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, the Bruce blog should mention it works part-time with nonprofit organization EcoCity Cleveland).

Green Energy Ohio has been pushing the state to adopt more renewable energy into its consumption, and as part of that effort the nonprofit is studying the potential of harnessing the wind off Lake Erie. Recently, GEO’s work paid off. Working with the city of Cleveland, the coast guard, CEI and other stakeholders, GEO got permission to build a 160 foot tower three miles off the coast of the lake in order to measure wind. GEO now needs to raise the money to put the tower and monitoring controls in place. And if the lake winds provide what GEO expects—quality utility grade power—perhaps a private firm such as Green Mountain Energy might be persuaded to tap into this new market?

Bruce blog needs to give a little more tough love to Cleveland Heights. The Coventry Village Special Improvement District (SID) raised some $2.5 million for streetscape improvements such as a new sidewalks, better configuration of parking, and road resurfacing. The work, scheduled for completion in September, looks great. One glaring omission, though, to this otherwise pedestrian-friendly street. It seems that someone forgot to order bike racks for the street, and now the same old problem of nowhere to lock up a bike remains. Bruce blog has learned that a certain influential Coventry merchant is making inquiries to a Cleveland nonprofit that produced a bike rack in an effort to remedy the situation. Meanwhile, the city and the SID identified a possible location for bike racks in the parking structure, but the idea never progressed past a conversation. Perhaps advocates are needed to coax Coventry Village and the city to purchase permanent bike racks and/or secured bike lockers?

"Landowners bent on crippling the Ohio Department of Natural Resources' authority to manage coastal development along the Lake Erie shoreline are expected to turn out in large and vocal numbers at an upcoming meeting of the Ohio Coastal Resources Advisory Council," according to an Audubon Ohio press release. The meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m., Thursday, August 7 at the Erie County Office Building (downtown), 247 Columbus Ave., 3rd Floor, Sandusky. Included on the council's meeting agenda is a discussion of the landowners' "darling legislative proposal," House Bill 218, which would redefine the state's ownership of the Lake Erie shoreline to stop at the natural low watermark and would "give near carte-blanch to private landowners to build structures above that mark." This proposed legislation represents a serious assault on the lands held in trust for Lake Erie's rightful owners: the citizens of Ohio.

A few quick facts about Ohio, which has one of the most intensely developed coasts in the nation: Only about 15 percent of the Ohio shoreline is publicly owned—that's about 40 out of 262 miles. And out of that 40 miles, less than 7 miles are publicly accessible beaches.

Patricia Stevens, partner at Cleveland-based environmental planning and architecture firm Schmidt Copeland Parker Stevens, has been lured away from her firm by the Cleveland MetroParks. Stevens formed the core of the firm's environmental planning side and led projects such as the future, green Beachwood Recreation Center. She will become the park system's new director of strategic planning. Coincidence or not that the MetroParks hired Stevens to fill this spot at a time when it's being eviscerated for allowing a trustee to cut a private land development deal involving park land (see the latest Sierra Club newsletter)?

Cuyahoga County Planning Commission is engaged in an enormous greenway project called the Cuyahoga Valley Initiative. It aims for nothing short of revivifying the Cuyahoga River Valley from its segregated uses (recreation in the upper, industrial in the lower river valley). The multi-year, multi-million dollar project hopes to spawn such ideas as renewable energy enterprises, an extended towpath running through the industrial valley and perhaps native plantings replacing rusted out steel bulkheads. The commission estimates that bulkhead replacements cost between $20,000 to $2 million per parcel, paid for by land-owners. The current bulkhead replacement system consists of an engineered sheet piling system, the report reads, and limits the capacity to restore and provide habitat for water quality. In response, The U.S. Army Corps will be developing a Habitat Feasibility Study this year to re-design the sheet piling approach for more ecologically viable solutions. "Developing an initiative to advance these ideas and to retain the commerce viability for the river channel should be explored," the commission recommends.