The price tag for their help? $500,000, the city said in their agreement.
Come last November, the Cleveland Planning Commission and the Finance Department realized that number wasn't going to stick: Field Operations, as the firm's now known, urged the city to consider lumping the plans for the proposed landbridge south of the main site in the final bill. That extra cost, they said, would be $400,000.
Or, as City Council framed the city's current ask for more dollars—a big oops!
"There's the appearance that [Field Operations] came in and bid low to get the work, and then said, 'Actually, the work we'd said would cost you a nickel will cost you ten cents," Chief Finance Officer Ahmed Abonamah told Council's Finance, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Committee on Monday afternoon. "I just want to reiterate that that is not what happened here."
Although Council approved City Hall's now nearly $1 million budget for the firm they're relying on to shape Cleveland's North Coast, a type of tsk tsk tension was palpable in the room. While city officials packaged the larger bill as necessary for the landbridge build, and the downgrade of the Shoreway, councilmembers saw the ask for more money as an opportunity to weigh in with their own two cents.
That is to say, If we're giving you more money, why aren't we more involved in this thing?
In the same tones found in Councilman Brian Kazy's call in early April to pressure the Haslams to keep the Browns Stadium where it is, several members on Monday questioned Abonamah and Planning Director Joyce Huang as to why they, and their constituents, weren't kept more abreast of Field Operations' design goals.
"I'm sure I'm not the only one who got emails, gotten calls, you know, from residents questioning about the shoreline. And they still have questions!" Ward 8 Councilman Michael Polensek said. "But I'm just wondering, is there any effort in this process for your consultant to come in and interview council members? What their thoughts and what their opinions are?"
Mark Oprea
Councilmembers, like Anthony Hairston (center), along with Joe Jones and Michael Polensek, were concerned that they weren't more involved in the lakefront redesign.
"Don't want to hear it out here on this table, but I'm very deeply concerned—I'm concerned for a number of reasons," Jones told Huang. "As my colleagues stated earlier, City Council is to be engaged and involved with this piece [of legislation], minding how significant, important it is going to be to the city of Cleveland."
"Keeping me in the loop," he added, "is going to be important."
As for Huang, who's helped helm public surveys and forums on the North Coast Master Plan since late 2022, the planning director held high the unity between the landbridge and the actual site. Of course, a lot of this hinges on whether they're designing around a football stadium or whether the Haslams decamp for Brook Park.
A good chunk of how and when the Field Operations plans become reality lies in the lap of Scott Skinner, the head of the brand new Waterfront Corporation created last month to guide the North Coast Master Plan from eye-catching rendering to actual waterfront attraction.
Skinner, who was present but did not speak at Monday's meeting, told Scene beforehand that actualizing the Field Operations' design lies in building up in a kind of piecemeal approach. Extend Mall C. Construct the bridge. Build apartments. Build ... a marketplace?
Though Skinner refused to comment directly on the $400,000 ask, he suggested this bit-by-bit tactic is how Cleveland can finally, finally, finally get its waterfront done.
"All of those are discrete transactions that contribute to a larger vision," Skinner told Scene, "but it also makes it makes easier to look at and to think about how it's actually going to happen."
"You know, one bite at a time," he added.
But is the lakefront enough of a gem, a sales asset? Plenty a portion of Downtown Cleveland has been retouched in recent years, from Public Square to Perk Park and East 12th Street. Yet, especially in the dead of winter, those spaces have failed to draw the foot traffic their initial designs had promised.
And of course, there's Cleveland's love-hate relationship with lakefront plans, which Skinner, even just four weeks into his post, is very well aware of.
"Cleveland's been through a number of master plans, a number of different visions, so [Lake Erie] clearly will not sell itself," Skinner said. "We have to play a big part in that, and that's part of my job."
But it's going to happen?
"It will," Skinner said.
As Huang suggested to Council, the final draft of the Field Operations' vision for a reimagined public space along Lake Erie should be released to the public by summer.
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