CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio – For the first time in 16 months, the city council resumed face-to-face meetings, with many safety precautions in place on Monday due to ongoing health concerns related to COVID-19.
In addition to the plexiglass partitions placed between the council members on the podium, only about 20 socially distant seats were arranged in chambers, with mask compulsory – and available on request – for the audience when they were not speaking on the podium.
About two dozen other people were seated a safe distance away in the atrium of the town hall on the first floor, where they could watch a simulcast of the meeting upstairs and wait for their number to be called.
But the agreement gave supporters of a $ 50 million mixed-use development on the city’s Cedar-Lee-Meadowbrook property the opportunity to share the floor with those who want to provide an acre for a small event and activity park.
“Build it” signs supporting the park in Lee and Meadowbrook are in the courtyards of the city and on Online petition at change.org On Monday evening, the number of signatures quickly approached 1,000, noted resident Maia White and warned of a “pants-on-fire” approach to development.
Flaherty & Collins, the budding developers of the entire 3 acres – most of it a 189-space parking lot behind the Cedar Lee Theater and Corporations – has now proposed about a third of the Meadowbrook acre as a city park.
Resident David Klain says there is already a “finished deal” between the city and the developer of the $ 83 million under construction “Top of the Hill” project further west on Cedar Road AT&T easement on the Meadowbrook page.
Support other residents the park urged city officials to slow down the process in order to collect more public contributions. An “impetus for parking and traffic” Community workshop“Is scheduled for Thursday (August 5th) at 6pm at Heights Main Library in Cedar-Lee.
Then at 6 p.m. there will be a “Public Space and Connectivity” August 11th in the atrium of the town hall, noted Councilor Mike Ungar, who denied any notion that the city is circumventing public engagement with a “rush job” to get the new project off the ground.
“There will be no compromises in the quality of work and no compromises in terms of processes and results,” said Ungar. “We have top-class staff who have mastered all of this, as well as the control of various bodies and commissions.”
Park proposal organizer Fran Mentch previously accused the city of “relinquishing responsibility to the public” after six previous unsuccessful attempts to develop the property.
Mentch said this was only surpassed by her eight attempts to get on a council committee agenda of the entire agenda when the meetings were conducted via YouTube during the statewide health emergency.
It culminated in an unsuccessful injunction trying to stop the council’s council special meeting called for June 28 to approve a letter of intent with F&C. This memorandum sets a 60-day target to put a formal development agreement into effect.
“Then you used up 30 days of that with your July break,” added Mentch.
Her daughter Lynn said the Pocket Park F&C suggestion appears to be an afterthought. “
She added that the recent concerts and events held in the Cedar-Fairmount district (with companies asking for a one-time pandemic grant of $ 25,000 from the city on Monday) sounded like fun, other than being held in various parking lots became.
“We’re called Tree City, USA, and we have parking lots,” said Lynn Mentch. “My question is, why can’t we have both?”
As for Resident Joanne Siegel, the city will have both, citing the nearby parks Cain, Cumberland, and Shaker Lakes.
“We all love parks, but the business district has to be continuous,” Siegel told the city council. “I would like to see that we lay the foundation stone as quickly as humanly possible to bring in tax money and vitality.”
Meadowbrook resident Destiny Burns, owner of the Cleveland Urban Winery and also the vice president of the business association known as the Cedar-Lee Special Improvement District (SID) said accommodating 200 affluent residents, millennials and empty nests should be a “no-brainer”.
“Trees don’t pay taxes and trees don’t buy wine,” Burns said. “I need more customers and we have to modernize and upgrade our business district in order to build and strengthen our economic future.”
Across Lee Road, Cedarbrook resident John Fleshin questioned the four- to five-story height of the proposed 200-unit apartment complex at market price.
Fleshin warned of a possible “bait-and-switch” that would result from the city increasing the acreage and already removing green spaces and trees around their 377 parking garage.
As an aside, Cedarbrook’s neighbor Catherine Osborn noted that the previous road block from the back of the Cedar Lee parking lot on Cedarbrook had been compromised and is now being treated more like an “no-sign intersection” by drivers – cars and trucks . “
This results in through traffic on what appears to be a dead end street, which is a public safety problem with you and your neighbors nearly being hit by drivers speeding by.
Representatives from Future Heights, the nonprofit that serves as one of the city’s community development companies, expressed their support for the full-scale mixed-use development, with Bob Brown seeing an opportunity to reclaim some of the population the city has lost until to 15,000 people in the past few decades.
The retired Cleveland planner added that green spaces should be a big part of the development. Deanna Bremer Fisher, Executive Director of Future Heights, noted that building on the site has been a city goal for at least 10 years.
“Now a skilled developer has stepped in and we should keep the momentum going,” added Fisher.
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