Cleveland is undergoing a historic transformation of its waterfront, with major public space investments reshaping how residents and visitors connect to Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River. Meanwhile, in adjacent Euclid, the Euclid Waterfront Improvements Plan (completed 2022) protected and enhanced 3,900 feet of privately-owned Lake Erie shoreline properties in exchange for a lakefront public access easement through those properties. Building upon Euclid’s success, Cuyahoga County undertook the county-wide Lakefront Public Access Plan (LPAP) in 2022.
In Cleveland, we’ll look at three catalytic park projects that represent a new era in civic investment, urban design and environmental stewardship.:
- The North Coast Master Plan, a bold framework for reclaiming the downtown lakefront with a pedestrian-first, civic-centered design that reconnects the city to the water’s edge.
- Irishtown Bend, a once-slipping hillside now being stabilized and reimagined as a 23-acre riverfront park that will link neighborhoods, trails, and waterfront access points while advancing environmental justice.
- Canal Basin Park, a keystone in the Towpath Trail system that honors Cleveland’s industrial and cultural history while creating a new public space at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River.
Meant to address significant shoreline erosion while creating public access to a lakefront that is 90% inaccessible, the LPAP recommendations were focused on three overarching goals: expand (or, where lacking, provide) public access to Lake Erie; mitigate erosion and restore lake edge ecology; enhance transportation networks along the shoreline. Several of the LPAP’s early phase catalyst projects are now being realized, and these projects increasingly layer resilient and dynamic shoreline protection solutions and performative landscape ecologies onto projects that historically stabilized the lakeshore exclusively with armor stone and other rigid engineering solutions. These nature-based approaches represent new “building blocks,” new urban waterfront typologies, for both public and private lake edge properties.
These catalyst projects are reaching along adjacent shorelines, extending up creeks and ravines, and establishing critical connections in county-wide pedestrian and bicycle transportation networks. They offer a model for mitigating land loss and property damage while increasingly accommodating and facilitating natural processes. Presenters will share design insights, cross-sector collaboration strategies, and lessons learned from planning to implementation.
Support is provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation.
