Cleveland is about to get yet another master plan design for the elusive goal of redeveloping Downtown’s lakefront. It’s 18th, to be exact. But the first without the stadium at the heart of the project.
That’s what waterfront czar Scott Skinner told the Planning Commission on Friday, just a week after City Council finalized a deal that would allow the Browns to decamp for Brook Park in exchange for a $100 million payout to the city.
The upcoming demolition of Huntington Bank Field and the team’s departure means the North Coast Waterfront Development Corporation will have to return to the drawing board to update the last master plan for the area, which was created by James Corner Field Operations in 2023.
A request for proposals was issued earlier this year and developer submissions under consideration have been narrowed down from 18 to 11, Skinner told the planning commission. Possible plans include a hotel, low-income housing, a mixed-use entertainment center, and a music venue, though Skinner didn’t get into the nitty gritty of each during the presentation.
The waterfront’s five-member board, which includes Mayor Justin Bibb, Council President Blaine Griffin and David Gilbert, will sift through the proposals to reformulate what the next master plan will look like when it’s submitted to the planning commission a year from now. And how it all could evolve by 2035.
“This is going to be a decade-long collaborative effort,” Skinner told the CPC. “And we wanted to make sure we’re filtering in groups up front that understand this and have a history of working collaboratively.”
Cleveland paid Field Operations nearly $1 million back in 2024 to render an ideal makeover for the dusty parking lot that’s sat north of Huntington Bank Field for decades. That plan seemed as daring as it was satisfying, with its proposed sun deck, boathouse, wetlands, basketball courts and multi-modal transit hub.
As of today, the landbridge linking Mall C with the North Coast is the only confirmed piece of construction, along with a downgrading project to convert the Shoreway from highway to slower boulevard.
This year, the waterfront development corporation capped off $284 million needed for the Shoreway conversion, which Skinner said will kick off in 2027.
But the grass-covered connector will further convince those developers to actually fund the hotel or soccer stadium they hope to build down the line, he said.
“One of the only reasons the site has not been developed in 100 years is that it’s really hard to get to,” Skinner said. “While, you know, realigning the shore and building the landbridge will solve all of those access problems and make it a more development-friendly site.”
But at what cost? Skinner did not say anything further about the master plan redux other than that his board will be vetting one—submitted by a “progressive design firm”—in the new year.
After Skinner’s info session, commissioners seemed eager to express the varying doubts and promises of what the North Coast could look like.
Ward 17 Councilman Charles Slife was hesitant at first to critique what is really a back-to-the-drawing board situation for waterfront group. Several others, like Slife, seemed to feel the urge to pick apart details of the original master plan now that, well, another master plan had to be rendered.
“I just think that the bifurcation of the Shoreway is incredibly problematic,” Slife said about the planned downgrade. “I think that the decision to come to that was rushed. It was presented to this body and others as an idea for discussion until the time for discussion was closed.”
Commissioner August Fluker questioned the trajectory of the bridge now that the Browns are Brook Park-bound.
“Maybe the landbridge is cooked, okay?” Fluker said. “Now that the stadium’s not going to be there.”
Skinner repeatedly played the realist.
“Now that we know there’s no stadium, this is a decade-plus-long development project, you’re not going to see a bunch of [development] happening right away,” Skinner said, not even “right after stadium is demolished.”
“It’s a very, very complicated planning process,” he said, “and complicated set of real estate transactions as we start to move forward.”
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