Lakewood is a Great Community and it’s Only Getting Better [Opinion]

To the Editor:

Lakewood is a great community and it’s only getting better. It’s one of the strongest and best-run cities in Northeast Ohio. In recent weeks, Crain’s reported that Lakewood’s housing market was “insane”—as in insanely good.

To continue our progress, Lakewood voters should vote FOR Issue 64 this November.

Part of protecting Lakewood’s momentum is making smart decisions about community assets. That’s what City Council did last year when they voted unanimously for a plan to build a brand new, state-of-the-art medical center in Lakewood.

This plan ensures Lakewood will have high-quality health care for many years to come.

Voting FOR the Issue 64 will protect all of the benefits that Lakewood receives:

• The agreement guarantees the Cleveland Clinic will pay for and build a new, state-of-the-art medical center with uninterrupted emergency care available 24/7/365.
• Lakewood patients’ health care experience likely won’t change. We’ll still have:
• Primary care and specialty outpatient programs, like geriatrics, cardiac care, and diabetes care.
• Almost all of the same medical services (94 percent) needed by patients at the old hospital available at the same convenient downtown location.
• The Clinic will pay Lakewood $19.6 million for transition costs and to help Lakewood redevelop the old site, and $32 million is being put into a Lakewood foundation to improve our community’s health.

Voting against this issue will not reopen the old Lakewood Hospital. It closed permanently in February after millions in losses. After more than a year of study, no health care system could be found that would continue to operate an inpatient hospital here.

If this issue fails, the redevelopment could stall, and we will waste untold time and millions of dollars in legal fees and other costs, as the agreement gets stuck in additional, expensive lawsuits.

I urge Lakewood residents to vote FOR Issue 64. It ensures Lakewood keeps high-quality health care at no cost to taxpayers, keeps uninterrupted emergency care 24/7/365, and keeps dozens of health care services in our downtown for years to come.

Sincerely,
Lindsey Wilber Grdina