Hotel Bruce

Welcome to the Bruce blog—a weekly update on news, events and issues affecting life in Cleveland. Reporting as it happens on transit, development, planning, environment and arts & culture.

Basically, we write about creative ideas forming, talk to the people who have an inside track on the issues, and sometimes offer a commentary of our own. (For disclosure purposes, Bruce blog is a local, independent writer who also works part-time with nonprofit organization EcoCity Cleveland. The opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of EcoCity or any other organization).

It seems as though the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) has a few guerilla tactics of its own in keeping anything progressive out of transportation projects. Bruce blog has learned that ODOT led a successful coup last week to remove the bike lanes from the Euclid Corridor Transportation Project.

This comes nearly a year after ODOT, RTA, and the city agreed, at Mayor Campbell’s request, to put bike lanes into the redesigned Euclid Avenue in both directions from E. 105th to E. 22nd streets. Apparently at last week’s meeting to approve 60 percent of the design of the Euclid Corridor, ODOT claimed that the design of the bike lanes was “discontinuous” because it goes from a solid to a dotted line leading up to and isn’t striped through the intersection. ODOT now recommends striping a five foot shoulder and putting up bike route signs.

“ODOT seems to be out to thwart the AASHTO guidelines,” says EcoCity Cleveland Transportation Manager, Ryan McKenzie, referring to the national standards he and others used to design the bike lanes. “They’re making things up as they go along."

The design that McKenzie and urban designer Steve Manka presented follows American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) guidelines which never stripe a lane through an intersection. A striped shoulder with no official bike lane symbol is much more ambiguous and is not a substitute for a bike lane, McKenzie says.

“They’re backroom sellouts,” McKenzie says. “But, unless there’s a public outcry, it will stay this way.”

To submit comments on ODOT’s decision to remove bike lanes from Euclid Avenue, send an email to Ryan McKenzie.

Are environmental groups poised to nail the city for a failed promise or are they on a witch hunt to blame the city for what they already knew but denied all along about Dike 14? Environmental groups have galvanized around attacking the city and the Port, which, in December, reportedly discussed reopening Dike 14 to more river and harbor dredge and spoiling plans for a lakefront park.

The latest in the dustup is whether “the Campbell Administration appears to be reneging on the Mayor’s pledge made in 2002 to provide a public access park at Dike 14,” as the Sierra Club writes in its latest newsletter. The Sierra Club article states that Lakefront Plan Director Debby Berry told the Lakefront Advisory Committee in June 2003 that Dike 14 should be re-opened to dredge disposal to “make it more useful.”

For its part, the city insists that environmentalists knew of the possibility of more disposal at Dike 14 back in July, 2003. Sources at the city provided a letter from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources that was circulated at the July advisory committee meeting which contains the passage Sierra Club and others attribute to Berry. In the letter dated June 12, 2003, ODNR deputy director Scott Zody writes to Berry that “we…encourage the city to explore options with the Army Corp. of Engineers to re-open portions of Dike 14 to accept additional dredge material to make the site more user friendly.”

It is unclear what Zody means by the phrase user friendly—could he mean leveling off the large swales that dot the 88-acre landscape? Or is it just euphemistic language for adding dredge? Most troubling to environmentalists is this passage: “ODNR also supports the notion of multi-use recreational facilities at Dike 14, and would urge the city to explore options to expand the dike so that any additional areas added to the site would be at water level.”
In the first case, environmentalists are making plans for passive recreation at Dike 14 such as birding sites, not multi-use facilities like ball fields (why add ball fields when Gordon Park has them in spades?). In addition, any mention of expansion, even one as unclear as adding more to the site at water level, touches the nerves of citizen and environmental groups.

Has the situation for dredge disposal changed that dramatically in a year when Mayor Campbell made her promise to make Dike 14 into a park? In a letter to Dike 14 stakeholders, the Army Corp. of Engineers indicated “concerns about reopening Dike 14” and that its focus for disposal plans for Cleveland would be on Dike 10B just north of Burke Lakefront Airport. The undated letter contains a passage that the Corp. is “working with the Federal Aviation Administration to design a structure compatible with current FAA requirements.” The Corp. also says its interested in potential for reopening dikes 9, 12 and 13. In addition, the Corp. is supposed to consider building a new disposal facility. But, with Dike 14 being open and not filled, it’s the path of least resistance. Except for that pesky promise of a park.

To weigh in on the subject, The Ohio EPA will hold a public meeting to discuss the possibility of reopening Dike 14 to more dredge fill from the river and harbor, this Thursday, January 15, 5:30 p.m. at Cleveland Public Library, 1900 Fulton Rd. You can fill out a card in order to make a comment on the public record. A Q&A session will follow a presentation.

The University Circle Access Boulevard, the six- or four-lane divided roadway proposed to extend from I-77 through the Central and Fairfax neighborhoods to University Circle, is marching ahead to the Innerbelt Study final recommendations list. With no major concerns voiced and with momentum picking up among local leaders, the boulevard will eventually move toward a Phase II environmental study.

Bruce blog spoke to a source at University Circle familiar with the project who notes that just one side of the industrial corridor where the boulevard could go includes 43 U.S. Superfund sites, or seriously contaminated brownfields. The opportunity to open this corridor to redevelopment is creating a head of steam for this proposal. If it passes the cost-benefit analysis, this promises to be a national model for major brownfield redevelopment and environmental remediation. In other words, if the promise of millions of dollars in new industrial tax base can come back to the city, it would be a decent use of millions of dollars in Clean Ohio Funds and U.S. Superfund clean-up credits.

Tom Bier, Director of the Center for Housing Research & Policy at Cleveland State University, candy coats not a damn thing about our regional outlook. In fact, Bier paints a downright bleak picture of the future—not only for the city of Cleveland, but the entire MSA of Cuyahoga County—if certain realities don’t change.

The cause of Bier’s fears are housing trends that have made new developments on farmlands commonplace, and a serious lack of supply of market-rate houses in Cleveland and developed areas. Bier is sanguine that the situation will worsen before it gets better, in part, because the city has been abandoned—by its founding families and by a state that doesn’t care enough about cities to offer relief. Right now, the burden is the city’s to bear alone, Bier says, and its only hope is serious funding for brownfield redevelopment—its the only thing that will level the playing field.

Read the full Bruce blog Q&A with Tom Bier

Regarding last week's hotelbruce editorial: almost every statistic, including the resale of existing homes, shows that outward migration from the City of Cleveland has not stopped or proportionately slowed. Small-scale, often upper-end developments in select inner-ring suburbs are not going to change this pattern by themselves.

This continual outward migration is not welcome news. Still, without the city's reported 1,500 new housing starts in 2003, Cleveland would be in worse shape than it is. City redevelopment should be encouraged in both urban affordable housing and market-valued housing. In-fill is definitely a way to do this. Land banking and engaging CDCs have been successful, proven revitalization tools.

At the same time, Cleveland's problems go beyond the impact of sprawl, defined by the hotelbruce blog editorial as "large-tract housing developments built on farmland at the metropolitan fringe." That is an important regional land-use concern.

But right now, the City of Cleveland totters financially. It is a city in deep trouble, it will eventually drag down Greater Cleveland if it continues, and both the city and its suburban ring need to be reintegrated.

It is time to institute symbiotic, enforceable regional planning. We need to begin building an effective regional (or at least Cuyahoga Countywide) government to replace our outmoded central city-suburban ring structure.

Then, 1:3 new housing start ratios within Greater Cleveland won't matter nearly as much— that is, unless there are three households moving out of Northeast Ohio for every one that remains.

January 12
The Ohio EPA will hold a public meeting to examine data and propose options to improve the water quality of Tinkers Creek. This tributary of the Lower Cuyahoga River was identified by EPA as needing further work due to higher than acceptable levels of sedimentation and pollution. Join OEPA officials in the discussion at Solon City Hall, council chambers from 6-8 p.m.

January 15
The Ohio EPA will hold a public meeting to discuss the possibility of reopening Dike 14 to more dredge fill from the river and harbor, 5:30 p.m. at Cleveland Public Library, 1900 Fulton Rd.

January 20
Have you ever wondered what life in Cleveland would be like without the need for a car? Join the next Cleveland "Car-free" Meet-up on Tuesday, January 20 at 6 p.m. The exact location is open for a vote. This is just like the casual klatches that the Dean and the Kucinich campaigns are facilitating. Vote for your preferred venue now.