Cleveland Moves Up a Notch in 2025 ParkScore Rankings

An increase in city spending on its 161 parks led to scoring the 30th spot on the Trust For Public Land’s annual ParkScore ratings. Credit: Mark Oprea

Cleveland’s parks have gotten slightly better since last year—well, at least according to a heap of data.

ParkScore, the Trust for Public Land’s annual rating of the 100 most-populated U.S. cities and their parks, ranked Cleveland number 30 on its rankings this year, according to the updated list released this week, up one spot from the 2024 ParkScore list.

Cleveland earned 62 points out of a possible 100 on the ParkScore Report.

The climb was attributed to a greater number of Clevelanders living ten minutes away from a city park and new parks opening.

But Cleveland didn’t jump any higher than 30, TPL found, due to mostly two drawbacks: its “average” spending per year on parks, about $58 million, and the relatively tiny percentage, seven percent, that parks compose of the city. (Especially in Asiatown, the report found.)

The importance of parks, as TPL President Carrie Besnette Hauser said in a statement with the report, aren’t really up for debate.

“At a time when so much in our nation seems fractured or polarized, parks may be the last ideology-free zones,” she wrote in a press release, “where everyone can come together, form meaningful relationships, and enjoy a few hours of peace and relaxation.”

The city continues to push forward with improvements.

Cleveland’s City Planning Commission approved a nearly 400-page Parks & Recreation Master Plan on May 2.

Gargantuan in scope, that plan suggests that Cleveland improve its city park system in three phases over the next 15 years, with ten parks high on the priority list—from refashioning Stella Walsh Park as a “regional rec center” to building a whole new rec center in Clark-Fulton or commissioning a study on how to best makeover (or not) the Halloran Ice Rink in West Boulevard.

The master plan also calls for doubling the Parks & Rec annual operating budget, from $26 million this year to about $44 million come 2032. (And fund all of that with a possible parks levy in 2028, and a whole bunch of corporate sponsorships, naming rights and property taxes.)

Which could easily become status quo, with plans going forward for Canal Basin Park, for the North Coast Master Plan, and for Gordon Park on the city’s East Side.

Renovations of park space in Clark-Fulton, Central and Glenville may be wrapped up by the end of the decade, the city’s master plan suggests.