Bruce Rinker, partner in our Real Estate Group, is featured in a Plain Dealer article following his appointment to the Cleveland Metroparks Board of Commissioners. Please join us in congratulating Bruce on this accomplishment.  (Attached is the article appearing in last Sunday's Plain Dealer).

 

Mayfield Mayor Bruce Rinker on familiar ground as newly named Cleveland Metroparks Commissioner
By James Ewinger (Cleveland Plain Dealer - 01/17/10)

 

MAYFIELD, Ohio -- Bruce Rinker's life was simple until he was tapped to help run the Cleveland Metroparks late last year.

 

Before that, he shouldered the dual responsibilities of a private law practice and the office of mayor in Mayfield, a community of about 3,400 with nearly 2,700 acres in eastern Cuyahoga County -- jobs he intends to continue.

 

Now, as one of three unpaid Metroparks commissioners, he will find his constituency is much more diverse. Most of the residents run on four legs, live underwater or fly over 22,000 acres that gird part of Cuyahoga County and spill into three others.

 

Rinker's recent appointment comes at a critical time, amid the start of a 10-year plan that will shape Ohio's oldest park district for years to come.

 

The commissioners also have to hire a replacement for Executive Director Vern Hartenburg, in hopes of carrying on his decades of debt- and scandal-free stewardship after he retires this year.

 

Cuyahoga County Probate Judge Anthony Russo, who appoints the parks commissioners, also wants them to look toward the lake when they consider expanding the park.

 

Walk through Mayfield with Rinker, and you hear a man who sounds as if he's been in dress rehearsal as a parks commissioner since 1993, when he became mayor.

 

In 17 years, Rinker has expanded the village's public lands to around 150 acres -- a 12-fold increase encompassing restored wetlands and streams, trails that connect with the Metroparks' North Chagrin Reservation, and a revamped roadbed for SOM Center that allows people to walk back and forth underneath it at two points.

 

In the midst of a mild winter storm in early January, he pulls into a resident's driveway along SOM Center Road, which separates most of the residents on its east side from the village's parks and its major cash cow, the Progressive Insurance campus.

 

Rinker is oblivious to the low-cut clogs that do nothing to separate his feet from the growing snow drifts. He leads two journalists to a small concrete promontory that overlooks a clean, burbling stream that flows under SOM Center on its way to join the Metroparks stream system and the Chagrin River.

 

The view is just dessert. It began in 1997 with the realization that the roadway needed work, and the deeper appreciation that SOM was "either going to split the community or bring it together," Rinker said.

 

"When things can be disrupted, that's usually the opportunity," he said of the nine-year project that made the area more pedestrian-friendly, solved a major drainage problem and helped induce Progressive Insurance to stay in the village and expand.

 

The Metroparks' planners have been trying to get a number of suburban mayors to work with them on controlling storm water runoff. They credit Rinker for taking the initiative, to come to them with ideas.

 

As he speaks about the project, Rinker identifies funding strategies, federal, state and local agencies that must sign off on such planning, and methods of acquiring land without drawing blood.

 

This is language Rinker learned as his public and private careers have evolved side by side since 1987. Before that, he was a lawyer specializing in litigation, mainly representing insurance companies and defending their policy holders in lawsuits.

 

After he joined the Village Council in 1987, he moved from torts to that corner of the law governing planning, zoning, eminent domain and real estate -- essentially the rich loam in which communities grow.

 

Tom Evans, a landscape architect with the nationwide URS engineering firm that has worked under contract with the village, calls Rinker "a green visionary" who has balanced economic development with storm-water and green-space issues.

 

Evans said another stream relocation project under Rinker's direction "restored a scar in the [parks'] North Chagrin Reservation" by solving a severe erosion problem.

 

Fred Rzepka, dean of park commissioners here with more than 20 years on the board, said he knows Rinker from his appearances before the commissioners on behalf of private clients and looks forward to working with him, calling him "intelligent, very reasonable, bright."

 

Rinker replaces William Ryan, who completed his third term last year but was not reappointed.

 

Rzepka's term expires next year, and board member David Whitehead's current term is up the year after that.

 

Russo said he knows of Rinker because the judge has lived in the village for 30 years. Russo said Rinker dealt with a run-down house near the judge by buying and razing it and turning the land into a park.

 

Most of Rinker's public acquisitions, in fact, have been without the cudgel of eminent domain. That methodology is in line with Cleveland Metroparks planners, who take pride in negotiating instead of seizing land, sometimes taking decades to work with a family before making a purchase.

 

Such patience appears to be a staple of Rinker's life.

 

Ask him his goals for the Metroparks, and he speaks with lawyerly caution:

 

"To make sure that I learn sufficiently well the array of assets that the Metroparks system contains," he said.

 

Then, for emphasis, he added "prudently."