Hotel Bruce

This issue of Hotel Bruce presents a potential Glenville drawn by idealistic urban planners, green space visionaries and nonprofit civic activists. Futurists all, its authors write about Dike 14 as a birder’s paradise, about building a series of “counter-cultural” gardens, about reinvigorating E. 105th and St. Clair as an RTA hub, about recreating Charles H. Lake Elementary School as a green “Greenville Elementary”—all in all, an impressive exercise in optimism.

I wish the future of Glenville, Cleveland, Greater Cleveland, and Northeast Ohio was so unabashedly assured. I wish transforming urban neighborhoods like Glenville into anything approaching Hotel Bruce’s 21st-century new urban-main street vision was unencumbered by present economic reality.

The present no longer resembles the past. Glenville began as a picturesque collection of orchards, nurseries and farms bought up by Cleveland’s moneyed class in the late 19th century for their own estates. After adding their own touches of noblesse oblige, the extravagantly wealthy ceded much of it to the city (hence Gordon and Rockefeller Parks), moved out to Bratenahl and points east, and the middle class moved in.

With no freeway to truncate it, Glenville extended gracefully from University Circle to Lake Erie. The Cultural Gardens were dedicated as living testaments to Cleveland’s ethnic diversity, tolerance and yearning for world peace. Glenville High School was one of the best urban public schools in the state, and East 105th was a bustling commercial center.

What’s responsible for Glenville’s slide from middle-class industriousness to working-poor impoverishment? The story of Glenville is the story of Cleveland.

We know most of it: the post-WWII decline in Cleveland’s system of public transportation and the movement toward suburban sprawl; the block busting, red-lining and civil unrest; the erosion of Cleveland’s school system; the decline in manufacturing and attendant support industries and services; the over-emphasis on big-box development over neighborhood revitalization; the e-bubble recession and post-9/11 setbacks.

The way to revitalize Glenville is to deal directly with the issues at hand. What Glenville’s current residents need (apart from a local supermarket) are increased living-wage job opportunities, better city-service delivery and safe streets. Attracting new residents demands more retail and service establishments, fresh and/or restored housing stock, and irrefutable evidence of a resuscitated public school system. To further much-needed commercial development, small businesses and entrepreneurship must be encouraged in every possible way.

This demands collaborative effort. In Hotel Bruce’s feature article on highest, best land use of E. 105th Street, successful commercial development seems currently at loggerheads with the parking needs of the street’s many churches. The conflict seems irreconcilable.

But this need not be so: on those six days other than Sunday, the churches can encourage business formation on the very land they occupy and own. They can empower an ecumenical, entrepreneurial partnership to create neighborhood-based businesses to express a faith-based outlook while improving Glenville’s economy. If these businesses succeed, the parking issue will be worked out—perhaps a healthy Business Improvement District (BID) will guarantee its members’ nearby lots for Sunday church parking.

Also key to redevelopment is a more efficient use of Glenville’s existing natural assets. Glenville’s greatest resource is Rockefeller Park, Glenville’s glen. The park was designed to be Cleveland’s Central Park. If the park can once again be perceived as accessible and safe, Glenville’s economic redevelopment will take a giant leap forward.

Even now, Glenville’s most prestigious residential area remains its historic district on the east side of the park, much of it fronting various cultural gardens. The Glenville Historic District can re-establish itself as not just the most prestigious residential neighborhood in Cleveland, but also the most successfully diverse. When Greater Cleveland rediscovers the park, the lots, houses and apartments surrounding all sides of Rockefeller will once more become prime parcels.

How to do this? It’s simple: get people down there. Make it one of those places where Greater Clevelanders and their visitors want to go. Give them reasons to linger and to feel comfortable.
Make them realize this wonderful park is a precious gem. Its topography, greenhouse and gardens are unique. The park links the worlds of art and culture found in University Circle to the grandeur of Lake Erie. It is a connector: it should connect. It is alive: it should be lively. It begs to be used: there is no reason why Rockefeller Park, so similar in so many ways to Cleveland Heights’ Cain Park, could not host a major music/arts festival every September.

Right now we can make the park more user-friendly without spending millions. One way? Light it up at night. A dark urban park is perceived as unsafe, even if police statistics belie that assumption. Lighting needs to be increased all along MLK, the park’s internal and upper walks, and its entrances and exits. Well-designed lighting will extend the park’s hours, improve its reputation and increase its use.

To further the park’s accessibility, MLK Drive has to be re-evaluated. Right now, most of us drive through Rockefeller Park on MLK as commuters, always rushing to get somewhere else. Even when we want to, we can’t stop any more than a red corpuscle can fight arterial flow.

The Doan Brook Restoration Project, which is a mammoth wastewater management initiative largely meant to rectify past planning mistakes, should incorporate small parking areas in its final stages so that drivers on MLK can actually stop, get out of their vehicles and stroll through the park.

This is not about putting in parking lots. Small pullovers, two on each side of the road and appropriately situated, would open up the lower areas of the park at modest cost. Each “stop’n’stroll” could be designed as a small garden gateway, complete with a bicycle rack, benches and artwork. Planning and installing them could even incorporate a design competition exhibited at the Rockefeller Greenhouse.

Eventually, MLK commuter traffic must be routed back to E. 105th where it belongs and where it can do commercial good. Relocating the Shoreway exit to E. 105th (or even swinging east from 105th to a better designed Eddy Rd. exit) will accelerate Glenville’s economic redevelopment efforts, strengthen the St. Clair corridor, and permit a more leisurely use of MLK It would be expensive but worth it.

If this is done correctly—perhaps in conjunction with ODOT’s plan to reroute elements of the Shoreway—the union of Rockefeller Park and Gordon Park can once again constitute a splendid gateway to Lake Erie.

These projects are doable, practical, and cost-effective. They will have positive, immediate economic impacts, measurable outcomes, improve Glenville’s quality of life, quicken its economic redevelopment, and protect its existing green space.

I say let’s do it. Let’s go back for the future.

Harris is a partner of H/L Communications, a marketing, public relations and civic advocacy firm which created and produces “JAZZ at the Rockefeller Greenhouse.” This annual event entering its 3rd year is scheduled for September 10. Harris also serves on the board of Friends of Greenhouse, the major nonprofit support group for the Rockefeller Park Greenhouse.