November 2015 - Parks & Recreation - 16

Community Center
Reimagining Urban Parks
By Nancy Desmond, CPRP

leveland Metroparks is well known for its 23,000 acres of meadows,
wetlands, rivers and forests ringing the suburbs of Cleveland. But, in
the last few years, chartered by a new strategic plan, the park district
has enthusiastically made inroads to better serve urban residents. Urban spaces can offer unconventional challenges and require creative solutions
beyond the boundaries of normal operations. Rivergate Park, located in Cleveland's industrial Flats area, was one such space.
Seven acres of desolate pavement and
gravel hidden away in an old industrial
area next to the Cuyahoga River shipping channel, Rivergate Park did not
have the obvious makings of a park.
The land, formerly used for boat storage,
was empty but for two drab, pre-engineered steel buildings. No grass or trees
grew there, and the dredged shipping
channel was busy with enormous bulk
freighters carrying industrial materials.
For several years, the space challenged
the imaginations of many who tried to
envision it as a park.
But, this scrappy piece of land could
provide something found almost nowhere else in Cleveland: public access
to the Cuyahoga River. It is centrally

located close to the 110-mile Towpath
Trail that stretches from the heart of
Cleveland to central Ohio. Land-use
planners envisioned park space for
urban residents, water recreation and
economic development, but the will
and the funding were not yet there.
In 2008-2009, a series of serendipitous events moved plans forward:
the price of commercial real estate
dropped and the Cleveland Rowing
Foundation (CRF) was seeking a
bigger location. However, CRF only
needed half the property, so it collaborated with the Trust for Public Land
(TPL), and the two organizations
purchased the entire parcel, valued at
$6 million, for just $3 million.

Seventy percent of the produce used at Cleveland Metroparks-owned Merwin's Wharf
Restaurant comes from within 10 miles of the location, adding to conservation efforts.
14 Parks & Recreation

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Tying It Together
In 2013, Cleveland Metroparks CEO,
Brian Zimmerman, was charged by
a new strategic plan to bring more
park services to the urban core. He
quickly grasped the potential in that
stark patch of pavement and steel
buildings. The existing and potential
entities on the site needed an agency such as Cleveland Metroparks to
help tie them all together. The Ohio
City Bicycle Co-op, serving the needs
of the cycling community, had been
operating on the edge of the property
for many years. The city was looking
for space to locate a long-promised
skateboard park. CRF moved in and
the Cleveland Dragon Boat Association was using the vacant parking lot.
Cleveland Metroparks envisioned an
urban park united around recreation,
including rowing, paddling, skateboarding and bicycling, and connected by regional trails.
In an unusual twist, one vacant
building on the property came with
a liquor license, a coveted revenue-generating asset in Ohio where
the number of such licenses is limited. In a departure from typical park
and recreation practices, the park
district transformed the building into
the full-service, riverfront Merwin's
Wharf Restaurant that it owns and
manages.
An important component of the
restaurant is connecting people with
the long-neglected Cuyahoga River.
Diners enjoy close-up views of giant
freighters plying the waters. Dwarfed
by the freighters, paddlers, rowers and
dragon boaters glide by. The paddlers
can use the free public dock that was

November 2015 - Parks & Recreation

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