Mark Oprea
North Marginal Road is still a dangerous way to get from Downtown to the East Side without a car. That will change in 2026, when the Marginal Road Greenway is scheduled to open.
If you were to bike or walk from downtown to the East 55th Marina today, the ride would be neither remarkable nor necessarily safe.
They would most likely take the North Marginal Road and travel most of the way alongside vehicles on that road, which is in dire need of repavement.
On Monday morning, a panel of city and county officials gleefully announced that the dangerous route would be a thing of the past in two years, as the North Marginal Greenway, a three-mile multi-use path lined with trees and lights, will be completed by the end of 2026.
The groundbreaking for the project, as most if not all of the seven speakers at the East 55th Marina Café suggested, had a bigger impact than another addition to Metroparks’ 325-mile trail portfolio. The Marginal Road Greenway, when it opens, will be the first non-car-only off-street trail connecting Downtown Cleveland to the East Side and University Circle.
Metroparks
The Greenway runs from East 9th right in front of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and runs along Burke and various yacht clubs until it reaches the East 55th Marina.
The project has long been a pipe dream, with roots dating back to the Michael White administration in the 1990s, but with partners gathered together, it gained momentum and was able to reach its fundraising goal of $12 million.
“When we think about trails, we don’t want to think of them as just a recreational activity,” said Mary Cierebiej, director of the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission. “These trails are really commuter routes right now for people who don’t own cars and need to get to and from their jobs.”
“One thing COVID has taught us is that everyone wants to be outside,” she added. “We need to create connections that are safe for people to know how to connect to the next segment, and that’s a very important segment.”
A section of a much larger network. The current Cuyahoga Greenways Plan, of which the Marginal Road Greenway is one small Part of it, describes in detail an ideal network of thoughtful options for traveling the county from Lakewood to Strongsville to Euclid by any mode of transportation that does not involve four wheels.
It is precisely this move to highlight this type of travel, NOACA Director Grace Gallucci told the crowd, that enabled the agency to contribute $6 million in Carbon Reduction Program funds that came directly from the Biden-Harris administration. “Why?” she said. “Because building bike infrastructure gets cars off the road, slows traffic congestion and helps reduce carbon emissions. Why different?”
Mark Oprea
Mayor Justin Bibb was joined by Mary Cierebiej, Dan Moore, Stephen Hoffman, Grace Gallucci, Brian Zimmerman and County Executive Chris Ronayne on Monday at the East 55th Marina.
Parts of North Marginal will be relocated, city planner Phil Kidd told Scene, to make room for both new trees and the multi-use path itself — which is necessary because large parts of the tree meadow are currently impassable or littered with power lines and brush.
“But it will be something like a true Metropark-level, standard-grade walking trail,” Kidd said, looking around the marina, “that will connect East 9th all the way here.”
As Kidd confirmed Monday, the Marginal Road Greenway, along with other bike-friendly trails, will come online before the end of the decade.
A car-protected bike lane will be installed on Payne Avenue from East 13th to East 55th after a two-year repaving project; the same will be done on about a mile of Carnegie Avenue; midways will be installed on Lorain and Superior avenues; a Memorial Loop will wrap around the southwest side of downtown; and bike lanes will be installed after Huron and Prospect are converted to one-way streets, although Kidd did not announce a timeline for those.
As for the Shoreway itself, plans for a downgrade — or “reassignment,” as MOCAP associate director Keisha Chambers said last week during the North Coast Master Plan update — weren’t confirmed until Bibb’s plans for the lakefront from West 3rd to East 9th. Plans that will, of course, run into loopholes if the Haslams decide to move the team south to Brook Park.
Mayor Bibb himself carefully defended the value of the lakeshore. with the Browns faced them miles away. (And outside of Cleveland.)
The same spirit is evident regarding the future of Burke Lakefront Airport. Two studies, for which the city paid a total of $300,000, were scheduled to be completed in June, but City Hall has not provided the public with any updates. In an interview earlier this year, Bibb seemed to believe that closing Burke would be a major benefit to the growing downtown population. (The FAA has the final say on airport closures.)
“We’ve worked very hard, very hard, to make our lakefront not just an asset to downtown or the West Side, but an asset to all of Cleveland,” Bibb said Monday, comparing Marginal Road to his overall philosophy.
“And what excites me is that our East Side residents now have the chance to experience a world-class lakefront for the first time in nearly a generation,” he added. “That’s what urbanism is all about.”
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