In North Coast's Latest Draft, a Refinement of Design and Purpose for Cleveland's Lakefront

New renderings of the North Coast Master Plan are here. Credit: City Planning Commission

The vision for the long-awaited overhaul of Cleveland’s lakefront just got one step clearer in vision this weekend.

The team behind the North Coast Master Plan — a coalition of planners and New York architects — debuted a refined second draft of its intentions for the 22 acres of land surrounding Cleveland Browns Stadium. Land, as of today, that is mostly parking and otherwise shut off from the rest of downtown by the shoreway.

In a lakefront-themed PechaKucha Night at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on Friday, and a followup Zoom presentation on Monday, the team further discussed how its preliminary designs, released in July, were fine-tuned to work more in-line with its ideological mission: to create a “place of healing” for those previously left out from coastal redesign.

“It’s to surface the whole history—that’s the term we’ve been using during our research phase,” said Allison Lukacsy-Love, a senior director of Downtown Projects at Greater Cleveland Partnership, during Monday’s hour-and-a-half Zoom conference. She drifted into the plan’s practical purpose, based on four months of feedback: “To fish, find peace and relaxation, watching the water, watching the sunset.”

“Of course, who can turn down a sand beach?” Lukacsy-Love added, as a slide depicting the plan’s Lake Erie side was shown. “Whether or not you’re staycationing or vacationing.”

Following 11 focus groups and an online survey that drew 2,502 responses, City Planning and James Corner Field Operations, the firm assigned to the Master Plan, announced a better picture of what exactly the space could be.

There will be up to 1,000 apartments, a 1,100-seat amphitheater, a multi-modal transit station for Greyhound, Amtrak and the RTA’s Waterfront Line. (And, yes, 875 parking spots.) There’s a rental-ready boathouse, a sun deck ideal for outdoor yoga, cleats for “resting” boats, a hockey-rink-friendly event plaza, a basketball court with input from the Cavaliers, and more.

But at Friday’s PechaKucha, hosted at the Rock Hall’s sixth-floor theater, five speakers vocalized the key aspects of the lakefront’s ideological potential—mostly by listening to and adapting historical takes from people who aren’t white.

James Corner Field Operations redesigned the beach area with more ecological needs in mind. A wetland was added, along with steps to accommodate the drop off from the beach. Credit: City Planning Commission

The area’s northeast corner, where the U.S.S. Mather sits, will include cleats for visiting boats and a 15,000 square foot sundeck. Credit: City Planning Commission

The area’s event plaza might host the first outdoor hockey-sized rink in the city. Credit: City Planning Commission

The underside of the landbridge might include artwork from Indigenous artists. Credit: City Planning Commission

“Is the lakefront our greatest asset? To Native people that sounds almost parasitic,” Cynthia Connolly, the City Club’s programming director and member of the Odawa tribe, told the 250 attendees Friday. She urged the audience to consider Lake Erie as more than an entity to derive pleasure from: “Water is a living spirit,” she said, “and that spirit can die.”

To Fran Stewart, a researcher at Ohio State, Lake Erie was a symbolic end to those on the Underground Railroad. For Keshia Johnson Chambers, assistant director at the Mayor’s Office of Capital Project, the lakefront of the 1950s was a sort of no-go stop for Green Book holders, as might be a “whites-only” beach or country club. “The common class [uninvited] was Black,” she said, “and this prevented them from enjoying all the amenities of Cleveland.”

Although the talks sometime seemed more like general history lessons than clear links to future designs, the message behind them—that a lakefront done right must take a democratic approach—resonated with the crowd.

And it resonated with Lisa Switkin, a principal at James Corner who worked on New York’s High Line and Chicago’s Domino Park. She echoed Connolly’s sentiment of reciprocity, while showing that the “varying shoreline” and naturalistic curvature of the design must be more selfless in its approach than in previous designs.

At one point, Switkin showed the audience a rendering of the space’s promenade, a pathway that links the landbridge to the area’s northwest corner. A fall scene unravels: an outdoor market nestled in between the apartment complex and its Taste of Cleveland food hall.

The slide changed; two dozen Browns fans appeared. The crowd laughed. “Of course, we want to enhance the game day experience, too,” Switkin said.

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