HUD officials were in town last week explaining how Greater Cleveland could tap into a $150 million Sustainable Communities Initiative for walkable, affordable, green and transit-accessible development at a regional scale. But does the program’s requirement that metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) receive the funds put Northeast Ohio behind the proverbial 8-ball?

Unless the feds decide to change the rules, the only shot we would have is NOACA, the region’s transportation MPO. That didn’t sit well with city of Cleveland officials, who note that the region and NOACA in particular have a dismal track record coordinating regional land-use and transportation planning.

“Sustainability in regional plans tend to get watered down,” remarked Cleveland Planning Director Bob Brown. “NOACA’s policies are so broad, they can justify most projects, even those that induce sprawl. I think a plan that strengthens the urban core and doesn’t have to please so many constituents would work better.”

Applicants would have to explain why regional partners are not involved, said Dwayne Marsh, HUD Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities. Otherwise, Cleveland would have to wait and see if it can apply to HUD’s Catalytic Grant program – a proposed portion of the Senate $4 billion Livable Communities Act -- geared to strengthening the urban core.

“For (the federal government) to be in a dialogue about enhancing economic competitiveness through environmental and housing concerns is a break through,” Marsh said. “The vision is for opportunity-rich neighborhoods, free from discrimination. As (HUD) Secretary Donovan says, ‘sustainability without equity is not sustainable.’”

A narrative tells a lot, not only ordering what has happened prior, but also relating things in a way to portend what could enfold.  Given recent positive events, perhaps it's time to re-visit how the argument for a bike-ped path has evolved, and then to a larger extent: in what kind of context did this particular issue’s evolution play out.

We will begin in and around 2005 during which time public concern was growing that ODOT was not listening to community input regarding design of the Innerbelt.  In a letter dated late 2005 to ODOT, the late Congresswoman Tubbs-Jones states she has worries that constituent issues are not being addressed, and that the “bridge proposal cannot and should not be considered a done deal”. Echoing her sentiments, Congressman Kucinich, in a letter dated July 2006 says there is little documentation to the effect of why ODOT is leaning to one particular bridge or another. Further, Kucinich bemoans the logic previously given that “the public can’t be provided with…technical documentation because ODOT is too busy listening to the public”.

In his State of the City address last week, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson detailed his plans to use sustainability as an economic engine, and a hoped for path out of poverty. Jackson—who convened 700 people to create a vision for a sustainable city last summer at the inaugural Sustainable Cleveland 2019 summit—started to spell out how he is implementing his green agenda.

Most notable from a green jobs standpoint, Jackson announced plans to bring Chinese LED-light manufacturer Sunpu-Opto’s American headquarters to Cleveland, which he expects to create up to 350 jobs. The business community usually define sustainability as producing economic, social, and environmental or ‘triple-bottom-line’ outcomes, and so the city has created a sustainable business model directing its municipal-owned utility, Cleveland Public Power, to be Sunpu-Opto’s first customer.

“The project would create an LED streetlight design for Cleveland, help reduce the City’s $12 million streetlight bill and help create a city-wide energy conservation program for homes and businesses,” the mayor said.

It is noteworthy that it took a Chinese manufacturer to get the deal done considering the Cleveland presence of GE Lighting and other LED makers, such as TCP in Aurora.

Sometimes, negotiation means chipping away around the edges of another party’s argument—or in the case of ODOT, of circumventing the last word of the bridge-building body by questioning the legitimacy of their reasons for no. Of course the number one reason for no to the addition of a multi-use path on the Innerbelt was that they didn’t have time: no time to add an addendum, no time to amend documents, no time to alter the environmental impact statement. But as we have come to find out from this and this letter, they do have time. We know this because our elected reps asked the feds whether it was true or not that if Clevelanders demanded infrastructure that coincided with federal goals of sustainable development, that we would be punished—stripped in fact of the $85 million American Recovery and Reinvestment Funds that would go to the financing of our bridge. And the answer they got was encouraging. As Sen. Brown’s letter to Gov. Strickland states: “…it is my understanding that…it would be possible to undertake the proper environmental and logistical studies without losing ARRA funding”.

That said, as we continue to chip we got to keep in mind that this is not an “us vs. them” process, as we risk, then, the situation devolving into something a lot smaller than what is at stake here.

In its Feb. 15 edition, The Nation describes Ohio as the Saudi Arabia of ‘grey power’. That’s quite a striking statement, and absolutely true considering 145 to 285 megawatts of grey power—“the massive bank account of steam and energy that could be used to generate electricity”—is coughed into the biosphere every day from hundreds of old line manufacturers. That's the equivalent of a new coal-fired power plant. 

At this week’s CSU Levin College Forum, “Distributed Generation and Industrial Energy: Reducing Costs, Increasing Efficiency” panelists looked at the barriers and opportunities to scale up grey and green power in Ohio. Since the state approved an Advanced Energy Portfolio Standard – mandating that power producers ramp up sourcing of green and possibly grey power (and increase their efficiency) to 25% by the year 2025 – new opportunities for individuals and business have come on line. For example, Senate Bill 221 authorized businesses to apply for “special contracts” to produce their own power and sell it back to the grid (in the past, only utilities could make requests of the state).

The trouble is, navigating the regulatory and financial aspects of setting up, say, a wind turbine or solar array on an industrial property is “daunting” because industry is stretched thin, says Sam Randazzo, general counsel for the Industrial Energy Users of Ohio.

U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) wrote to Governor Ted Strickland (D-OH) today urging him to include a bicycle and pedestrian path in construction plans for the replacement Innerbelt Bridge in downtown Cleveland. The project, recently described as “Ohio's largest single infrastructure project ever,” will be partially funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).

“With a strong and growing bicycling community in Cleveland, a sizeable carless population, and new development in nearby neighborhoods, it would be penny-wise and pound-foolish to build this bridge with only cars and trucks in mind,” wrote Sen. Brown. “We can only do this project once, and it is critical we do it right.”

Brown praised the work of the Ohio Department of Transportation under Gov. Strickland’s administration, noting its unprecedented approach to supporting different modes of transportation.

Brown has been an outspoken advocate for diversifying forms of transportation in Ohio. In October 2009, Sen. Brown led a bipartisan group of 14 members of the Ohio Delegation in sending a letter to the Department of Transportation, urging that Ohio be strongly considered for funds to develop passenger rail corridor across the state. In January, Ohio was awarded more than $400 million in funds to expand high speed rail lines connecting Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, and Dayton.

Full text of Sen. Brown's letter to the governor can be found here.

On Tuesday, March 9 Brooklyn Centre Naturalists and Friends of Big Creek will join forces to bring the NEO community a mini-symposium called “Putting the 'U' in Urban Watershed Stewardship”. Usually, when we talk about urban watershed issues, we look at the big picture, but at this symposium, FOBC and BCN have decided to explore how an individual can impact our Greater Cleveland watershed in a positive way by action and deed.

The topics discussed will include storm water management, creating healthy backyard and public environments for wildlife through the use of native plants and organic gardening practices, and an understanding of how water quality can be improved through individual action.

Brooklyn Centre Naturalists received one of 58 grants awarded by Reimagining Greater Cleveland: Vacant Land Reuse Project.This project is a collaboration between the City of Cleveland Community Development Department and Neighborhood Progress, Inc. with technical assistance from The Ohio State Extension Service and ParkWorks.

• On February 23rd ODOT and the City Planning Department held a public meeting to discuss the latest updates on Lakefront West—a project that is supposed to finally mesh the West Side’s lakefront back into the city fabric. While there are plusses to the project (e.g., a multi-use path) the negatives are nevertheless real, and include not just a watering down of the project’s essence: to create access to the waterfront, but—more generally—include flaws in the way decisions are made in the implementation of sound urban design. Click here for a full GCBL report.
• Cleveland-based artist Corrie Slawson is part of a small, yet growing number of folks showcasing the absence of vacancy as the potential of space. Her SpaceLab-sponsored project Work Party 118 was recently given spec by Scene magazine. Read the article. See her work. Because this is the kind of stuff that is part of the future of urban planning and design—at least for us Clevelanders that are forced to rework with the abandonment left to us. But I guess it beats having no space left to do anything innovative, eh?
• Pop Up City is back with a show…tomorrow! It is cold out. It is dark out. It is Cleveland. What to do? Sip. Listen. Dance. Play. Make fire and eat meat. What else? The event will be held at Hart Crane Memorial Park at the corner of Merwin and Columbus

The $100 million federal Sustainable Communities Program seeks to reward regions that coordinate land-use, transportation and fair housing and tie plans to meaningful metrics, such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions. EPA, HUD and DOT are hosting a series of listening sessions – Cleveland is one of only six cities on the national tour, on March 10 – to establish criteria for funding regional sustainable development plans. Digging into the background paper, it appears the Sustainable Communities Initiative is looking at regions that are

1) willing to work on a plan that innovates around land-transportation-housing
2) has a plan that needs implementation; or
3) leads the nation in implementation, but want to be even more awesomely sustainable.

Which category does Northeast Ohio fall into? At first blush, we appear to be in category one. Northeast Ohio is relatively behind the curve on regional planning that links sustainable land use, transportation and housing. The Euclid Corridor might be the only clear example of a “corridor transit-oriented development plan” – RTA and Midtown Cleveland have been marketing their properties in Euclid Corridor as a TOD opportunity, and their plan for a mixed-use district from E. 55th to the Cleveland Clinic but it stalled with the recession. 

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) met yesterday with members of the Cleveland Planning Commission, including director Robert Brown, to discuss the path forward to ensure that plans to replace the I-90 Innerbelt bridge include a separate roadway for bikes and pedestrians. “The State of Ohio should be encouraging opportunities for the people of Cleveland to cross the Cuyahoga River in a way that is good for public health, good for the environment, good for businesses, and good for communities,” Kucinich said.

The meeting centered on an effort that the Planning Commission endorsed in February for ODOT to include alternative designs in its bid packages which are due back March 23. Commissioner Lillian Kuri said ODOT’s response that this is too late to amend an environmental statement is bureaucratic runaround.

“ODOT at its meeting with its bidders admitted there will be many amendments and adjustments to the environmental statement. They said the same thing before we got the bike and pedestrian promenade on the Detroit-Superior Bridge. We don’t want to stop the project. We simply want them to authorize the firms to submit two bids, one with the path and one without.”

Kucinich’s legal counsel Marty Gelfand promised to contact the Federal Highway Administration to confirm that including an alternative bid would not delay the process.

“Federal highway already has standards (for a bike and pedestrian path on a bridge),” confirmed Cleveland Planning staffer, Marty Cader.

“I think firms would relish the opportunity because it’s a significant span,” said Commission Chair Tony Coyne.