CLEVELAND — As plans for Canal Basin Park take shape along the Cuyahoga River, new drawings show a water-themed playground, a curving boardwalk and a tribute to the hand-dug waterway that once linked Lake Erie to the Ohio River – and the national economy.
Those designs won conceptual approval Friday from the Cleveland City Planning Commission. Now the city and its partners hope to start construction on the first phase of the ambitious project in 2026.
It will take years to fully realize the vision for more than 20 acres stretching from the Center Street Swing Bridge to Old River Road in the Flats. The entire project could cost $30 million to $40 million and require significant funding from federal and state governments.
But you’ll start to see smaller – and much less expensive – changes to the site in the spring, from murals brightening up blank bridge pilings to events designed to bring people down to the water.
“When you see the freighters come up the river, there’s just nothing like it,” said Jim McKnight, a senior landscape architect and section chief of site development in the mayor’s office of capital projects at City Hall. “So we see it as a very special place and certainly want to make it a destination for all Clevelanders.”
Canal Basin Park has been on the drawing board for more than a decade. And discussions about building a park in that part of the Flats date back to the early 1970s, just a few years after a fire on the Cuyahoga River made national headlines and launched an environmental movement.
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Now most of the land in that area is publicly owned. The Towpath Trail cuts through the site, ending near a rolling green space flanked by benches and steps. Cyclists can travel south to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park or wind their way across the Flats to the lake.
“This is a place where you can make a connection,” said Mera Cardenas, executive director of Canalway Partners, a nonprofit advocate for the project. “Whether it’s a connection to history, whether it’s a connection to recreation, whether it’s a connection to water, whether it’s a connection to other people, I think that’s what Canal Basin has always been. It’s been a pivot point.”
Cardenas moved to Northeast Ohio five years ago to lead Canalway.
A Pennsylvania native descended from coal miners and union advocates, she’s discovered unexpected ties to Cleveland. Her great-grandfather worked at the Warner & Swasey Co., a machine-tool maker that was based here for a century. Her grandfather once lived in Lakewood.
“I think Cleveland is a story of grit and resilience in the face of adversity,” she said. “Or maybe plans not working out the way you thought they would – and moving forward.”
At Canal Basin Park, the project team is determined to do just that.
The new concepts build on a framework created in 2015, and ideas sketched out in 2022. They were drawn up by Merritt Chase, a landscape architecture and urban design firm with offices in Indianapolis and Pittsburgh.
The centerpiece of the design is a recreated canal basin – a pool designed to catch, filter and slowly release stormwater running off nearby surfaces and the Veterans Memorial Bridge (also known as the Detroit-Superior Bridge). It will sit in the same place where boats once gathered to transfer cargo, from barrels of flour to iron ore, cheese, wool and wood.
A shallow canal will stretch along the Towpath between Columbus Road and Merwin Avenue, which will be closed off to cars. The inland water feature will be separated from the river by a plaza and a riverfront terrace.
Renderings show expansive lawns and a sea of native plants, filled with families on blankets and children playing.
Site plans depict a renovated dog park and a plaza that will cascade from Superior Avenue down to a revamped Settlers Landing – the point where Moses Cleaveland is said to have put down stakes to establish a new city.
“This is a tremendous opportunity,” McKnight said during the planning commission meeting Friday. “It’s city-owned land in the heart of the city, in the Flats, with waterfront access on two river banks.”
Merritt Chase spent almost a year working on the project with help from OHM Advisors and ThirdSpace Action Lab. They asked for community feedback in June and previewed the designs at the site in October on National Walk to a Park Day.
“Folks really wanted us to connect to the larger park and trail networks in and around the area,” Nina Chase, a founding principal of Merritt Chase, told members of the planning commission. “We got a lot of good feedback about wanting to make this a family-friendly park destination.”
The project team also heard a lot about showcasing Cleveland’s history, from the canal era through the railroad age, from pollution to the river’s gradual resurgence.
The canal operated from 1827 to 1874. Then, it was filled with dirt and covered by railroad tracks.
As large bridges crisscrossed the river, they took out old riverfront buildings during construction – and made it possible to bypass the Flats entirely.
“In some ways, that’s why a lot of people don’t know where it is,” Cardenas said of the Canal Basin Park site. It’s still an area that’s easy to overlook and tricky to navigate.
But, she said, “when you see any skyline shots of Cleveland, you’re actually looking at Canal Basin. And that probably is something a lot of people don’t realize.”
On Monday afternoon, the park area was quiet. A handful of cars sat in a city-owned parking lot. A runner passed, breath visible in the cold air, on the Towpath Trail.
Cardenas pointed to small white flags that showed where the canal once flowed. She talked about the possibility of winter weather activities like ice skating.
The project team will spend much of this year refining the designs and conducting additional environmental studies to get a fuller sense of any hazards in the dirt and how they need to be handled. Construction will happen in phases, beginning with the boardwalk.
“It’s gonna take as long as it takes to raise the money, quite frankly,” said McKnight, who said the city is looking at targeted funding programs for park and trail enhancements and coastal restoration efforts in the Great Lakes.
A short walk away, developers are planning to revive old buildings and erect new ones on Old River Road. In the other direction, industry on the Columbus Road Peninsula is gradually giving way to recreation.
A huge hillside stabilization project at nearby Irishtown Bend will set the stage for another, even larger, park across the river.
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Apartments are rising on Scranton Peninsula. And behind Tower City, construction on a new Cleveland Cavaliers training facility and sports-medicine hub is the first phase of a potential $3.5 billion riverfront redevelopment project.
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“Canal Basin, to me, is the terminus. … You have this ability to go left or right that you don’t have anywhere else,” Lillian Kuri, the planning commission’s chairwoman, said during Friday’s meeting. “You hit that terminus, and you can almost wrap your arms around the Cuyahoga River and decide how to experience it.”
She encouraged the city and its partners to set a standard of public access for other riverfront projects – particularly private developments – to follow.
“I want, over my lifetime, to be able to say that we advanced the opportunity for a continuous boardwalk,” Kuri said. “Which still doesn’t exist.”
