For awhile, I thought the Indianapolis Star had decided to skip any coverage of the investigation of the sleazy manner in which the Regional Operations Center at a big political contributor's white elephant property on the east side came to be. What little reporting the Star has done to date has primarily been for the purpose of communicating to its readers that any investigation of the deal was simply partisan politics on the part of the Democratic-controlled council. The Star's John Tuohy finally has a story today emphasizing a point I made after reviewing the latest document dump from the Ballard administration a month and a half ago: Former Public Safety Director Frank Straub thought the Eastgate Mall site was a bad choice.
Tuohy's story, for the most part, doesn't cover any new ground than what I previously reported. He did get some comments from the building's owner about some of Straub's misgiving's about the Eastgate Mall site. One of Straub's concerns I previously discussed was an FBI raid of a business owned by one of the ROC property owners in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. That would be Marvin Slomowitz, an east coast billionaire real estate developer.
Slomowitz tells the Star the raid was "politically motivated" and he received a letter 18 months letter from the FBI clearing him. He said he was unaware Straub had concerns about the matter. "I feel sorry for my poor partners hearing now what they were against," Touhy says Slomowitz said by phone from Florida. Yeah, they're laughing all the way to the bank at just how much they were able to exploit politically-corrupt people in Indianapolis to extract a $20 million, 25-year lease a for deteriorating former Simon shopping mall they picked up on the cheap.
U.S. Representative Susan Brooks' husband's client, Alex Carroll, who has made big campaign contributions to the right people, chimed in. Carroll said he didn't know about the FBI raid of Slomowitz' business and that the raid couldn't have involved anything "significant because the FBI and other law enforcement agencies moved into the ROC in January 2012." That's not entirely true. The FBI had originally discussed having permanent space in the building, but according to testimony before the council's investigative committee, the FBI chose not to become a permanent tenant in the building. Agents may have used space at the building during the Super Bowl in February 2012, but they don't have an ongoing presence there. Councilor Ben Hunter, who received big campaign contributions from Carroll after pushing so hard for the Eastgate Mall site, insisted had nothing to do with the site selection or his support. Ballard's spokesman, Marc Lotter, says he didn't even think Ballard knew Carroll made campaign contributions. Yeah, right.
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