10 ideas for improving downtown’s public realm as Cleveland changes mayors – Commentary

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Downtown Cleveland has a serious problem with its connective tissue, and it’s not a new one. For decades, public spaces and places between its office towers, sports facilities, and public buildings have remained hard, gray, dull, and mean-looking.

In downtown, as in too many other parts of the city, the public realm caters first and foremost to automobiles. And much of downtown remains cut off from the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie, the city’s greatest natural assets. That’s a serious liability for a city trying to reverse decades of decline.

As Mayor Frank Jackson prepares to step down in January after an unprecedented 16 years in office, there’s a fresh opportunity for change.

Jackson’s successor, 34-year-old nonprofit executive Justin Bibb, a political newcomer, is poised to reboot how the city views its public realm, downtown and elsewhere.

“For far too long we have had a traffic engineering department that has prioritized cars over pedestrians,’’ he said during the fall campaign. “We need to be a city that embraces protected bike lanes, that embraces walkability.’’

To be fair, downtown certainly improved on Jackson’s watch, thanks to the city’s efforts and to changing demographics.

As downtown’s residential population grew to 20,000, Perk Park and Public Square got renovated. Warehouses and offices buildings were transformed into apartments.

New buildings began rising from surface parking lots that have scarred the city for decades. And Jackson helped convince Sherwin Williams Co. to build a new skyscraper headquarters scheduled for completion in 2024 off Public Square rather than move to another city.

But the outgoing mayor also leaves behind a legacy of frustration.

“On bike and pedestrian infrastructure, we’re behind other cities by 20 years,’’ said Ward 3 Councilman Kerry McCormack, who represents downtown.

Jackson’s failures are epitomized by the Jersey barriers and concrete planters his administration installed in Public Square in 2017, marring an otherwise beautiful, $50 million renovation completed in 2016.

The barriers were meant to address new worries about pedestrian safety and homeland security that surfaced when Superior Avenue reopened as a bus route in the square after having been closed during and after the 2016 Republican National Convention.

Regardless of the motivation behind them, the barriers came to symbolize the administration’s stubborn tolerance for ugliness in the heart of the city, and its lack of interest in quickly finding a fix, such as installing safety bollards.

Michael Deemer, the president and CEO of the nonprofit Downtown Cleveland Alliance, said in an interview that it’s crucial for the city to improve streetscapes and spaces between buildings so it can continue to attract new residents and companies. And he points to federal COVID relief and infrastructure bills as a possible source of funding for better public amenities.

“I think those resources create a truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to really invest in legacy cities like Cleveland,’’ he said.

Big new projects proposed for downtown show that private sector power brokers want to see better connections to the river and the lake.

In May, Dee and Jimmy Haslam, co-owners of the Browns, proposed extending the downtown Mall over the dead zone created by the Ohio 2 Shoreway and lakefront railroad lines to create a stronger pedestrian connection to the lakefront and FirstEnergy Stadium.

In September, Bedrock Cleveland unveiled a 30-year vision for completing the unfinished western face of the Tower City Center complex by extending it down to the Cuyahoga River at Collision Bend. The concept centers on a grand staircase cascading from Huron Road to the riverfront.

Bibb, for his part, has said he’s open to considering whether to shut down Burke Lakefront Airport and turn it into a park or development site, an idea Jackson rejected.

Bibb should also follow up on the best ideas left behind by the Jackson administration, including that of building dedicated bike lanes on Superior Avenue from Public Square to East 55th Street as the first leg of a citywide network called The Midway.

What else should be on the new mayor’s to-do list for downtown?

The following suggestions are intended as a conversation starter, not an exhaustive tally. Consider it also an invitation to share responses or other new ideas by emailing me at [email protected]. That said, here are 10 ideas, big and small, for making a better downtown:

1. Preserve and reuse the old Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Terminal. Built in 1897, the terminal is a Gothic Revival treasure located overlooking the Cuyahoga River at Canal and Carter roads. It served until 1933 as the city’s main passenger rail station when it was replaced by the Union Terminal at Tower City Center. Now owned by Sherwin-Williams Co., the B&O building has been vacant for decades, but it has outstanding potential to become a vital part of the future Canal Basin Park, a 20-acre public space taking shape nearby on Columbus Road Peninsula as the northern terminus of the 101-mile Towpath Trail. In 2018, the nonprofit Canalway Partners, which helped spearhead the trail, signed a memorandum of understanding with Sherwin-Williams to explore revitalizing the old terminal as a hotel related to travel on the trail. Tom Yablonsky, vice president of Canalway Partners, said those discussions are “in a holding pattern’’ while the big paint company builds its new headquarters at Public Square. Sherwin-Williams didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.

2. Turn the parking lots in front of the U.S. courthouse tower into parks: In 2002, when the U.S. General Services Administration finished building the 24-story Carl B. Stokes U.S. Courthouse tower overlooking the Cuyahoga River at Huron Road, it left the project with a mangled northern edge at ground level, where rail tracks for the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s Waterfront Line and rapid transit Red Line enter the Tower City complex below grade. The canyon created by the tracks cuts between the courthouse tower’s entry plaza and two parcels owned by the GSA along the south side of the Detroit Superior Bridge at Huron Road that total 1.7 acres. Since 2002, the GSA has leased the properties to a parking lot operator, leaving an eyesore in front of a building named for one of Cleveland’s greatest elected Black officials. It’s time to fix this scar by turning the parking lots into park spaces that terrace down to Canal Basin Park.

3. Create a seamless jogging loop between downtown and Ohio City. The Jackson administration blew an easy win in 2019 when it led a $13 million project to resurface 2,200 feet of Huron Road on the west side of the Tower City complex, overlooking the Cuyahoga River. The city rebuffed a proposal by real estate broker Conor Coakley and other advocates who wanted to see one of the road’s six lanes turned into a recreational path for use by joggers and bicyclists. The lane would have been part of a 3-mile loop connecting downtown to Ohio City and West 25th Street via the Detroit-Superior and Lorain-Carnegie Bridges. The Lakewood firm of AoDK Architecture expanded on the idea with renderings showing how the western edge of Ontario Street, which also overlooks the Cuyahoga River, could be turned into a spectacular linear park. As the Jackson administration winds down, the Ontario Street sidewalk opposite Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse is edged with chain-link and weeds, and the repaved stretch of Huron Road…