Marginal Road Greenway Connecting Downtown to East 55th Expected to Be Completed in 2026

North Marginal Road is, today, a hazardous way of getting from Downtown to the East Side without a car. That will change in 2026, when the Marginal Road Greenway plans to open. Credit: Mark Oprea

If you were to bike or walk from Downtown to the East 55th Marina today, the trip wouldn’t be anything of note or necessarily safe.

You would most likely take North Marginal Road, and traverse done most of the way in the street, which is in serious need of repaving, alongside vehicles.

On Monday morning, a dais of city and county officials gladly announced that the hazardous route will, in two years, be a trip of the past as the North Marginal Greenway, a three-mile multi-purpose trail lined with trees and lights, will be completed by the end of 2026.

The groundbreaking for the project, as implied by most if not all seven speakers present at the East 55th Marina Café, had greater implications than another addition to the Metroparks portfolio of 325 miles of trails. The Marginal Road Greenway, when open, will be the first off-street pathway not dedicated to cars to link Downtown Cleveland with the East Side and University Circle.

The greenway will run from East 9th, right in front of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and run alongside Burke and various yacht clubs, until it reaches the East 55th Marina. Credit: Metroparks

Long a pipedream of an idea stemming back to the Michael White administration of the 1990s, the project gained steam through the assembled partners and met a $12-million fundraising goal.

“When we think about trails, we don’t want to just think about them as recreation,” Mary Cierebiej, director of the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission, said. “These trails are really commuter sheds right now for people who don’t own vehicles, who need to get to and from their places of employment.

“One thing COVID taught us is that everybody wants to be outside,” she added. “We have to make connections that are safe for people that they know how to connect to the next segment, and this is a very important segment.”

A segment of a much larger network. The current Cuyahoga Greenways Plan, of which the Marginal Road Greenway will be a small part of, details an ideal network of well-though-out ways to travel around the county, from Lakewood to Strongsville to Euclid, by anything not on four wheels.

It’s just that move to empasize that sort of travel, NOACA Director Grace Gallucci told the crowd, that allowed the agency to chip in $6 million in the first place, in Carbon Reduction Program funds that came straight from the Biden-Harris administration. “Why?” she said. “Because building bicycle infrastructure removes cars off the road, slows traffic congestion, helps reduce carbon emissions. Why else?”

Mayor Justin Bibb was joined by Mary Cierebiej, Dan Moore, Stephen Hoffman, Grace Gallucci, Brian Zimmerman and County Executive Chris Ronayne, on Monday at the East 55th Marina. Credit: Mark Oprea

Parts of North Marginal will be shifted, city planner Phil Kidd told Scene, to make way for both new trees and the multi-purpose pathway itself—necessary, as large swaths of the tree lawn now are impassible or cluttered with power lines and overgrowth.

“But it’s going to be like a legit, Metroparks-level, standard-grade trail,” Kidd said, looking around at the Marina, “that’s going to connect East 9th all the way to here.”

As Kidd confirmed Monday, the Marginal Road Greenway will come online in tandem with other bike-friendly pathways before the end of the decade.

Payne Avenue, from East 13th to East 55th, will see a car-protected bike lane striped on it after a two-year repaving; the same goes for a mile or so of Carnegie Avenue; Midways should be installed on Lorain and Superior avenues; a Memorial Loop will wrap around Downtown’s southwest side; and bike lanes will go in after Huron and Prospect are refashioned into one-ways, though Kidd didn’t offer a timeline as to when.

As for the Shoreway itself, plans for a downgrade—or “reassignment,” as MOCAP assistant director Keisha Chambers said at the North Coast Master Plan update last week—have only been confirmed with Bibb’s plans for the lakefront from West 3rd to East 9th. Plans that will run into hiccups, of course, if the Haslams decide to take the team south to Brook Park.

Mayor Bibb himself has maintained a carefully-spoken defense of the lakefront’s value with the Browns opposed to them miles away. (And out of Cleveland.)

The same spirit hints around the future of Burke Lakefront Airport. Two studies the city paid a combined $300,000 for were supposed to wrap up in June, yet City Hall has not given the public any updates. In an interview earlier this year, Bibb seemed to feel that closing Burke would be a great asset to Downtown’s growing population. (The FAA has the ultimate say in airport closures.)

“We have been working very hard, very hard to make our lakefront not just a Downtown asset, not just a West Side asset, but an all-of-Cleveland asset,” Bibb said on Monday, linking Marginal Road to his overall philosophy.

“And what gets me excited is that for the first time in nearly a generation, our East Side residents will now have the chance to experience a world class lakefront for the first time,” he added. “That’s what city building is all about.”