Winterfest- The season may be chilly, but the ticket is HOT!

Cleveland Winterfest is here, contrary to the warm weather we've been sporting lately. Make sure you kick off the holiday season right by attending this jam packed day of activities.

The event starts bright and early at 9am and lasts until the tree lighting and firework display at 6pm. Don't think it stops there, an indoor after party will be held at The Cleveland Plus Visitor Center. There will also be ice sculpture carvings on East 4th Street throughout the evening. Last but not least, do not forget about The Winter Wine and Ale Fest from 8pm-12am at 200 Public Square, which will be a great way for the 21 and over set to warm up from a day full of outdoor fun.

Highlights of the day include the showing of the OSU vs. Michigan game (GO BUCKS!), free horse drawn carriage rides, concerts, and of course the Public Square lighting ceremony.

*According to @DowntownCle, The Downtown Cleveland Alliance's twitter account, there are only 60 tickets left for this Saturday's Cleveland Winter Wine and Ale Fest so make sure you get yours while you still can.

*For more info and to purchase tickets check out: www.downtowncleveland.com/winterfest

Volunteers labor for weeks on St. Augustine's Thanksgiving feast for thousands

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Seven days a week, Jerome White walks from his home on East 55th Street to volunteer at the St. Augustine Hunger Center in Tremont, Cleveland's West Side neighborhood. His walk takes an hour and 15 minutes -- or longer, depending on how hard it's raining or how deep the snow is.

On Thursday, he plans to leave home at 2 a.m. to help prepare eggs and sausage at an all-you-can-eat free breakfast at OLA St. Joseph Center in Tremont. Then he'll go on to St. Augustine's, where he is one of the 1,000 volunteers who prepare and transport 17,000 hot meals to serve poor and homebound people at no cost on Thanksgiving Day.

Just call White an officer in Sister Corita Ambro's Thanksgiving army.

Ambro, a 75-year-old dynamo at St. Augustine, has been supervising the free Thanksgiving feast for 30 of her 40 years at the church.

On Thursday, 300 to 500 people will dine between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. at two halls at St. Augustine Church, but thousands more across Greater Cleveland will enjoy a hot turkey dinner because of preparations that began the first week of October in the basement at St. Augustine's.

That's when the first of 1,000 turkeys went in the six ovens and eight roasters, each of which hold two or three turkeys. Since then, volunteer William "Fish" Hardy has arrived every morning at 5 to turn out 25 turkeys per day. And hunger center cook Sheryl Austin has baked from 120 to 180 pecan, apple and pumpkin pies daily, for a total of 3,000 that will be polished off Thursday.

Several volunteers come daily to debone the turkeys, filling big foil trays with meat to be frozen. "If we didn't start in October, we would never be done in time for Thanksgiving," said Ambro. She works the Thanksgiving prep in with such usual tasks as finding homeless people places to live and overseeing the three free meals St. Augustine's offers every weekday, along with two meals on Saturdays and Sundays.

The week before Thanksgiving, Tom Lisy of Bay Village and Gene Hanzely of Avon Lake, both Knights of Columbus volunteers, put on plastic gloves to pull the meat from just-cooked turkeys. The retirees have been helping prepare for Thanksgiving at St. Augustine's for most of the past decade.

"This is what Knights of Columbus do," said Hanzely, his gloves greasy. "We're supposed to help people."

That day, 21 eighth-graders from St. Ambrose School in Brunswick came to bring cans of food and assemble the cardboard boxes that will hold the foam containers for the hot meals that volunteers will assemble early on the holiday.
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"This teaches our children so much about life -- about the real world," said Sharon Yurick, a retired St. Ambrose teacher who chaperoned the group of 21 kids.

Food prepared at St. Augustine goes to hunger centers, churches and shut-ins from Lorain to East Cleveland -- much of it on Thanksgiving Day. Last week, St. Augustine's volunteer coordinator, Doris Everetts, was glued to a computer logging requests for meals and assigning volunteers. One apartment building on Cedar Avenue requested 75 meals.

On Thursday, volunteers will go to Pilgrim United Church of Christ, a distribution site near St. Augustine', to get maps and boxes of hot turkey dinners to deliver to more than 6,000 individuals who won't spend Thanksgiving with family or friends.

Everetts delegates volunteer tasks from food prep and serving to cleanup. Other volunteers will greet diners at the hunger centers and sit down to eat and talk with them. "That's important too," Everetts said.

Today, Mark "Munch" Bishop, ESPN Cleveland morning host on WKNR AM/850, will broadcast an appeal for food and cash donations throughout the day from St. Augustine as he has since the Rev. Joseph McNulty, the pastor of the church, called him for help 21 years and three radio stations ago.

The collection runs from about 6:30 a.m. until about 5 p.m. at the church, 2486 West 14th St.

"We have businessmen in suits and ties popping the trunks of their Mercedes to people who come in cars that I am amazed can make it down here," Bishop said. Last year, the Thanksgiving Eve round-up yielded about $5,000, 400 turkeys and 2,000 pounds of boxes and cans of food.

Ron Hudson of Mayfield Heights, shot when he was a Marine Corps sniper in Vietnam, will collect food brought to the church today from his wheelchair.

There are many heartfelt moments, Hudson said. "Last year, a guy gave us his last two dollars. He said, 'I'll walk the two miles to work and not take the bus.' That's what happens in Cleveland."

We are a caring city, Ambro agrees. Though she stood in a nearly empty pantry in the hunger center last week, stocked with little more than refried beans and beets, she said she had faith it would be filled after today. "The people of Cleveland are so generous."

"Sister Corita keeps my belly full," said John Jones of Cleveland's West Side, who goes to the St. Augustine hunger center to eat and to volunteer. "I do whatever they need done," said Jones. "It's been wonderful coming here."

The fact that more people throughout the area have little to spend on food hit home with Kevin Thompson. His law firm, Elk & Elk, donates 400 to 500 turkeys a year to St. Augustine. "Last year we saw families with little kids at the hunger center," said Thompson. "Being a family man, it was tough for me to see that."

But Thursday, across the city, whoever orders a meal will get one. Joe Smith, a laid-off cook and a volunteer, promises they'll even have sweet potatoes baked the old-fashioned way.

"We've got the marshmallows ready!"

(Article courtesy of Cleveland.com)

Thanksgiving Eve Celebrations

Are you planning on taking part in the bar room festivities the night before Thanksgiving? If you haven't yet been persuaded or are still unsure where to go this list below should be of some help coordinating a great night out for friends and family. Cheers!

Sachsenheim Hall (7001 Denison Ave.)Heavy Metal for The Hungry- A concert that benefits the Cleveland Food Bank.

Liquid Nightclub (1212 West 6th) Thanksgiving eve, and every Wednesday Liquid has Ladies Night with complimentary drinks + dancing all night.

Now That's Class (11213 Detroit Ave.) will be hosting a not so average bar night by putting on a burlesque show.

Roc Bar (1220 Old River Rd) will be hosting an Ugly Sweater party- so bust out your most hideous garb and grab a drink. Designated drivers get their non-alcoholic beverages for free!

The Cleveland Improv Comedy Club and Restaurant (2000 Sycamore Street) Hosts of WNCX 98.5’s “Scott and Jeff Show” will tag-team an unbelievably funny show.

Touch Supperclub ( 2710 Lorain Ave.) Party with some of Cleveland's best DJs.

The Beachland Ballroom (15711 Waterloo Rd.) will be hosting their 5th anniversary 'This Way Out' show.

Brain Gain: Which industries are growing in NE Ohio

CLEVELAND -- We are a rust belt city with the reputation of a dying economy. And, when you look at unemployment numbers and empty office buildings, its hard to imagine Cleveland is thriving. But, there's an exciting undercurrent in Northeast Ohio, one that promises a better and brighter future.

"There's just this whole idea that somehow everyone is leaving and its entirely wrong," says Thomas Waltermire with Team NEO.

The stigma of "Brain Drain" is all perspective. Waltermire has crunched the numbers and says the statistics show, Cleveland is gaining and gaining where it matters.

In numbers just released by Team NEO, they found that 80 thousand jobs were realized this year in the region, 23 thousand since July alone. And the Gross Regional Product is projected to grow 3.6 percent in 2010.

So why the stigma Cleveland's best and brightest have to go to bigger cities for better opportunities?

"We get so fixated on a few big brand names and somehow think nobody's here... But there are a lot of smaller companies that have developed and evolved and grown, and so we actually have more headquarters type functions now than we've ever had before."

Waltermire says both Akron and Cleveland are slowly attracting a different type of business - a far cry from steel and automotive.

"But what's in common is its all higher technology, its more globally competitive, and more export oriented and those are the trends going on in the economy here."

New "cleantech" energy technology is being created right here, biotech is developing and manufacturing isn't dead, in fact booming.

"The United States has never had more industrial manufacturing output than it has today."

(Article courtesy of WKYC.com)

Cleveland's Fabulous Food Show

Cleveland hosted The Fabulous Food Show a little over a week ago with celebrity chefs such as Guy Fieri and Alton Brown. Aside from cooking demonstrations, a food market, and a dessert pavilion we would love to know what our readers checked out. We know there were over 200 vendors, so lets us know what whetted your appetite. If you went to the food expo drop us a comment on what there was to see, drink, and taste!

Brain Gain: Biotech innovation saving lives and local economy

CLEVELAND -- Cleveland is already well-known for its high quality medical care. But its reputation is growing elsewhere.

Some of the nation's best and brightest are flocking to university circle to be on the cutting edge of the biotech innovation. Channel 3's Maureen Kyle continues our "Brain Gain" series with a look at how this could be the catalyst to change Cleveland forever.

"We are seen as a center for health care innovation among the leading clinicians that are here," says BioEnterprise CEO Baiju Shah.

In between doctors and patient care is the medical innovation needed to save lives. And located between the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals sits BioEnterprise, an incubator for biotech start ups.

"For every 10 ventures that is launched in the biomedical space, one of them will grow up to be the next "Steris". Two of them will be successfully acquired by a larger company and then those entrepreneurs will start their next ventures."

Shah started BioEnterprise in 2002 with 250 companies the incubator now has more than 600 and drawing in more.

"Went to the east coast, the west coast, someone convinced us to come to Cleveland, " says Jake Orville, a New York native.

Orville could have taken his company anywhere and decided Cleveland was the best location.

"Having been here now for two years, I think that's what's unique with Cleveland. You have the combination of the technology and you have the combination of the physician care and the patient care and its the two of them that really helps breed companies like mine, Cleveland Heart Lab."

Cleveland Heart Lab started with 8 employees, now has 26 and is looking to add 10 more.

"Opportunity! Opportunity knocked," says George Farr.

Farr was raised in Garfield Heights and moved to Connecticut to be a professor at Yale. He and a others moved back to work on protein advancement that will help stroke and brain trauma victims.

With their grant money they got a 16 hundred square foot lab in University Circle.

"For that same amount of money back in New Haven, we would get basically just half of one of these benches. That's it. No office space, no nothing."

It's these companies changing Cleveland's reputation worldwide and will change the way we view successful local businesses.

"They're not the TRW's. these are companies who have 10 to 50 employees that are working on very cool inventions that all of us are going to need."

(Article courtesy of WKYC.com)

Cuyahoga County commissioners clear way for medical mart and convention center

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cuyahoga County on Thursday closed a series of deals for the $465 million medical mart and convention center, clearing the way for construction of a project that backers predict will help revitalize the local economy.

Nearly five years after the tax-financed project was proposed, county commissioners approved key land purchases and a business agreement with the county's private partner, Chicago-based MMPI.

Their vote came at their second to last meeting. In January, a new charter government will replace the three commissioners and inherit the downtown Cleveland project. The mart will showcase medical products and technology in a four-story building attached to an underground convention center near the lakefront.

Here are details of agreements approved Thursday:

•Commissioners imposed a hike of 1 percentage point in the hotel bed tax to help pay for operations, which are expected to run $6 million a year. The measure will generate $2.4 million a year for operations.

• Positively Cleveland, the city tourism bureau, agreed to contribute about $16 million over 17 years for operational costs. Positively Cleveland's contribution will come from bed tax revenue, which accounts for most of its operating money.

• MMPI secured cost guarantees from design-builder Turner Construction Co. Under the agreement, Turner must complete design and construction for no more than $348 million. The deal calls for a 32-month construction schedule to be completed 2013.

• The county bought five properties, including $20 million for the existing city-owned convention center, and several parcels on St. Clair Avenue.

• A lease and operations agreement calls MMPI to build on the county-owned property. The county will pay MMPI $40 million a year, and MMPI will pay the county $36 million a year to pay its debt. The agreement allows under some circumstances for the county to use space in city-owned Public Auditorium, and for the city to use convention center space.

Workers will begin this month removing asbestos from several buildings in preparation for demolition. "Starting in the fall (2011), you'll see steel coming up," said Jeff Appelbaum, the county's point man on the project. Earlier this week, Appelbaum briefed all 11 members of incoming County Council, and urged them to form a subcommittee devoted to the medical mart and convention center. "Regardless of whether you have to make decisions, you are going to get calls," he said. "You're going to want to stay informed."

MMPI spokesman Dave Johnson said 41 companies have signed letters of intent to occupy medical mart showrooms, but he declined to name the potential tenants. 'The convention center has 16 signed letters of intent for trade shows and conferences, he said.

The deals approved Thursday mark the end of a process that been controversial at times, particularly when commissioners raised the sales tax a quarter cent without a public vote in 2007 to finance the project.

"We're delighted we've reached this moment," said Commissioner Tim Hagan. "It's important to the long-term vitality of the region."
(Article courtesy of Cleveland.com and The Cleveland Plain Dealer)