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http://dispatch.com/bball/bball.php?story=dispatch/2005/11/07/20051107-F2-03.html
Sellers selling developers on attributes of hometown
Monday, November 07, 2005
WARRENSVILLE HEIGHTS, Ohio (AP) — Former Ohio State basketball player Brad Sellers has returned from a basketball career abroad and in the NBA to serve as economic development director for the Cleveland suburb where he grew up.
Developers have begun cozying up to this community, with plans for almost $200 million in commercial and home construction.
Mayor Marcia Fudge says the revival coincides with her hiring Sellers as a community liaison five years ago.
Sellers deflects the praise he gets for helping turn around the fortunes of a city that wasn’t always kind to him. He says that before Fudge took office, officials didn’t publicize the city attributes.
"Developers are looking for deals all around," he said. "If you don’t sell it, they don’t care. It’s all about the bottom line for them. They look at it like this: ‘If there’s nothing going on in this town, there’s a reason.’ "
Warrensville Heights has missed out on growth for years despite being situated near two metropolitan freeways and having plenty of room. Fudge says white civic and business leaders have ignored the mostly black city, probably because they didn’t know much about it. Sellers’ presence helped change that, she said.
A graduate of Warrensville Heights High School, Sellers played at Wisconsin and Ohio State before embarking on a six-year career with the Chicago Bulls and Minnesota Timberwolves. He played another eight years in Europe and Israel.
Sellers, 42, returned to the Cleveland area and lives in nearby Aurora. He hesitated when Fudge offered him the job but said he felt like he had to help out the community where he says black residents, including his parents, paved the way.
Whites in the neighborhood sometimes antagonized him when he was a boy in the 1970s, Sellers said. Once, when he was a fifth-grader, four white men jumped out of a car and chased him.
"I remember that car like it was yesterday," Sellers said. "It was a gold convertible with a green top."
Warrensville Heights still has its problems. Its population is aging, and the economy is spotty. Still, Fudge and Sellers are bullish on the city, citing plans for a 250,000 square-foot shopping center next to a new Marriott. And crews have broken ground on a new subdivision of $400,000 homes.
