EYE ON:
Ohio’s Cleveland
Foundation Centennial
Trail
By Laura Stark
The old rail corridor sat forgotten, dark
and overgrown, a secret passage connect-
ing the vast, sapphire blue Lake Erie to
Cleveland’s once gritty industrial core.
“
It’s a rail corridor that was lost,”
John Mitterholzer says in describing
the developing Cleveland Foundation
Centennial Trail. “No one really knew
it existed. It was covered with trees and
brush; if you looked at it, you wouldn’t
know what it was.” But
because the corridor made
the critical connection
between the city’s down-
town neighborhoods and
the lake, Mitterholzer,
senior program officer for
the environment at The
George Gund Foundation
in Cleveland, says that
determining to award a
$2 million grant from the
foundation for the trail
project was “an easy deci-
sion to make.”
Fortuitously, the rail
corridor, which dates back to the 1850s,
was available in one piece from Earl
Walker, a Cleveland investor, who donated
most of its value. “The Trust for Public
Land negotiated with Walker for the
property, and a Clean Ohio [Conservation
Fund] grant was used to acquire the entire
length of the railroad corridor,” says Greg
Peckham, managing director of LAND
studio, a local nonprofit partnering in
the trail’s development. “Overnight, we
became a landowner of this old historic
railroad right-of-way. We felt like we
jumped a little bit off a cliff.”
The emerging 1.3-mile rail-trail is one
of a series of recent projects, including
several parks developed in the last few
years, which are fundamentally changing
the Cleveland landscape.
“
If you think of Cleveland as an old,
industrial rust-belt city, think again,” says
Brian Zimmerman, CEO at Cleveland
Metroparks, which will manage the new
trail. “This project is a big part of a para-
digm shift in the city. People don’t want to
take their cars to go for a walk or a hike.
We want to make trail connections to
make getting to green space easy.”
Along the corridor, a few public
housing structures stretch toward the
sky. “Residents of those buildings have a
million-dollar view of the lake, but can’t
get there without a car,” says Pam Carson,
Ohio state director for The Trust for Public
Land. “There isn’t even any public trans-
portation to get there. Imagine how life is
going to change when they can get on a
trail and get to the lake.”
In addition to Lake Erie, the trail will
provide access to another of the city’s
famed waterways: the Cuyahoga River.
Together, the lake and river have posi-
tioned Cleveland historically as a ship-
ping powerhouse. Unfortunately, these
natural assets were compromised over
time with warehouses, factories, steel-
yards, and all the trappings and pollution
associated with industry.
“
We’re taking an area of environmen-
tal degradation and turning the story on
its head, remaking a river valley that’s
best known for catching on fire,” says
Peckham, referring to the sensational 1969
Time
story about the Cuyahoga River, a
Trail under construction:
Cleveland
Foundation Centennial Trail
Location:
Scranton Road toWendy
Park in Cleveland
Used railroad corridor:
Cleveland and
Mahoning Railroad
Length:
1.3
miles
Proposed surface:
Most likely asphalt
Concept renderings of the Cleveland
Foundation Centennial Trail: lakefront
pedestrian bridge (top), prepared by Rasales
+ Partners; economic development rendering
(
left), prepared by 2014 Capstone Class, Levin
College of Urban Affairs, Cleveland State
University.
courtesy the trust for public land (2)
rails
to
trails
u
winter.15
4
tracks ’n’ ties