At Forum Over Planned Hingetown Street Closure, a Focus on Safety and Kids

Over the weekend, as New York City shut down 53 streets to car traffic, a similar energy was being discussed in Hingetown.

On Saturday morning, some 40 Clevelanders took over the front seating space of Larder Deli off West 29th Street to discuss what seems to be, regardless of some pushback from a few skeptics, an eager willingess to shut down one of Hingetown's most populated area to vehicles. In planner parlance, make it an "open street."

And the forum, which included the desires of urbanists or concerns of business owners, was also centered on the needs of the neighborhood's changing demographics.

"I mean, for starters, biking and walking is one of the most dangerous things I've done in this city," Isaac Robb, 38, a father of an eight-year-old daughter, told Scene at the forum.

Since 2022, when City Hall first expressed interest in blocking West 29th off to cars, the question of how to do so has persisted—and also long delayed action. In February, the Cleveland Planning Commission was awarded $100,000 from the Project for Public Spaces, open street advocates based in New York City, for the eventual repurposing of the enclave's prime retail corridor.

But not without distaste. Several businesses in between Detroit and Clinton avenues feel that shutting down the street, without their collective permission, would contribute to the neighborhood's apparent parking problem. "I'm annoyed by the whole thing," one business owner told Scene.

Which, to Robb, who's lived close to Hingetown for years, feels a tad bit misguided.

"I think we think of a million reasons not to do this instead of it being closed," he said.

The open house itself, which featured Planning Commission staff and Project for Public Spaces representatives as guides, acted as both an amenities vision board for residents and a kind of white flag for the doubting Thomas. Those present were handed out sheets of pink stickers to mark preferences for activities on West 29th other than rows of automobiles—for food trucks, farmers markets, movie screenings.

Others wrote in their own family-minded suggestions on yellow Post-Its: For potato sack slide races. For a mini golf course. For a "kid's lemonade stand."

Vibrant fun that not all attendees bought into.

"You should have asked BEFORE applying for a grant," someone wrote.

"Project for Public Spaces needs to verify assertions and require data from applicants so bad grants don't happen," another said.

Elena Madison, a project director for Project for Public Spaces, said that she felt the negative reactions to West 29th's possible redesign come primarily from those who haven't experienced first-hand a concert on concrete, a morning yoga class in the former turning lane.

And from those, she added with aplomb, who don't have kids themselves.

"There is clearly a concern of families with children," Madison told Scene, looking around the room. "Actually, I think it's unusual to see so many families with children at an event like this. It's telling."

The reasoning, suggested by Madison and confirmed by decades of data, lies in what seems to be a silent crisis through decades of auto dependency. Even today, in 2024, car crashes are a leading cause of death for people aged 1 to 54, the Center for Disease Control found. It's the leading cause of death for children to those in their late twenties.

In Cleveland, where 70 percent of commuters drive, streets often take years to close despite eagerness in the planning department.

East 4th and the Flats East Bank, in the 2000s, were early proof-of-concepts for human-scale design in a city hit hard by the influence of car dependency. And Market Avenue, close to West 25th and Lorain Ave., was permanently made an open street last August, following years of business hesitancy and governmental red tape.

It's all of the above, the fear for DoorDash parkers and the rarity of open streets in Cleveland, that has Planning Director Joyce Huang approaching the closure of West 29th with optimistic caution. On Saturday, Huang played both the part of feedback gatherer and open-street liaison, eager to see Hingetown more vibrant and weary of any potential blowback.

"That's the purpose of this," she said. "To see what could work, before we do something more costly."

Huang said that the Commission is aiming to produce a first-draft design for West 29th's makeover sometime this summer, with a potential install date in the fall.

A design that, she hinted, has already been impacted by naysayers: The city is currently looking at just closing down the block between Church and Clinton—not the block to the north, as was previously the plan.

Huang, a mother of one, needed no urging to take stock in the input from families concerned about safety.

"Kids all over the world live in cities," Huang said. "It's good for them to semi-independently travel. To be in their neighborhood without always worrying about cars."

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