Cleveland Unveils Latest Lakefront Master Plan, Calls for Major Shoreway Overhaul With or Without Browns (2024)

It's common knowledge for anyone who's tried to get to the lakefront from downtown Cleveland that the current ways of doing so—either via East 9th or West 3rd—aren't the most easy, safe or welcoming experiences.

For one, East 9th, the devoted connector of I-71 and OH-2, has no bike lanes. Pedestrians, bicyclists or scooter riders must cross over eight lanes of highway traffic to get to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, or to the North Coast Harbor, Downtown's de facto green space on the lake.

"It is like playing a dangerous game of Frogger," Scott Skinner, head of theNorth Coast Waterfront Development Corporation, said in a panel update for the North Coast Master Plan, which will cost some $460 million to complete, on Monday on Mall C.

That plan, which is nearing the end of its community involvement phase, is meant to ameliorate the anxieties and problems caused by car traffic, among other pressing issues, like providing more public greenspace on the shores of Lake Erie. "What I am excited about is creating an intersection that is signalized," Skinner said, "that is safe, and that feelssafe to walk with the family across."

That idea was discussed by a panel of the lakefront makeover's prime movers for hundreds of those curious who showed up Monday afternoon. As the team nears its next step of civil engineering planning this fall, a consensus among those spearheading its design seems to have been reached: The Shoreway has to go; new sidewalks and bikeways must go in.

Plans unveiled Monday show how the city could make this happen. In addition to the landbridge, a central focus of the project that would connect the malls to the North Coast over existing rail lines, the Shoreway (from West 3rd to East 55th), parts of South Marginal Road, Al Lerner Way and the Main Avenue Bridge are all suggested for renovations of some kind, as well as the Amtrak station, Key Plaza and—almost inconsequentially—the Great Lakes windmill.

New intersections and roads at East 15th and East 18th will head south into Downtown for added access. New loop driveways will reroute car traffic. New brick-colored, multi-modal pathways and sidewalks (protected by a thin tree line) will hug the new Shoreway boulevard constructed just north of where the highway stands today.

"East 9th will be at grade—which means the bridge that you take now to cross [the street] will no longer be there," Keisha Chambers, assistant director of the Mayor's Office of Capital Projects, said. "You'll be able to cross at an actual intersection, which provides us opportunities to make this a muchsafer route."

Since late 2022, when the Bibb administration announced its pursuit of renovating Cleveland's lakefront, the city has been asking residents to chime in on how the North Coast should function, not just how it should please aesthetically. That is to say: watching a Lake Erie sunset only comes after redesigning the streets that get us there.

"There" nowadays is still just sad peninsula of parking, which both Skinner and Joyce Pan Huang, the city planning director, hope has a more immediate fix in the next few months. What does that look like? Could their be a shipping container pop up market? A "grass" meeting ground with summertime bookmobiles?

A quick fix meant to hold Clevelanders over. For good reason: Skinner said shovels won't go into the ground, if the money's raised, until "early 2028" at the earliest.

"We are advancing plans fairly quickly," he said. "At the same time, this is a long-term project. This is not something that's going to happen in six or 12 or even 18 months." (The final plans might not even be completed until late 2025, Chambers said.)

Which puts it among other ongoing projects looking at finish lines down the road -- the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's extension westward, the North Coast Harbor's $1 million greenery update in progress, Irishtown Bend Park, the Superior Midway.

With or without Cleveland Browns Stadium.

Hopefully with, as Mayor Justin Bibb, who spoke briefly before the panel, is still banking on, just days after he pushed a $461 million package to convince the Haslams to choose a renovated lakefront stadium over a $2-billion dome build in Brook park. Regardless, he said, "We will remake our lakefront once and for all."

Asked whether or not the stadium would be demolished,Chief Integrated Development OfficerJeff Epstein was a lot clearer.

"If the Browns decide to play elsewhere, we've got another big piece of land to plan, and we'll cross that bridge when we get to it."

Additional forums will be held throughout the city the rest of August.

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