CLEVELAND — City leaders and neighbors alike acknowledge that Cleveland faces an issue with vacant lots. With more than 18,000 residential parcels in its Land Bank inventory, the city is second in the country for vacant land.
“If I had to estimate just on this street – vacant, nothing on it, no gardening, no homes – maybe like 15 lots,” said Shirley Bell-Wheeler, referring to Imperial Ave. on the northern edge of Cleveland’s Mt. Pleasant neighborhood.
In 2017, she began slowly transforming one unused corner of the neighborhood into the Revolutionary Love Community Garden.
“There was actually a big building, like a corner store, right here. And then there were vacant lots. We started with three garden boxes and slowly we expanded,” she said.
The community garden now occupies five parcels of formerly vacant land. Bell-Wheeler’s art-centric, youth-focused nonprofit Elements of Internal Movements uses the garden as a site for learning, workforce development and healing.
“Just the hope and the aesthetics and care you put into it, it says something about a space,” she said. “I live in the community, so it’s an added bonus because this is my community.”
Just down the street sits the Garden of 11 Angels, a Western Reserve Land Conservancy project that created a memorial in place of the vacant lot where convicted serial killer Anthony Sowell’s house formerly stood.
Numerous other vacant lots have yet to see redevelopment. The collective 6,000 acres of empty land scattered around Cleveland neighborhoods make up about one-eighth of the city’s total area and, when combined, would be triple the size occupied by Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.
“Those 18,000 parcels represent a very big liability for the city. We’re responsible for maintenance of it and keeping safety,” said Alyssa Hernandez, Cleveland’s director of Community Development. “But what is our greatest liability, I think, can become our greatest asset.”
Few other large cities have the available space for development, and Hernandez said repurposing vacant property is a high priority for the current administration. The first step will be streamlining the process of selling and redeveloping the land.
“That represents a reactive process, but what we’re doing now is a proactive process,” she said.
Through a grant from the US EPA’s Environmental Justice Collaborative Problem-Solving Cooperative Agreement program, the Western Reserve Land Conservancy (WRLC) is leading a two-year initiative to overhaul the current system.
It’s called CLEVLOT, which stands for the Cleveland Vacant Land Opportunity Tool.
“This is not your grandfather’s land bank. It’s changing, it’s evolving,” said Matt Zone, the senior vice president of Thriving Communities for WRLC.
The former process required interested buyers to file a comprehensive application with the Cleveland Land Bank. Then, the Land Bank would seek approval from numerous stakeholders.
“They have to consult with a wide range of other entities that are outside of their control,” explained Tim Dehm, a planning and design specialist at WRLC who helped lead the CLEVLOT initiative. “They have to talk to council members, they have to talk to CDCs and they have to talk to neighborhood planners. And they have to create alignment around what the use of one lot should be.”
The overhaul will reverse that process.
“Let’s get all of those stakeholders in a group to begin with,” said Hernandez. “And then let’s say, ‘What’s the highest and best use for this lot? What vision do we see for this?’”
The Cleveland Land Bank recently upgraded its application to an online format and created an online resource page. More digital tools are soon to follow.
WRLC said the final product will be a user-friendly, open-source database and planning tool created with input from a variety of stakeholders. Potential buyers and project leaders will be able to see which parcels are available and how the community would like them repurposed.
Bell-Wheeler said she is looking forward to an easier process and hopes it leads to more investment in unused land.
“Especially as a mom of four, I think about — what legacy am I leaving for my children? As a homeowner, I’m thinking about what neighborhood I’m leaving to my children,” she said.
In addition to the upcoming technology, the Land Bank is also adjusting the price of its available land based on geography. Most residential parcels currently go for a flat rate of $200.
Soon, properties in market rate and high-demand neighborhoods will cost $10 per square foot. Land in so-called “middle neighborhoods” will be $3 per square foot. The Land Bank will charge $0.70 per square foot in “opportunity neighborhoods.”
