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CLEVELAND, Ohio — The City of Cleveland has a take-it-or-leave-it offer for its convention center — the preferred site for the new medical mart and convention center.

The city has until Friday to accept the deal offered by the Cuyahoga County Commissioners, which seeks to develop the new medical convention and emporium.

The two sides are seemingly far apart. The county is offering $17.5 million while the city wants $25 million, according to WKYC.

Purchasing the land is the next greatest hurdle for this project since Medical Mart Properties Inc., the company picked to build and maintain the facility, cinched a development deal with the county. But since that point there’s been new concerns: about whether the local convention bureau Positively Cleveland would lose out because of a medical mart deal; whether there should be a greater emphasis on local non-medical conventions; and more recently whether the burgeoning film industry would suffer.

All this negotiation goes on in the backdrop of another promise: that MMPI itself would walk from the deal if the purchase price of the convention center is too high. “”At some point [if the amount for the land is too high], we can’t make the facility competitive and we’d have to look elsewhere,” MMPI executive Mark Falanga said earlier this month.

The next, best location likely wouldn’t be Tower City, the site given the most scrutiny besides the current convention center. Instead, the county says it will look toward the city’s University Circle neighborhood — home to Cleveland Clinic, Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals Case Medical Center.

We’ll all know more on Friday.

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