03/24/02

The parking lot was packed. The meeting was standing-room-only.

Roughly 135 people jammed a conference room at the Leonard Krieger CanalWay Center in Cuyahoga Heights 10 days ago. On the agenda before the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission was a plan showing how a regional hike and bike path could be extended six miles north to downtown Cleveland from the park where the CanalWay Center is located.

Advocates have dreamed for years about blazing a trail through Cleveland's industrial back yard, connecting downtown and the lakefront to the vast network of regional parks that lie to the south. But the plan, authored by Schmidt Copeland Parker Stevens, a Cleveland landscape and architecture firm, shows for the first time where the right-of-way would go.

The 11 members of the planning commission, who represent the city, its suburbs and the county, unanimously approved the proposal, but only after amending their resolution to give the city of Cleveland the final say over the trail. That language was meaningless, because under Ohio law, the city is a home-rule government with sole power over land use and zoning.

Given that reality, the planning commission's approval of the trail is a strong suggestion to the city, not a mandate. What's lacking now is a clear sense of how the plan will be funded and implemented. Nevertheless, the planning commission's action was an important step forward for the biggest regional planning concept to hit Northeast Ohio since the creation of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park in 1975.

Bridging the chasm

When finished, the six miles of trail will become part of the Ohio & Erie Canal National Heritage Corridor, connecting the heart of Cleveland to the Towpath Trail, which follows the historic route of the old canal through the Ohio heartland.

The heritage corridor will run 110 miles south to New Philadelphia, with spurs reaching deep into communities on either side. Up and down the line, travelers could hike or bike, cruise in cars on scenic byways or ride the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad.

The northernmost section of trail in Cleveland is the most important piece of the entire network, because it connects the biggest population center in the region to the corridor.

In Cleveland, the trail also has the potential to be far more than a 10-foot path for bikers and in-line skaters. If built to the highest standards of landscape design, it could bridge the chasm between the city's East and West sides and spark environmental reclamation, historic preservation and economic renewal for miles on either side of the pathway.

Before the planning commissioners approved the plan, they listened to speakers from a dozen advocacy groups and business people who want the trail finished ASAP.

"I'm just a park guy," said John Debo, superintendent of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, "but in my opinion, there is no more important effort in the region than putting together the pieces of this corridor."

Paul Goldberg, president of the 10,000-member Greater Cleveland Real Estate Organization, said the "entire Cuyahoga County real estate community" wants the trail finished. "It will stimulate adaptive reuse of older buildings and encourage construction of new buildings," he said.

And Tom Yablonsky, director of the Historic Warehouse District Development Corp. in Cleveland, reminded the commissioners that his neighborhood "has 2,000 residents, and all are of voting age."

Turning on the pressure

But the biggest design opportunity lies in the pedestrian bridge over the river at Canal Basin. The bridge ought to be conceived as the gateway to a park system that has global significance because it will connect the waters of the Great Lakes to the rivers that flow into the Gulf of Mexico.

It should be viewed as a 21st-century structure that advances the art and science of engineering and architecture. To choose the designer, nothing less than an international competition will do.

In all, the trail plan outlined for the planning commissioners would take five to seven years to complete and would cost $24.5 million to $47.8 million. The price is cheap when weighed against the potential benefits. Sources of potential funding include federal highway dollars that soon will be invested in the repair and redesign of the Inner Belt and a new state fund for brown-field reclamation and parks.

The key issue now is that no single agency or branch of government has stepped forward to make sure the trail gets built. Possibly, the city would negotiate deals with property owners, the county would build the trail, and Cleveland Metroparks would manage and maintain it.

To make the plan a reality, however, advocates will have to keep up the pressure and remind elected officials that the people of Cuyahoga County want to reclaim their river and valley.

Litt is architecture critic of The Plain Dealer.

Contact Steven Litt at:

slitt@plaind.com, 216-999-4136