CLEVELAND — A couple more quarters for parking. A $2 surcharge on a museum ticket, perhaps. Or a few dollars tacked onto tacos and margaritas at Nuevo Modern Mexican & Tequila Bar.
That’s what you could end up paying on the Downtown lakefront, if Cleveland City Council approves a new tool to finance development in the area. Surcharges on purchases would go toward better public access, including parks, trails and areas for recreation.
Council is considering legislation to create a New Community Authority – a financing structure that’s common in central and southern Ohio but rare in this part of the state. The only such authority in Northeast Ohio is in Richmond Heights, where a private developer is replacing a dead shopping mall with a Meijer supermarket, apartments and other retail.
In Cleveland, the authority would focus on a district that stretches from Huntington Bank Field to Burke Lakefront Airport. The land there is owned by the city but occupied by a mix of publicly and privately owned buildings.
It includes the site where a proposed land bridge would touch down, connecting the waterfront to the core of downtown and priming little-used parking lots for development.
The district’s footprint, if it’s approved, also will encompass the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame; the Great Lakes Science Center; the city-owned NFL stadium, which the Cleveland Browns plan to leave in 2029; Voinovich Park; a nearby restaurant and apartment building; Burke; the sprawling Muni Lot across the Shoreway; and the Willard garage at City Hall.
That means visitors could see user fees at all those places – but only if the property owners and tenants sign off. The New Community Authority will have to negotiate deals with each stakeholder on the lakefront, including Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration.
Those institutions and businesses will decide what their customers can afford.
“It’s users of the lakefront opting in to a very, very small additional fee in exchange for the ability to build out acres and acres of free public space,” said Scott Skinner, the executive director of the North Coast Waterfront Development Corp., the nonprofit group responsible for bringing the city’s lakefront master plan to life.
“Someone may pay an extra 50 cents or a dollar to park down on the lakefront. Or an extra 2% or 1% of sales tax,” he said. “In exchange, that money can be put in a separate pot that allows us to do things like build a world-class public park.”
'Another tool in the toolbox'
The pending legislation would not establish any fees. It would simply create the New Community Authority, a quasi-governmental entity with a nine-member board appointed by council and the mayor.
But the legislation does set limits on fees - $5 for parking, $2 for admissions and 5% of retail sales. As the area develops, the authority also would have the ability to charge fees on hotel stays and property values.
Skinner said the initial fees will be much less than those maximums.
“The only reason for those numbers being slightly higher is that it provides flexibility over the next 20, 30, 40 years to be able to adapt to given market conditions,” he said.
At the outset, the district could generate close to $1 million a year.
Jessica Trivisonno, the mayor’s senior advisor for major projects, said officials are trying to protect the city’s general fund – which pays for basic services – and avoid putting more weight on cash-strapped Clevelanders.
“This is another tool in the toolbox that has been available to the city of Cleveland but not utilized by the city,” she said of New Community Authorities.
Most of the people who attend Browns games or visit lakefront museums don’t live in the city. On Monday morning, many of the people passing by the Rock Hall were tourists rushing to catch a plane or visit one last attraction before leaving town.
Daniel Mamede and his wife drove down from Toronto for a long weekend to see the Rock Hall, visit the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield and dine on East Fourth Street. On Monday, they were planning to check out the USS Cod Submarine Memorial on Lake Erie.
“It’s a beautiful city. I’m impressed. … It’s clean. It’s organized,” said Mamede, who also was surprised to find convenient, free on-street parking Downtown.
He said a surcharge on a museum ticket or restaurant bill wouldn’t be a turn-off. “If you talk about one, two bucks, five tops – I don’t think it’s gonna impact much,” he said.
Luther Robinson, a 77-year-old Cleveland resident, was on his way to the Veterans Day parade. He doesn’t like paying for parking, but he isn’t opposed to modest user fees.
“I guess I’d be willing to do it. Especially if they improve the lakefront,” he said.
'A really complicated, difficult thing to do'
New Community Authorities started out as a tool for turning huge pieces of farmland into housing developments.
Over time, changes in state law have made them much more flexible and appealing. Communities and developers use them to create and capture new revenue streams across a project site.
New Community Authorities also have the power to issue bonds to pay for projects like parks, streets, sidewalks, utilities, parking facilities and fitness centers.
In 2015, the developers of the Flats East Bank project on the Cuyahoga River tried to create a New Community Authority to pay for security and public space investments across a 23-acre district. Council approved the enabling legislation, but then-Mayor Frank Jackson vetoed it, calling it a tax increase that wouldn’t improve city services or pay off city debt.
In this case, the Bibb administration is backing the idea, which is just one piece of a bigger strategy for finally remaking the lakefront.
The city recently rolled out a new lakefront plan, dominated by public space, and released the results of two studies that look at the economic impact and feasibility of closing Burke.
Just last month, Cleveland won a $60 million federal grant to kickstart construction on new streets and a reconfigured Shoreway.
And earlier this year, City Council agreed to create a tax-increment financing district that will capture property-tax growth across Downtown and pledge some of the new revenues to public infrastructure projects on the lakefront, along the riverfront and across the city.
“There is no one solution to developing our lakefront,” Skinner said. “It’s a really complicated, difficult thing to do. It’s why we’ve been trying to do it for decades and decades.”
City Council will hold a special public hearing on the New Community Authority proposal at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday. That’s a requirement of state law. Then, the legislation will head to council committees for discussion over the next few weeks.
If two pieces of underlying legislation pass within the next few months (the second, which hasn’t been introduced yet, involves fleshing out the map of the district), then lakefront visitors could start to see user fees next summer. Those charges will be clearly spelled out on receipts.
“Our goal is to identify how we can pay for all of these public amenities that we want to build – while not burdening anyone who is using the lakefront currently,” Skinner said.
