It's time to stop ducking Duck Island

CLEVELAND – If it looks like a big real estate development and sounds like a big real estate development, it probably will be a big real estate development.

That's what a spate of real estate transactions in recent months suggest for an urban enclave close to downtown that's neither an island or named after ducks. (Some claim it's named for criminals who used to duck and hide here from the law). It's an ear-shaped area east of Columbus Road and west of the Walworth Run valley.

Duck Island is actually part of Tremont although many people think it's in Ohio City. The official dividing line for the service areas of the two community development corporations (Ohio City Inc. and Tremont West Development Corp.) is Columbus Road.

Duck Island reappeared on my radar Nov. 1 when the city's Design Review Committee was asked to approve a request by Ward 3 Councilman Joe Cimperman to vacate part of West 20th Street north of Lorain Avenue.

Council members don't just submit requests to vacate city streets when they feel like it. They do so at the request of others. And vacating a city street means the city is relinquishing its right of way, probably forever. It can be a pretty big deal, and it often takes a big project to justify it.

At the north end of West 20th is a vacant, single-level industrial building that was for sale for years. One year ago, it was acquired by Andrew Brickman. He is a partner with Justin Campbell in Abode LLC which builds eco-friendly, luxury town homes in Cleveland's University Circle and Little Italy, plus the inner-ring suburbs Cleveland Heights, Fairview Park and Lakewood.

All around Brickman's industrial parcel are numerous other residential and vacant properties having different corporate owners. Yet all the names trace back to Brickman or Abode in public records. Taken together, the properties west of West 19th/Grove Court Condos and atop the hill east of Columbus Road form a site about as large as the St. Ignatius High School campus (or at least the main campus north of Lorain Avenue).

The purpose of this agglomeration is not a secret. It is revealed in the name of one of the companies formed to acquire land at the north end of Duck Island – “Abode Ohio City Townhomes,” according to records from the Cuyahoga County Auditor's office.

The timing of this project is less well known; Brickman isn't talking publicly about this project yet. However, considering that the city is already vacating a street for it, this strongly suggests that demolitions and site preparation could be sought soon. How many demolitions? Four commercial structures are probable; but there are also 14 historic houses sprinkled in this area and most appear to be in fair to good condition. Their fates are unknown.

What is known are the intentions of the developer eyeballing the area of Duck Island south of Lorain Avenue. About 20 properties, most of them vacant land, were acquired by Matt Berges or his company Berges Home Performance. Ten of them are for development of green-friendly infill housing.

Plans for various housing styles and property locations are shown on his firm's Web site. Berges' motivations don't seem to be limited to the financial returns that normally drive developers. Why? First, he is the green housing manager at Environmental Health Watch. And second, he's invested in the neighborhood in the ultimate way – he and his family moved there.

County records show he recently acquired the large brick home and surrounding 10 parcels of the late Rosemary Vinci. If that name doesn't ring a bell, her name came up during early investigations of the county's corruption scandal. Vinci died in 2008 under suspicious circumstances. Her father, James Vinci, a reputed organized crime figure who famously owned Diamond Jim's in the Flats, was reportedly killed in a mob hit in 1985 to prevent him from testifying in a trial of accused mobsters.

But Rosemary Vinci was better known in the neighborhood for owning strip clubs and ruling the Duck Island Block Club with an iron high heel. One of her missions was to urge Duck Island residents to acquire a neighboring property and demolish the house on it (if it wasn't already torn down) to reduce the urban density of the urban neighborhood located just one mile from Public Square. She surrounded her own West 18th Street house by a moat of vacated lands and walls that exuded the kind of exclusive estate one expects in a gated suburban community.

A decade ago, Vinci also led opposition to a mixed-income, high-density residential development next to the Red Line Rapid station along Columbus Road south of Lorain. She claimed the transit- and pedestrian-oriented development would increase traffic but others accused her of fear-mongering against its low-income component.

Today, Berges is president of the Duck Island Block Club. He's a forward-thinking man who's highly regarded around the country and in Cleveland as a sustainable housing contractor.

With the booming demand by young professionals and empty-nesters for more housing in the urban core, it's important to have sustainability-minded developers like Brickman and Berges who are in a position to respond. It's a welcome change from the city's past when fear and corruption shaped our development policies.

Duck Island's location between Ohio City and the heart of Tremont makes it an ideal urban development area. Its proximity to the Rapid station and the Lorain-Carnegie Hope Memorial Bridge with its new bikeway/walkway into downtown enhances its drawing power. Hopefully Duck Island's new-urbanist promise shall be hindered no more.

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Enhance Clifton starts Sept 13, merchants fear traffic detours

CLEVELAND – Now that contractors were chosen for $25 million worth of transit and pedestrian enhancements to Clifton Boulevard, a formal groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled for Sept. 13.

But after the West Shoreway was closed for two weeks this past summer for the filming of Captain America, Clifton's merchants want to know how construction of Enhance Clifton will be carried out.

Those answers will start to come into focus now that the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority's board on Tuesday hired Perk Company Inc. for $8.65 million to construct infrastructure along 4 miles of Clifton from the west end of Lakewood east to Edgewater Park.

That includes a landscaped median in Cleveland, improved transit waiting environments and a streetscape for the business district between West 115th and West 117th streets.

RTA's board also approved a contract with New Flyer of America Inc. to buy 23 articulated, low-floor buses for up to $16.33 million. An articulated bus is extra long and bends in the middle so it can go around corners and curves. Most of these new buses will be used on the No. 55 Clifton route into downtown, according to RTA documents.

The contract with Perk also stipulates that the City of Cleveland may provide an additional $343,026 for sidewalk repairs, said Ward 16 Councilman Jay Westbrook.

“The sidewalks will be replaced as needed under the city's assessment program that's been used in the rest of Ward 16 to maintain safe sidewalks,” Westbrook said.

The difference with the Clifton project is that property owners will have to pay only 50 percent of the cost instead of the full amount. He said property owners having sidewalks in need of repair or replacement should have already received assessment notices in the mail.

Until the filming of Captain America shut down the Shoreway for two weeks in June and detoured traffic away from Clifton, merchants seemed excited about Enhance Clifton. But that shut down caused some merchants to experience a 90 percent reduction in business, said Anita Brindza, executive director of Cudell Improvement Inc.

“Some elements of Enhance Clifton will be very much welcomed, but merchants justifiably have some trepidation,” she said. “It depends on how the construction goes. If they do it in segments, then it may not be as bad.”

“The sequencing and scheduling still have not been determined,” Westbrook said. “Clifton will remain open during construction. Some of the work will start in the fall, but most will be done starting in the spring.”

He also noted that this project is the forerunner of what is planned for the West Shoreway, which is due to be converted into a landscaped boulevard. A funding request for this conversion is pending before the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency.

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America's first Interstate to be abandoned--when and where?

   Sometime in the next 5-15 years, a remarkable event could occur. The first section of Interstate or interstate-quality highway will be abandoned somewhere in this country due to a lack of funds.

   It will probably be a short, lightly used section of road with a decaying, expensive bridge in the middle of it. The highway department responsible for closing that section of road will try to minimize the significance of the event by calling it a temporary closure. They themselves may not even realize at that moment the closure is permanent. But it won’t be the last abandonment. My home state of Ohio’s stagnant population growth makes it a likely place for this momentous event to happen here first.

   What’s even more remarkable is that it may be inevitable. There are many reasons why this will occur: rising construction costs, stagnant gas tax revenue from more fuel-efficient vehicles, high gas prices, a declining middle class, retiring Baby Boomers (75 million Americans) and car-apathetic young people (80 million Americans) that drove 23 percent fewer miles 2001-09 than did the prior generation.

   Why could it be inevitable? Legislators and voters refuse to increase road taxes, institute vehicle-mile fees or convert “freeways” into toll roads. Even if they did, the higher user costs might cause people to drive even less. The effects of this unprecedented situation are profound.

   Foremost, highway departments are trying to hoard all the taxpayer dollars they can, including $51.5 billion in federal subsidies since 2008 to bail out the Highway Trust Fund and $29 billion in federal stimulus dollars to expand roads they can’t afford to maintain. But it kept road builders busy during the recession.

   Hoarding taxpayers’ dollars is one reason why rail and transit projects are being killed by governors like those in Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin – so the politically active highwaymen can continue feeding at the public trough. A spokesman for Ohio Department of Transportation Director Jerry Wray (a former asphalt industry association executive) confirmed this remains an issue for ODOT when he was asked recently if his department would support plans for Columbus-Chicago passenger rail service.

   “As I am sure you are aware, Ohio, like many other states, has limited transportation funds that do not cover the existing commitments for infrastructure investment,” Wray’s spokesman said. “This financial reality makes the needed capital investment as well as the on-going operating subsidy that would be required for a passenger rail route very difficult.”

   This is all the more ironic as ridership has risen nationwide on trains and buses by 30 percent in the 21^st century while miles driven have fallen to their lowest levels since before 2004. So funding is being denied to trains and transit which people are using more often in an attempt to keep people driving, which they are doing less.

    The primary goal of government agencies like ODOT is survival. Under current laws, the only way ODOT can survive is to keep people driving and the gas taxes flowing. Meanwhile, ODOT has no way to capture the value from people riding trains and transit to support those new activities and transition into a multi-modal transportation agency.

   Alas, ODOT spends only 1 percent of its budget on public transportation, even though 9 percent of Ohio households have no cars – that’s 1 million people. Even more households have multiple wage earners sharing one car per home. These numbers are growing as Ohio gets poorer – median family income has fallen to its lowest levels in 27 years. Yet Ohio spends less on basic public transportation than it does to cut the grass along its interstates. Ohio legislators need to find a way to capture value from Ohioans traveling by trains and transit.

   Furthermore, well-funded and organized civil rights activists, environmentalists and fair housing advocates see transportation agencies taking money from public transit to save an aging, overbuilt highway system from insolvency. They recently won a federal action against the Wisconsin Department of Transportation for failing to include transit improvements as part of a $1.7 billion highway interchange in Milwaukee.

   One could argue that ODOT’s policies do that every day by spending so little on transit compared to the number of Ohioans who have no access to cars. Physical access to basic services is a human right in a civilized society. Whether Ohio chooses to remain one will depend on its actions in the coming years as we continue to get older and poorer.

   So that first section of abandoned interstate will be symptomatic of the sweeping changes occurring in America’s transportation system. It’s why the highwaymen are trying to postpone it for as long as they can. It’s a tough pill for them to swallow. But it’s inevitable. The only question is where and when.

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