- [Male Voiceover] Production and distribution of City Club Forums and Ideastream Public Media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.

(upbeat music playing) (random indistinct chatter) (bell tinging) - Good afternoon and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland.

I'm Tony Coyne, President of the law firm of Mansour Gavin.

I'm also a 39 year member of the City Club.

And it's great to be back here in person at the Citadel of Free Speech, introducing today's forum on the Waterfront, Connecting Neighborhoods to the Shore.

Today's forum is part of the Lincoln Institute 75th anniversary celebration.

And it is co-sponsored by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the law firm Mansour Gavin.

An important element of the celebration includes the City Club Forum Series, which aims to explore the role of land policy in addressing society's most pressing social, economic, and environmental challenges.

The Lincoln Institute is engaging in these discussions in Cleveland, both because of its roots in the area, it also as part of its Legacy Cities Initiative.

This initiative supports a nationwide network of community and government leaders working to create shared prosperity in cities transitioning from industrial economies.

Today our topic is Equitable Access to our Waterfronts.

Ohio lakes and rivers provide important space for recreation, social gatherings, and simply a place to cool off.

This makes public access to the waterfront vital to the social fabric of our communities.

Yet 90% of Cuyahoga county shoreline is inaccessible to the public.

Both social and physical barriers have prevented residents, especially in low income communities, from interacting with our region's greatest asset, the water and the shores of Lake Erie.

So today, we ask, how can lakefront cities leverage development and land use policy to make waterfront access more equitable for all?

And over the last several years, three Ohio cities, Euclid, Sandusky, and Cleveland have taken steps to increase waterfront access.

And today we're joined by leadership from each of these three great cities to discuss what has worked as well as challenges and opportunities we face with our waterfront access.

Guiding today's conversation is Rick Jackson, Senior Host and Producer with Ideastream Public Media.

So Rick, I turn the program over to you to introduce our esteemed panel.

- Tony, thank you so much for setting up the course of our conversation for the next hour, much appreciated.

To talk about the challenges that we face and successes we've seen in recent months and recent years, actually I'm joined by Kirsten Holzheimer Gail, Mayor of the City of Euclid for more than five years now.

By City Manager Eric Wobser of Sandusky, a Sandusky native, who's been at this post for about seven years now, and Planning Director Freddy Collier of the City of Cleveland who took that job actually about a week after Eric took his.

Later in the hour, we'll have the opportunity for you to ask them questions as well.

Both those of you here at the City Club, those listening online or through WCPN, text those questions to 330-541-5794.

Mayor Gail, Euclid recently completed the first part of the city's lakefront trail part of this transformative waterfront improvement plan.

I wanted to start there because precisely that is why we're here today, to talk about how we connect people to the water again.

For you it's both about access and having it as an asset.

How critical was this advancement to having people want to live and play in Euclid?

- Thank you for the question.

And thank you everyone for coming.

It's great to be here in person.

I do wanna thank the Lincoln Land Institute and Mansour Gavin and wanna give a shout out to Lincoln Electric, who is our largest employer and has been there.

Had their home in Euclid for 125 years.

So we're thrilled to have them.

Euclid is absolutely a legacy city.

Euclid, many people know it in its industrial heyday.

We were home to TRW, Chase Brass, a GM plant.

People move their flock there for jobs, for good schools, and a community, a strong community.

And then we saw some change in that and really wanted to focus on how do we make Euclid a strong city?

How do we continue its strong legacy of being a great place to live?

And we really saw the lakefront as that really important factor.

And so, as you said, it's an asset.

It is one of our greatest assets, but it really wasn't accessible to most of the residents.

I had the great fortune to grow up living right on the lake.

My parents are still there.

We had private access to Lake Erie and it was part of who I am, who our family was.

We enjoyed the neighborhood that I lived in.

And so really at the root of it, I want everyone to have that same experience.

How do you get down?

How do you get to enjoy the lake?

And so our project really opened up access to our community.

It was privately owned in most parts, not accessible to most people.

For high rise apartments right in the project area, they could look at the lake but couldn't get down to the lake.

So it's been a project.

It's been a great project, but the important part of the project is not the trail.

It's how the trail and the project has transformed our community.

- Thank you.

Eric Wobser, like Euclid, Sandusky has been working on access for several years.

You previously said that COVID just punched you guys in the face because of the original dependence on tourism and the entertainment industry.

And coming right after Sandusky invested millions of dollars into the new Jackson Street Pier, new bikeway, the 2020 plan opening really is only kind of happening now.

You actually had a concert there last night.

What is this new access to the shoreline mean to the people of Sandusky?

- I think it means everything.

You know what, when people think of Sandusky, of course, they think of Cedar Point and that's why we were so vulnerable to the pandemic.

But in addition to that, they think of Sandusky Bay, Lake Erie, the Lake Erie islands.

And it really is particularly in a post-industrial economy where we had been so dependent.

We had a GM plant and a Ford plant in the Sandusky region.

We've lost both of those.

And really the pivot was towards the lake, but the sustainability of the lake is so critical.

And if you want people to believe in the sustainability of the lake, then you need to give them access to the lake.

And Sandusky is a very narrow town that kind of spreads the linearly along the lake.

And very few parts of the city does anyone live more than a mile or a mile and a half to the lake.

But because, like Ohio, like Cuyahoga county, over 90% of our shoreline has been privately owned, they lacked access to the lake.

So what you didn't see in Sandusky often enough were lakefront premiums or a quality of life that was benefiting from being a lakefront town.

And so what our City Commission President Dick Brady was here, Commissioner Blake Harris and the entire City Commission as well as many of our staff who made it today really made a push several years ago to open up access to the lake, to reinvest in it, not only as a tool for economic development, which has been very successful for us.

We've had over 300 million invested in the city over the past five years, much of it right along the investments we've made in the lake.

But in addition to that, as an opportunity for equity for all of our residents.

You know, we're the most diverse city in our region.

We're the most low income city in our region.

And we are providing opportunities through, not only creating that public access to Sandusky Bay into our downtown waterfront, but through the programming, our recreation team is here.

We have provided free and accessible and common programming that is meant to be very representative of all the people that come to our city or live in our city.

And in that you see our waterfront not being viewed as gated or privatized marinas anymore, but being a space where people can feel a part of the community.

And really, I think that is what Sandusky is becoming.

I think that's what we need for all of Lake Erie and the legacy cities along it to truly realize our potential in the 21st century.

- In the few weeks since you've had the Thursday Night Concert Series, other things going on there, are you getting the participation you want?

- Yeah, it's been incredibly exciting.

And we plan to do all of this.

As you mentioned, we were launching the new pier and the new shoreline drive, which was the first mile of our Sandusky Bay pathway.

In 2020 because of COVID, we were unable to do any of this and coming out of our bicentennial vision plan, we had many sponsors that helped us purchase a stage, an LED movie screen, funding for programming.

And we couldn't do it.

What was exciting to us was in spite of the fact that we couldn't do all that programming last year, people still found their way down.

We've averaged about a thousand pedestrians during the day downtown on the waterfront, which if you had heard that about Sandusky's downtown five years ago, you wouldn't have believed it because it felt like a ghost town.

And when I came back to Sandusky and walked to the waterfront the day before I started in my current position, I said, everything's great except for there's no people.

And I think now we've brought people down there.

And then when we added programming to that this summer, I know we did one free concert that came up really quickly.

And I think there were probably 3 to 5,000 people, not only at the concert itself, but just in downtown Sandusky all at one time.

And I had one of our commissioners say that he had never, in his adult life, he's nearly 70 years old, seen downtown Sandusky feel so vibrant.

And it's important because we heard from a lot of people during that process, that we were revitalizing the waterfront, not for the people of Sandusky but for private development.

And the reality is, this program, it was free.

It was diverse, it was representative.

And that's the value of public space, particularly on a waterfront.

So I think we've been very excited and now that we'll have a year to plan going into next year, we've already got a lot of ideas about how to take that to the next level.

- Great example, thanks.

Freddy Collier, Cleveland has problems unique amongst this panel just partly because of the miles of coastline that you have, but the variety of what's along the water.

You've got the port authority, you've got an airport, you've got residences, you've got industry, multiple recreational outlets.

Lot to manage, a lot of partners to negotiate with, all amid a growing recognition that the lake and the river really are amenities Cleveland needs to take more advantage of.

Where do you focus first?

- So thank you for having me.

And when we think about Cleveland in comparison to the other cities along our Lake Erie waterfront, we have eight miles of waterfront that we have to account for, not to mention the river valley.

So Cleveland has two waterfront assets that we have to take full advantage of.

And there's some historic dichotomies that create the situation that we're in now.

When you look at the eight mile stretch of waterfront, you know, Cleveland is a city that was built on commerce.

And a lot of the decisions that were made in the past were based on economic development.

It wasn't necessarily about the environment.

It wasn't about access, none of those things.

And part of what we're doing now is really trying to right those wrongs.

So when we look at our waterfront, particularly the Cuyahoga River Valley, as well as our eight mile stretch of waterfront, we have to overcome literally a lot of issues.

And when we did the waterfront district plan that was done a number of years ago, we really wanted to look at the entire eight-mile stretch and they really focus on specific geography.

So you have the Western waterfront, the core waterfront, and the Eastern waterfront.

And most recently we just adopted the vision for the valley.

What we've witnessed is that there has been private development that has happened, but a lot of that development is disjointed, not connected.

And one of our goals was to bring the people in the communities to those waterfront assets.

And in order to do that, and I'll give you one example on the West Shoreway.

We literally had to punch through in under the actual railroad tracks to connect people who lived in the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood to the asset of Edgewater Park.

That was a heavy lift.

- [Rick] Yes.

We had to rethink the shoreway there, which was another heavy lift financially.

Not to mention all of the engagement that has to take place, but we did a lot of that with the understanding that this waterfront is God's gift to the community and nobody should be void of having access to it.

And then when you look at the downtown waterfront, we were thinking along the lines of connecting people via bridges and these really narrow ways to get to and fro, but the thinking has evolved in the sense that we need to connect the entire downtown grid to the water.

And we're doing that with the most recent plan that you are all seeing with respect to the partnership with the Browns.

Also on the river valley side, how do we begin to connect the grid down to the water?

So this notion of making sure that we have open space assets, and I would tell you about open space.

A lot of people think that open space is a, you don't feel good prospect, it's economic driver.

We've seen it with trail development.

We've seen how housing is really locating right next to trails.

And people wanna be next to those are natural amenities and they'd create a true economic asset for us.

So we're constantly going back and forth with addressing the challenges and trying to flip those and turn those into opportunities.

Battery Park, again, another example, that was a battery plant previously.

Now it's a development.

And then you had a natural asset connecting those dots.

We're doing that downtown, and we're gonna be doing that on the Eastern waterfront.

- I'm glad you mentioned that impediment that we all see every day, the Shoreway.

It's walled off the community in a way that at least our other cities don't have to deal with.

They have much more space between highway and water.

So many people, it's not just a problem of equity, which is the other part we wanna talk about.

It is accessibility.

How soon can the east side see what the west side has gotten?

We talked about punching under railroad tracks.

- Sure, so you have to take first what the environment give you.

And when you look at the neighborhoods that flank our waterfront particularly on the east side, you have streets like 55th street, you have streets like 72nd street, you have the signature corridor of where Rockefeller Park connects to the waterfront.

So you have to maximize those first and foremost and create better connections there.

And then the additive things that you can do is also create, you know, bridges and also look at where you have underutilized or under-tapped recreational assets like Gordon Park, extremely underutilized asset.

And you have a lot of land opportunity just south of Gordon Park.

The other thing that we're doing that's really important is really looking at how we draw people to the water and making sure that you have pedestrian and bike connections that connect you to the water.

And most recently, we partnered with the Metroparks to look at the CHEERS initiative, and really look at how we create a coastline, particularly on the Eastern side of the city, that's gonna draw people from all over the city and the region.

Many of the projects that you're gonna see come to life along our waterfront are not just for those people who are directly flanking the water, but we're also reaching our tentacles out into the region because these are regional assets.

Irishtown Bend is a perfect example.

You look at the CHEERS initiative.

You look at the the Browns initiative.

You look at all of these signature pieces.

These are gonna be the draws that really start to bring people back to the water.

Now I'd be remiss if I didn't say that we have to also understand, and I think all of the panelists understand, that we are part of a continuum.

And I think capitalizing on what we did with the waterfront district plan.

I see Debbie Berry over there, who was my colleague, who actually sat next to me in a cube when we were working on their city-wide plan in waterfront district plan.

This administration has been very diligent under the leadership of Ken Silliman, really advancing that work.

So it's about implementing the plan.

So when you have these plans in place, the most important thing you could do is work the plan.

So this is a continuum and the next generation of folks are gonna have to really pick up the ball and carry that forward.

But this is a great blueprint and we're doing great work transactionally.

- Mayor Gail, your project is taking years to come to the point where it is now.

You are, as you said, a low income city.

You're a majority minority city, but with half-million dollar lake shore homes as well.

Do you have some secret sauce for making the beaches reflective of those different types of people who are in Euclid?

Something you can say to the people who do use as well as the people who do not?

- Sure, yeah, I mean, that's a really, a big part of our plan was equity.

We wanted everybody to have access to the lake, no matter where they lived in the city.

The secret sauce for us is really, as you said, it's been lengthy.

It's been a long process.

We've had to be persistent, we've had to be creative, certainly dependent on partnerships.

But at the root, it started with a community consensus.

So we pulled together residents, stakeholders, businesses, the community at large to help us develop the vision.

We had a great consultant, SmithGroup, who has done waterfront work across the great lakes and really helped us take advantage of the geography we had.

But imagined something new.

I mean, I think the plan certainly transitioned and, you know, was reformulated through the process.

We pulled together funding sources from so many different places.

So, you know, we address erosion control.

We have environmental issues, we have economic development issues.

We have equity issues, and really providing a community open access and park space along the lake that has been really transformative.

It wouldn't have happened without the support of City Council and our City Council President Charlene Mancuso is here, and Ward Five Council Woman, Christine McIntosh, and a former City Council President, John Monroe, Allison Lukacsy-Love, our Planning Director, and Former Planning Director, Jonathan Holody, who now is with Sandusky.

I mean, it's been, you have to be persistent.

The partnerships are important focusing on the assets, but for us, it really is about that.

How do we open up access to everybody?

It's not just a north-side project, it's a city of Euclid project.

It's a regional project.

And we're really thrilled that now it's being viewed as the Euclid Model.

And so I don't, actually, can I take a second just to explain the pro- I don't even know if everybody is aware or familiar with our project.

It's a three-quarter mile multipurpose trail along the shoreline.

We did have to break it up into phases.

So again, that's an important, I think, the secret sauce.

- [Erick] 12 years?

- Yes, we hired SmithGroup in 2009 who helped us develop the plan.

We started with the pier as phase one.

The trail had to be broken up into two phases because of funding.

And our next phase, we do have a marina paper.

That's our next phase once we get past this phase.

But we really are...

It's taken a lot, and a city like Euclid, we've always been, since my involvement, scraping for pennies.

How do you commit the funds needed?

And we're so fortunate to have partners like the Metroparks and Cuyahoga county and EPA and Army Corps and federal funding, state funding, county funding, local funding.

I mean, we could not have done it without really that persistence, the partnerships, the cooperation and the residents that, really at the root of it, the residents being involved and in favor of it.

- Just trying to think about how many years ago it was that Ideastream did a piece on this when it's coming together, maybe five or six, but there is a great YouTube video out there you can look at that explains, basically through drone shots, how this would work.

It is a beautiful project.

Folks, a survey released just this week by the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative informs us that waterfront communities as a whole have, in the last two years, spent $878 million for shoreline repairs.

Ohio's 24 coastline towns will spend something like $400 million in the next two years just to fight off coastal erosion, next five years, sorry.

Mayor Gail, that's one of your biggest concerns, erosion, of course, $6 million of phase two for your project was local money city and county.

I know you'd rather spend it on cash and parks and employee raises and Christmas bonuses, but your share of erosion control is heavy.

And you said you're a low income community.

Are taxpayers on the hook for that?

And do taxpayers perceive that they're on the hook for that?

- Taxpayers do, I think some taxpayers do perceive that they're on the hook?

Most of the funding that we've committed locally will be repaid through a tax increment finance zone.

So we were able to create a zone in that area and the increased tax value will pay for most of the improvements that we've had to pay.

We did think it was important to have some local skin in the game.

So yes, we did commit some local capital funds to that, which we felt was important.

We're asking, and we had private donations.

We have great partner in K&D who own the apartment complex in the project area.

We felt it was important that we committed our own money too, put our own skin in the game, but for the most part, our residents will not pay for it.

It's being paid for through, as I mentioned, county casino funds.

We were the first recipient outside of Cleveland for county casino funds.

And we certainly appreciate the county support in that.

But paying it back primarily through tax increased value of the property tax.

- Something I wanna hear from all of you on.

I'll just start with Eric and work our way down.

Do you hear pushback from people say, I don't use the lake.

I don't go down there, I don't have a boat.

I don't know how to swim.

Why should I pay for this?

What's the response?

- We don't tend to hear that.

I think it is naturally intuitive to people in Sandusky that the lake is an asset whether, one of the things that we've done and part of a partnership, our City Commission recently worked to save a boat, I don't know what you call the good time.

It's not quite a ferry boat, but it's a pleasure mode.

Yeah, pleasure boat.

And it was going through some issues.

It had some unexpected repairs and the community really stepped up, including our City Commission President, Dick Brady, and the rest of the commission to support bringing them back.

And one of the things that we were able to do in putting some resources via a grant into the saving the GOODTIME was we got community access.

They agreed to up to six times a year, now we can take the community out on the boat.

And that's something that we did during our bicentennial vision planning process, was we invited people out onto the lake for free.

And what we found is there are many, many residents of Sandusky who though, even though they live in this lake front community that has been named the best coastal small town or the best place to live affordably on the lake, they had never been out on the water.

They'd never actually seen the city from the lake.

They had never seen Cedar Point and the view from the lake back on hotel breakers with the rollercoasters.

And so we're trying to find ways, both on the shore but also in the water, to creatively give better access to Sanduskians.

And one of the challenges that we do face, the pushback that we do get is of that private ownership of the lake, much more so those who live in a house on the lake, or live in a gated community on the lake, or a private concern in the lake who push back against public access.

And we're navigating that conversation right now, as we develop the right of way for the Sandusky Bay Pathway, which is meant to be an 11 mile trail that connects one end of the city to the other, that we hope will eventually become part of a much larger trail.

And I think that's the fight that we need to take on all of us together as we try to connect our communities.

And that's really the equity situation here is... You know, we talk about equity, I just read a statistic last week that said the United States right now, about one-third of the wealth is in the hands of 1% of the population.

And that is consistent with where France was at the time of the French Revolution.

And I think when we try to address those issues, we look to Washington often, but we also have to look at the choices that we make locally.

Ohio Shoreline is over 90% privately owned.

It is the most privately owned shore coastline in the entire United States of America.

That is an equity issue.

And so we have to find ways to make choices in spite of opposition.

I know in Lake Avenue right now in Cleveland is one of those examples and I'm sure Director Collier is living through that.

I'm sure Ken Silliman's glad he's no longer part of that conversation, but that's the reality.

That's the fight that we're facing right now is the lake is the people's lake, it is a natural resource.

It is not owned by someone just because they have private property on it.

And we have to fight.

(audience clapping) We have to fight to overcome the opposition to the people that think they own Lake Erie.

They think they own access to Lake Erie.

And sometime that's a trail running in front of your house.

Sometimes it's the trail running behind your house.

It's really creative private solution, like what they're doing in Euclid.

But what we can't do is back down from that because there is opposition.

I think that is one of the most important things we can do locally in a lake front community to be a part of the equity conversation.

- That's what I want to hear from all of you on this.

Kirsten.

- Yeah, and so I think that's part of what's precedent setting about our project is it is private property.

For the most part, we were able to acquire some, but the private property owners above the trail gave permanent easements so that the trail could be built on the lake.

- [Rick] 100 of them, right?

- 100 different people had to sign off on it.

And that includes, there's homeowners associations that run up to the lake and they own the lakefront parcel together.

So all of those residents had to sign off on this project.

So again, it involved a tremendous amount of engagement by the residents.

This project would not happen if that had not happened.

But that's really what it's about is opening up.

So it's not private and there was some pushback, oh, you're spending this money.

You're doing this project to support a couple of private lakefront homeowners.

No, we're really building this so the entire community can come down and enjoy the lake.

And to your earlier point, during COVID, people were clamoring to get down there.

The project was under construction and people are kind of going around the fence to check it out and people want to be outside.

They really, I think just getting down to the waterfront.

We've seen a tremendous increase in the use of our parks of people coming down and enjoying it.

And it's not complete.

The second phase of the trail will be completed by the end of the year but people are down there enjoying it, using it from all over the city.

You'll go down and you, it's not people who live on the north side.

It's people from all over the community, from outside of the community.

- Let's say from Willow Wood, from Cleveland, your borders.

- We get people from, Cuyahoga county is looking at also opening up access.

They have a planning process underway.

And so after several of their public meetings, we'll be down there and we'll see people from Bratenahl or from the West Side Lakewood wanting to see, because you have to see what it looks like.

It's hard to understand on paper.

And I think there's some photos that are being shown.

It's hard to visualize because it's not something you would naturally think of.

We had rocks and erosion and cliffs that were crumbling into the lake, and we now have beautiful park space open to everybody along the shoreline.

So it's been, people really need to come down and I would invite everybody, Sims Park 228 in Lake Shore Boulevard.

Come down and see it because it's really spectacular.

And I think very exciting to think about what Cleveland and what Cuyahoga county and even regionally, what NOACA is looking at doing is how do we build on what Euclid has been able to accomplish across the whole shoreline?

- Just to restate the question, people who don't go to the water live far away.

Lee-Miles, for instance, you're not near the water.

- Right?

- Why should they care?

- Yeah, a couple things.

And I wanna give an example of when we went through the engagement process for vision for the valley, one of the things that we did with the many engagement efforts that we had is we went out to sort of those outlying communities that were far from the actual lake, and to engage them.

And many people didn't have time to come down.

They just don't have any reason to come downtown or experience the waterfront.

And I think it goes to Eric's point about really exposure.

I think that's critical.

And the exposure happens by having the right programming and sending the right message.

Private development can send a message that you're not welcome.

And one of the things that we've been really working with private interests around is making sure that there is open space amenities for people to be able to access and touch the water.

Now that takes advocacy and you can't just do it with advocacy, it's what we've learned , is that you have to regulate it.

You know, people don't do the right thing because it's right.

You know, and you have to put the systems in place.

And Councilman Brancatelli, you know, knows this.

At the council table, we often have to look like the villain or being accused of impeding development because we are trying to position the city in the right way.

So I'll give you an example of one of the things that we had instituted citywide, which was the riparian setback zone.

And that was for all of our waterways, with the exception of the federal navigable channel, which is our riverfront.

So you can't do that because our river is a utilitarian river, it's a functioning river that has, you know, barges and things of that nature.

So we were limited there, but here we are with this unique conflict with the Cuyahoga River Valley, where you have maritime uses, you have recreational boating, and you also have the utilitarian vessels, and these things are starting to converge more and more.

They're not stopping.

So one of the reasons why the vision for the valley was so important was to reconcile, how do you take all of these different land uses and make them work together?

And how do you create opportunities whereby these things can coexist?

Now, one example with respect to getting people down to the water is the Foundry.

And for many of you who may not know what the Foundry does is it really helps to educate young people and others around the the discipline or the sport of rowing.

And they have programs where they've reached out to CMSD students and they have classes that are held there.

And in that process, these kids are being exposed to the river, what it does and are being introduced to this amenity.

So we have to be very thoughtful with respect to how we introduce the water to the people of the greater region, and really get people to understand that this is your asset too, you know.

But again the investment sends the message.

So I totally agree with the mayor here, that it's not what you do, is how you go about doing it and how you communicate.

And then the last thing I'll say is the branding and the marketing and telling the story is so critical.

I think people underestimate that.

You know, you have to get the word out about it.

You have to have a brand that people are going to want to get to know and engage with.

So I think there's a lot to unpack there in that question.

But there's a lot of pieces and moving parts that I think it's gonna take in order to really make it equitable for everyone.

- Thank you.

Another shameless plug.

If you wanna see a story on the Foundry in the CMSD program, I did that too.

(panel and audience laughing) But I gotta tell you from talking to those kids, inner city kids who'd never before been on a river, they say I look at my city in a whole different way now.

I've never seen how beautiful Cleveland is from the water.

And I can tell you, from sitting in a kayak, and then you look up and there's a 700 foot vessel coming at you, you get a whole new respect.

(panel and audience laughing) You really do.

Today at the City Club, we are listening to a forum talking about how three cities, Cleveland, Euclid and Sandusky have worked toward increasing access to our waterfronts.

Joining me on stage, Freddy Collier, Director of City Planning, the city of Cleveland, Kirsten Holzheimer Gail, 14th Mayor of Euclid, and Eric Wobser, City Manager of the city of Sandusky.

We are about to begin the audience Q&A.

We welcome questions from everyone: City Club members, guests, students, those of you joining in via the live stream or the radio broadcast on WCPN, Ideastream Public Media.

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May we have the first question, please?

- City of Chicago has miles and miles of beautiful wide sandy beaches that are adjacent to the downtown city.

Well, Cleveland, I hear trails, but I don't hear sand beaches.

Will we in the city of Cleveland have anything like that?

- So I'll take a step to that, obviously.

So Edgewater Park is the best example of a public beach and one that is done really well.

When you think about Chicago, the one principle that they followed was that anything east of Lake Shore Boulevard was public.

That's a principle.

Any smart waterfront community, where you have public space, you have a connector, that is at grade.

Most people have a boulevard, like a Lake Shore Boulevard in Chicago, and then the city scape.

If you don't follow that principle, then this is what you end up with.

And again, many of us are here trying to fix those.

And this is not just Cleveland.

You got Philadelphia and you have a number of cities.

They even have now some federal aid that's really looking to help cities with decking over highways so that they can create these connections and reclaim the space that the highway system took away from having that access.

The question is, will Cleveland have it?

That's the trajectory that we're on.

If you look at the core waterfront plan, the one that was most recently developed in partnership, now emphasize partnership with the Browns, it didn't look at a bridge, but it looks at really decking over with the plinth as the first phase.

We eventually want to fill in the hole in the donut between west third and east ninth, and really begin to connect the grid back to the water.

When we go east, same principle, is really trying to overcome those obstacles.

And I do wanna say to the viewing audience out there, you have to understand the rigor, the tenacity in the fingerprints that it takes to move a project, particularly when there's large infrastructure resources that are involved.

The years of focus that it takes to make sure that you're able to pull that off is tremendous.

So I think there's a lack of appreciation for that.

And when I hear people say, oh, what's the timeline?

Oh, it should have been done.

Chicago is doing this.

And I don't mean any, I'm not being facetious, but I think the public needs to be educated about the process and what it takes to go after money, to sell a plan, to really triage, to get these pieces going.

You'd be patting us on the back because it's very, very, very rigorous.

- I guess I could add too.

So our project has a sand beach at the western end and then a sand beach at the eastern end, which is a paddle craft beach.

The Army Corps, and to Freddy's point, our permitting process to do what we did, the permits alone, once we turned the applications in, took a year and a half, 16, 18 months for the Army Corps of Engineers, EPA, ODNR to approve it.

They do not want to approve things that go out into the lake that are not natural.

So we have some Cabo beaches, which is more of a natural beach in between the two sand beaches.

But right now the permitting agencies and the regulations would make it very difficult to add a new sand beach into the water.

It would have to be probably pulling back land is, so.

- And to the point that you were making, Chicago didn't become Chicago in 1970.

They made that plan back in 1922 or something.

- Yeah, correct, and if I may add to that, 'cause this is merely important to understand with respect to who we are and what we are and accepting that.

So when you look, for example, at our river valley, when we did visit for the valley, one of the things that we did is we looked at what the competition was doing.

Everybody's focusing on their waterfront right now.

We looked at what Chicago did.

Chicago's riverfront is like a main street corridor with buildings right on the water, very unique.

We looked at Pittsburgh, three rivers.

We looked at what they did in Columbus with the Scioto Mile which is basically Greenland, right?

Cleveland was the most unique situation out of every city we benchmarked.

There was nothing like it, from topography, bridges, infrastructure, a mixture of uses.

It's a very unique challenge.

So we had to really start to focus and say, okay, how do we take this and turn it into the asset?

A lot of those challenges that we're talking about with the barges, with the bridges, those are some of the greatest assets that we have down there.

How ironic is that?

And then we have investment coming in with Flats Eastbank, all of these different places and we have to figure out, okay, this may seem like a hotspot, but really what's the opportunity in it?

So how do you start to celebrate and highlight this and create conditions where these things can coexist?

So the latest recommendation that came out of the vision for the valley plan was really being able to traverse that river by foot or by trail from end to end.

So this pedestrian promenade, but one of the biggest impediments with dealing with that is we got to address the bulkheads.

The bulkheads are like sidewalks.

You know, when you talk about looking at the river as a corridor, and that's a huge lift, hence Irishtown Bend being sort of the example, and that's just one section of our river.

And you have to understand, and I appreciate, excuse me.

(Mayor Gail laughing) I'll just hold it.

I appreciate the comparison of the three cities, but these are very different places, right?

Even though we all occupy that same stretch, you know, of waterfront.

So it's important to understand uniquely what each of these communities give you because in its entirety, that is how we market and promote our region.

And our region as a waterfront community is really, you have amusement parks in Sandusky.

You have a huge opportunity in the city of Cleveland to connect to major cities downtown.

You have a more smaller bedroom sort of community with Euclid.

So we have all of the ingredients here.

It's just packaging that and really looking at it as an entire system versus these individual communities.

- Mayor, how important is it that we do all work together as one shoreline?

- I think it's critical.

I think a lot of people have been looking at what we've been able to accomplish and now how do we extend that for the region?

Because again, we want everybody to have access, not just the communities that live along the shoreline and we can learn from each other.

- Okay, next question, please.

- Well, Ric, I wanna follow exactly on what you asked.

There's always a lot of well-deserved attention on Edgewater Park, on Whiskey Island and the new bridge and the river, certainly on downtown, and now Gordon, but where do we stand with extending the great things that are being done in Euclid through Collinwood, and through the back section of Cleveland shoreline between Bratenahl and Euclid, that's a critical section.

You've got people who are anxious to see what's happening in Euclid, extend all the way through that community.

So those lake shore owners really wanna see that happen.

You've got to people that see what's happening in Euclid and say why not here?

So where do we stand on that?

- Yeah, so Western Reserve Land Conservancy, we actually just met with them recently.

And really looking at how we leverage the opportunities that Wildwood State Park has to offer.

And also where Villa Angela-St. Joe's, the former school sits, and the land opportunities there.

'Cause one of the key things with respect to the neighborhood, if you look as far of the eastern edge of Cleveland, which is North Collinwood, is that, that is one community where you can be right there on the lake and not know you're next to it.

Literally not know it.

So the desire has been to really open that up.

And remember, if you recall what I said about taking what the community gives you, so that green space connection is actually there.

If you look at Wildwood, if you look at all of the vegetation and things that exist around VA-St. Joe's, and then talking about connecting it to Richmond Heights, you actually have a trail proposal that we're working on.

That's really gonna connect you down from Richmond Heights to that Wildwood area there.

So it's all there for us.

The Western Reserve Land Conservancy is working on some things that I'm not at liberty to disclose.

- [Rick] Oh, come on.

- They're conceivings, (audience and panelists laughing) but these are things that everyone is paying attention to.

And Dick, it's not necessarily that we don't see these things.

It's just about getting them up and running and taking the opportunities and looking at the resources and figuring out how you prioritize.

And that's what's always has been the challenge, I think, for most cities is, you know, doesn't matter whether the economy is good or bad, public resource is always limited.

So you're always deciding what's the play?

What's the right play that's gonna be the catalyst to have a ripple effect?

Now, there's anomaly today.

And that anomaly is $511 million.

You know, and how do you begin to prioritize that?

And one of the things that we've outlined as a priority is riverfront bulkhead improvements, which is a critical piece of the puzzle, and also looking at how we begin to connect to the lakefront.

So we have to, again, triage and take every bit of resource and strategically place it in a way where we believe it will have the most ripple effect, but that is definitely on the radar.

- Thanks, next question.

- I commend all three cities for your progressive ideas to improve the quality of life here on lake Erie.

If you build it, they will come.

My question is this.

We don't have water problems like our brothers and sisters out west.

We have a high water level problem.

How do you address in your planning fluctuations for high water that keeps some boats and boathouses, that floods docks for cruise ships?

- Mayor, you've been fighting the erosion battle.

You wanna start?

- Sure, so our project had to be designed for high water level.

So part of the engineering part of the project included going up to a wave tank in Canada.

Former Director Holody went up and got to witness it and wave simulations from, you know, 100 year storms to, so our project had to be built to withstand high water and storms.

That's in the engineering, that's in the permitting.

The property outside of where our project is has been deva- I mean, there's homes that have been devastated, boathouses into the water.

You know, the water up to the cliffs, taking away cliffs.

And so that, as you go forward, our project was a way to...

It provided erosion control for this three quarter mile, but it built the trail on top.

So we really, again, that was part of the precedent setting.

How do you not just put the... How do you not just put armor stone stones at the base of a hill for erosion control?

That doesn't, I mean, it provides erosion control, but you can't get down to the water, you can't.

So this provided, you know, the armor stone and the concrete at the base, designed so that the trail and the public space can be built on top.

So it really combined both.

I don't know if that doesn't necessarily answer your question, I know, but the project, the engineers, ours was designed at least in that project area.

It was built and approved, started before the high water.

So we really had some concerns as the project got going that the water level was now much higher than it was when we had planned.

We were at historic high water levels in over the last two years.

So it changed, you know, the construction a little bit, but the plan was designed well to sustain that.

- Eric, you poured so much in the Jackson Pier, what do you have in terms of the thinking that went into that because of high water situations?

- Yeah, so we've had, just yesterday, our Commission President Brady and I sat down with a marina owner who was looking at, you know, the pandemic was a great time for marinas in public spaces and we have over 4,000 boat slips on the shores of Sandusky.

And then so that was a boom in our economy last year.

But this year, they're dealing with a lot of flooding and, you know, we had some flooding the previous two years, but it's been the combination of the rain, saturated ground levels and the higher water levels for a sustained period.

So if we're going to make a larger bet on Sandusky Bay and Lake Erie is the driver of our economy, whether we're talking about algal blooms, whether we're talking about climate change and the impacts that that can have on water levels and flooding and those types of things, we have to be prepared.

We have to think about the longer-term investments that we make in addition to utilizing that public space as an asset for our community, as well as for economic development.

And so, you know, our engineer was part of that and they're looking at different options.

One of the things that we can do is to utilize the Sandusky Bay Pathway that actually creates a dyke between the land coming from the right of way and the property itself.

So it pushes the water back away from the property right now.

It's going straight from the street as it comes down into some of these marinas.

So we're looking at as many creative solutions as we can, but we can't take that for granted.

And I think one of the things that all of our shoreline communities are gonna have to figure out is what if this isn't a bluff?

You know, someone mentioned a hundred year storm, but the a hundred year storm seem to be coming often.

You know, we had a wind storm blown out in our Historic State Theater last year.

We've lost two or three buildings to windstorms in Sandusky with shear winds coming off the lake.

This could be the new normal.

And so we're gonna have to adjust with how we develop along the waterfront, and we're gonna have to adjust with how we deal with floodplains and all of those issues.

And again, you know, Fred mentioned or Dr. Collier mentioned the federal funding.

I think state and federal funding is gonna have to be a tremendous part of those solutions because particularly in legacy cities that are already dealing with antiquated infrastructure, not always even having separated storm and sewer lines.

That is a massive investment for us to undertake.

And that is one of the things that we cannot do on our own without help from Columbus or Washington.

- Thank you, excellent question, next.

- We've got a text question, it says, once the waterfront becomes accessible, wealthier neighborhoods develop, wealthier people don't want to share neighborhoods with poor people.

How do modern city planners deal with this issue being gentrification, which bars poor people from these waterfront accessible neighborhoods?

- Yeah, we've touched on that.

We knew the gentrification question would come up.

Mayor Gail, is that an issue that you've already hopefully thought forward to?

- Yes, I don't, I don't...

I think we're not keeping people out.

We're trying to welcome people in.

So we're opening it up...

Historically the poor community did not have access.

- I think the question was about the people's perception, not the city's perception.

- Okay.

I mean, our waterfront's been used by more and it is attracting absolutely a more diverse community.

I think the issues we've had with that is increased trash and, you know, some people not following rules.

And, you know, we're trying to make sure it's a positive place for everybody and it has proven to be.

We are seeing new homes being built.

We are seeing housing values go up.

So we want to make sure our community is able to stay and we're not forcing people out.

We have not seen that yet and are committed certainly to having a city that's welcoming to all.

- Director Collier, you're seeing it close right now because the near west side is developing fast, but you've got CMHA housing a block away.

- Yeah, so let me start off by saying with respect to the open space, and that was a great question by the way.

With respect to open space, in my mind as a planning professional, open spaces are the great equalizer, and this is why the emphasis needs to be on the open spaces.

And then building off of that.

The challenge becomes when we talk about the building off of that, the what, the product, the price point.

And these are things that we are often grappling with with respect to the city of Cleveland.

And one of the key things that I think we have done as administration is ensure that you have a diversity of product.

If you have a diversity of product, then you can create the diversity of price point.

And then the accessibility is there.

I'm gonna give you two tangible examples of something that we're dealing with right now.

And I'm gonna start with the river valley.

So with Irishtown Bend, which is gonna be a tremendous- (indistinct) (audience laughing) - Oh man, I mean, the reason why I keep bringing up Irishtown Bend is because there's gonna be nothing like it in the entire region when that's completed.

And the other reason why that's so important is because that Ohio City community is a very diverse community.

- [Rick] Yes.

- You have one of the oldest housing projects in the country in lakeview.

You have a senior high rise that CMHA own that literally overlooks that asset.

Those can't go away.

So we have to reinvest and double down on making sure that those things are connected to that asset.

So CMHA is going through a process right now where we're gonna be re-imagining lakeview estates.

And also there is gonna be efforts into rethinking or renovating that tower.

These are all critical elements because when the area starts to change, those people should not be pushed out.

They should be able to remain.

And I think that's really where the effort has to be put with respect to policy and its intersection with design.

- And they need walking access to the water as well.

- No question about it.

You know, and then the transportation assets that exist there, how do people get to and from the asset?

So bikes, scooters, being able to walk, be able to catch a bus.

So it's all of those systems layering on in these spaces that's gonna create the equity, right?

And equity is not about conversations, it's not about words.

It's in the transaction.

You can see equity or inequity in the policy.

So part of also what we're gonna- (indistinct) Also, what we're doing- (indistinct) Yeah, also what we're doing too is really looking at how our infrastructure becomes an impediment.

So that same lakeview estate that I was talking about, Route Two severs that from Ohio City.

That's all Ohio City neighborhood.

And if you look at it from a river valley standpoint, the CMHA estates sit in the same peninsula that Nautica sits in.

You wouldn't even know it, but again, because the severing of the highway dividing up that peninsula.

So part of what we're trying to do is like turn that on its head and begin to start to connect the dots.

And I think this is where the infrastructure reimagination has to happen and we have to punch through the Shoreway Route Two over there, right by 28th Street and all of that, and really start to connect those residents back into the community in which they belong, which is Ohio City.

- Eric, I know you want to weigh in, but let's squeeze in one more question.

We're short on time, go ahead.

- Thank you, so you've discussed that the shoreline is about 90% privatized.

When you're talking with those private owners, whether they're residential, industrial, commercial, a lot of common themes come up like fear of noise or trash or personal safety, property security concerns.

Would you talk a little bit about the myth versus the reality of some of those common concerns of private property owners?

- Eric, you wanted to.

- Yeah, I can speak to that and it ties it in some ways in what I wanted to comment to the previous question.

I think it's always myth versus reality.

And in Sandusky right now, we're having this conversation and there's a lot of antiquated thoughts about what providing public access to a waterfront will mean for a property.

Whether it's gonna be conflict with automobiles for an industrial property, whether it's gonna be undesirables, and I say that in quotations for those who may pass along the linear trail, but the reality is when you create public access to the waterfront, you see the exact opposite of that.

You see increased foot traffic, creating more safety for the community.

You see more vibrancy, you see rising property values.

And, you know, we're working with Environmental Design Group on the Sandusky Bay Pathway Project in Sandusky.

You know, they did a lot of that connections to Treemont for the Towpath Trail.

And where you see that Towpath Trail pass by Treemont, you see investment.

And to Director Collier's point into the equity part of this conversation is, it is absolutely critical that from your housing strategy, your development strategy, that you're thinking about mixed income, you're thinking about integration, but the worst thing that could happen to these neighborhoods, and I see so many of my old friends from Ohio City here, where I was at previously, and we used to always say, we're a riverfront neighbor and the lakefront neighborhood without access.

And it is the lower income residents of a community who suffer the most to live in a place with such great proximity to these wonderful natural assets, but no direct access to them.

And so when we bring that access, we bring a premium to their lives by being in a waterfront community, which if they're homeowners can happen economically, but it also happens with increased opportunities for employment and it just improves their quality of life.

And then the last point I'll make on this piece is this, you don't just do this because it's the right thing to do, you do it because it's the economically smarter thing to do.

And I read a study several years ago that said, when a waterfront property is privately owned, there is a premium for that property.

And then immediately across the street, you lose almost entirely the value of that property being waterfront.

When it is publicly accessible, like what Fred was talking about in Chicago, that premium for being in a waterfront, not a waterfront house, but in a waterfront neighborhood, or even more broadly, a waterfront community, can spread for miles.

It's anybody who can get there on foot, get their on bus, get there on a bike, and then you bring value to an entire community.

And I think that in places like Cleveland, like Euclid, like Sandusky that have hemorrhaged population because middle-class people have chosen to leave those cities that were a long way off from the conversation as long as we do development sensitively and that bringing public access can bring people back into those communities.

And I think that is the equitable thing to do.

And I think public access can only enhance their quality of life or the equity within our communities.

- We will call this the first hour of a great conversation.

Thank you all.

Today at the City Club, we've been listening to a forum on Equitable Waterfront Access featuring Freddy L. Collier, the Director of City Planning for Cleveland, Kirsten Holzheimer Gail, Mayor of Euclid, Eric Wobser, City Manager of the City of Sandusky.

Today's forum was presented by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the law firm Mansour Gavin.

It's the third of four forums to be co-sponsored by the Lincoln Institute.

That brings us to the end of a lot of announcements and today's forum.

Thank you panelists.

Thank you members and friends of the City Club.

This forum is now adjourned.

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