The Nashville Medical Trade Center folks are attending the NeoCon trade show, and apparently things are going well. The med mart's folks tweeted yesterday that, following last week's tenant announcement, they're "receiving great interest" and have met with "20+ companies; many want proposals."

In April, Modern Healthcare's Vince Galloro wrote about the dueling medical mart projects in Cleveland and Nashville. We missed it until the Nashville Medical Trade Center folks tweeted about it yesterday, pointing out one quoted opinion that Nashville's project will be more successful than Cleveland's.

Perhaps more interesting, however, is the argument by Cleveland Medical Mart and Convention Center developer MMPI that the Ohio city is the medical capital of the country — not Nashville. And, well, there are some statistics that may surprise you:

Johnson argues that Cleveland, rather than Nashville, is “the nation's medical capital.” Johnson cites the locally based but globally influential Cleveland Clinic Foundation as a major advantage, bolstered by three other local hospital providers, MetroHealth Medical Center, Sisters of Charity Health System and University Hospitals; all four are partners in the project and will be tenants, Johnson says. Steris Corp., a maker of infection-control products based in Mentor, Ohio, will have a permanent showroom at the mart, Johnson says.

Cleveland's healthcare industry employs 480,000 people in some form or another and has $35 billion in economic impact, Johnson adds. Nashville has its own figures for healthcare employment and economic impact—210,000 local jobs and $30 billion in economic impact, according to a study released in July by the Nashville Health Care Council.

Developers of the Cleveland Medical Mart & Convention Center are now touting 63 letters of intent for the project, which is currently under construction. The Plain Dealer has the update, at this link.

For the background on Nashville's planned med mart and its Cleveland competition, click here.

In its weekly update of the progress of Nashville Medical Trade Center competitor — the Cleveland Medical Mart & Convention Center — The Plain Dealer discusses the construction site activity, where more than 200 construction workers and “40 large machines” are toiling toward a 2013 opening. Nashville’s $250 million med mart is scheduled to open the same year.