Potential designs for a new park space at Irishtown Bend in Cleveland will be presented to the public Tuesday evening.
Planners, trail designers and the Ohio City Community Development Corporation are betting that building green space on the Cuyahoga River will achieve multiple results.
Irishtown Bend is the name for a 17-acre hillside where workers, mostly Irish, helped build Cleveland’s industrial might in the 19th century. Now the hillside is overgrown and slowly destabilizing.
That’s a concern for river navigation and has helped bring partners together to fix the hill, connect bike trails and create a new park.
Scott Cataffa, one of the primary landscape architects on the project, says two main visions are emerging so far.
“One scheme is more active and offers more neighborhood park amenities like playgrounds and dog parks and those kind of things that would give Ohio City kind of a great neighborhood park.
'Playgrounds and dog parks and those kind of things would give Ohio City kind of a great neighborhood park.'
"The other scheme is a little bit more pastoral. It’s event-focused. We could have a big amphitheater here, maybe you could have concerts or events here. Otherwise its more naturalistic, softer kind of landscape,” he said.
Plans for the park and funding for it are not yet certain. Tuesday’s public session will provide input to help narrow down plans to one design. Costs for stabilizing the hill are estimated to be about $49 million.
