Hemisphere: About Us

CASE STUDY: Youth Intervention Center

HEMISPHERE CONSULTANTS MAKE CASE FOR YOUTH CENTER

For almost a decade, Cuyahoga County in northeast Ohio was having difficulty finding a place to construct a major intervention center for troubled youth. Promoting any location for such a use was a significant public relations challenge. At the same time, the city of Cleveland was facing the need for cleanup of PCBs and asbestos at the former Schmidts Brewery. The shuttered facility, hard-hit by vandalism, had been identified by Cleveland's mayor as one of the city's worst contaminated sites.

Overcoming Environmental and PR Hurdles
Hemisphere's expert environmental, real estate, financial and public relations advisors went to work quickly. They assembled and led a team to resolve the cleanup issues at the former brewery, and to communicate that plan to residents who held a negative public opinion about how the site would be used. Hemisphere Advisors orchestrated a strategy that raised the public's confidence about how the site would be cleaned up, and that such a project would be the best possible use of the site.

Daunting Project Turns into Community Success
Hemisphere's consultants proved that remediating the property to stringent residential cleanup standards would be cost-effective only if the site were used for a major public project like the youth intervention center, which would deliver high returns to the community. By addressing the environmental concerns and crafting an effective communications strategy, Hemisphere has made it possible for the county to proceed with a 240,000-square-foot, $60 million youth center facility at the site. The center is expected to be completed by 2003.