Amazon project gets protests over minority construction jobs
A dust-up NORTH RANDALL — over minority construction hiring at the Amazon fulfillment center project in North Randall is casting a cloud over long-awaited activity on the former Randall Park Mall site and spurring a
— war of words between the mayor of this largely African-American village and the outspoken president of the Black Contractors Group.
In email blasts and flyers, Norman Edwards claims that black workers are being shut out. On Monday, he organized the first of what could be many protests, in a very public push to put e-commerce giant Amazon and North Randall Mayor David Smith on the spot.
Seefried Industrial Properties, Inc., of Atlanta bought the former mall site in August and is developing a sprawling distribution building there for Amazon, which has signed a long-term lease. The fulfillment center, expected to open next year, will employ more than 2,000 full-time workers who will gather up, pack and ship small items such as books and consumer electronics.
Edwards, known for his fiery rhetoric, says he’ll stage protests and bring in busloads of clergy and contractors from other states to join him until at least 20 percent of the workers on the site are black or Hispanic. “Damn them,” he said of Amazon.
“We don’t want them in the neighborhood,” he added. “We’re going to have a national boycott on them. We’re going to keep coming.”
Smith, who also is black, said he’s committed to inclusion and has no quibbles with the quest for more diversity on construction sites. But he’s frustrated by Edwards’ tactics.
“You can’t stop people from protesting,” Smith said. “But what really irritates me is that you don’t have all the facts, and you have people that are following you in the protests.”
Some cities and counties do attach hiring requirements — for local workers and minority- and femaleowned contracting businesses — to public projects, though there’s a statewide fight going on over the legitimacy of local-hiring regulations. The Amazon fulfillment center, though, is a private construction project.
The village, Cuyahoga County and the state are chipping in — in the form of property-tax abatement, money for road improvements and job-creation tax credits tied to Amazon’s tenure and employment on the site. But those incentives don’t carry race-based hiring requirements.
The Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority’s board signed off in July on the agency’s plan to issue and sell up to $123 million in taxable bonds to help fund construction. That bond-financing transaction doesn’t involve taxpayer money. The port, which has a two-tiered mission of supporting maritime activities and economic development, is a conduit. The agency collects a fee for issuing bonds sold to a private investor. Amazon’s rent payments will cover the debt.
The port does have an inclusion policy, which applies to the North Randall project and its other development-finance deals. That policy sets a benchmark of 20 percent participation in a project by certified minority-owned or woman-owned businesses.
The port doesn’t have legal authority to force developers and contractors to hire certain workers — or to punish builders who don’t. But 90 percent of port-assisted projects meet that 20 percent goal, and the rest aren’t far off, said Jade Davis, vice president of external affairs.
“What we have done is as much as we could, given the current regulatory and legislative framework in which we’re working,” Davis said of the port’s inclusion efforts. “We have tracked numbers, and we’ve been pretty successful in compelling people we have worked with on the development finance side to hit those numbers — or get very close.”
Clayco, a real estate and construction firm based in St. Louis, is the general contractor on the Amazon project. A Sept. 28 status update provided by the port showed much of the work, from fencing to painting to masonry, hadn’t been awarded yet to subcontractors. Of the jobs that had been assigned, almost 25 percent of the spending was going to businesses owned by women or minorities — exceeding the port’s threshold.
Edwards said that doesn’t cut it, since some companies are owned by white women.
“We want black companies that are going to come in there and have black workers or Hispanic workers,” he said. “We have contractors that are confident and that are capable.”