Hough to Get First New Public Park Since 1950s

As the emphasis on green spaces has grown in recent years, especially in areas that have historically lacked them, Hough is set to see development in that arena.

And the project will be the neighborhood's first new public park in about three generations.

"I don't believe there's been one built since World War II," Matt Zone, senior vice president of the Western Reserve Land Conservancy, said.

Zone and the WRLC have been championing, and leading progress on, a 2.6-acre community green space a block west of the Thurgood Marshall Rec Center off East 86th St. and Hough Ave since mid-2021. The site of the old John W. Raper School was being sold by the Cleveland Metropolitan School District for $50,000, just as a community survey by the Famicos Foundation showed desire for more park space.

Zone, who helps WRLC take on some 30 or so land acquisition projects a year, felt propelled by Hough's assets and its scars.
"It's great Cleveland made a $7 million investment in League Park, but it's not always open to the community," Zone told Scene in a Zoom call. "There's the Fannie Lewis Park contiguous to it, but residents don't get the opportunity to really interact there."

"That orchard is wonderful," he added. "But again, it's not a very public space."

The conservancy's pursuit of what will be a $2.2 million park, tentatively-titled Hough Community Green Space, carries promising undertones for a neighborhood known for both its local gems—the local baseball team's first home, and Cleveland's largest urban vineyard—and for lingering effects of 20th century redlining and Civil Rights-era unrest.
With $500,000 of American Rescue Plan Act dollars committed from the city, Hough's first public park in decades also acts as a remedy for the critical feedback seen throughout Mayor Justin Bibb's Parks and Recreation Plan survey. Some 47 percent of respondents said they did not feel safe in them, or didn't find the city's current parks appealing.

It's what Zone and team said they had in mind as preliminary designs were made: to draw both on design principles that led to positive park usage and to lean on Hough residents' yearnings for how their park should function.

"We had some folks just afraid of the high deer population," Khalid Ali, WRLC's urban greenspace coordinator, said, who led engagement meetups in and around Thurgood Recreation Center. "Some felt spaces weren't safe, and more lighting needed to be provided."

Others, namely the elder, long-time Hough residents, sought tree-pocketed places where they could just be outside. Where they could, Ali said, "walk, get exercise, get peace of mind, have something to do—maybe host a yoga club? Stuff like that."

Zone agreed. "What seniors told us is, 'There's no place where we can have intergenerational gathering, with the great grandma and the grandchild, or a playground for those grandchildren," he said. "So, our design is actually what the community's wishes are."

That design will incorporate a kidney-shaped, oval pathway that surrounds an open-air pavilion, along with playgrounds for toddlers and preschoolers. There will be picnic tables, benches, walkway connections to East 85th and 86th streets and the tennis courts at Thurgood.

Such an amenity, which could break ground later this year, would fulfill a two-birds-one-stone pact: both deter juvenile antics—residents complain often about dirt bike riders, Zone said—and fortify the area as a healthier place to live. Especially as doctors and researchers for growing hospital district on Euclid Avenue look further west to buy homes.

But don't tell longtime Hough residents. "They felt a strong sense of being kind of encroached upon by Cleveland Clinic buying up more property," he recalled, "and a lot of new people coming into the area."

"They wanted to really have a voice in the process," Ali added. "And we feel that the park is going to show that."

WRLC is about $500,000 short of its $2.2 million funding goal, Zone said. Congresswoman Shontel Brown just earmarked $500,000 of federal funds for the project, her office reported on Wednesday.

After WRLC finishes development on the currently unnamed space, they'll transfer ownership over to the city of Cleveland, which will be in charge indefinitely of maintaining it.
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