent anonymously under the banner of a group called the Coalition for a Better Cleveland. The group, which includes such gas station opponents as Hudson, has since taken more public stances. Coalition members have been protesting council’s new ward maps.)
Among the listed donors to the council campaigns was Ibrahim Shehadeh, who owns Shaker Madison LLC. The name of Samir Mohammad, who helped the project through the zoning process, appears in parentheses next to the name of a business in one of Hairston’s unaudited campaign disclosures.
Mohammad told Signal Cleveland that the donation was not his money. Through a council spokesperson, Hairston said that Mohammad’s name was listed in error.
Mohammad argued that gas station owners shouldn’t all be lumped in together; they’re also business competitors, he said.
Followers of Cleveland politics might recognize Mohammad’s name. In 2012, he pleaded guilty to charges including conspiracy to commit bribery as part of the federal investigation that ensnared Jimmy Dimora and Frank Russo. He said that his past shouldn’t be relevant in this situation, nor should it preclude him from working.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Hairston — the chair of the development and planning committee — rebuffed any suggestions of impropriety.
“Please do not mix words and go to the public to say that we are doing something — or to the media — to insinuate that we are doing something illegal or something nefarious has happened behind the curtains,” he said.
When the issue bubbled up last year, Kelly told Signal Cleveland that there was nothing underhanded about receiving contributions from local business owners.
Shaker Madison LLC has gone to court to appeal the denial by the zoning board. (As it happens, the judge overseeing the case is former council president and mayoral candidate Kevin Kelley.)
Mohammad said he thought the board had “railroaded” the company. A zoning change would give the developer flexibility with the site, should it become a fire house, gas station or something else, such as a dental lab or animal hospital, he said. He argued that one zoning rule at issue here — an overlay district encouraging pedestrian-friendly business — has hurt development on Madison Avenue.
“All they did is put a bunch of, what do you call it, obstacles and make sure it could never get developed and that’s exactly what happened,” he said.
As for Shehadeh, Signal Cleveland called a phone number listed for him in records from an unrelated court case. A man who answered the phone said it was the wrong number and that Shehadeh could instead be reached at a different number: either “1-800-IBRAHIM” or “1-800-ABRAHAM,” it wasn’t clear which.
Asked if there was a better number, the man replied, “That’s the only way I know.”
One number leads to an air duct and chimney cleaning company on Long Island. The other appears to go to a company that makes suspenders in Corsicana, Texas.
This story has been updated with more information about the sender of the email about council’s campaign donors.
