CLEVELAND, Ohio — A long-running effort to stabilize the brush-covered Irishtown Bend hillside overlooking the Flats and to top it with a new riverfront park took a big leap forward Friday with a vote by Northeast Ohio’s leading planning agency to devote $12.8 million in federal money to the $45 million project.
The board of the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, NOACA, which oversees federal and state transportation spending in Cuyahoga, Lake, Lorain, Geauga, and Medina counties, voted unanimously to award the money to the Irishtown Bend project.
The money will be used to stabilize the hillside, which has threatened for decades to slide into the Cuyahoga River and block industrial shipping, including ore boats serving the steel mill in the industrial Flats, now operated by Cleveland-Cliffs.
The funding virtually ensures that the stabilization can be followed by the construction of a 23-acre riverfront park on the sloping hillside, with views of the skyline and the Cuyahoga River, possibly as early as 2025.
“It’s nothing short of incredible,’’ said Tom McNair, executive director of Ohio City Inc., a nonprofit community development corporation that has helped to spearhead planning for the future park in collaboration with Cleveland Metroparks and other agencies.
“If you look at the work that NOACA and [its director] Grace Gallucci have done in this, they’ve been leaders from the beginning,” McNair said.
County Executive Armond Budish, who voted for the allocation as a member of the NOACA board, said: “I’m very happy this is getting done before we have a disaster, which is the way things should get done.”
The NOACA allocation will channel money awarded to the State of Ohio under the federal government through the 2020 Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act. The funds are coming from a category called “Highway Infrastructure Programs,” but Gallucci said they can be used to stabilize Irishtown Bend.
“The hillside and river are part of the federal shipping channel for the Great Lakes, and transportation funds from DOT [the federal Department of Transportation} are eligible to be used for this purpose,’’ she said.
Prior to Friday’s announcement, roughly $25 million in public funds had been gathered for the slope stabilization project, which is being led by the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority.
The new funding from NOACA will leave the project roughly $7 million to $7.5 million short of the estimated $45 million cost of the stabilization.
Gallucci and Will Friedman, the port’s executive director, said that the city, the county, and the port have agreed to fund the remaining gap.
“We have to do this,’' Budish said. “It’s not like it’s optional. If the city comes up with its share we’ll come up with ours and so will the port.”
Friedman said the port has applied for a $5 million state grant and a $12 million federal grant, either of which could be used for the project.
Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said in an email relayed through a spokesperson that his administration is “seeking legislative authority to provide up to $3.7 million to help fill the remaining financial gap.”
The stabilization project will include removing some 250,000 cubic yards of fill material added to the Irishtown hillside in the mid-20th century by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The dirt isn’t stable, and is threatening to slide into the river, he said.
Other elements of the project will include re-grading the slope and building a massive bulkhead on the curving west bank of the river, where previously installed bulkheads have all but vanished.
McNair said that if work proceeds as planned by the port, fundamental elements of the park, including completion of the Cleveland Foundation Centennial Lake Link Trail, could be in place by 2025.
Landscape architect and Youngstown native Scott Cataffa, who founded the San Francisco-based design firm of Plural, has been developing an updated version of plans for the park, which will be made available for public review and comment in the fall, McNair said.
Some $3.3 million in money previously allocated by NOACA is available for the construction of the park, McNair said. The updated designs, and progress on the stabilization, could help spur efforts to raise additional dollars from public sources and private philanthropy, he said.
Irishtown Bend takes its name from the 19th-century settlement of Irish immigrants established on the hillside.
The action taken by NOACA Friday followed by one day a vote by the port authority board to initiate a process that could lead to the acquisition of a holdout property on the hillside through eminent domain.
The 0.41-acre property at the southeast corner of Detroit Avenue and West 25th Street includes a long-vacant, two-story commercial building topped with a billboard.
Cleveland developer Tony George, who co-owns the property with his son, restaurateur Bobby George, said they want to develop the property into a wellness center, a restaurant, and a welcome center for the park. George said he’d fight the port if it tries to acquire the property through eminent domain.
Friedman said Thursday that new geotechnical studies show that in order to save the building, the port would have to spend $5 million to install a mid-slope retaining wall below it.
“We are not going to spend $5 million in public money so that property can remain,’’ Friedman said. “We are going to figure out the fair market value and acquire it, which is going to be far less than $5 million.”
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