CLEVELAND — Leaders with the Port of Cleveland said at any moment, a landslide could occur at the Irishtown Bend Hillside off W 25th Street, blocking the only way for ships to get into the Port. The result would devastate the regional economy.
They started looking into ways to stabilize the hill years ago and proposed a plan to the city in 2018.
Those plans were halted by a legal dispute over one property on the corner of the project site.
In the past month, that lawsuit has been settled, and the project is regaining momentum, as stabilization is expected to begin by the end of the summer.
Tom McNair, CEO of Ohio City Inc., couldn’t be more excited.
“I feel like people can’t quite grasp the scale of which is coming here,” McNair said.
When he first heard about plans from the Cleveland Port to stabilize the hillside at Irishtown Bend, he said he knew there was potential for something big.
“We kind of went into their office and said ‘We think that there’s a way to work together here to not only stabilize the hillside, but we have this once-in-a-generation opportunity as we do that to create a community asset,’” McNair said.
The Port responded well to the idea.
So, Ohio City Inc. and LAND Studio, in collaboration with a number of partners, got to work dreaming up the Irishtown Bend Park Project.
The plans they’ve drawn up now would transform the area into 23 acres of public green space, connecting several regional trails, providing a view of downtown and inviting the community to gather by the river where the ships come in.
“At Ohio City Inc, we always joke that we’re the waterfront community that could never see or touch the water,” McNair said.
This area has a rich history for many communities in the city, something leaders of the project hope to honor.
Margaret Lynch, Executive Director of the Irish American Archive Society, said people began thinly settling in the hillside in the 1820s.
But once the canal was completed in 1830 and Cleveland became a leader in shipping, the work at the Port brought more people to the neighborhood.
“A lot of workers lived on the hillside and walked down to the docks for their work, which was loading and unloading coal,” Lynch said. “It was also maybe working in the railroad yards, which sort of dotted the west side of the river heading up to the lake, and there were other small, you could say, manufacturing concerns in the area.”
Eventually, many in the Irish community moved farther west, making way for Hungarian immigrants who filled in the homes they left behind.
Later, Appalachian and Black Americans who came to Cleveland from the South during the Great Migration moved into the hillside.
By that point, the homes on the hillside were nearly 100 years old, and not in great shape.
“The housing authority had developed a plan in conjunction with a bunch of citizens to create what became a high-rise tower for senior citizens, but then they also developed low-rise three-story pods, apartment-style housing for families,” Lynch said.
Eventually, the three-story pods were taken down, but the high-rise for seniors is still there.
Leaders tell me they’re working together to find ways to educate the community about that history, but before they can get started on that, they’re focused on getting the hillside stabilized to avoid a local economic and environmental disaster.
Once stabilization’s completed, in the next 18 to 24 months, construction of the park will begin, estimated to take another 18 to 24 months.
It’s an ambitious project that we won’t see the results of for another four years, but it’s one that McNair believes is well worth the effort.
And with each small construction project, the vision is slowly becoming a reality.
Fundraising is complete for the stabilization portion of the project, and so far, partners have raised $17 million of an estimated $45 million needed for the park project.
