No Building Left Behind 2015

[It has been ten years since I coined the phrase "No building left behind" policy of Portsmouth real estate. The two principle examples of that policy, the Marting building and the so-called Adelphia building, still stand, empty and uninhabitable, reminding us of how corrupt our city government was and still is. What follows is a re-posting of the original article.]

Southern Ohio Museum: Original No Building Left Behind

     The good news is Marting’s won’t be the site of the new city building. The bad news is the Adelphia site will. Why is that bad news?

      Remember that the first principle of Portsmouth real estate is that no over privileged private party or corporation should ever have to take a loss on a building or piece of land, no matter how worthless or hazardous it is, as long as there are public funds that can be tapped into to bail the owner out, or as long as there is a tax break that can be derived from donating the property to the public, and letting the city deal with the headaches and expenses associated with owning and dealing with the property. This first principle of Portsmouth real estate could be called the No Building Left Behind policy.

      Instead of being free to build from scratch on the best site possible, city planners must start with a building and site that has been unloaded on them with the connivance of corrupt public officials. The City Building Committee Final Report (11 Dec. 2006) listed as the first and presumably most important reason for locating the new City Hall Complex on the so-called Adelphia building site is that the city owns the property. It is like the old days, when ATT had a total monopoly of the telephone industry, including the manufacture and sale of telephones. The policy of ATT back then was you could have any color phone you wanted provided it was black. Under the No Building Left Behind policy, the city or county can erect a new public building or city hall complex anywhere they want provided it is an undesirable site or building that the city has paid too much money for or has accepted from a donor who has stipulated the site or building must be used for a public purpose so that the donor can get a tax write-off.

      Consider the following examples of Portsmouth’s No Building Left Behind policy at work, beginning (1) with the earliest one I know of, the 1977 sale of the obsolete Security Central National Bank building to the city, which then leased it to the Southern Ohio Museum Corporation for one dollar a year for a period of twenty years, with the city, as lessor, having major responsibility for maintaining and insuring the building; (2) the empty and virtually worthless department store that the Marting Foundation illegally and infamously unloaded on the city for $1.9 million; (3) the nearly bankrupt Travel World Agency, which three well-connected Portsmouth businessmen, with Clayton Johnson as their lawyer, “donated” to Ohio U., as a tax write-off; (4) the empty Thatcher house, on Franklin Blvd., for which SSU paid the politically connected Thatchers much more than it was worth and which SSU later sold to a doctor at a $50,000 loss to the taxpayers; (5) Dr. Rooney’s house, on Camelot Drive, the remote and parking-less money pit that SSU paid top dollar for and, with the meter still running, now serves as the slipping and sliding home for SSU president Rita Rice Morris; (6) the empty and otherwise worthless Kenrick’s department store that was taken off George Clayton’s hands with county and federal funds and converted into a Welcome Center; (7) the “sale” of the Temple B’Nai Abraham to SSU for an ungodly sum; and (8) the “donation” to the city of the misnamed Adelphia property, which should be called, the Singer property. Adelphia never owned that property, having only leased it instead from Dr. Herbert Singer, of Los Angeles.

The No Singer Building Left Behind

      The history of the Singer property bears a depressing similarity to all the other shady real estate deals of the last thirty years. Just as you would not know that Martings is really three very old buildings beneath a faux brick façade, the Singer building is actually two old buildings hidden behind a rusting metal façade. What became the Singer property was once the site of an automobile dealership, but after things went kaput in Portsmouth, that dealership and others on Washington Street went out of business. While the history of the building and the date of its construction is something of a mystery, which even the crack consultants of Ameresco Corp. could not unravel, what we know for sure is that at one point local shyster lawyer Mike Mearan owned the so-called Adelphia property. Then, in 1984, he sold it to Dr. Herbert Singer, of Los Angeles. Following his purchase of the property from Mearan, Singer then leased the building for twenty years to Adelphia Cable. I have heard that Adelphia was paying Singer a sizable rent each month. [I was subsequently told by an employee of Adelphia Cable that it was paying $12,000 a month rent, which over the 20 year lease would be $2,880,000 dollars.]

      Because of the massive fraud perpetrated by the family that owned the Adelphia Corporation, that company went bankrupt and the larcenous founder, John Rigas, went to prison. Because of the protections afforded to bankrupt corporations, Adelphia apparently did not need to meet the obligations of the final year of its twenty-year lease with Singer. I was puzzled when Adelphia hastily moved out of Singer’s building to a smaller less conveniently located site. Because commercial property in Portsmouth is notoriously hard to rent, I wondered why Adelphia hadn’t used its leverage to negotiate a new lease for Singer’s building, at better financial terms. Subsequent events would make clear why Adelphia wanted out of the Singer building as fast as possible. First of all, how would you feel as a tenant if the building you were paying good money for had been neglected for some time, and had leaky room in which there was asbestos in the decking? How would you feel, furthermore, if your absentee landlord lived in Los Angeles, over 2500 miles away?

      Following the flight of Adelphia Cable from Washington Street, Singer was stuck with an ugly building that had virtually no financial or architectural value and no prospect of being rented by another tenant. His curiosity getting the better of him, Singer finally made his first visit to Portsmouth to see the property, but only after Adelphia had moved out. At some point Singer hired the controversial real estate agent-developer Neal Hatcher to handle the property. Months turned into years and the Singer building sat on that decrepit southwest corner of Washington and 9th Street, unattended and leaking, like so many other empty commercial buildings in Portsmouth (think Marting’s, think Kenrick’s). The Singer building was almost as bad as many of the buildings that Hatcher owns and neglects.

      Singer was responsible for city taxes on the decrepit property, but in deadbeat fashion he stopped meeting those financial obligations. This was not very civic-minded of him, but what did he have to lose, way out there in California, in stiffing the taxpayers of Portsmouth? But he still needed to find some way to unload the property. Because Hatcher could find no buyer foolish enough to buy the property, Singer hired Mike Mearan to come up with a plan to stick the public with it, and Mearan, a gifted con artist, did. Mearan knows the winding and dimly lit corridors and courtrooms of the City Building and the County Courthouse of Portsmouth the way a proctologist knows a cancerous rectum or Jean Valjean, in Hugo’s Les Miserables, knows the sewers of Paris. What Mearan advised Singer to do was donate the worthless property to the city, stipulating that in accepting the property the city would have to commit to using it for a public purpose. That was an all-important stipulation, because only then would Singer be able to claim a tax write-off from the IRS. Another stipulation that Singer put on the “donation” was that he would not have to pay the $23,000 back taxes he owed on the building. At the City Council meeting 13 Feb. 2006, the council approved a motion from David Malone to excuse $5,707.50 in taxes due on Singer’s property. This was in addition to excusing Singer of the $17,000 plus taxes he had already failed to pay. Councilman Malone,whose math is notoriously fuzzy, is usually accorded the honor of making motions that bilk the taxpayers. The scheme Mearan came up with was to propose to the city that the building Singer was offering be converted into a police station, which clearly met the definition of “public use.”

“Wonderful Idea”

      The public first learned of the Singer-Mearan donation scheme when Hatcher, acting as Singer’s real estate agent, appeared at the 13 Dec. 2004 City Council meeting with Tanner and Stone smoke-and-mirror architectural plans to convert the Adelphia building into a police station. I was at that meeting and I remember that the architectural drawings made the renovated Singer building look like the Gingerbread house in “Hansel and Gretel.” It looked good enough to eat. Who paid for those architectural plans? Singer? Hatcher? Mearan? Or did Tanner and Stone donate their time in anticipation of future fees? According to the minutes of the 13 Dec. 2004 Council meeting, “Mr. Hatcher said he felt it would be a wonderful idea and provided drawings showing the Adelphia Building as it exists and how it might look if converted into a Police Station. . . . Mr. Hatcher suggested an ordinance accepting the building should include an amount not to exceed $500,000 to 600,000 for improvements. He noted the advantages would include parking for the police. He said he felt this to be a good opportunity for the City of Portsmouth . . .” Not wanting to hog all the glory, Hatcher pointed out that the plan was the brainchild of Mike Mearan.

      At the Council Meeting 10 Jan. 2005, Kalb urged members of the City Council to visit the Adelphia building and judge for themselves if the building was worth accepting from Singer. Kalb claimed that someone else was interested in the building if the city wasn’t, which is the familiar tactic that is used in real estate negotiations to get a reluctant party to buy. The same tactic was used by George Clayton to justify raising the price that SSU paid for the Mooney house on Camelot Drive. Playing the role of a political pimp, for which he is well suited, Kalb was in effect saying, “Hey, there are other guys interested in this gal if you ain’t.”

Shyster Lawyer

     Mearan appeared at the 14 March 2005 City Council meeting, identifying himself as “an attorney representing Herbert Singer who is offering the former Adelphia building to the city . . . the intent of Dr. Singer is to give this property to the City for the City to use.” Mearan went on to admit that Singer’s “intent” in offering the building to the city was really not philanthropy but to get a tax write-off, and he could only get that if the property was used for a public purpose. As the minutes of 14 March 2005 state, “Mr. Mearan said that in order for Dr. Singer to take advantage of certain IRS regulations the City could not sell or lease the building because that would set a value on the property and would restrict the amount Mr. Singer can claim as a donation to the City.” The next sentence of the 14 March 2005 minutes reveals how little philanthropy had to do with Singer’s donation. “Mr. Mearan stated that with the understanding that the City would accept the property and use it for City purposes, with a restriction of ten years after which if the city wants to get rid of the building or do whatever they want with the building they could do so.” Do whatever they want with it? In other words, after ten years of public use, which would qualify Singer for the full write-off, the city could shove the building as far as Singer or Mearan was concerned. Once Singer got his tax-write off, he didn’t care what happened to the property, just as he hadn’t cared what happened to the property when he owned it, as long Adelphia paid the rent. Singer had squeezed all he could out of it.

      The City Council bought into the Singer-Mearan-Hatcher scheme and passed an ordinance at the 14 March 2005 meeting "Authorizing the Mayor and the City of Portsmouth, Ohio, to accept a deed to real estate generally known as 807 Washington Street, Portsmouth, Ohio, said property to be used for city-related purposes for a minimum period of 10 years." Kalb reported at the Council Meeting 23 May 2005 that he had met that morning with Mike Mearan, who showed him the deed that signed the so-called Adelphia building over to the city.

      The city’s acceptance of the Singer building was the first step down a long and expensive road for taxpayers. There are some things that are not only not worth the asking price, they are not even worth accepting as a gift. Failing to look the gift horse in the mouth, failing to look for mold and asbestos in the building, the city accepted Singer’s offer. The result was the city ended up paying through the nose for a nag that was fit only for the glue factory. If the Singer building had been a horse, the humane thing would have been to shoot it. Instead, the City Council accepted the building from Singer and, following Mearan’s stipulation about public use, agreed to turn it into a police station. The close examination of the building was made only after the city accepted the building. That examination showed that beneath the rusting metal façade, the Singer building was unsalvageable. The leaking roof was leaking worse, making that asbestos problem even worse, and the moisture was creating black mold, also known as toxic mold, which for a building is like AIDS. The Singer building was an incurably sick building. It was not safe to convert into an outhouse, let alone into a police station. Why hadn’t the city council and mayor made a close examination of the building before they accepted it from Singer? Because too many of our city officials are in office to do the bidding of those with big bucks. They dare not not ask embarrassing questions or try to get at the truth. The truth about the Singer building was the last thing they wanted. So the city was stuck with yet another decrepit old building with asbestos and mold.

No Oxycontin Left Behind

     Did this mean that Singer was going to lose his tax write-off? Did this mean he was going to have to pay the $23,000 in taxes after all? There was little likelihood of that, especially after Mearan became a member of the Portsmouth City Council. Mearan became a member of council not the democratic way, by running for office. Here is how he got on council: After I filed a complaint with the County Board of Elections, charging Tim Loper was not living in the First Ward, which the city charter requires, he was removed from City Council. Mearan was subsequently appointed to replace Loper by the City Council. The City Council did not stop there, because next it appointed Mearan to the City Building Committee. Howard Baughman and the City Council did not stop there, because then they appointed Mearan to chair that committee. Mearan's first act as chair of the CBC was to assign his drug-addicted employee Heather Hren (shown left in photo at work for CBC ) as its stenographer, a position she held until she was arrested for transporting oxycontin from Columbus to Portsmouth in a car Mearan had rented for her. In addition to No Building Left Behind, we have No Oxycontin Left Behind.

      So Mearan was not only appointed to the Council and appointed to the CBC, he was appointed chair of it. In what other city could such a brazen conflict of interest take place without so much as a peep from the press or local law enforcement officials? An attorney representing a client who would get a tax write-off if his “donation” was used for a public purpose, such as a police station or city building, chairs a committee that is considering locations for a new police station and a new city building. What do you think the odds were that the City Building Committee, with Mearan as chair, would recommend the Singer property be used for a police station? And what do you think the odds were that the CBC, once the Singer building was shown to be unsalvageable, would then recommend that the building be torn down and that the site be used to build a new police station and city building? Pretty good chance, I would say.

“Improvements”

      What follows is a list of the improvements that the Building Committee acknowledged would have to be made to the so-called Adelphia building to convert it into a police station. (1) Installation of communications and data cabling; (2) Installation of new emergency generator; (3) Modification of existing electric distribution system; (4) Installation of new Heating-Ventilation-Air Conditioning systems; (5) Installation of new plumbing piping and fixtures; (6) Floor cutting, concrete patching, and tile for new locker rooms; (7) Cleaning of wall studs, walls and floors to remove mold residue; (8) Painting of structural steel in older section of building; (9) Painting of all interior walls; (10) Removal and replacement of all interior doors and hardware; (11) Removal and replacement of all flooring materials; (12) Removal and replacement of all of the existing ceiling tiles; (13) Removal and replacement of 50% of insulation above the ceiling; (14) Removal and replacement of 50% of existing drywall; (15) Installation of new energy-efficient windows and exterior doors; (16) Installation of new roof for entire building; (17) Exterior work including replacement of metal siding and painting of masonry; (18) Site work including resurfacing of parking lot and landscaping. These eighteen proposals should have been replaced by one simple proposal: Remove this contaminated building forever from the face of the earth and let the negligent landlord pay for at least part of the removal.

      Why in the world would any public official agree to spend as much money as these improvements would cost to convert an old building in terrible condition when a new one could be built for the same price? Why resuscitate a corpse when you can have a new baby? You can bet the cost of converting the so-called Adelphia building was going to be much more than the $500,000 to $600,000 Hatcher originally estimated. That estimate was so much fairy dust tossed in the eyes of a gullible public. And notice that one “improvement” that seems hardly worth mentioning, removing mold residue, proved enough to scuttle the whole project.

      If Singer had not neglected his building as much as he obviously had for as long as he had, maybe the building would have been worth saving. I say maybe. But why should the public pay for the neglect of an absentee landlord who allowed his property to deteriorate so badly? Because that is a feature of No Building Left Behind. After all the profit has been wrung out of a property and a business, the owner turns it over to the state, county, or city government to let it deal with the consequences. When rail passenger traffic was no longer profitable, turn it over to the government and complain about how inefficiently the government runs things. When the Marting’s department store can no longer turn a profit, sell it to the city government for one last profit squeeze of $1.9 million and let the empty building become a festering political and financial problem for years.

Black Telephone

      The City Building Committee tried to pass off the Singer property, which it was led to by the nose, as the best site for a new city complex. What the CBC decided is the equivalent of saying that a black phone would have been its first choice even if there were fifty-seven other colors and shades available. The corner of Washington and 9th Streets is about as good a site for a new city complex as John Street would be for a convent or the Scioto River for a surfing competition. What is there about that corner that suits it for a city complex? There’s not much to be said for that location. Instead of a view of the Ohio River and the bridge, the only thing you can see from the corner of Washington and 9th is the steam escaping from that crooked smoke stack on the roof of the the Osco factory. If the city had not been hornswoggled into accepting a building that should have been condemned as a health hazard, where might the new city building have ended up? We will never know for sure, because the No Building Left Behind policy dictated that the city building and the police station was either going to be in the Marting’s building or on the Singer property. That is like giving a condemned man the choice between the noose or the electric chair.

      But the Singer site is the lesser of two evils, because no one is any longer trying to claim the Singer building is salvageable, whereas there are still die-hards who will still tell you the Marting building should be converted into a city building. At least on the Singer site the city can start from scratch instead of having to renovate a decrepit 125-year-old department store. The City Building Committee was under a lot of pressure to choose the Marting building for a city hall, but Clayton Johnson had succeeded in making that building so politically radioactive that there is now no chance of his original scheme ever being carried out, even with his obliging tools Kalb and Baughman backing it.

      The best site for a new city building would be the site of the present City Building. If the City Building is going to be razed, then a new one should be raised on the same site. Why? Because it is the most convenient, the most time-honored, and the most scenic spot. And it is downtown. Being downtown was supposedly a major advantage of the Marting building. But city officials, and above all Mayor Kalb, have been angling to make the site of the City Building available to a developer for years. It is too valuable, Kalb says, to be wasted on a mere city hall, on the house of local government. The phrase that gets repeated is "prime commercial property." The CBC even uses that phrase in explaining why the current site of the City Building should not be wasted on a city hall complex: it is prime commercial property. If it so valuable commercially, why has the Ramada Inn, directly across the street, been a financial basket case ever since it was built. The Ramada Inn has survived by housing university students and as a half-way house for people with drug-related problems. The Ramada Inn survived by mooching off the public sector, and we are supposed to believe the land across the street is too valuable to waste on a new city complex?

      The single most important truth about No Left Building Left Behind policy is that we wouldn’t have had any of the shenanigans and headaches and scandals associated with the Marting building and the Singer building if Kalb and his cronies had not been conspiring for years to systematically neglect the City Building with the intention of eventually tearing it down in order to sell the site to some developer. The anticipated tearing down of the City Building was what made the Marting and the Singer rip-offs possible.

      When it comes to saying just which developer is interested in the City Building site, Kalb has been like a coy stripteaser, revealing just enough to pique the public’s curiosity, but not enough to reveal who that developer is. Who is Kalb protecting, who is he hiding? Which developer is it whose name would create a firestorm if it were known he was the one waiting to get his hands on the City Building site? Which developer is it who is ultimately responsible for where the City Building and the Portsmouth Police Station apparently will end up? Whoever ends up on whichever site, keep in mind that all the shenanigans are really the result of the No Building Left Behind policy, according to which a building that has architectural and structural value, such as the Train Depot and the City Building, will be torn down while many millions will be squandered acquiring property and buildings that are actually liabilities, not assets. This is the way things are done in Portsmouth. The question is will things ever change?

Marting's, the Albatross Building

The First Commandment

Because councilmen Kevin W. Johnson and Rich Saddler are reportedly trying to get the city to convert the Marting building into a city hall, I am  reposting "The First Commandment" from 2006 to remind readers that when it comes to unloading property off on taxpayers, some things never change.

The First Commandment of Portsmouth’s over-privileged is “Local government shall not construct a new public building when a doctor, lawyer or businessman has a worthless old building that can be turned into a public building at great public expense.”

Here are five recent examples of the First Commandment at work:

Thatcher House 

(1) First Ward councilman John Thatcher and his wife, a former trustee of Shawnee State U., owned an unoccupied old house on Franklin Blvd that they had trouble selling in Portsmouth’s sluggish real estate market. The solution? They sold it, for much more than market value, to SSU as a “temporary” house for the SSU president. When the temporary president’s house was later sold, to a doctor, SSU and the tax-payers of Ohio took a $50,000 loss, not counting the furnishings and redecoration and the loss of taxes for the years the house was off the tax rolls.

Camelot Drive

(2) A doctor had an unoccupied aging Camelot Drive house, with serious structural problems, which he was having trouble selling in Portsmouth’s chronically sluggish real estate market. The solution? He sold it to Shawnee State U. at an inflated price as the permanent home for the president of SSU, even though the house is far from campus, has inadequate parking space, requires large expenditures for repairs and refurbishing, and is unstably situated on the side of a hill down which it is inclined slowly to slip. The sale was “negotiated” by the chair of the SSU board of trustees, George Clayton.

Adelphia Building

(3) Herbert Singer, an absentee landlord, living in Los Angeles, had an unoccupied building on Washington St., the former Adelphia building, on which he owed back taxes. The prospects of any business wanting to rent or buy that property were very remote. The solution? He got the city to accept the worthless Washington St. building as the next headquarters for the Portsmouth Police Dept. That way the absentee landlord in L.A. would not be responsible for real estate taxes, past and future, and he could claim a tax write off. Neil Hatcher, the absentee landlord’s agent, would get his cut. Chief Horner, always willing to play ball in a crooked game, readily agreed to this arrangement.

Welcome Center

(4) George Clayton’s Kenrick’s catalogue store on Second St. went belly up when the Grant Bridge went down, and he was stuck with an old, empty building that he had no hope of renting or selling but still had to pay taxes on. The solution? With his political connections, he unloaded it on the county, which obtained it with pork provided by Rep. Rob Porkman and the Dept. of Agriculture. The building, on which millions have now been spent, is named The Welcome Center, but tourists complain it is seldom open and when it is it is unwelcoming. What it really is is the headquarters for the Southern Ohio Growth Partnership and the illegitimate and ugly architectural offspring of the marriage of pork and political corruption.

Marting Building

(5) The Marting Foundation, a speciously philanthropic front for Portsmouth’s boss, Clayton Johnson, a cousin of George Clayton, had a large white elephant on its hand: the empty Marting building, a former department store, at the corner of Sixth and Chillicothe St. The problem is a familiar one in Portsmouth: the property is unsellable and unrentable but the taxes on it still have to be paid. “It ain’t worth anything,” as councilman Mohr told a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch. The solution? Get the city to buy it for nearly $2 million and convert the now 124-year-old department store into a municipal building. The city bought it, at the inflated price, but the sale was ruled invalid by the courts. Then the Marting Foundation arranged a fall-back deal whereby the city would keep possession of the building, provided the city met certain conditions laid down by the Foundation. Imagine a con artist dictating the terms under which he will return the money he has fraudulently obtained. Like the Old Maid in the card game, the Marting building is last thing the Foundation wanted to end up in its hands. If it gets approval in a special referendum that will take place on May 2, our corrupt city government plans to go ahead and convert the former department store to a municipal building.

What these five examples demonstrate is how Portsmouth’s over-privileged classes faithfully adhere to the First Commandment: “Local government shall not construct a new public building when a doctor, lawyer or businessman has a worthless old building that can be turned into a public building at great public expense.”

Marting Brick

“. . . the Albrecht-Gampp combination appear to be clowns by comparison.”

                                                            Marting Brick is falling down,

                                                            Falling down, falling down,

                                                           Marting Brick is falling down,

                                                           My fair lady.

On January 26, 2013, a report appeared in the Portsmouth  Daily (except Monday) Times on bricks falling from the Marting building onto the property of the American Savings Bank (ASB). The anthropologist and linguist Levi Strauss   hypothesized that one of the reasons humans developed language was to deceive.  Deception is important  in human activities, especially politics and business.  The  Portsmouth Daily Times (PDT) is a business and practices deception, especially since it is a failing business whose days are numbered.

“Portsmouth boy” reporter  Frank Lewis has spun quite a deceptive tale about Marting bricks. It is deceptive, at least in regard to intentions, as much in  what he  left out as  what he put in. The following sentence appears near the end of Lewis’s tale:  “The city purchased the building in May of 2002, and has done nothing with the building, allowing it to fall into deep disrepair.” This clearly makes it sound as if the city is the culprit where the Marting building is concerned.   The city is not guiltless but is far less guilty than the Marting Foundation and the mastermind behind the Foundation, Clayton Johnson.

What Lewis left out of his tale was that the “purchase”  of the Marting building was a swindle made possible by the conniving of two willing tools—then-mayor Greg Bauer and then-city council president Jim Kalb. But the perpetrator and the orchestrator  of the Marting swindle was Clayton Johnson,  the brains of the Marting Foundation. Having wrung every dollar it could from the crumbling bricks of the Marting building, the Marting Foundation  then foisted the building  off on the taxpayers of Portsmouth who paid about five times more for the bricks than they were worth. In fact, the bricks were not worth anything. They were worst than worthless: they were a tax liability  and a potentially large expense since the leaking asbestos building would need to be torn down at the Foundation’s expense.  

Is Clayton Johnson  mentioned even once by Lewis? No. Not one PDT reporter or editor has ever  criticized Johnson, and if anyone  had he or she would have been out of a job pronto. But the Johnson era is definitely now over. He’s retired and spending most of his time in the scalawag heaven of Hilton Head. And now that  Hatcher has turned into a public benefactor, with a public athletic complex named after him, could his rapacious career as a developer be drawing to a close?

What  Lewis reveals in his Falling Bricks tale is that  we are now living in  the beginning of the Gampp-Albrecht  era. Gampp is portrayed in Lewis’s tale as the good guy, concerned not only about the well-being of  bank property  but also of  the good citizens of Portsmouth who might  he clobbered by a falling brick. “Yes I know it’s a once in a million chance that someone could be walking down the alley and a brick could fall and hit them in the head,” Gampp told Lewis, “but it is there.”  He explained further, “So we want to make sure that we don’t have damage caused to our structure, and we want to be appropriately compensated if something does happen. But, beyond that, our concern was then, and still is, we don’t want to risk the safety or health of anyone, and our concern is, that as bricks start falling out of that building, we don’t want to see anyone get hurt.” Is it possible that Gampp, a banker, is more concerned about  people than profits? Or is Lewis’s tale confirmation of Levi Strauss’s suspicion that language evolved to deceive?

Lewis’s tale is not really about  bricks. You have been deceived if you think it is. His tale is not about the Marting building, either, not really. It is about the Municipal Building, or more specifically the land on which the Municipal Building rests. The last paragraph of Lewis’s tale drags in the the Municipal Building by the eaves. “Meanwhile, the city remains in a building on property considered by some as the most valuable piece of property in downtown Portsmouth with no solid plans for where they will house government offices in the future. All the while, bricks continue to fall from the Marting’s Fifth Street building, a brick at a time, with still no remedy in sight.”

  The developer Jeff Albrecht has been lusting for  the land under the Municipal Building for at least fifteen years. What  Albrecht wants to do is tear down the Municipal Building, and Gampp is abetting him by hyping the danger of falling Marting bricks,  suggesting by analogy that the Municipal Building is falling down and should be bulldozed as soon as possible, if not sooner. Intelligent people will not be fooled by the stupid deception. If Marting brick is falling down,  so is the IQ of the crooks in  control of the city.  I could never have imagined I would one day look back nostalgically on the Johnson-Hatcher era, but  the Albrecht-Gampp combination appear to be clowns by comparison.

The Marting Foundation

The Marting Foundation: The Scamarting of Portsmouth

Statement of purpose of the Marting Foundation on its first filing with the IRS for the year 2002

The death of the crooked SOGP (the Southern Ohio Growth Partnership) is a blessed event  in the history of Portsmouth, just as May 29th, 2002, the day the Marting Scam was perpetrated, was “a day that should  live in infamy,” as Andrew Feight put it in “‘Follow the Money’: A History of the Marting’s Scandal.” The SOGP is dead, but its partner-in-crime, the philanthropic front entity known as the Marting Foundation, continues to feebly live on, further tarnishing the once respected, even beloved, Marting name. According to official documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service, the Foundation was established as a charitable organization: “For the purpose of promoting and advancing economic betterment in Portsmouth and Scioto County on a not for profit basis.” That’s what the official statement says, but I believe the Foundation was established  for the economic betterment of the corrupt clique that controls the city on a for-profit basis. I believe the  Foundation was established by the nearly bankrupt Marting Brothers Company with the aim of  liquidating that company and paying  off its local stockholders, especially the largest shareholder (26%), Richard D. Marting, by laundering  the $2 million dollars the company acquired in 2002 from  its  illegal sale to the city of the decrepit and scandalously over-appraised Marting department store building.

The Foundation worked closely with the Marting Company  to deceive the public. Working closely was not hard to do since the trustees of the Foundation were also the trustees of the Marting Company, and for all we know they were also trustees of the short-lived front, the Marting Brothers Acquisition Company, also created in 1996. The overall scheme was so incredibly complicated and convoluted it  was like a distorting mirror in a fun house. It was not just a conflict of interest; it was shameless collusion. From 1996, when the Foundation was created,  to 2010,  Wisnieswski, Johnson, Arnett, Jenkins, and Payne  were also trustees of the SOGP, making it a trifecta: The Marting Company, the Marting Foundation, and the SOGP.   Julia S. Wisniewski, the chairperson of the Foundation, is the owner of Smith’s Drugs, in downtown Portsmouth. Randal M. Arnett is the CEO of the Southern Ohio Medical Center (SOMC). Gerald R. Jenkins is the former president and member of the board of the American Savings Bank. Roy Payne, now deceased, was the first dean of the College of Business at Shawnee State U. Clayton Johnson, was the lawyer who represented the Marting Company and masterminded the  sale of the Marting building to the city. Together, Julia Smith, as Chairperson and Johnson, as ringleader, were the Bonnie and Clyde of the Foundation, only they didn’t rob banks: they borrowed money from them, which was not hard since Johnson was on the board of directors of two of the banks involved: Bank One and the Oak Hill Bank.

The money that the Foundation dispensed from 2002 to 2010 went principally to two organizations. (1)The primary recipient, the Portsmouth city government,  received a $200,000 “kickback,” as Feight called it. Those who follow the machinations of the city council more closely than I do tell me that exactly where and to whom in the city government the $200,000 went is something of a mystery. When asked in a city council meeting, neither Mayor Kalb nor City Auditor Williams could say just where the money went or how it was used. (2)The next highest amount granted was a total of $65,000 to the  Southern Ohio Museum, a pet project of Johnson’s wife, who was its executive director. The Foundation’s 2003  filing with the I.R.S. (below) shows the first down payments, of $100,000 and $5,000, to these favored recipients. Note that the highlighted second column asks if the recipient of a grant is an individual, has he or she any relationship to  any manager of the foundation. The museum is an organization, of course, not an individual, so “NONE” is listed, but it still appears to be a conflict of interest, if not nepotism.

  

What gets publicized are the smaller grants the Foundation makes to other groups and organizations, such as those that make shelter available to homeless pets and people. The Foundation’s more public-relations-minded, smaller grants get publicized while the much larger grants to the pet organization of Johnson’s wife and to the crooks in city government are not considered front page news. Conceived in scandal, dedicated to the laundering of the illegal money from the sale of the Marting building, the Marting Foundation should give back the money it robbed back to the city and dissolve so the Marting scandle can finally be put behind us. The Marting name is now mud and Wisniewski and the others will be too as long they are associated with the Foundation.

Julia Wisniewski ( right) giving Marting Foundation check to Sierra Haven Animal Rescue Center, in 2011.

To read Andrew Feight's outstanding article on the Marting Scam, "Follow the Money," visit his Lower Scioto Valley website : click here

To read Clayton Johnson's testimony before Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation on Teresa Mollette's terrific website, click here

Merry Marting's To All

T’was the night before Christmas and all through the store,
Not a councilman was stirring, not even a Mohr;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that some payoffs soon would be there.
The Johnsons were nestled all snug in their beds;
Visions of Hilton Head danced in their heads.
And Jim in his longjohns and Allison in her cap
Had just settled down for a long council nap,
When out on the street there arose such a clatter,
He sprang from his bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the display window, he flew like a flash,
Tripping over decorations as if they were trash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave a ghostly look to the scene below,
When what to Jim’s sleepy eyes should appear
But thousands of women, from far and from near,
Gals from the past, from the nineteen-forties,
Slim ones, plump ones, tall ones, shorties,
So many gals he knew he had to act quick,
So he opened the doors with his lottery pick.
More rabid than bobbysoxers, inside they came,
And he smiled and laughed and called them by name:
“Hi, Denise, Hi, Doris, Hi, Trixie, you vixens,
You luscious dishes with all the fixin’s!
Come in to Marting’s, the heart of the Mall,
And Shop away! Shop away! Shop away, all!”

Waving their charge cards and eager to buy,
They went straight to menswear for their favorite guy,
And then up the escalator, like doves they flew,
Buying pill hats and furs and lingerie too.
And then in a tinkling, Jim heard on the roof,
The sound of leaks leaking, and then, poof!
They were gone forever, those gals, with a bound,
Gone without a trace, gone without a sound,
Like Christmas stockings without the loot,
Like New Year’s horns without the toot.
Weren’t they real and would they never be back,
For a shopping feast or even a snack?

He’d tried his dangdest to make Marting’s merry,
He’d decorated her with holly and berry,
He’d repeatedly said, “Hell, no!
She shouldn’t have been torn down ages ago!
She’s not like a mummy with bad teeth,
She’s not hiding behind a Christmas wreath,
She’s not an Old Maid, so damp and so smelly,
She’s a gorgeous lady, like Grace Kelly,
She’s old but well-preserved, like Liz Taylor herself,
She won’t be 125 till January 12th.
She’s just rusting – I mean resting. She’not dead.
And I don’t give a frig what the voters said.
So what if I’m only a grocery clerk?
The average voter is a stupid jerk.
We need shoes, we need socks, we need clothes,
And Marting’s is where the smart shopper goes.”

Behind the façade, behind the faux-brick bustle,
There’s a typical Portsmouth two-million dollar hustle.
And I heard Jim exclaim, as he turned out the light,
“Merry Marting’s to all and to all a good night!”

Scioto Cesspool

The now infamous Marting building

As infamous as it deservedly is, the city’s purchase of the Marting building was not unique. It is part of a pattern in which members of Portsmouth’s heavily abated privileged clique unload distressed property on the public. The public continues to pay long afterwards because the property the elite unloads typically is unsuited for public use because of its condition and its location. Like the Marting and the Kendrick buildings, such properties usually have to be extensively repaired or renovated. The hidden long-range costs of such repairs and renovations are rarely acknowledged at the time the property is unloaded because that would show the folly of purchasing old but architecturally insignificant structures when new ones, designed for the specific uses to which they would be put, would be cheaper and far more efficient in the long run. Count on it – the 100-year-old Marting building will end up costing the public an arm and a leg.

But that is nothing new. It goes on all the time. As an example, let’s review a couple of house purchases by Shawnee State U. On 9 April 2001 SSU agreed to purchase 3060 Camelot Drive, which now houses Shawnee State’s president. As was the case with the Marting building, the public paid far too much for 3060 Camelot ($412,000), which, because of its location and condition and lack of parking space, never should have been bought in the first place, at any price.

 

3060 Camelot. Note truck, materials, and crack in driveway

Since it was not his own but the public’s money he was spending, there was little motivation for George Clayton, the Shawnee State trustee who brokered the deal for 3060 Camelot, to bargain with the doctor who owned it. Clayton could afford to be generous to a neighbor on the Hill, and he was. In a flat real estate market and for a prematurely old house that the departing doctor was having trouble selling, Clayton agreed to pay a whopping purchase price. And that was just the beginning.

In 2001, the Portsmouth architectural firm of Tanner Stone made an inspection of 3060 Camelot for the trustees and declared it sound. The Tanner Stone report concluded, “it must be said this is a truly fine house. It appears that it was well built and, possibly more importantly, has been well maintained.” The Tanner Stone conclusion was, to put it mildly, misleading. But Clayton got what he wanted, an endorsement of his decision to purchase 3060 Camelot, just as the Marting Foundation got from Ken Rase the high appraisal it wanted to unload the Marting building at an inflated price.

From top to bottom and in between, 3060 Camelot was a lemon. Let’s start at the top, with the cedar-shingled roof. The contractor who had previously done sealing work on the roof claimed, according to the Tanner Stone report, that if the roof continued to be resealed every three years, it could last for ten or more years. At such time in the future when the roof might need to be replaced, it could be done for as little as $10,000 the same contractor claimed, according to the Tanner Stone report.

Let us now fast forward, not fifteen, not ten, but to just a couple of years, and what we discover is that the roof on 3060 Camelot had to be replaced. The cost was not $10,000, not $15,000, but $30,000! And there were additional costs connected with the roof. There were drains, which cost $2,618, and gutters:, which cost $466.

How about the middle of the house, the living area? According to the Tanner Stone report the house had been well maintained, but I was at a trustees’ meeting at which it was reported that newly appointed president Rita Rice Morris on her first tour of the house had found the main living area in sore need of repainting and re-papering. The cost was $7,590. And of course the house had to be furnished. The cost for the furniture was $15,000. The university had previously purchased furniture for a temporary presidential house, but that furniture was reportedly not the right style for 3060 Camelot. I will get back to that temporary president’s house later.

In SSU files that I viewed under Ohio’s open records law, I found a long list of items that needed to be repaired or replaced at 3060 Camelot. Just repairing the shower, for example, cost $1,659. There is a hot tub on the rear porch, and keeping that up is no small expense. Servicing it cost $803 and a new cover for it $463. There was $2,406 for leaks around fans, etc. There were thousands of dollars in other costs to add to the $412,000. The point is there are immediate expenses with an older house that would not have been the case with a new one.

Now let’s look at the foundation of 3060 Camelot, which is located on a hill. The ground on which 3060 Camelot is located has proved somewhat unstable. In building 3060 Camelot in 1980, the contractor had apparently used fill to provide an even foundation for the house, which was also the case in 1990, when another garage was added. What struck me when I first drove several miles up to 3060 Camelot about five years ago were the large cracks in the asphalt in front of the house. Those cracks may or may not have any relationship to a potential problem that Tanner Stone acknowledged in their report: the garage that had been added and an adjoining retaining wall needed to be shored up to prevent them sliding down the hill. The approximate cost for securing the garage and wall was $15,000 - $20,000, according to Tanner Stone. The doctor claimed that work could be done for a fraction of that figure, which he promised to do before the sale. But is it only the garage and wall that are unstable? Will 3060 ever settle down?

The most surprising thing I saw in the files I obtained were the costs connected with maintaining and improving the grounds around 3060. One item in the file revealed the cost of tree and stump removal: $9,250. And there are many thousands of dollars more listed, including $3,150 for (presumably) another tree removal and $1,645 for landscaping. Perhaps the house and grounds had been well maintained, as Tanner Stone reported. But if that is the case then even well-maintained houses only 20 years old can be money pits.

What makes this all the more hard to take is that the trustees had previously committed to building a new presidential house on or near the campus. The trustees had authorized the creation of a President’s House Committee, of which I was a member and of which George Clayton was chairman, to plan for that house. Two things that the committee agreed upon early on was that “the house must be in close proximity to SSU’s campus” (7 Jan. 1999), and that it should not be a “Shawnee brick” square box house. Susan Warsaw, a member of the committee, urged us to “think outside box.” Instead of hiring the usual architectural suspect, Tanner Stone, the committee selected a young Columbus architect, Michael Hasara, and the committee encouraged him to be creative. He came up with an original design that the committee approved, but George Clayton and William McKinley, another member of the committee, early on began criticizing the design and undermining the architect. (For a view of Hasara’s extraordinary work, in both traditional and modern styles, explore his website at www.hasara.com) And to see what might have been, look at the proposed design for SSU. It was to be built on the southeast corner of Waller and Second St., where a parking lot was built instead.

The SSU president's house that never was

After the committee had chosen a site on campus and was preparing for the groundbreaking, and the university had already paid Hasara about $10,000 of his fee, George Clayton picked a fight with the young architect and accused him of refusing to make changes in the design that he Clayton had asked for. I don’t know what these changes were, because Clayton was using the House Committee as a front and rubber stamp for himself and the trustees. Hasara told others at SSU via email that Clayton was misrepresenting the situation. When he learned about Hasara’s email, Clayton did his Don Corleone imitation. Loyalty is what Clayton expects above all from others, even though he seems congenitally incapable of it himself. I knew Hasara only slightly, but I got to know Clayton well enough to know whose word I would believe.

Hasara was fired and the commitment to build a house in close proximity to the SSU campus was scuttled. And what better place was there for a new president to live than on the Hill, not far from George Clayton and other trustees? And why waste money building a new house anywhere when there was a deserving doctor on the Hill with a house on his hands?

I now suspect that one of the reasons Hasara was terminated and the plans for the presidential house on campus were scuttled was that several influential trustees had concluded that in hiring James P. Chapman as president they had made a mistake. Chapman was too close to the faculty, among whom he had tremendous support – the most popular president the university had ever had, the Daily Times reported editorially. The trustees had never been able to get along with the faculty, and would be suspicious of any president who did. The trustees preferred a president like Clive Veri, however incompetent and unpopular with the faculty he may have been, because Veri knew how the game was played. For one thing, he lived in a home up on the Hill. The trustees decided to locate the president’s house and the new president that they would get to replace Chapman a good distance – physically and symbolically – from the campus, even though such a decision went in the face of what the trustees had publicly committed themselves to.

According to the minutes of t the trustees’ meeting at which they approved the purchase of former trustee Jo Ann Thatcher’s 1828 Franklin Boulevard house, the chairman of the trustees, Frank Waller “stated that this [Thatcher’s house] was an interim home and that sometime in the future, a presidential home would be built close to or on campus. Mr. [George L.] Davis voiced his approval of the resolution even though he had no vote at this meeting, stating that it shows a commitment to build a presidential home on campus.” Actually all that this palaver about building a presidential house on campus showed was how far some trustees would go to create a smokescreen to cover up the obvious conflict of interest they had in buying a former trustee’s house as an interim house at an inflated price of $230,000. When the university tried to sell the Thatcher house, it had no takers at this fraudulent figure. After being on the market for an embarrassingly long time, 1828 Franklin was sold not for $230,000 but for $180,000, the tax-payers taking a $50,000 loss, along with the thousands of dollars spent on it in the interim.

Taxpayers took $50,000 loss on Thatcher house

There is a possibility that in purchasing 1828 Franklin and 3060 Camelot SSU may have violated state law, which forbids the state paying more than 10% above the appraised value of property. I’ve been told the Thatcher house was appraised at $200,000 (and that may have been one of those suspiciously high appraisals that take place when a property of the clique goes on the market), so in paying 15% more for it, SSU appears to have gone over the 10% limit. The Thatchers reportedly got a twelfth hour offer that led trustee chairman Frank Waller to increase SSU’s offer. That incidentally, also is what happened at 3060 Camelot. At the twelfth hour the selling price was jacked up because the doctor claimed he had a higher offer from another party. Even if that offer was made, should it change the appraised value of a house? Does all this sound fishier than something cooked up in Johnson’s Restaurant? Surely, if there was anything illegal or unethical, SSU counsel Stephen P. Donohue, who is rumored to be an Ohio Assistant Attorney General and who has gone on to become a part-time judge, would have been on it like Gangbusters.

If 1828 Franklin and 3060 Camelot were money pits, Martings could turn out to be Scioto's great cesspool. Estimates for Marting’s renovation have ranged from 2 to 10 million dollars. Most tax-payers in Portsmouth could tell you which of those two figures will be closer to the eventual cost. Through public feeding tubes and other means, public monies will pour into the hundred year-old building for the next quarter of a century. “I know every stinking inch of that building,” a former employee of Marting’s said recently at a public meeting. What is the source of that stink? If the physical foundation of 3060 Camelot is somewhat mushy, the moral foundation of the Marting building is even more so. Located as it is in the heart of Portsmouth’s downtown red light district, the illegitimate offspring of a phony Foundation and a corrupt city council, Marting’s is just up the street and around the corner from the law offices of George Clayton’s cousin.

"A-Marting We Will Go!"

What does this house have in common with the Marting building?

We should add a new word to Portsmouth’s lexicon, “marting,” meaning “to purchase, at inflated prices, with public monies, white elephant properties from the politically well connected.” Properties were being “martinged” in Portsmouth prior to the purchase of the Marting building, the purchase of which was just the two-million-dollar gorilla that broke the camel’s back, to mix metaphors. Someone who is a student of ethics told me that corruption is so pervasive in Portsmouth that those who behave unethically by "marting" their property really don't think they are doing anything wrong. That's just the way things are done locally and that's the way they have been done for a long time. It's discouraging to think that might be the case, that we are dealing not only with a culture of dependency but with a culture unconscious of its own corruption, that from the cradle they are taught to tap into public monies when they are in a real estate pickle:

A-marting we will go, a-marting we will go,

Heigh-ho the dairy-o, a-marting we will go,

A-marting we will go, a-marting we will go,

We’ll sell our house to some old souse

Or to the public-o, or to the public-o.

The trustees of Shawnee State University have “martinged” property more than once. In 1999, John W. Thatcher, a local attorney, and his wife Jo Ann Thatcher, a former SSU trustee who was active in Republican circles, were having trouble selling their empty, dowdy 82-year-old house at 1828 Franklin Boulevard, pictured above. There are some lovely old houses on Franklin; the stolid Thatcher house was not one of them. The Thatcher house does not even have a front entrance. People visiting it for the first time sometimes circled the house, trying to figure out where to enter. The first time I visited the Thatcher house, I like others had trouble finding the entrance. Rephrasing Falstaff’s words in “Henry IV, part 2, I said to myself, “It’s neither fish nor foul; a man knows not where to enter it.”

Most owners have difficulty selling their property in Portsmouth’s chronically depressed real estate market. Sometimes it seems as if property in Portsmouth is as hard to sell as stinking mackerel, to use a Shakespearean expression. But most people don’t have the political connections the Thatchers have to get their mackerel properly “martinged.” Former Ohio Attorney General and present state Auditor Betty Montgomery was among the Republican bigwigs who reportedly knew where to enter the Thatcher house. Just as the Portsmouth City Council would later bail out Clayton Johnson and the Marting Foundation, and just as Portsmouth Murals, Inc., would bail out George Clayton by paying him $350,000 for his empty properties in Boneyfiddle, the SSU trustees bailed out the Thatchers with public monies, paying them $230,000 in June 1999 for an empty house that was appraised for $163,340. In a chronically depressed real estate market, the Thatchers were paid some $65,000 above the appraised value for a piece of property the university did not need. I was told by a high administrator at the university that state law did not allow property to be purchased by the state at more than 10% of its appraised value. If that was the law, the Thatcher house could have sold for no more than $179, 685. Certainly if the purchase of the Thatcher house was illegal, then the Attorney General at that time, Betty Montgomery, would have disallowed it. Wouldn't she? Anyway, the SSU trustees bought the Thatcher house as a temporary residence for President James Chapman and his wife, even though the Chapmans would have preferred other living arrangements.

The trustees “martinged” the Thatcher house by paying way too much for it as a temporary residence for a president who did not want to live there. At the trustees meeting at which the purchase of the Thatcher house was approved, one trustee is on record as saying the purchase was a good deal for the university, which would have no trouble getting its money back on the property once a permanent house could be found for the president. That president would not be Chapman, who, because he would not play ball with some of the trustees, was not rehired.

3060 Camelot Drive, another "martinged" property

Finding a permanent house for the next president involved more “marting” of property. The trustees hired an architect to design a new house for the SSU president, to be located on campus, as Chapman had recommended; but after a year of planning and expense they thought better of wasting money that way, fired the architect, got rid of Chapman, and purchased another empty house, miles away from campus, on the Hill, for $412,000, paying the doctor who owned it well above any 10% limit. The appraised value of 3060 Camelot Drive was $365,140. George Clayton, who was then chairman of the SSU trustees and who can “marting” with the best of them, engineered that sweetheart deal, bailing out a doctor who had left town and who was having trouble selling 3060 Camelot Drive.

When the time came for SSU to sell the Thatcher house, it naturally had trouble doing so. The unoccupied house was on the market for some time. The university finally sold it, in December 2002, like distressed merchandise, 3 1/2 years after purchasing it from the Thachers, for $180,000. In other words, SSU sold the house for $50,000 less than they paid the Thatchers for it.

In a pontifical letter-to-the-editor in the Community Common (2 January 2005), the same John W. Thatcher, whose Franklin Boulevard house had been martinged, defended the city’s purchase of the Marting building, claiming that it will save money in the long run. Oh, sure, the purchase of the Marting building will save money, just as the purchase of Thatcher’s house saved money. Oh, sure, the purchase of the Marting building was a good deal, just as the purchase of Thatcher’s house was a good deal, even though the Marting building is as unsuited for a municipal building as the Thatcher house was as a residence for a university president. Why waste public money to build a new house for the president or a new municipal building, designed for the specific uses to which it would be put, and in the best location, when a “philanthropic” foundation has an empty downtown store with neither a parking lot or a future, and a politically connected couple have an empty house on Franklin Boulevard, and a doctor who moved has a house on the Hill he could not sell? Those properties needed to be taken off the hands of the politically well connected, and off the tax rolls, and the public needed to pay for it. That’s the way property is “martinged” in Portsmouth. And the experts at "marting," who write letters to the editor defending it, are the same people who want us to believe they are dedicated public servants and philanthropists.