The lower Cuyahoga Valley helped Greater Cleveland become one of the most important industrial centers in the world. The Cuyahoga Valley Initiative (CVI) is a large-scale vision to restore the economy, river, culture, and community of the Cuyahoga Valley, especially in the 75-square miles in and surrounding the ship channel.

In 2004, The Cuyahoga County Planning Commission and its many partners and collaborators embarked on a historic effort to transform a valley whose image reflects its industrial past. Sustainability is one of the guiding principles at work in the CVI project. For example, one of the pilot projects developed by world-renowned sustainability think tank Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) and their local partner Entrepreneurs for Sustainability calls for a Regenerative Development Zone for the Tre-Gate area near Tremont.

It could be a laboratory for ecological restoration and fresh ways of doing business... to demonstrate ways to weave industry and nature together, consolidate industrial facilities, assemble parcels to make land available for development, return buried watercourses to the earth's surface, test ways for businesses to share resources, develop green buildings, create new pollution-mitigation and industrial clean-up businesses, and demonstrate clean energy technologies and systems, according to RMI.

This eco-industrial park or industrial symbiosis caught the interest of local business, RMI adds. It could be a national model for lean manufacturing and spur economic development in the valley.

Resources:

• Cuyahoga Valley Initiative
• Rocky Mountain Institute's Regenerating the Cuyahoga Valley report