By Gregory Korte
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Schaefer

Fifth Third Bank CEO George A. Schaefer Jr., the man charged with selling the recommendations of Mayor Charlie Luken's Economic Development Task Force, doesn't say much.

During the 10 months in which he co-chaired the 18-member task force, he often sat listening stoically to endless presentations on what's wrong with the city's development efforts.

But when he does speak, people take notice. His plain talking, cut-to-the-chase style peppered the task force's deliberation with unpolished brass tacks:

On Gov. Bob Taft's economic development office: "These people are just weak. They're not the A team. They're not even the B or C team. They're just useless."

On business retention: "We have businesses leaving the city, and the people down at City Hall don't know a thing about it until they read about it in the Enquirer. That's unacceptable."

On panhandling: "There's a guy down on Fourth Street who has a Kroger cart, and he comes out every day and chains his cart to the signpost, and sets up his perch. I hear all this rhetoric about 'clean and safe.' For my thousands of employees, that's a huge issue in how comfortable they feel working downtown. And yet everybody plays ostrich here."

On the city bureaucracy: "Can anyone explain to me why we have a Planning Department and a Planning Commission?"

The answer may be obvious to a city hall bureaucrat. But the more panel members thought about it, it was perhaps the best question of the day, challenging the way things are done and constantly looking for ways to make the system more efficient and cost-effective.

"He has the ability to ask the hard question, and do it directly. That's what most CEOs are great at," said Nick Vehr, the former councilman and vice president of the Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce who served on the task force. "I think he brings a focus on results and things that can be measured. Like any CEO, but certainly the CEO of one of the best banks in the country, he wants a focus on performance and customer service."

The task force Thursday recommended streamlining the city's process of granting permits and tax incentives, creating a "strike team" of dealmakers within the city manager's office, and - perhaps most controversial - creating two new development entities outside City Hall:

• A citywide development authority - led by an unelected board appointed by the mayor - with the power to issue bonds, take property by eminent domain and clean up old industrial sites.

• A closely related non-profit development corporation to coordinate an ambitious plan to reinvigorate the Fountain Square area.

From the beginning, Schaefer focused the commission's efforts on the big picture. "We're not going to bring the Hallmark store to Madisonville," he said. Not that he has anything against Madisonville. Fifth Third has 2,500 employees there. Almost 5,000 more work downtown.

"My involvement is grounded in the 7,700 employees I have in the city. There's a little bit of selfishness here, too. It's enlightened self-interest," he said. "I'm not doing this so Valerie gets a promotion."

City Manager Valerie Lemmie was Schaefer's co-chairwoman on the task force. If Lemmie's participation was essential to get the bureaucracy to buy into the reforms, Schaefer brought with him significant clout in the business community. Other downtown CEOs return his phone calls.

Still, Schaefer has modest, Delhi Township roots. He graduated from Elder High School and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, fought in Vietnam and earned the Bronze Star.

Now 57, Schaefer has been described as perhaps the only man alive who's as comfortable on Glenway Avenue as he is on Wall Street.

It's that understanding of Cincinnati's culture - with its German-influenced parsimony and stubbornness - that helped guide Lemmie through the political pitfalls of such a profound reform of economic development, the city manager said.

"He brought the reputation, the experience, and the leadership, and the knowledge of the community and our culture," Lemmie said. "He knows exactly what the capacity of the city is for change. He knows what is reasonable to expect, and what's unreasonable."

Schaefer's job has been to get the myriad fiefdoms within Cincinnati's corporate and civic community to buy into the reforms.

"In this city, if you have 100 people who want to get things done and one who doesn't, it won't happen," he said.

The task force held its meetings at Fifth Third's Clement L. Buenger board room. His predecessor in the chairman's seat led the 1991 Buenger Commission, which studied accountability in the Cincinnati Public Schools. Other top execs - like David Phillips of Arthur Andersen and John Smale of Procter & Gamble - led blue-ribbon efforts to look at city management in 1986 and infrastructure in 1987.

"I don't know if this is anything of that magnitude. The business community was asked to be helpful, and we came up with a plan," Schaefer said. "Like the mayor said, if you don't like this plan, show me a better process. But don't tell me we're already doing a bang-up job with economic development."

Mayor Charlie Luken said he appointed Schaefer in part because they share a common trait: impatience. "People like George Schaefer are not going to sit around for a year studying this thing," Luken said last June.

Ten months later, the Schaefer-Lemmie commission recommended the most sweeping reform of the city's development efforts in its history. And now, Schaefer's job is to keep people focused on implementing the recommendations without a lot of tinkering by City Council. "My attitude is this," Schaefer said. "You send us out to do a task. Why don't you listen to what we have to say before you nit-pick it to death."

E-mail gkorte@enquirer.com