Gloria Ferris

A week ago, I attended the ODOT Innerbelt Project meeting held at Myers University. This meeting was held at the request of Midtown Corridor businessmen and the local CDCs situated in the designated “trench” area of the innerbelt.
THE TRENCH: As I said at the meeting, these guys have a great way to set a tone and visual of an area. I don’t know about you, but when I hear the word “trench” two images come to mind–the first, are the trenches dug across Europe during World War I which afforded little if any protection for the doughboys against mustard gas and the other one, is of the ditches in Wood County, Ohio where I attended college. These ditches in Northwest Ohio are about eight to ten feet deep and were necessary because of the low or high water table–I never could remember which–and usually by late summer were the home of countless mosquitos and the smell of stagnant water. As you can tell, when the officials at the front of the room began discussing “the trench” the visual was not a pleasant one for me. How about for you? What does the phrase “the trench” do for you?

YELLOW HIGHLIGHTED BLOBS: May I say that the presentation by ODOT was “oh so typical”? Of course, I may. This is my blog and my opinion and I am welcome to it. Anyway, there was the usual introduction of speakers, but I will say that the speaker portion was under the usual two hour minimum but even so, the content was much the same. Craig Hebebrand was again in charge of explaining the rationale for closing downtown exits and funneling the traffic onto Chester Avenue and East 22nd Street and the adjacent side streets. On every slide, there were blue lines indicating the innerbelt now, white lines showing the innerbelt of the future and several yellow highlighted blobs. Slide after slide showed these little yellow blobs but Craig never explained what they were. When he reached the last slide, I couldn’t stand it any longer I asked him to explain what the little yellow blobs were. Lo and behold, these yellow smudges were the properties to be taken in the name of progress. In other words, folks, these were the properties slotted for eminent domain. Not a mention of this by any official there until the question was asked. Of course, Craig was quick to say that these were projections and much of the land was parking lots and they really weren’t sure how much impact if any the takings would have on the businesses. Turns out that these yellow blobs represented nineteen separate properties.

EXITS: I found it very enlightening to have Mr. Proctor tell us that we need to eliminate downtown exits because of the number of fender bender accidnets that happen due to the poor design of these exits. He then highlighted how far that ODOT has come since those days of the late 50s and early 60s. We have instituted all of the best practices and advances made when we have added enterances and exits in the upgrades to the one by Legacy Village and the new one to be added at Crocker Park. Anyone else see the irony of this statement? Here we are ELIMINATING exits in the core area of our region–Downtown Cleveland–for those government officials who don’t get it–while on the outskirts of the county we are ADDING exits. As usual when I attend these events as the speakers droned on I began having even more questions than I had when I entered the room. Scott Muscatello has done a very efficient job of “live blogging” the event so to get the play by play description you should go here.

POSSIBILITY OF NATIONAL REGISTER STATUS: When discussing the elimination of the Carnegie exit, Mr. Proctor cited that the possibility that the Walker and Weeks building and the Juvenile Justice Center COULD BE candidates for national Landmark status. Now understand he did not say that they were, that they had been nominated or anything else related to the designation other than that they could be. Now, I understand that The Ferchill Group has extensively renovated that Walker and Weeks building and it is a vision to behold and if the Midtown corridor is to become a vibrant neighborhood this building will probably act as a cornerstone, so let’s talk about the other building that Mr. Proctor suggested– The Juvenile Justice Center.
Architecturally, this building does have some unique features and some things well worth perserving, but lets talk about the functionality of its use in today’s world. It doesn’t. I served on a Youth Services Advisory Board in the nineties, and we all knew then, that the structure could no longer handle its mission. Maybe if it needed to be deconstructed and moved for the safety of the innerstate system, we would finally address the problem of how to have a more effective juvenile justice system. All of you who know me that I am a huge proponent of historic preservation, but the inefficiency of the ” maybe” architectural significance of this edifice pales in the light of what I know as an inefficient space for the mission at hand. Now, I am not saying that tearing down this building is the way to go, but with a project with such significance to not only the downtown area but to the region shouldn’t every avenue be explored more thoroughly than “It may be significant”.

LACK OF IMPACT STUDIES: I was utterly amazed that there had been only a very sketchy traffic flow study done and that basically it was done to justify the closing of the exits due to fender benders and that there would not be a significant rise in drive through traffic. Nothing was said about what the closures would do to the accompanying city streets that would now take on the flow of traffic. And then to stand there and tell us that there had never been a need for an economic impact study in any other ODOT project so therefore, they had not seen the need for it until they were asked by the Midtown Corridor merchants and CDCs. Now let’s ponder that for a minute. No one saw the economic impact to an area that potentially could lose at least nineteen businesses/parking lots and that access would now be funneled through two exits rather than five or six exits onto city streets not equipped in any way to take on additional traffic.

Wait! Wait! I get it. We won’t need the studies because there will be less reason for people to get off the downtown exits, they will simply travel through the trench on their way to the outskirts of the county.
I see– they have it ALL planned out and little if any of it has to do with serving the city’s businesses and residents,but regionally it will be better. Will it?

A few disclosure points I tried to find the slides that were used to show the closing of exits and the yellow highlighted blobs but was unsuccessful. I also didn’t find much on the ODOT site that specifically spoke to the issue of THE MIDTOWN TRENCH. If anyone has found official slides and articles that outline the plan, please let me know. Until then, all I have are reports and articles about the meetings.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 5th, 2006 at 9:54 pm and is filed under Cleveland, developing community, growing an economy, quality of life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.