Weekend Open House of Veterans Memorial Bridge's Streetcar Level Previews What the 'Low Line' Might Be

In Jasper Wood's 1953 documentary "Streetcar," the Cleveland-born, self-taught photographer depicts the daily motion of the pale-yellow light rail trains that roared on the lower level of the Veterans Memorial bridge.

Set to a solemn Western instrumental, Wood's poetic capture of the Downtown-Ohio City connector is, with its porkpie-hatted men and West Side Market-bound crowds, a nice capsule of what might be a golden era of Cleveland transit.


It also foretold a death knell. In 1954, all of Cleveland's streetcars were sold, most of them to Big Auto companies who wanted them off the street.

This weekend, seventy years since Wood's meditation on the Veterans Memorial bridge, some 9,000 perused its lower level, both to see what's long been publicly inaccessible and as a preview for what may be when designs to revitalize the 3,112-foot stretch are finalized.
Popularized as the Low Line project by Chris Ronayne, the county executive hosted a two-day open house, in part, for Northeast Ohioans to tell a group of 30 or so pink-shirted volunteers how exactly a long-delayed reawakening could benefit the public. The project title, which gained steam after Ronayne's announcement in January, is a nod to New York's High Line, the 1.4-mile park built on an old rail spur on the Lower West Side of Manhattan.

For the attendees interviewed by Scene, quick thoughts of skepticism mingled with dancing dreams of green-painted bike lanes, pop-up cafes and prime overlooks of the Cuyahoga River. (All told to volunteers with notepads at their hips.)
"It's got to be retail, maybe a nice restaurant?" Paula Baranuk, 70, a resident of North Royalton, said standing by her husband, Dan.

"Maybe a nice mix" of food, Dan Baranuk, 71, added, "something like the old John Q's?"

"What do the kids do these days?" Paula mused, looking around the crowd walking on the floorboards. "Roller skate? Maybe something outdoors-y?"

Catherine Osbourne, 32, and her friend Erin Ogden, 26, were standing closer to the center of the bridge, near where visitors were toying with an installed viewing scope.

Osbourne, a hobbyist cyclist who lives in Cleveland Heights, was quick to lament the quality of the bike lane above her, on the bridge's street level. After all, cars zip by unseparated by any protective barrier; and chunks of concrete are missing from the bridge's sidewalk.

"I would not want to bike over the bridge," she told Scene, as car traffic above her slugged by. "It just always seems dangerous."

According to a 2019 design published by Kent State University's Urban Design Collaborative, which was on display at the event, a two-way bike lane could run through the Low Line's center. Park benches could host resting pedestrians. The Low Line would be, in essence, a calmer way of commuting from Ohio City to the west side of Downtown.

The promise of an easy pedestrian link is what brought Sam McNulty and his wife Ciara Ahern out to walk the lower level. McNulty, the Market Garden Brewery founder who's revitalized West 25th since the early 2010s, lit up with ideas for the Low Line as a tourist draw seemed more likely in his mind. ("Bridgetober Fest" is a possibility, as McNulty spitballed.)

"Oh, this would be an absolute game changer," McNulty said. "Just like the West Side Market is a draw—this could be our version of that. The Low Line. The Park In The Sky,'" he mused.
Ronayne, who was present at Friday's event sporting a giddy smile, hasn't detailed a precise funding or design plan for the Low Line, which could cost the city and county millions, as did New York's park. But, with the nearby $100 million Irishtown Bend Park coming into the picture, both parks, as research shows, are guaranteed to increase property values. (And secure tenants for Bridgeworks, the midrise to be integrated with the Low Line's western entrance when it's finished in 2024.)

The Low Line could also help actualize the West Bank of the Flats, which has struggled to attract redevelopment, unlike its across-the-river neighbor, the Flats East Bank.

And, as Cleveland's cultural shift to the urban core becomes more of an asset for city and county leaders, the park could act as a breadcrumb for those itching to sell Downtown as an attractive place to live.

That's exactly what the lower level seemed to be Friday, with thousands strolling the path where Wood once filmed "Streetcar," where the occasional Ingenuity Fest was held, where electricians fix occasional power glitches.

Talks of what-could-be brought up a sort of Proustian moment for the Baranuks, who both saw the bridge equally as a museum piece. Dan especially.

"My mother's 93," he said. "She remembers going over this bridge, looking down out of the car at the water. She just loved it."

And the Low Line's audience?

"By the time they finish this," he said, "who knows where the city'll be."

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