HOW CHUCK RATNER AND FOREST CITY REMIND US OF OUR PLUS SPIRIT

I had the privilege of having a small group lunch August 4 with Chuck Ratner, CEO of Forest City Enterprises. For those of you who don’t know much about Forest City, founded in 1920, today the company is an $11.7 Billion publicly-traded global real estate firm headquartered in Cleveland. Most amazing is how the company came to be – and the values it still holds today.
At lunch, I learned about how Max Ratner, Chuck’s dad, immigrated to the United States from Poland. Like many immigrants, Max was an entrepreneur. He opened a creamery, and then a lumber business. Though at first the business was retail – a pre-Home Depot, if you will, after the depression, the Ratners began buying large pieces of land in far away places like “Beachwood” and “Parma” (now well built-out suburbs 20 minutes from Cleveland). Over time, the company was able to purchase parcels of land throughout the United States, leading to their national prominence today.

The Ratners embody what is best about the Cleveland Plus region: genuine people with entrepreneurial spirit.

And Chuck is genuine. Casually dressed in a short-sleeved yellow shirt, the real estate mogul talked openly about his parents’ struggles and passionately about the need to give back to the community. Having served as the Chair of Cleveland’s United Way Campaign, Chair of the Jewish Federation, on the board of the Cleveland Orchestra and the Greater Cleveland Partnership, he says that the list is not important. It is the WORK – the progress and outcomes that better lives – that is important. He passionately spoke about Cleveland – about the company’s commitment to improving the urban core. He spoke about the need to change urban education, and demonstrated his passions as he talked about his work with the new STEM school, ePrep, and Cleveland Public Schools’ CEO, Dr. Eugene Sanders. He was open about his love of Judaism, quoting Talmudic passages that guided much of his life. Ideals of openness, honesty, integrity and community. In Judaism, there must be a “minyan” – 10 people – for public prayer; he pointed to how this law reminds us of the need for community. The idea that we are better together.

This of course is the idea of Team NEO – working together as one region to attract businesses. The fact that collectively we can do more than any one city or county can do on its own. That collaboratively, we have better ideas and more opportunities.

Chuck Ratner is one of Northeast Ohio’s best Plusses. He reminds us that the ideals of our region’s founders still run deep in our blood today. And those virtues – that entrepreneurial spirit and goodness of the heart – is what is making progress for Northeast Ohio’s future.
Ps – the lunch was a program of the Young Leadership Division of the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland for Ben Gurion Society members

For more about Team NEO and the Cleveland Plus region, visit www.clevelandplusbusiness.com