City of Cleveland Heights posts strategic plan update
The City of Cleveland Heights has posted a draft Strategic Development Plan 2010 on its website, www.clevelandheights.com. The strategic plan, designed as a framework for action by city government, is the first strategic plan put forth by the city since 1993.
The plan is organized around seven ambitious goals related to issues of concern. A concise summary of existing conditions in the city sets the stage. This is followed by in-depth discussions of each goal. The goals, as one would expect, focus on some of the challenges that the city has faced for generations--maintaining the community's unique character, holding onto existing residents and attracting new ones, renovating and upgrading housing stock, keeping a unique collection of commercial districts prosperous and relevant, and improving the city's aging physical infrastructure. Topics that were nonexistent or on the fringe of most people's consciousness in 1993, such as the foreclosure crisis and sustainable development practices, are given serious attention in the 2010 plan.
The plan, authored by the seven-member planning commission, with substantial support from the city's department of planning and development staff, encouragingly references studying the feasibility of an overall city master plan, or comprehensive plan, the lack of which puts Cleveland Heights in a nearly unique position among municipalities of its size and character. Also encouraging is the plan's redoubled emphasis on the city's immediate adjacency to, and interdependency with, flourishing University Circle.
Development opportunities are enumerated and analyzed in terms of their ability to bolster the city's tax base and thus its ability to maintain a competitive level of services. Obvious development sites, such as Top of the Hill and Meadowbrook Lee, are discussed, and the plan does not shy away from addressing controversial topics, such as the reuse of the decommissioned Millikin School campus or development scenarios for the Oakwood Country Club property.
The strategic plan is as thorough as a 41-page document can be. The city's commercial districts, for example, are examined in detail, and the less prosperous commercial districts, primarily those north of Mayfield Road, are considered thoughtfully. Various futures are put forth for consideration for these less-privileged districts, but, to the comfort of northside residents, their wholesale abandonment is not recommended.
The last 11 pages of the plan look back at the 1993 plan and the ways in which the goals set out in that plan have or have not been realized.
As we go to press, it appears that there will be only one public meeting, on Sept. 13, at which those interested will be able to express their opinions of the plan. In the meantime, citizens are encouraged to view the plan online--it is an interesting read--and to send their comments or questions by e-mail to devplan@clvhts.com.
Vince Reddy, who works for Cleveland Public Art, has lived in Cleveland Heights for nearly 14 years.