• Cleveland has more in common with Eastern Europe than we assumed. Tremont residents Phil Pavarinni, Jr. and Ohio Citizen Action Cleveland Area Program Director Liz Ilg will meet with representatives from five different countries that all have a Mittal Steel plant as neighbors in Luxembourg on May 12, to plan for an international effort to get Mittal to clean up. They’re networking with CEE Bankwatch (Croatia), Environment Hamilton (Canada), GroundWork (South Africa), GARDE programme of Environmental Law Service (Czech Republic), Friends of the Earth Luxembourg, Karaganda EcoMuseum (Kazakhstan), National Ecological Center of Ukraine, Solidarity ArcelorMittal Poland, Steel Valley Crisis Committee (South Africa), and Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance (South Africa).

  Ohio Citizen Action will release a documentary on Mittal Steel and Cleveland at the Museum of Contemporary Art (8501 Carnegie Ave.) on Friday June 6 at 7 pm.

  
  

How do we best soften the impact that the Innerbelt will have on downtown Cleveland? The Innerbelt Trench—with its new frontage roads above—and all of the ramps and overpasses will measure 15 lanes of concrete wide as it enters downtown. The area between Tri-C and CSU could be an innovation zone or a dead zone, Hunter Morrison argues. He was part of a small invited group wrestling with the question of how to invest $25 million in urban design funds to heal what will surely look like a scar in the urban landscape. Read more.

ODOT invited small stakeholder groups to generate ideas on how to slice up the $25 million urban design budget set aside from the $1.5 billion Innerbelt Project with the goal of improving the connections to and identity of Cleveland and its neighborhoods.

On May 8, 2007, I sat in at City Architecture, which is running the meetings, while a small group wrestled over how to best invest this relatively small sum. Should it be spent on a few sensory ‘moments’ of public art, parks, trails, lighting, or one big bang project such as creating a land bridge that hides the scar on the urban fabric caused by the highway?

Hunter Morrison, ex-Cleveland Planning Director now urban design consultant for the Quadrangle and Tri-C, spent considerable time arguing for a land bridge spanning E. 22nd to E. 24th streets.

“It could restore the urban fabric between Tri-C and Cleveland State…create an innovation zone where a ten minute walk between places isn’t out of the ordinary.” ODOT already plans to build a bridge at E. 22nd , he added. A land cap might reestablish the street grid, even if it does eat up the entire urban design budget.

ODOT provided $2 million for the Columbus land cap, with private developers paying for the majority. A land-cap would make sense if it gave Tri-C, the city and developers enough incentive to build real estate, said City Architecture head Paul Volpe.

The Central Interchange—with the Trench, the I-77 overpass and the new frontage roads—will create about 15 lanes of road, said EcoCity Cleveland director David Beach. That’s more concrete than we have now, running the risk of creating a dead zone if not planned properly. “Despite all the decorative concrete and lighting, we could end up with the same sterile environment they have around the trench and frontage roads in Cincinnati.”

Each of the 24 buildings that made the short list for the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Innerbelt Project has its story to tell. A group of local history detectives filled in the details and, along the way, discovered a tale of a city that effectively drove itself out of business.

The tattered fragments of Cleveland’s once-bustling factory neighborhoods are, once again, in the path of the Innerbelt. The process to save them means arming citizens with knowledge of how to preserve history, and how to advocate for alternatives to the federal bulldozer.

Engine Company No. 8 at 2599 Scranton Road (CUY-626-4)

The Ferry Cap & Set Screw Company building at 2151 Scranton Avenue

Distribution Terminal Warehouse at 2000 W. 14th Street (CUY-7999-2)

Broadway Mills at 300 Central Viaduct (CUY-722-2)

The Marathon Gas Station at 300 Central Viaduct

The King-Otis Cleveland Mounted Police Stables at 1150 E. 38th Street (CUY-8000-5)