The $19 million interchange project in Avon has been in the works for more than three years. Funded primarily by private investment from the city and landowners, the project is expected to give drivers access to 100 acres of new office, retail, and industrial space, including a Cleveland Clinic family health center.
David Beach, the director of EcoCity Cleveland and the sustainability director for the Natural History Museum, finds the location and style of the future development problematic.
David Beach: This interchange is going to open up hundreds of acres of rural land for development. It's going to move investment down the I-90 corridor farther west and that causes lots of problems in a region where so many existing communities need reinvestment.
The five-county regional planning group NOACA, or The Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, is charged with reviewing the project. It's conducted an economic impact study that also looked at environmental factors. NOACA consultants found the new interchange would result in more acreage being developed than if it weren't. But it also downplays the relative loss of green space. David Beach believes the impact will be much more detrimental.
David Beach: It's a sprawling low-density area and totally dependent on access by automobiles. And that's just not sustainable in age of climate change and where we have rising energy prices.
On the economic side, if a westward shift is a worry, the city of Westlake would be one of the primary losers, according to its mayor, Dennis Clough. He worries that Westlake, which itself has boomed from out-migration, would lose jobs with a new Avon interchange. He's resigned to the project going forward, but feels NOACA should encourage more upgrading in his city as well.
Dennis Clough: NOACA needs to then say all these roads are now our priority over everybody else's roads and we're gonna fund it. If they do that, well then my issues have gone away other then the fact that there's just more competition.
And there's plenty of competition for business between these well-to-do, adjacent suburbs. Westlake, recently built Crocker Park, a mix of housing, retail, and office space and retains three thriving Cleveland Clinic centers.
Avon Mayor Jim Smith boasts that his city is one of the fastest growing cities in the country. The number of residents has increased nearly 42 percent from 2000 to 2006, according to Forbes Magazine. Smith says people will continue to move to Avon even if Clough and other mayors object.
Jim Smith: You're not gonna shut them off by not giving 'em an interchange because people will come here. They will put up with the traffic and all the other traveling woes and they'll still come for a good school system. They're not going to stop anything. The only thing they're probably going stop is maybe companies from expanding.
At least one company is expanding in Avon. In August, The Cleveland Clinic asked NOACA to approve the highway project. The Clinic's Oliver Henkel says the hospital system plans to build a new outpatient facility on a 40-acre soybean plot.
Henkel says The Clinic looked at 7 sites in Westlake, but none fit their expansion needs. He says the interchange will satisfy traffic needs for both suburbs by easing rush hour traffic for Crocker Park patrons commuters that use Route 83 in Avon.
Oliver Henkel: We make no quarrel at all with Westlake and we continue to enjoy to work with the city. The one major reason for building the intersection at Lear/Nagel was to relieve the congestion.
NOACA's study found that if the interchange were not built, market forces would simply shift development elsewhere - but their study doesn't specify where. NOACA's 38 member board is expected to vote on the project later this month.
Tasha Flournoy, 90.3.