Lake Metroparks broke ground on a walking and biking trail that will eventually stretch two and a half miles along Lake Erie.
The trail will begin at the Painesville Township Park and stretch west, directly along the shoreline, toward Fairport Harbor Lakefront Park.
The project is meant to help reconnect Lake County residents to a waterfront that’s historically been reserved for industrial use, said Lake Metroparks Executive Director Paul Palagyi.
“It's an opportunity to really get people to access the water,” he said. “We have six different lakefront parks, which are all different or have a little different nuance to them, but we feel it's very important to give people of Lake County that opportunity.”
Phase one, the first half mile of the trail, is expected to be completed and open to the public by October, Palagyi said. An additional portion of the trail will be on a permanent easement on land owned by Kurtz Brothers Inc. That means Kurtz Brothers still owns the land, but Lake County has permission to use it as a park.
Lake Metroparks is also talking with Glenn Springs Holdings Inc., land owners of a property that formerly housed the Diamond Shamrock Chemical Plant, about possible plans to extend the trail and create parking lots with additional green space, Palagyi said.
“We're talking with them about donating the easement or the donation of the land so that we can build the trail,” he said. “Nothing's finished yet, but they've been very cooperative and very positive about the idea.”
Glenn Springs' Diamond Shamrock site was a former brownfield that took years to clean up, Palagyi said. The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency led the cleanup efforts and deemed the area safe for use before the project went underway.
“We've always depended on EPA and said, ‘OK EPA, you tell us when it's safe and what's safe to do,’” he said. “EPA believes this is a very positive project — a great way to see what has taken a long time to clean up is now clean, and seeing it get back use is really a nice victory for everybody.”
While there are other lakefront paths in the area, many of them are directly on the shoreline for a portion of the path before veering off inland, Palagyi said. This lakefront trail will be the longest in the county that is directly along Lake Erie.
“Trying to find ways to help people engage with that lakeshore when so much of it has been in private hands for so long, which is fine, it's just not publicly accessible,” Palagyi said. “So, being able to take two miles and turn it into a publicly accessible area is pretty outstanding. You don't see that often.”
Some places have longer trails, but they're not directly on the lakeshore. They'll go for a while along the lakeshore, then they'll go in two blocks and over six blocks and come back up to the trail. Or they're a shared highway or a roadway.Paul Palagyi, Lake County Metroparks Executive Director
The trail will also connect Lake County residents and visitors with nature.
Painesville Township Park is already a destination for migratory species like raptors, eagles and monarch butterflies looking to rest and find food after the long flight across the lake, Palagyi said. With that in mind, the Lake Metroparks plans feature diverse plants to serve as many species as possible.
“Everything that we're looking at doing in the future is to add more habitat, diversify the plant species, mix in things like milkweed, which the monarchs really need, and a diversity of flowers so that you don't have of what's called a monoculture,” Palagyi said. “You don't want to have one type of plant because it only blooms at one time and it only provides certain things to certain species.”
It's very important to have habitat for them where they can safely rest, fuel up, feed. And the monarch butterflies right now will catch this little bit of a northerly breeze.Paul Palagyi, Lake County Metroparks Executive Director
The path likely won’t succumb to erosion due to armored walls along the shoreline that use different styles of concrete blocks to ensure protection, including boulders, cut stones and dolos, which are wave breakers shaped like toy jacks.
“When Lake Erie was hitting its record-high lake levels in 2019, there were erosion problems all along the lake. This area was so well armored, it didn't suffer any problems,” Palagyi said. We're fortunate that we're able to build the trail right behind an existing armored wall.”
After the first half mile of the trail is complete, the team will focus on an 800-foot stretch of the lakefront that isn’t armored. It will build up an eight-foot erosion wall to ensure the trail will be safe for long-term use before constructing the rest of the trail, according to the park.
