Throwing It All Away at Crocker Park
Welcome to Crocker Park: the Westlake shopping complex where Greater Clevelanders browse Barnes and Noble, watch flicks at the Regal Cinema, buy wine at Trader Joe's, and dine at posh restaurants on lazy weekends. There are even luxury apartments and business offices right above the stores. Crocker Park's own website hails it as "one of the most exciting developments of its kind in the country… this 480 million dollar project encompasses twelve city blocks… all in a park-like setting filled with the captivating charm and bustling energy of a traditional downtown main street." Yes, Crocker Park is a fully functional faux-town.
But guess what isn't available on Crocker Park's bustling, charming streets? Recycling. In any form. The bottles and cans from every visitor, resident, business, and restaurant, are simply tossed in the trash. I called Crocker Park's general manager, Darryl Whitehead, to find out why everything goes to the landfill. He wouldn't comment on Crocker Park's recycling policy. He told me he would have to get "a statement from corporate," but he never called me back. I called him repeatedly for more than two weeks. Each time I was promised an answer that was never delivered—an answer to a simple question: does Crocker Park offer recycling to its businesses and visitors? If not, why? And are there any plans to offer it in the near future? But it was clear that this was a taboo subject. Recycling, or the lack thereof, is something the management of Crocker Park doesn't want to discuss.
So I went instead to the people who live and work in Crocker Park every day. I spoke with employees at Trader Joe's. They have no recycling options. Some concerned employees have started their own recycling program, bringing hundreds of empty wine bottles (from the customer tasting station) back to their own residences, in order to dispose of them properly. As you can imagine, this is quite an undertaking—and these thoughtful people do it for no pay.
I spoke with an employee of Aladdin's Eatery, who echoed the same dismay about the lack of recycling at Crocker Park. Aladdin's employees have also stepped up to do the right thing, taking garbage home with them to make sure the bottles and cans get recycled. It's funny: Crocker Park—the $480 million project—won't even commit to a yes or no answer about recycling on the premises, but hourly employees haul bottles and cans away from Crocker Park, just because they feel terrible about throwing it all away.
Tired of getting the runaround, I left a final voicemail for Darryl Whitehead. "I'll be submitting my article by the end of October," I said, "and if I don't hear from you by then, I'll assume that Crocker Park doesn't feel the need to make a statement about recycling." He never called me back. This is unacceptable. The rest of the modern world has been recycling for years. The benefits are obvious. Crocker Park is a fairly new complex, and recycling options should have been factored into the final project.
A manager at The Cheesecake Factory smiled when I brought up the topic of recycling. She had an "it's about time" look on her face when I said I was writing an article about Crocker Park's woeful environmental practices.
"Does Crocker Park give you an option to recycle?" I asked her. "No," she said with a smirk, "everything here just gets thrown into the dumpster."
Want to help? Call the main office of Crocker Park at 440-835-9343 and tell them you want to speak to the general manager Darryl Whitehead or email Whithead at dwhitehead@starkenterprises.com. Tell him to allow the many businesses, residents and visitors of Crocker Park to dispose of their waste in a more sustainable way. He might be able to avoid one concerned citizen, but he can't avoid us all. In a world with so many difficult environmental problems, it's kind of nice to find one that can be so easily remedied.