transportation demand management

Input sought for Watterson-Lake development

By Ken Prendergast / November 20, 2023

At a recent community input meeting, a basic concept was revealed for redeveloping the former Watterson-Lake School site on Detroit Avenue, between West 74th and 75th streets in Cleveland’s Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood. The design concept, called a massing, suggested a mixed-use, mixed-income development offering 112 apartments in a five-story building set back from Detroit, 12 rental townhomes, retail and small business incubator spaces fronting Detroit, plus community and park spaces.

GCRTA stations: lots of opportunity

By Ken Prendergast / August 3, 2023

In recent months, the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA) has served notice that its rail system isn’t going anywhere. And that could be interpreted in one of two ways. In one way, GCRTA plans to invest $540 million by the end of this decade to rebuild its 34-mile rail system including a new, standardized light-rail fleet plus rebuilt tracks and stations on the Red, Blue and Green lines. Greater Cleveland’s “Rapid” is sticking around for decades to come. But taking it another way, there are no expansion plans while ridership on GCRTA buses and trains fell nearly 60 percent from 2013 to 2021 “led” by its rail system which fell even farther, from 9.3 million boardings in 2013 to 2.9 million in 2021.

City considers re-legalizing the city again

By Ken Prendergast / July 22, 2023

The city of Cleveland’s Board of Zoning Appeals’ docket regularly sees cases like this. On Monday, Sally Banks LLC will ask the board to allow it add a 1,100-square-foot addition to its popular Treehouse pub, 820 College Ave. in Tremont, without adding off-street parking spaces. It’s the second time the pub is expanding and it’s the second time it has had to go through the process of getting a variance to ignore the city’s zoning laws. Those zoning laws say the pub has to add an off-street parking space for every 100 square feet of new business space. The average cost per parking space to build a surface parking lot is $5,000, city data shows.

West 73rd Apartments OK’d

By Ken Prendergast / July 7, 2023

After more than a year of debate, the design-review committee of City Planning Commission gave its final approval of a proposed apartment complex at 1321-1357 W. 73rd St. in Cleveland’s Gordon Square neighborhood. The unanimous vote sets the stage for the developer Joel Zagelbaum of Brooklyn, NY to apply for building permits to start construction.