Cleveland’s Parks and Rec Master Plan Leans Into 15-Minute City Concept

A big heap of city projects in the past two years have turned increasingly to a type of planning reliant on what could be called data questions: What do we have? Where do we have it? And where could better things be?

What’s at the data-driven heart of the 15-minute city concept — loosely defined as building a city where most of residents’ needs can be met within a short walk, bicycle or transit ride from their house — was seen at City Hall’s debut to the public of its behemoth Parks and Rec Master Plan, displayed in a sweltering hot room at the Michael Zone Rec Center in Ohio City on Tuesday.

In a wall-to-wall display of the plan, culled together by the Mayor’s Office of Capital Projects and the Philadelphia-based OLIN Studio, residents got to see a relatively brainy idea ready for deployment—that Cleveland, over the next 15 years, should spend money to fix and/or install parks, or pickleball courts and splashpads, with a highly-specific walking radius in mind.

“It’s not just about putting a Public Square everywhere in Cleveland,” Andrew Dobshinsky, an associate for OLIN Studio, told Scene at the presentation. “It’s about what amenities do we need? And where do we need them?”

Since January, when MOCAP released its needs assessment, a culmination of 1,500 survey takers and their parks critiques, City Hall’s been working with OLIN and a slew of other consultants, from ThirdSpace to OHM Advisors, to convert Clevelanders’ feedback into a doable (and fundable) framework.

Hence the rule of the walking radius: OLIN’s team found that, in an ideal context, Clevelanders should live within a ten-minute walk of playgrounds and basketball hoops; and a twenty-minute walk of swimming pools, baseball diamonds, rec centers, community gardens and a dog park. And yes, a pickleball court.

Every single one of Cleveland’s 159 parks would be recategorized into one of six “proposed classifications”—as a regional park, a special facility, a civic space, etc.—which would, in turn, determine what exact amenity or improvement that park would need. That is to say, more bike racks, or paved loop trails, or permanent restrooms, or clear connections to a nearby RTA stop.

More importantly, according to both to survey takers and to those present on Tuesday, parks would first of all need to be brought up to par.

“So right here it is: ‘Facilities are not well maintained,'” Jay Rauschenbach, the city’s Parks & Recreation planning manager, said reading a placard citing January’s survey. (About half of Clevelanders think that the city’s parks are in rough shape.)

“That’s why people aren’t going there,” he added. “People just want nice things. They don’t want to go to a basketball court that has no nets. Or go to a playground with a swing’s not working. They just want the most basic things—and be able to use them.”

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Mark Oprea

Heavy focus is being placed on upgrading and maintaining the parks Cleveland already struggles to keep up to par.

To Rauschenbach’s point, the world of park maintenance could evolve nicely if the Parks and Rec plan is impliemented in the near future. For decades, MOCAP has had a staff of a few dozen to maintain both parks and vacant lots across Cleveland, a fact that Rauschenbach said has led to a deep backlog of deferred park repairs.

It’s also a balancing act with funding: Cleveland gets roughly $15 million a year, cash majorly from general obligation bonds (bonds issued by the city), to infuse into new parks, like Clark Field in Tremont, or to brush up those begging for new paint jobs or 21st century seating.

Funding that goes, Rauschenbach said, quite fast.

“I mean, it’s usually like a million dollars to do one single park,” he said. “That’s fully taking everything out, putting something new right back in.

Rauschenbach looked out a south-facing window of the rec center. “If you want to replace that playground with, like, a brand new playground, that in itself is $300,000 to $600,000 just for one playground. Then, there’s the parking lot, the trails, the trees, the tennis court. It’s a lot.”

All of which begs the question heard ad infinitum after any Cleveland study: How are 15 years of massive overhauls to hundreds of city parks going to be paid for?

Dobshinsky said that OLIN and MOCAP will explore a wider range of funding models in the third phase of the parks plan. But ideas seem to be endless—Cleveland could tap into a plethora of sponsors, of donations from nonprofits, even source dollars garnered from the Shore-to-Core-to-Shore tax increment financing program that City Council passed last month.

As long as, Councilwoman Jenny Spencer said, park refurbishing isn’t solely reliant on Council dollars.

“That’s a very slow process, right?” Spencer said at the meeting. Because of the city’s bonding capacity, it takes a long time to cycle through all the different facilities and green spaces. Our budget will continue to be an essential tool—but is there something more?”

Especially, she said, calling on her Ward 15 residents’ thoughts on their own neighborhood parks. “Things as simple as the condition of a locker room can change your experience of coming and using your own rec center,” she said.

Or outside where baseball diamonds sat in need of work, or rusted soccer posts in need of nets.

Or, say, a small room in the Michael Zone Rec Center, which was so balmy that several attendees had to fan their faces with brochures.

“Yep, this place needs a new A/C system,” Dobshinsky said, smiling. “That’s what we’re talking about.”

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