The Observation Deck

This effects Lakewood more than a lot of projects that actually occur within Lakewood city limits. This is not the first time I heard of this, but this is probably the craziest idea I have ever seen. If this is done, it will just put another nail in the coffin of Cleveland--I know many people will refuse to commute downtown if they turn a major artery into 35mph with traffic lights, etc.

Does anyone else find this very disturbing, or am I the one who is on crack? It looks like they want to punish people who go to work and reward a neighborhood where a very large percentage of people do not go to work (prostitution and drug dealing don't count as going to work).

I will go to this meeting if possible and report back. This reminds me of a former plan in Toronto, where they wanted to literally bury the Gardiner (the major expressway from the west), so they could plant a lot of nice grass and little trees.

Doug


Shoreway wish list worth $70 million
Hearing aims to pare tab for boulevard
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Tom Breckenridge
Plain Dealer Reporter
City and state planners have big wishes but limited cash to convert the West Shoreway into a lake-friendly boulevard.

Wednesday night, they want you to help them decide how the $50 million project should be laid out.

The city and the Ohio Department of Transportation will roll out eight possible sites for new or improved access along the 2.9 miles of the West Shoreway (Ohio 2) running from West Boulevard to West 25th Street.

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This is the first major transportation project to spin out of the city's lakefront master plan, which seeks to link neighborhoods long blocked from the lakefront by highways and rail lines. Planners, contractors and a 36-member subcommittee have been studying options under what ODOT calls the Cleveland Lakefront West project.

Plans call for converting the 50-mph Shoreway into a 35-mph boulevard with a grass median, a bike-and-hike trail and multiple intersections affording better access to Edgewater Park and other areas.

Removal of highway ramps would yield more green space and pockets of development along the way.

Planners are looking at eight sites to build seven new or improved intersections. That includes a traffic tunnel under the railroad, at West 73rd Street or West 65th Street, to link with Edgewater Park. West 54th Street would meet the boulevard and push north to Division Avenue, affording access to city-owned green space near the Old River Channel, under one option.

ODOT's Craig Hebebrand said a wish list to optimize the seven intersections would cost $70 million, well beyond the budget. So he and city planners want the public to help choose from 20-plus options for the project, which is scheduled to open by late 2011 or early 2012.

Councilman Matt Zone said he's disappointed there's not more money for the work. Engineering and land-acquisition will chew up $10 million, and reconfiguring the ganglion of roads and ramps at West 25th and West 28th streets will cost $15 million more, he estimated.

He favors a traffic tunnel at West 73rd, to leverage the tens of millions of dollars that will be spent at nearby Battery Park, a residential development that's under construction.

"That's one of the most appealing aspects of the plan," Zone said.

Residents can scrutinize the boulevard plans starting at 5:30 p.m. tomorrow at Sagrada Familia Catholic Church, 7719 Detroit Ave. Planners will present them from 6 to 7 p.m. and then take questions.

The plans will be on the Web soon after the meeting, at www.innerbelt.org. Click on the Cleveland Lakefront West link.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

tbreckenridge@plaind.com, 216-999-4695

of course, would it really BE 35mph? Go driving in Chicago, specifically along Lakeshore Drive. There's red lights and intersections through downtown, and then north of downtown it has off-ramps and on-ramps, but while the speed limit is posted at 35mph, most people drive 55mph or higher. And there's a lot of heavy traffic.

I think even if the Shoreway had intersections and posted slower speed limits, people would still zip along, probably at 45mph or higher ... though undoubtedly Cleveland would install some speed cameras, since they love putting those up any route a suburbanite would use to enter the fair city of Cleveland.

Heck, the shoreway is 50mph now ... but I never see anyone going that slow, unless a police car is parked there.

Of course, a big difference between the Shoreway and similar roads in Chicago, Toronto, or elsewhere ... the Shoreway is much shorter. I mean really, how long is it? From the intersection with West Boulevard to hitting the Main Avenue Bridge, it's only a few miles. Is slowing that down, adding a median and some intersections going to be a HUGE disruption?

I estimate it will double commute times from some parts of Lakewood. Maybe doubling your commute time, whatever it is, would not bother you.

If they go through with this plan, it won't be the end of the world for me. I will either work remotely or work somewhere else.

This is besides the point that it is a waste of money...not just Cleveland's money, but money from the State of Ohio, of which Lakewood is a part.

Doug

It sounds like they are aiming at re-civilizing the area through 'attrition'.

It is obvious the 35 mph speed limit won't be followed. It is therefore not necessary to explicitly state that many drug dealers and prostitutes will be hit by cars. So long as the traffic lights are far enough apart for motorists to pick up speed.

Doug

The Shoreway is 3 miles from its begining to West 6th. At 60 MPH (speeding), the drive should take 3 mins. Covering the same distance on the proposed blvd would take 6 mins. Is that the doubling commute time that you refer to, or is there another factor? Even when I take Detroit all the way in from the shoreway intersection, it only adds another 6-8 minutes to the trip.

What am I missing?

Jeff

Personally, I really hope this happens. While I commute downtown via this route every day, I think it will add to the charm and beauty of what I consider already one of the great commute routes in America. I agree with Jeff. It will only add a few minutes.

Having lived in San Francisco for many years and having witnessed what was done to the Embarcadaro area once they converted the double-decker freeway to a boulevard, I can already imagine the value add this new route will make to both Cleveland and Lakewood. I speculate that the homes, apartments and condos between Cove and West Boulevard will become even more desirable. Add in the proposed Clifton Boulevard improvements and this will strengthen considerably the east end of Lakewood.

Another benefit could be it (Shoreway and Clifton Blvd. improvements) will detour (to 90) many of the Rocky River and Bay Village folks that bolt through our town over the Clifton Bridge to/from every day. One just has to stand at the corner of Webb and Lake any week day between 4 and 6 p.m. to witness the speed at which these folks manuever their way through our community without ever stopping to spend a buck.

Jay Foran wrote:.... I speculate that the homes, apartments and condos between Cove and West Boulevard will become even more desirable. ...Add in the proposed Clifton Boulevard improvements and this will strengthen considerably the east end of Lakewood.

Your post says it all.

The changes will add minutes to the commute and hundreds of millions of dollars in potential development for Lakewood and Cleveland.

If the Euclid Corridor Project was a scam to get the Feds to pay for improvements along Euclid, it was a clever idea.

On the other hand, if RTA thinks elliminating two lanes of traffic, elliminating street level parking and having the buses run down the middle of the street will increase business activity they are smoking to much crack.

If ever there was a solution in search of a problem, this is it. Of all the complaints and suggestions I hear about life in the Cleveland area, "let's put stoplights on that damn Shoreway" just never comes up.

More intersections mean either more lights or more opportunities for accidents. If anyone thinks it's going to be a matter of adding 5 minutes to a 5 mile drive, they have obviously never heard of the traffic light....or Cleveland's love of "traffic calming".

It's not much more than 3 miles from the Clifton bridge to the start of the Shoreway, yet that can be a 20 minute ordeal with all the lights. 13, to be exact. I can't imagine you would need any less than 6 on the roughly 65 blocks that comprise the west shoreway. Six miles. 19 stoplights. THEN you can deal with E. 9th or Lakeside or wherever you enter downtown.

If the goal here is yet more $500,000-$2 million lakefront condos (and by gum, that's just what Cleveland needs) which it obviously is, you could put up a lot more by getting rid of that stupid airport.

I'm amazed anyone in Lakewood would support this, because this is FAR more anti-Lakewood than anything that happens in Westlake. While Lakewood would pay the price in longer commute times, the developable land is all in CLEVELAND. Why even bother looking in Lakewood when you can make your commute shorter on a newly-expaned W. 49th?

Most public projects have had the effect of helping you get out of Lakewood faster. This one will try to make sure you never get here in the first place.

In the meantime, one of the things that makes Lakewood desirable, namely its convenience, will become as pleasant as a 5 p.m. drive out on Chester Ave.

What condition were the areas surrounding the location of the shoreway like before the Shoreway was finished?


Was it safe to walk there at night?

I walked threw it one night last year. A 300 pound prostitute solicited me, but no one tried to sell me drugs. They only try to sell me drugs during the day. I passed some kind of Jazz club. Yet when I tried to find it during the day....it had disappeared!

For me, anything that makes Cleveland stronger makes Lakewood stronger, especially at this time in it's lifespan. I'll give them the real estate development and bank on the spillover to our East End.

If Cleveland continues to fail...jobs will continue to move to outerbelt locations (e.g. Rockside, Westlake, 271). Lakewood's proximity and "convenience" is lost.

Jay Foran wrote:For me, anything that makes Cleveland stronger makes Lakewood stronger, especially at this time in it's lifespan. I'll give them the real estate development and bank on the spillover to our East End.

If Cleveland continues to fail...jobs will continue to move to outerbelt locations (e.g. Rockside, Westlake, 271). Lakewood's proximity and "convenience" is lost.

I guess I hang on to the belief that what would make Cleveland, and Lakewood, stronger are more JOBS, as opposed to more luxe townhouses.

And I have nothing agaisnt luxe townhouses. I think we could put a few THOUSAND of them on the land currently being used for what, 5 corporate jets and an annual car race?

The fact that Burke is untouchable, while we're talking about spending tens of millions on a stretch of road that everybody likes is beyond my comprehension.

Compared to the Beck Center, my sense is a lot more people like Lakewood because of the Shoreway. If it's going to take me a half hour to get home, why spend it at stop lights? At least I won't wear out my brakes heading out 90 to Westlake.

This is Cleveland's political muscle vs. the inner-rings' impotence. Westlake has the bucks, Cleveland the political pull. Lakewood has Tom George.

PS to Ryan: The Cleveland Bop Stop doesn't disappear, but it does have limited hours, usually on weekends. The 300 lb prostitute is another story.

the 300 pound prostitute approached me near a Soul Food diner. To be fair she was more around 250.

Within 15 years a majority of the people working downtown will live within 3 miles of downtown Cleveland. Or they will live within a 20 minute walk of existing RTA rail lines going downtown.

Joan Roberts wrote:

Jay Foran wrote:For me, anything that makes Cleveland stronger makes Lakewood stronger, especially at this time in it's lifespan. I'll give them the real estate development and bank on the spillover to our East End.

If Cleveland continues to fail...jobs will continue to move to outerbelt locations (e.g. Rockside, Westlake, 271). Lakewood's proximity and "convenience" is lost.

I guess I hang on to the belief that what would make Cleveland, and Lakewood, stronger are more JOBS, as opposed to more luxe townhouses.

And I have nothing agaisnt luxe townhouses. I think we could put a few THOUSAND of them on the land currently being used for what, 5 corporate jets and an annual car race?

The fact that Burke is untouchable, while we're talking about spending tens of millions on a stretch of road that everybody likes is beyond my comprehension.

Compared to the Beck Center, my sense is a lot more people like Lakewood because of the Shoreway. If it's going to take me a half hour to get home, why spend it at stop lights? At least I won't wear out my brakes heading out 90 to Westlake.

This is Cleveland's political muscle vs. the inner-rings' impotence. Westlake has the bucks, Cleveland the political pull. Lakewood has Tom George.

PS to Ryan: The Cleveland Bop Stop doesn't disappear, but it does have limited hours, usually on weekends. The 300 lb prostitute is another story.

Joan/Jay

I do not buy the notion that Lakewood's future is connected with Cleveland. It is this kind of in-the-box thinking that worries me, and runs against the grain and thought process of VAL. If Cleveland was a manufacturing center this might be true, but those days are gone, and not coming back soon.

It's failure to come to grip with reality might be a huge plus for Lakewood. While kicking public affairs with Ken and others at Bela one night, I was talking about Lakewood annexing part of Cleveland. I thought we should grab all the way to West 44th from the Lake to Madison. These lines were drawn up in my head to grab the water treatment plant, Cleveland Theater, and Vila Zapata's. A guy who joined the conversation Mark, overheard this and laughed saying that Witold Rybczynski had come up with a similar plan for Cleveland back in the 90s. "Suburban Despair -Is urban sprawl really an American menace?"

Where cities like Cleveland that had not annexed around them would collapse, but the suburbs around them could help by annexing their neighborhoods and allowing Cleveland to shrink and regain their density.

So there is at least one rosy picture for Lakewood with Cleveland failing.

But I see Lakewood's future much different than all other cities in the region. We have a tremendous amount of people working out of their homes in Lakewood for companies no longer even in the state of Ohio. Computers and blazing online speed has made trips to the office obsolete. The same internet has made it possible for people to reach out with their home based businesses around the world. Offices like the Lakewood Observer will be commonplace in the future, companies even conglomerates without physical offices.

I have been doing work with a group of graphic artists that have started a new studio about 7 years ago. The evolution of graphic studios I think will mirror new business trends. Huge studios broken up by freelancers and costs, fell apart under the weight of costs, reformed briefly, then opted for networking strategies and costs over bricks and mortar.

We must look to the future, Lakewood's future, not Cleveland's. Lakewood must be framed as different from the "region." Embrace the new business styles, and cater to a world with gas at $6.00 or more a gallon, WiFi faster than fiber optic, and a large majority of the population sitting on their front porches while working. To tie ourselves with Cleveland is like tieing ourselves to a drowning man, and we know how those stories end. Very badly for both.

Cleveland and Regionalism will be the first two words on Lakewood's tombstone if we do not wake up and smell the Phoenix Coffee.



Fly fishing for trout at Coho Point. When the Coho run in the spring watching them work up the rapids is breathtaking.


East bank of the Emerald Canyon displays how it got its name.

FWIW

"in the box thinking"? OUCH!

I agree that Lakewood needs to un-hitch its star from Cleveland's and have said that many times.

(I don't foresee a city of 55,000 eBay sellers, but that's another argument)

It takes a long, long time for an economy to shift around though, and for the time being, the lure of Lakewood is that it's a quick run to downtown. Turn that into a frustrating commute of intersections and stop lights, and you take away one of the city's most crucial selling points.

It's weird, isn't it, that I see this as Big Cleveland Politics and Money screwing Lakewood, and you don't seem to mind. I'm as amped about this as you are about Westlake. Guess it's a role reversal.