A pair of public meetings tonight begin to shape the future for two of Cleveland’s prime destinations: The Flats and University Circle.

First, Ohio Canal Corridor and the City of Cleveland will introduce the Canal Basin District Plan. The focus of the plan is on “connections”—trail, bikeway, public transit and pedestrian boardwalks—to and from a new 21-acre urban park at the last oxbow in the river with major redevelopment activity in the Flats. Canal Basin Park will serve as the destination or jump off point for the Towpath Trail, but beyond that goal, how it integrates with the boardwalk along the river to Flats East Bank and to public spaces in and around the Flats and Cuyahoga Riverfront are still up for discussion.

Going on at the same time, uptown, is the continuation of plans to find a higher purpose for the sea of surface parking lots along Mayfield Road—the main artery connecting Little Italy and University Circle. Last year, an arts and retail village idea was floated along with RTA’s plans to move a Rapid Transit station to Mayfield and E. 119th (from its current location at E. 120th). Tonight’s meeting will introduce the city’s streetscape planning project for this stretch, begin to analyze traffic circulation and set goals to improve pedestrian friendliness.

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This highly interactive meeting is open for all community stakeholders to attend and share their thoughts to kick-off the streetscape planning project along Mayfield Road from the Cleveland city line to Euclid Avenue. A study comissioned UCI, Little Italy Redevelopment Corp. and NOACA will analyze traffic circulation, improve pedestrian-friendliness, investigate development opportunities and enhance the quality of life within the Mayfield Road Corridor.

This first community meeting will focus on understanding the Mayfield Road Corridor district, and the purpose of this meeting will be to inform the community about this TLCI process, stimulate thinking about issues and opportunities within the study area and engage in meaningful discussions with stakeholders about their goals, priorities and ideas.

For more information on getting to University Circle, please visit the “Get Here” page at www.universitycircle.org. If you have any questions, please contact Chris Bongorno at 216-791-3900.

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The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority invites you to participate in a community meeting to review preliminary station designs for its $10 million upgrade and renovation of the Cedar-University Rapid Transit Station.

GCRTA’s primary goal is to make the Cedar-University Rapid Station integral to the community by maximizing its connection with area neighborhoods and ensuring that the station is designed with your input in mind.

 RSVP to Emily Baunach at BrownFlynn (440-484-0100, Ext. 210 or emilyb@brownflynn.com)

• After decades of pulling up the drawbridge, University Circle’s big institutions—Cleveland Clinic, Case, University Hospitals, Cleveland Museum of Art, Judson—want to be better neighbors. The Greater Circle Living initiative will give full-time employees up to $10,000 to buy a home in an adjacent neighborhood. And the Cleveland Foundation is kicking in $5,000 for full-time employees of a non-profit institution in University Circle. Read more.
• Kenston High School’s Envirothon academic club collected enough wind velocity data from an anemometer installed on top of a giant cell tower to propose at a recent school board meeting that the district build a wind turbine that would generate twice the renewable energy as the 225 kW wind turbine at the Great Lakes Science Center.

  With world-wide demand for turbines creating a two-year waiting list, more of these homegrown projects will make the case for a local wind turbine manufacturer. Read more.

• “The soaring price of gas is helping jump start a transportation revolution in Columbus, and we are proud to promote biking as an alternative to the automobile for commuters as well as recreation,” said Columbus Mayor Coleman, unveiling the city’s Bicentennial Bikeways Plan during Bike-to-Work-Week. “We’ve committed $20 million by 2012, and are looking to making biking a safer, easier way to get around Columbus’ neighborhoods and to jobs and activities downtown.”

  Similar to Cleveland’s $13 million carve out for bicycling amenities in its five-year capital budget, the biggest difference is Columbus’ plan has clearly stated goals:

  
  

• Cleveland Botanical Garden and Kent State University will unveil a collaborative partnership exploring the potential of liquid crystal technology for creating more sustainable, energy-efficient greenhouses tomorrow at 10 am. Two greenhouses located in front of the Garden on Wade Oval will be used to begin the experiment. 
• From Cleveland Restoration Society: Robert C. Gaede, FAIA, November 6, 1920 - April 16, 2008. Cleveland has lost its "senior statesman" for historic preservation with the death of Bob Gaede. He was a founding member and an Honorary Life Trustee of the Cleveland Restoration Society and served as editor of its publication, Facade, for nearly three decades. Bob saved many endangered landmarks through his engaging prose and kind demeanor, always backed by solid architectural ideas and hand-drawn illustrations. He built a successful practice in architecture, both new design and historic rehabilitation. He volunteered extensively at nonprofit organizations and under-funded preservation causes. A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m.
  
  

Cleveland expects to benefit from its affiliation with an international effort to promote sustainability when it became only the second city in the nation (after San Francisco) to sign the UN Global Compact. The Compact commits the city to a set of principles that balances social and environmental equity with economic development. Cleveland joins hundreds of businesses and institutions, including Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic, which also signed the Compact this past Earth Day.

Case’s Business as an Agent of World Benefit (BAWB) gathered Northeast Ohio’s sustainability leaders last October to discuss the Compact as an avenue to focus the region on clear action plans.

“We’d like a network of companies to join the compact, and to be the first region to participate and connect with its global standards,” Cuyahoga County Planning Commission director Paul Alsenas said at the event.

Following on the heels of Cleveland signing, Cuyahoga County is expected to become a member in the near future.

BAWB’s connection to the UNGC staff in the U.S.—particularly Professor David Cooperrider, who helped to facilitate previous UN conferences on sustainability —has helped Case become one of the centers for spreading the compact in North America. BAWB/Case was officially named as the Secretariat for the UNGC for the US.

Ante Glavas, director of BAWB, is hoping to springboard off the recent announcements to convince more companies from our region to sign on to the Compact. Local companies that have already signed the compact include Fairmount Minerals and Brown Flynn.

Upper Chester is a 100-acre development that aims to restore vitality to part of Cleveland’s Hough neighborhood that sits at a crucial juncture in University Circle, between the Cleveland Clinic and Case’s proposed West Quad research campus at E. 105th Street. Plans call for 840 units of new housing, plus 80,000 square feet of neighborhood commercial and retail space. The Finch Group and Heartland Developers of Cleveland plan to break ground on the first building in the complex in about a year, the Plain Dealer reported in March, 2008.

Combining living spaces and stores supplying everyday necessities within walking and biking distance of University Circle’s top medical and cultural institutions will be a boon for the area. What’s more, Upper Chester is one of three pilot sustainable urban neighborhood design projects under the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED program.

What this translates into is green buildings in a setting that feels comfortable and accessible as a pedestrian without being gated or disconnected from the city grid. In fact, the LEED project manager, Lillian Kuri, is working with the city of Cleveland and City Architecture on making Upper Chester and the surrounding blocks into a green design district. When approved, the district will ensure that the green features in the LEED development reach into the surrounding neighborhood.

A few examples of details that Kuri would like to see in Upper Chester:

In a sign that transit-oriented development is coming of age in Cleveland, University Circle officials are making progress in their push to get RTA to relocate the E. 120th Street Rapid station to Mayfield Road. The move would significantly raise the value and buzz around a proposal to convert a collection of surface lots into a condo/retail development in the heart of University Circle's Uptown district, they argue. Read more.

University Circle arts transit village district update 5-24-07

	Click on images to enlarge

Figuring out where to put RTA’s Red Line train station platform and entrances – either by the bridge between Little Italy and University Circle or even accessible from the lobby of a new condo/retail development proposed for a vacant lot on the corner of Mayfield and the red brick-lined E. 117th – is the first domino shell in planning the eight-acre site between Mayfield, Euclid and the train tracks.

The other option is to maintain the platform at its current location on the border of East Cleveland at E. 120th, but the planners and mostly University Circle stakeholders at the latest round of planning meetings generally oppose such a move (some, however, did voice concerns about ‘disenfranchising’ a small residential area including Wade Park Estates). Moving the station to Mayfield Road brings it closer to the center of activity in University Circle, said University Circle, Inc. (UCI) planning director Bob Reeves, and that allows more students, faculty, and visitors coming from downtown or the airport to take transit and walk to many more destinations.