At Waterfront Summit, Optimism That a String of Major Projects Will Reconnect Cleveland to Lake Erie

The shorelines will be remade in the coming years Credit: Erik Drost/FlickrCC

As things stand in Cleveland today, the most common and convenient way of traveling east to west along Lake Erie’s shoreline is by the highway that’s lined it since the 1960s. The byproduct of that convenience: a shoreline devoted to cars and a physical blockage to the water.

On Wednesday, a summit gathered together the leaders of seven major waterfront projects set to greenify what’s currently concrete, asphalt or dirt. Or at the very least redo cracked, unwalkable sidewalks with tree-lined pathways.

Yet, among a slew of hopeful project updates, a kind of silent sigh bubbled under the meet: Most won’t see completion until the end of the decade. Or, in the case of CHEERS, the new series of park-islands west of the Lakefront Preserve, in roughly 22 years. That’s 2047.

“I’m sure we’ve all developed planning fatigue over the years,” Allison Lukacsy-Love, a project director at the Greater Cleveland Partnership said during the meeting, which was held virtually. “Every one of us can go to so many meetings.”

Yet this meeting, which was held by the Trust For Public Land, gave some optimistic context to the groundbreaking to come.

Designs for the North Coast Lakefront, the development goliath of the Bibb administration, are “about 90 percent” done, Planning Director Joyce Huang said. They’ll wrap up in early spring. Huang also said the city’s collaborating with the Ohio Department of Transportation on the downgrading of OH-2 into a slower-speed boulevard.

Eight years after its study commenced, three miles of North Marginal Road, from its entry point at East 9th Street to its connector to Gordon Park, will start its transformation this spring. (For $12 million.) No longer will joggers or cyclists have to travel in the street due to uneven sidewalks, Eric Mack, of the county’s Department of Public Works, said. At least in 2025, when the new tree-lined bikeway is set to debut.

As for Gordon Park, which may finish its own facelift by 2028: “It’s not a very welcoming environment,” David Wilson, a project manager at LAND Studio, said.

Phase one of Irishtown Bend Park’s lengthy hillside stabilization —in which 70,000 cubic yards of packed down river dredge were excavated—is done, said Linda Sternheimer, vice president of planning at the Port Authority. Underground utilities still need to be relocated, along with repairing of the sewer system.

A map of seven of the county’s major park and trail projects in the next two decades. Credit: Trust For Public Land

Then, in 2025, the actual park build will commence, adding a connecting trail from Wendy Park to the Towpath to the south. “We’re about halfway to our goal,” Joel Wimbiscus, a project manager at LAND Studio, said. “We’re making good momentum.”

In the most meatiest and high stakes of the bunch, the Metroparks’ CHEERS project seems ready to go from design to construction in “late 2025.” The construction of brand new parkland literally on Lake Erie will come from dredge from the Cuyahoga, and won’t be wrapped up for 22 years after groundbreaking, Metroparks planner Kelly Coffman said.

But, as with the Marginal Road bike path, and the long-overdue restoration of Gordon Park, questions were raised at Wednesday’s summit as to how surrounding neighborhoods would be sure to access to them. (The whole idea is the central force behind Bibb’s North Coast Master Plan, past presentations have shown.)

Several speakers noted cause-and-effect ideas: making East 79th St., say, more inviting for east siders walking or biking—and not driving—to Gordon Park, which may start its makeover in “eight to ten months,” Wilson said. Or possibly, possibly partnering again with ODOT, Huang suggested, to “help identify areas to stitch” (that is, downgrade) along sections of the eight-lane I-90.

By the end of the hour summit, our project heads’ planning fatigue might have been showing. As might most Clevelanders.

“For so long, our backs have been turned to the lakefront,” Huang said. “I mean, if you look downtown, our spaces are expiring. So much of the lakefront is grey—heavy infrastructure, concrete. We used to be much more connected.”

“It’s time to reclaim it,” she added.