The Newest White Elephant in the Room

The Massillon Senior Apartments at 59 Lincoln Way East.

A private enterprise.

And guess who pays the loan?

We do.

In an all too familiar pattern of "business development" under the reign of Massillon's Once & Future Mayor for Life, Frank Cicchinelli, the City of Massillon is once more on the financial hook for someone else's private enterprise.

Tuesday night, taking a break from the critical business of determining who sits where at the meetings, City Council requested that the Law Director start the process of obtaining a receiver for the Massillon Senior Apartments. A receiver would be a third party who would run the building and collect the rents on behalf of the city.

Currently, a private developer, John Lucas collects the rents.

Massillon pays the loan.

Seriously.

He gets the rent money and Massillon pays the debt.

And Massillon still owes $925,000 dollars on the loan.

As some of our long term faithful readers may recall, the original developers stopped paying on the loan in 2010, but Massillon City Council was not notified by the city auditor until after the mayoral primary of 2011.

We can only speculate as to why the late notification.

Current operator John Lucas made an offer to buy the building earlier this year, but he couldn't come up with the money.

And now he quietly collects the rent.

While we pay the loan.

The Senior Apartments are just one more example of the "Massillon Miracle" of development, a narrative promulgated by Team Cicchinelli.

We don't argue that these are great business deals for the developers.

The City takes the risk and the developer takes the money.

What's not to like?

Except when the business fails, and our cash strapped city has one more financial obligation to pay as the result of another questionable deal executed by our former leader.

We are now left wondering if any more white elephants will be entering our collective room, led into the city by our Once & Future Mayor for Life.