Gravy Train

For nearly two years, Cleveland's only downtown shopping center has borne the telltale signs of a mall on the skids.

It started when Dillard's pulled out in January 2002, leaving Tower City Center without a department store. Then the Disney Store and the Nature Company left. Express was replaced by an embroidery shop.

This summer, the mall took the drastic step of instituting free weekend parking, but even that seemed to do little to woo shoppers. Beachwood Place and Great Northern offer spacious parking. They also have department stores. Tower City has an empty shell.

To the politicians who run this city, Tower City's troubles quickly became a crisis in the making. After all, it's the only major shopping center left in the downtown core. But, just as important, the mall was a major investment for two groups that politicians strive to appease: taxpayers and Forest City Enterprises.

Forest City is one of the few big companies still based in Cleveland that isn't a bank or a law firm. Started by the Ratner family in 1921 as a lumber supplier, it has since become a $5.3 billion concern and one of the biggest developers in the nation, with offices in Denver, D.C., Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. Today, its high-profile projects are in trendier cities: shopping malls in San Francisco, The New York Times building in Manhattan. Still, company headquarters remain in the Terminal Tower, and despite going public 40 years ago, the business is still under family control, with Ratners and their in-laws holding more than half its board seats.

The company's geriatric chairmen, onetime brothers-in-law Albert Ratner and Sam Miller, have spent their lives in this city. Both keep low profiles, but both have serious connections. Articulate and savvy, Ratner is known for generous contributions to just about every power player in town. The prickly Miller, who married and divorced Ratner's sister and rose to become Forest City's co-chairman and treasurer, has famously great relations at City Hall. Even former Mayor Mike White, who couldn't seem to get along with anyone, considered Miller one of his best friends.

Such warm relations have a way of paying dividends, and Tower City's construction was a prime example. The complex benefited from some $35 million of taxpayer bucks: $23.2 million in low-interest loans, plus $12.5 million in federal highway grants for the roads and bridgework around it. When the federal money required a local match, the city chipped in another $2.2 million. RTA also paid some $54.9 million to renovate its station in the mall's basement.

That was 17 years ago; many of the loans haven't even come due. And with the complex's only department store gone, city officials had good reason to worry.

But the company had a ready solution: more tax dollars. And what Forest City wants, Forest City gets. That's just the way things go around here.

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The Forest City money trail isn't really a trail. It's an eight-lane superhighway that runs through federal, state, and local government. The Ratner and Miller families have given federal candidates and committees $770,000 since 1995. State candidates received $139,650 during the same period.

The sums are made even more potent by the families' method of giving. The law bars individuals from giving more than $2,000 to any one candidate each year. So 18 or 19 members of the Ratner family simply write checks on the same day to the same politician.

It's called "bundling." And while it may look like an end run around the law, it's perfectly legal. It's also smart business. "You get more bang for your buck if you're all giving on the same day," says Catherine Turcer, legislative director for Ohio Citizen Action. "When you think about a $1,000 contribution and what it means to a campaign, $19,000 is a lot of money."

(On behalf of the company, Miller declined comment, saying that Forest City prefers to stay out of the newspaper. He then deployed his trademark snarl and told a Scene reporter to "get a job with a real newspaper," ending the conversation.)

The families' political leanings are clearly Democratic. Over the last eight years, they've given the Democratic National Committee $60,000; another $23,000 went to its congressional and senatorial committees. Even the Ohio Democratic Party, a losing cause if ever one existed, got checks totaling $8,800.

But the family has no problem helping Republicans who can return the favor. Congressman Ralph Regula of Wooster has accepted $33,700 from Ratners and Millers since 1995. Regula is vice-chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, which in June approved a $9.2 billion package to privatize military housing.

Three months later, a partnership led by Forest City won a 50-year contract to do the job in Hawaii. The project's worth: $358 million.

"In most cases, campaign contributions don't buy something," Turcer says. "There's no straight-quid-pro-quo corruption. But it does get you access to politicians. If someone's giving you $1,000 -- or $19,000 -- you're going to take their phone call really quickly."