There isn’t much to see these days on Dock 32 north of Huntington Bank Field, home of the Cleveland Browns, except for thousands of usually empty parking spaces speckled with seagull droppings.
But Scott Skinner, the executive director of Cleveland’s nonprofit North Coast Waterfront Development Corp., envisions big possibilities for the area, which commands sweeping views of the skyline, Lake Erie and the historic William G. Mather steamship, now a floating museum.
“You can see a world in which this is active space used by residents of Cleveland, as well as folks from across the region and country, to stay in a hotel, to enjoy food and beverage opportunities, to live in an apartment, to enjoy public space,’’ Skinner said during a recent visit to the site.
A veteran real estate developer, Skinner is part of a team of public officials and stakeholders spearheading a planned $447 million transformation of the downtown lakefront.
Construction on major pieces of public infrastructure, including a revamp of the Ohio 2 Shoreway, is scheduled to kick off in 2027. The first phase of work will cost $284 million, of which $150 million in federal and state money has been committed. Construction must start by 2027 because it’s the deadline to start using the federal money, Skinner said.
Big opportunity
After numerous failed attempts over the past century, the city’s new effort is the biggest opportunity in decades to redefine the look and feel of underused parts of the lakefront, which consists of landfill built during the 20th century.
The work is needed because lakefront attractions built in the 1990s, including the football stadium, the Great Lakes Science Center and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, are isolated and poorly connected to the rest of downtown. Despite heavy public investment in the attractions, scant private development has cropped up around them.
The most promising parts of the city’s vision, developed over the past three years, call for lush new landscaping and public spaces close to the lake that could trigger the development of housing, hotels, restaurants and more.
Other parts of the plan are still hazy, including for critically important infrastructure on 15 acres between downtown and the lakefront, where the Shoreway would be revamped. This is where improved bike and pedestrian connections are needed, and where a multi-modal transit hub is proposed.
Jeff Sleasman, the senior director of research at the Fund for Our Economic Future and a member of the city’s oversight committee for Complete and Green Streets, said the design of this in-between area “can make or break’’ the city's lakefront project.
“You can do great things on the lakefront, but if you have this moat in between, it’s really going to depress the possibilities,’’ he said.
With the 2027 construction deadline looming, it’s urgent to resolve the “moat” and other unfinished details as soon as possible, with the same degree of public participation included in earlier rounds of lakefront planning.
It probably hasn’t helped that for more than a year, public attention has focused on whether Jimmy and Dee Haslam, co-owners of the Browns, will move the team from the open-air stadium on the lakefront to a proposed new covered stadium in suburban Brook Park, about 10 miles southwest of downtown.
The city hasn’t been idle while the Browns issue remains unresolved. It launched the waterfront development corporation and hired Skinner a year ago. His work has included consolidating a confusing patchwork of city-owned parcels, making it easier to sign a long-term lease with a developer.
But what happens in the next phase of planning will determine whether the city can deliver on the lofty visions developed so far. A lot needs to happen, soon.
Where things stand
The work scheduled to start in 2027 will include construction of the 1,800-foot-long North Coast Connector, also called a “land bridge,” that will extend north from the downtown Mall, across rail lines and the Shoreway to Dock 32. The Mall is the three-block-long public space north of Rockwell Avenue that’s framed by government and civic buildings including City Hall and Public Auditorium.
The city also plans to tear down the elevated Main Avenue Bridge ramp, a part of the Shoreway south and west of the stadium that separates the Warehouse District from the waterfront.
Between West Third Street and East 12th Street, the Shoreway would become a 35 mile-per-hour boulevard instead of the 55-mile-per-hour highway it is today. The idea is to make it an attractive entry to redeveloped areas north of the stadium, where the Browns’ lease expires at the end of the 2028 season.
Ironically, given their interest in moving to Brook Park, it was the Haslams who spurred the city’s work on the lakefront in 2021 by spending $1 million to develop an early proposal for the land bridge connecting the Mall to the stadium and areas beyond.
The city responded quickly by launching a $5 million traffic study to explore the feasibility of the Haslam proposal. The city split the cost with the Ohio Department of Transportation. NOACA, the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, also took part.
In addition, the city spent more than $750,000 to develop plans for new parks, public spaces and development sites east and north of the stadium. Field Operations, the New York-based landscape architecture firm that designed the $50 million renovation of Public Square in 2016, led that work, which included extensive public participation.
While that planning was underway, the Haslams began exploring whether to build a new covered stadium in Brook Park on the 176-acre former site of a Ford engine plant near Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.
The Haslams now say they’ll pay for half of the estimated $2.4 billion cost of the Brook Park stadium and that the public should pay for the rest. The Ohio Legislature will decide by June 30 whether to provide $600 million funded through bonds or other sources.
The Haslams also want Cuyahoga County to borrow another $600 million. Under that scenario, the county would provide $178 million in county hotel and car rental taxes, and Brook Park would come up with $422 million from taxes on project-related admissions, parking, development and employment and business income. County Executive Chris Ronayne strongly opposes the Brook Park move, as does Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, who has offered $461 million to keep the team downtown.
Moving forward with or without the team
Whatever the team decides, the city’s work on the lakefront is going ahead, Skinner said.
“With or without the stadium, we are developing Cleveland’s downtown lakefront,’’ he said. “That is happening.’’
Bibb, answering a question during his State of the City conversation at Public Auditorium Wednesday, agreed with Skinner.
"Hell or high water, we are going to develop a world class lakefront that our residents can be proud of, once and for all," he said.
Of course, they're right. The Haslams’ Brook Park gambit shouldn’t block the city's lakefront ambitions. That’s especially true now that construction money is available.
The state has kicked in $20 million. Two grants of $60 million and $70 million were awarded by the U.S. Department of Transportation last year and early in January, respectively. The money isn’t yet in the city’s hands, but Skinner said it’s unlikely to be withdrawn through cost-cutting now underway across the federal government.
“Every single indication we have is that the money that we've raised is solid,’’ he said. “We're moving forward with grant agreements with the U.S. Department of Transportation.’’
A renovation of the lakefront stadium, built in 1997, could still be included in the city’s plans if the Browns stay. In that event, the waterfront transformation could move ahead more quickly, Skinner said. But if the team leaves, the stadium land could be redeveloped along with the acreage to the north.
Improving the vision
The big issue now is achieving shovel-ready status by 2027. Field Operations designs for new public spaces and development parcels north of the stadium are roughly 90% complete, Skinner said. They’ve received plenty of public attention and enthusiastic feedback.
That’s much less true of the Shoreway zone, which is now dominated by highway lanes and ramps, parking lots and a dated-looking Amtrak station.
Plans for that portion of the lakefront are close to 30% complete, Skinner said. They were developed by Osborn, the Cleveland engineering firm that led the earlier traffic feasibility study.
Conceptual designs for the land bridge, which would cross over the Shoreway, show that the structure’s top level could be a beautiful extension of the Mall, curving north past the stadium before descending toward the lake with a grand staircase.
But the structure will also include 900 parking spaces in a new garage below it. Without great care, it could look at street level like a gigantic back door entry to the lakefront, not the welcoming point of arrival it should be. The same could be true of the Shoreway and existing bridges over West Third and East Ninth streets, which are awful places to walk or ride a bike. They need at least to be modified.
The city will soon issue two requests for qualifications to address the unfinished details. One will seek an owner's representative and the other will seek a design-builder. It’s crunch time, and staffers know it.
“We need to continue to work to ensure that the design is as good as it can be,’’ said Jeff Epstein, the city’s chief of integrated development. “This will be a major focus of our work going forward.’’
What’s next
To get ready for 2027, the city and the North Coast development corporation are taking numerous other steps. They include:
- Creating “North Coast Yard,’’ a pop-up activation of the waterside parking lot north of the stadium starting in early June with roller skating performances and other scheduled events. Temporary improvements will include a waterside viewing deck and areas for outdoor games and other activities.
- Seeking a developer for the area north of the stadium to test the market’s willingness to invest. Skinner’s organization will soon issue a request for qualifications from companies interested in building housing, hotels and retail spaces.
- Writing bylaws for the city’s New Community Authority, a public entity authorized by state law to collect fees and taxes within a specific geography, in this case the lakefront, to defray bonds that could help pay for infrastructure needed to spur development.
- Seeking additional construction funds, possibly through a federal loan through the TIFIA program, short for Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act.
On top of all these tasks, the city needs to reach out to the public again to gather feedback as its designs continue to develop. Visibility will help ensure the best results. This is no time to blow a once-in-a-century opportunity.
