APPENDIX D2: MEDIA

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South Euclid councilman sues ODOT

BY ED WITTENBERG CJN Staff Reporter | Posted: Thursday, September 19, 2013 2:00 pm

South Euclid Councilman Marty Gelfand has filed a lawsuit in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas

Court against the Ohio Department of Transportation and a local deputy director.

In the suit, filed Sept. 13, Gelfand seeks public records related to the proposed Opportunity

Corridor, a road being planned in Cleveland by ODOT that would connect Interstate 490 with

University Circle and Cleveland Clinic around East 105th Street.

Gelfand requested the records in a letter July 9 after meeting with Myron Pakush, deputy director

of ODOT District 12, to discuss the project and possible alternatives. He said he still has not

received the records.

The request was denied in August pending federal approval of a draft environmental impact study

for the project, Gelfand said.

"The basis of my complaint is Ohio public records law says if someone in the public wants to

know how the government operates, the government has to be transparent," Gelfand, a lawyer,

said in an interview. "There are some exemptions to it, but public planning processes are not

exempt from open records law. ODOT has to show that, and they refused to do it."

Gelfand believes there are better alternatives to the proposed $324 million project. He said he

wants to find out how and why ODOT selected the proposed connector route and what alternatives

were proposed.

"I'm trying to help the public make decisions about the spending of taxpayer money," he said.

"The public has to be notified and has to be able to interact with the agency in an informed way.

"I'm asking (ODOT), 'Why did you reject an alternative that seems to be perfectly good, that

would do the job in a better way than your preferred alternative?'"

Gelfand said one alternative that involves improving Woodland Avenue would cost considerably

less money.

"The plan they have now has a lot of problems," he said. "It just doesn't make a lot of sense to

me."

Gelfand, a member of Beth El-The Heights Synagogue in Cleveland Heights, has served as an at-

large councilman in South Euclid since January 2012.

Page 1 of 2South Euclid councilman sues ODOT - Cleveland Jewish News: Local News

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"South Euclid is an eastern suburb adjacent to Cleveland, so this does affect us," he said. "People

commute downtown from South Euclid."

Calls to Pakush's office for comment were referred to Amanda Lee, public information officer for

District 12.

"We do not comment on pending litigation," Lee said. She added the Ohio attorney general's

office is representing ODOT in the case.

In addition to the public records, Gelfand's suit asked the court for $100 each business day that

ODOT failed to comply with his request, "reasonable" attorney fees, court costs and "any other

appropriate relief."

ewittenberg@cjn.org

Page 2 of 2South Euclid councilman sues ODOT - Cleveland Jewish News: Local News

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Many questions remain for Cleveland's proposed Opportunity Corridor: News Comment of the Day Print

By Mike Rose, Northeast Ohio Media Group Follow on Twitter on October 02, 2013 at 6:16 PM, updated October 02, 2013 at 6:19 PM Email

View/Post Comments

In response to the latest public meeting on Cleveland's Opportunity Corridor project, cleveland.com user David 44149 asks:

I support the concept of this planned project. I have driven to and from University Circle since 1985, and I know that it is needed. It also has great potential for opening up an area to redevelopment and improvement that is in desperate need of it. Having said that, I am very surprised at the asymmetric number of lanes. If we need three lanes going into University Circle, why are only two lanes fine for coming out? With the median and such, it would appear that there is no center lane that can flip direction like Carnegie. I can say from personal experience that both directions get congested, I hope that this project succeeds. It is not going to be an overnight success, but I think it has a lot of long term potential and will help one of the most economically depressed areas of the city.

Get in on the discussion and share your thoughts on the Opportunity Corridor below in the comments.

Appendix D2 - Page 4

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Photo credit: CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

The Ohio Department of Transportation's rendering of the proposed Opportunity Corridor

Opportunity Corridor is leading to some anxietyConcern about eminent domain arises along path of $331 million project

By JAY MILLER

4:30 am, October 6, 2013

The specter of eminent domain is haunting

Andrew Wright and other property owners

along the planned Opportunity Corridor, a

$331 million roadway that would connect

Cleveland's University Circle area with

Interstate 490.

Mr. Wright is general manager of Forge

Products Co., a metalworking company

along the corridor route that has been

expanding. It added on to its offices and

moved its machine shop, and then its

shipping and receiving department, into a

vacant building just north of its longtime

home at 9503 Woodland Ave. At the time,

it looked like the Opportunity Corridor wouldn't come to fruition after a decade of talk.

Now, though, that building is in the path of what would be an extension of Ohio Route 10. Like

many buildings and homes in the neighborhood, it is more than 100 years old.

It was among the buildings that were part of a factory complex built in 1906 by Peerless Motor

Car Co. Sometime after Peerless stopped making cars in 1931, it was home to the Model Box

Co. It was abandoned when Forge Products' parent company bought it in 2010.

So, Mr. Wright expects the Ohio Department of Transportation will take that building under

eminent domain — the right of the state to acquire private property for a public purpose. If it

does, Forge Products will need to consider its alternatives, because it needs to expand.

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“We've been here since 1978, give or take, and we like where we are; we're comfortable here

and our employees are comfortable here,” Mr. Wright said in a telephone interview last week.

“It would cost a crapload of money to move.”

Todd Shaker, owner of The Final Cut, a business that turns raw fruit into bite-size pieces it sells

to institutional food service customers, likewise is worried about his building at 8630 Evins Ave.,

which also is slated for taking under eminent domain.

At a public meeting last Tuesday, Oct. 1, to update neighborhood residents and business

owners on the Opportunity Corridor and hear their comments, Mr. Shaker tried to explain to an

ODOT staffer that he couldn't use some equipment in his current building in whatever new

building he would move into because he couldn't afford the downtime a move would entail. He

would need to buy new.

“A new building doesn't make me whole,” he told a reporter later, adding, “We want to stay in

Cleveland.”

A study by ODOT estimates the state will need to take 64 residential buildings, including single-

and multi-family homes, 25 commercial buildings, some of which are vacant, and a church to

clear the path for the corridor.

Suddenly, money

Road building — and property taking — on this scale haven't been undertaken in Cleveland in

years, though the rebuilding of the Inner Belt Bridge over the Cuyahoga River did have some

fights over property values.

In July, Gov. John Kasich told Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson the state would come through

with the lion's share of the cash needed to build the Opportunity Corridor. The project would

carve out a roadway that has been promoted as the foundation on which the city could rebuild a

struggling, deteriorating East Side neighborhood, often called the “Forgotten Triangle.”

The 3.5-mile road would be a divided, 35-mph boulevard linking Interstate 490 at East 55th

Street to University Circle along East 105th Street. It would make it easier to reach the growing

health care and employment center at University Circle from the west and, transportation

planners believe, relieve congestion on the Inner Belt.

The city of Cleveland rejected ODOT's original plan a decade ago for a freeway to University

Circle, but embraced the idea of a roadway that would spur redevelopment along the route. But

the project was on the back burner until a change in state law this spring allowed the Kasich

administration to tap the Ohio Turnpike for an infusion of road building money. The Ohio

Turnpike and Infrastructure Commission sold $1.1 billion in bonds, and Gov. Kasich said the

Opportunity Corridor would share in proceeds of the sale.

Construction is expected to start along East 105th as early as next year, though the full project

likely won't be completed until the end of the decade.

Once the construction dust settles, it will be up to the city of Cleveland and private developers

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to assemble land along the boulevard into developable parcels for offices, warehouse and light

industrial buildings and even new residential communities. A July 2012 land use study

estimated that about 29% of the land along the corridor is vacant, “dominated by isolated

residences, dilapidated properties and incomplete land uses.”

Exerting a 'heavy hand'?

With the ball beginning to roll for the Opportunity Corridor project, some people and businesses

along its proposed path now are anxious.

At last week's meeting with ODOT officials, some neighborhood residents and community

leaders voiced some of the same concerns expressed by Forge Products' Mr. Wright and Final

Cut's Mr. Shaker about eminent domain.

Their worries are economic; they are related to property values that are depressed by the

recession, the age of their homes and buildings, and the additional markdown their land faces

because of the blight that surrounds them. They fear the price ODOT will put on their properties

— what the law calls its fair market value if sold on the open market — won't be enough for

them to afford comparable homes or buildings in other neighborhoods.

“Where are you going to find a $5,000 house?” Mr. Wright said later in a telephone interview.

Ohio law allows ODOT to take possession of a property before it comes to final terms with the

owner. Under this so-called “quick take” process, the transportation department can begin

construction work and the property owner either can continue negotiating a settlement or can

ask a court to determine the property's fair value.

“This is the classic problem for property owners,” said Craig Miller, a Cleveland attorney and

former Cleveland law director who represents several clients with property along the corridor.

“This heavy hand of eminent domain can be pretty troublesome for property owners.”

It also could have a negative effect, at least for the time being, on whatever economic activity

still exists along the route.

Mr. Wright said while Forge Products would like to stay in the neighborhood, it is exploring its

options.

“We've been a part of this community for a long time,” Mr. Wright said. “We're trying to be a

good corporate citizen because we want to see things succeed, even if we're in the cross hairs,

so it's a real challenge for us.”

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November 6, 2013 by Angie Schmitt

ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH WATCH: “OPPORTUNITY CORRIDOR” IS MORE OF A “CAR CORRIDOR”

Local nonprofit group Environmental Health Watch published this letter to the editor in the Plain Dealer: We at Environmental Health Watch think the so-called “Opportunity Corridor” is really a “Car Corridor” which will likely hurt rather than help the 40 percent of neighborhood residents who do not own a car.

EHW has worked collaboratively to address urban environmental and health issues in Northeast Ohio for over 30 years. Our staff served on the steering committee for the Opportunity Corridor Brownfields Area-Wide Plan and helped organize community participation for the plan. Despite this work, we have concerns over whether the Opportunity Corridor, as designed, benefits local neighborhoods and adequately addresses neighborhood and environmental impacts.

Approximately 40 percent of households in the project rely on public transportation, walking or bicycling for mobility. Although community members have consistently called for adding public transportation components and adequate pedestrian and bicycle facilities to the plan, goals for multiple modes of transportation were added as evaluation factors but not included as core needs.

Further, the Environmental Justice Memo for the Environmental Impact Study has concluded there is no feasible corridor alternative which addresses neighborhood transportation needs or avoids disproportionate impacts to low-income and minority populations. These impacts will include home seizures, increased noise, and significant impacts on local air quality in an area with already existing high asthma rates and health disparities. Other concerns include the incomplete assessment of effects of the road on sprawl and disinvestment in the inner city, and the potential impact on climate change.

Appendix D2 - Page 10

The Opportunity Corridor has the potential to provide jobs and other important benefits to the local neighborhoods it impacts, but significant environmental and health concerns need to be adequately assessed and addressed and community benefits need to be negotiated prior to groundbreaking.

Mike Piepsny, Kim Foreman and Mandy Metcalf,

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11/20/13 RACISM STILL ALIVE & WELL; INDULGED BY BLACK AND WHITE CORPORATE LEADERS & POLITICIANS | Cleveland Leader

www.clevelandleader.com/node/21793 1/2

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RACISM STILL ALIVE & WELL; INDULGED BY BLACK AND WHITE CORPORATE

LEADERS & POLITICIANS

Published by Roldo Bartimole on November 17, 2013 - 2:01pm

Here are two multi-million Cleveland projects that show that racism is very much alive in this city and costdoesn't mean a thing when it comes to pursuing it.

Neither project is necessary or an improvement. Just costly.

Opportunity Corridor, a $350 or so million is an escape hatch for some people to travel from west to ClevelandClinic and University Circle. It will slice through a black neighborhood. Even though there are ordinary city streetsthat course the same path. Perfectly useable.

Disgusting.

Public Square, a $40-million project, is to get buses and the riff-raff they carry (black people to our leaders) offthe square and away from Tower City and the Dan Gilbert's gambling joint.

Disgusting.

But the lack of political leadership in town and the almost absence of citizen action plus the total sellout of thePlain Dealer and so-called television news means it will happen.Voices of reason need not apply.

Of course, with Plain Dealer publisher Terry Egger a co-chair you can't expect anything negative to filter its wayinto the once daily. Terry's gained a reputation for hiding news, not publishing it.

I noticed that Ch. 3, WKYC-TV, actually reported the other night that the Browns don't pay property taxes. And thatthe Browns pay only $250,000 to rent the stadium.

I wish senior political reporter Tom Beres and Managing Editor Russ Mitchell will begin to do something beyondthe mere skimming of the Browns sweetheart deal with the city. And that goes for the investigative teams of theother channels too.

They bend over when "Smiling Jimmy" Haslam (Mr. Nice Guy in press clips) wants $120 million inimprovements (mostly to enhance his advertising take), wants to eliminate 3,000 cheap seats and up morerevenue by increasing higher priced seats.

All this is being done under the watch of Mr. Sincere Mayor Frank Jackson and his contingent of Council Clowns.

When is anyone in this city going to wake up? Or is everybody dead?

Here's a link to a protest against the Corridor: http://www.change.org/petitions/ne-ohio-elected-leaders-opportunity-corridor-gets-it-wrong

The Opportunity Corridor, so 1984ishly named, is the Tell that every citizen should be able to detect. There's nocivic opportunity involved.

I took a ride last week from the Cleveland Clinic down Euclid Avenue to 55th street over to Quincy. A quick jog upQuincy, a four lane, two-way little used street by my journey, to East 105th Street, right back to the ClevelandClinic campus, which is a quick ride into all of University Circle. It took minutes.

This vehicle Opportunity is right there.

Cost: $0.

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Opportunity Corridor media transportation

Local News

Roldo Bartimole

Not even a new street stripe is necessary.

It a totally easy journey from E. 55th (and I-490) from where the misnamed $330 million Opportunity Corridorwould move vehicles to University Circle.

But you see a no cost road means no construction money for contractors, no construction jobs for labor, nolawyers, no architects, no bondholders, no insurers, no planners and no bankers or bond counsels.

Why hardly anyone could make a profit on a deal as that.

So in other words, no graft, payoffs, or gifts to friends or opportunities for campaign donations.

So let's do the stupid thing. Again.

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It truly disgusted me that the media acts as cheerleaders for these thieves wholove welfare for the rich.

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Nguyễn Phương ThànhIt truly disgusted me that the media acts as cheerleadersfor these thieves who love welfare for the rich.

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EEWSo it looks like taxpayers put in about $25 million peryear. Are there any estimates of other tax revenues notincluded above, which I think was a big part of thejustification. I.E. sales taxes,...

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Appendix D2 - Page 13

Can Cleveland realize the benefits of Opportunity

Corridor and avoid pitfalls?

A map from a recent report by City Architecture on brownfields and development potential in the Cleveland "Forgotten Triangle" includes the ODOT preferred alignment for Opportunity Corridor. (City Architecture, ODOT) Print

By Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer Follow on Twitter on September 26, 2013 at 5:30 PM, updated September 26, 2013 at 7:16 PM Email

View/Post Comments

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- This city suffered terribly a half-century ago when the interstate highway system rolled into town.

Neighborhoods were gashed in half. The lakefront was largely walled off by concrete. Downtown was slashed apart from Midtown and the Central neighborhood by a highway trench that acts like a gigantic moat.

Appendix D2 - Page 14

Let’s not forget that the interstates fueled a suburban expansion that caused a massive exodus of city residents, which still threatens to swamp Northeast Ohio with fiscally unsustainable sprawl.

Given all this evidence, the question is whether anything related to the interstate system can help Cleveland, rather than add to the wreckage.

View full size Opportunity Corridor would provide room to expand and better access to the interstate highway system for businesses in Cleveland's "Forgotten Triangle," such as Orlando Baking Co. at 7777 Grand Ave., and Miceli Dairy Products, shown here, at 2721 E. 90th St.

A positive answer may come in the form of Opportunity Corridor, a $331 million boulevard championed in early stages of planning over the past decade by the city and the Greater Cleveland Partnership, the city’s chamber of commerce.

Terrance C.Z. Egger, the publisher of The Plain Dealer, co-chairs the project’s 21-member civic steering committee with Jamie Ireland, managing partner of Early Stage Partners.

The corridor would curve across the economically devastated south-central portion of the city and connect the highway network to University Circle, the fastest-growing job center in the region.

If designed well, the corridor could create a 400-acre inner-city brownfield redevelopment zone that generates thousands of new jobs. It could be the antithesis of the suburban, transit-aloof, corporate-office sprawl zone that Chagrin Highlands has become on the east side of the county.

Appendix D2 - Page 15

View full size A map shows how the area to be traversed by Opportunity Corridor - known as the Forgotten Triangle - is difficult to navigate through today because it is carved by by railroads and valleys.

But whether Opportunity Corridor succeeds depends entirely on what happens over the next two or three years as the corridor moves from the final stages of design to a projected completion in 2019.

The question of the project’s design is urgent because Republican Gov. John Kasich has accelerated funding for the project.

Despite the city’s sorry history with big road projects, can we get it right this time and not repeat the horrible mistakes of the 1950s and ‘60s?

Two public events related to the corridor and how the community can shape its future are on tap soon.

One is an ODOT public hearing from 4 to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 1, at Mt. Sinai Baptist Church, 7510 Woodland Ave., Cleveland. Comments from the hearing will become part of the agency’s environmental impact study, completion of which is required by the Federal Highway Administration before the corridor can go ahead.

Appendix D2 - Page 16

View full size A recent study by City Architecture for the Greater Cleveland Partnership shows how large parcels for development could be assembled around the proposed Opportunity Corridor. Streets marked blue in this proposal would be removed.

The second event is a “Circle Neighbors,” public forum on Wednesday, Oct. 9, from 6:15 to 7:30 p.m. in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

At the museum, I’ll moderate a panel of speakers including Chris Ronayne, director of University Circle Inc.; Vickie Johnson, director of Fairfax Renaissance Development Corp.; Deb Janik, senior vice president for real estate and business development at the Greater Cleveland Partnership; and blogger and activist Angie Schmitt.

The forum, which is free and sponsored by the Womens Council of the museum, will examine where the design of Opportunity Corridor stands today and how the neighborhoods around it – including the Forgotten Triangle and University Circle – could benefit or be harmed.

Planning for the project so far has been encouraging. The corridor would begin at the stub end of I-490 at East 55th Street, where protests in the 1960s halted extension of the Clark Freeway east through the Shaker Lakes to I-271.

In contrast to the old freeway proposal, the corridor would be a five-lane, 35 mph boulevard that runs 3.5 miles east to East 105th Street, with 13 at-grade, pedestrian-friendly intersections connecting the road to neighborhoods on the north and south.

Appendix D2 - Page 17

View full size The Sidaway suspension bridge for pedestrians, now smothered in greenery, once connected the St. Hyacinth neighborhood on the north side of Slavic Village to Kinsman Road and Garden Valley on the east side of Kingsbury Run. Opportunity Corridor would bridge Kingsbury, creating an unprecedented connection between those neighborhoods, University Circle and the interstate highway system.

Opportunity Corridor would make it easier for commuters and visitors to reach University Circle jobs and cultural institutions such as the Cleveland Orchestra and the Cleveland Museum of Art. The institutions in particular would have easier access to new audiences on the West Side of the city and Cuyahoga County.

Just as important, if not more so, the corridor could reactivate hundreds of acres of fallow industrial land and hollowed-out neighborhoods in the city’s “Forgotten Triangle,” located south of South Woodland Road and east of East 55th Street.

The area is extremely difficult to traverse today because it has been carved into discrete pieces by the CSX and Norfolk-Southern railroads, and because of its rolling terrain, which includes the Kingsbury Run valley.

Appendix D2 - Page 18

View full size A typical roadway section from the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Opportunity Corridor shows a 10-foot multi-purpose trail on the right, in addition to a sidewalk on the left, plus five travel lanes and a green median.

Simply pouring more maintenance money into the existing road network wouldn’t make sense; nor would it encourage development.

Even so, the standard criticism of the project is that highway or road projects that add extra capacity to the existing system are bad because they reinforce sprawl development and reliance on the automobile.

According to this logic, articulated by critics including Schmitt, the Cleveland chapter of the Sierra Club and the GreenCityBlueLake Institute at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, we already have plenty of roads and should simply repair the ones that exist.

But Opportunity Corridor would reconfigure a dysfunctional network of streets and provide new access to the interstate system in the urban core. As a result, it could transform land values and produce jobs.

A 2011 study by Allegro Realty Advisors for the Greater Cleveland Partnership states that the corridor could create 2,300 permanent jobs and 3,300 temporary jobs with a total payroll of $1.1 billion. Hundreds of millions of dollars in city, county, state and federal tax revenues would be created.

That would be a strong return in exchange for the pain some individual property owners will endure. ODOT projects that some 90 homes and businesses would have to be relocated. They’ll need to be made whole, fairly.

To realize the full benefits of the corridor, a lot more than planning the roadway needs to be done soon.

Appendix D2 - Page 19

View full size Small vacant lots along Rawlings Avenue in Cleveland and other areas in the city's "Forgotten Triangle" could be assembled into larger parcels and redeveloped if the Opportunity Corridor boulevard is realized. Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer

Hundreds of acres of property flanking the right-of-way need to be assembled and rezoned to encourage design construction of a dense, walkable urban commercial center. Urban guidelines need to be devised to ensure the area looks like part of the city, not a suburban office or industrial park.

Early designs for the corridor include a 10-foot-wide multipurpose trail that could accommodate bikes. That’s terrific, but the bike path needs to be conceived as part of a system that connects University Circle to the nearby Slavic Village neighborhood, the city’s lakefront and downtown.

The corridor’s pathway, which skirts just south of the Regional Transit Authority’s Red, Green and Blue lines, needs to be designed to encourage pedestrian connections to the rapid transit stations nearby.

Appendix D2 - Page 20

View full sizeAn ODOT diagram in the Opportunity Corridor Draft Environmental Impact Study shows how the 35 mph boulevard would cross 13 intersections connecting the right-of-way to neighborhoods.ODOT

Commuters should have the option to use transit to reach new jobs made possible by redevelopment in the area. City Planning Director Robert Brown would also like to see buses on the corridor.

Janik said she’d like to see the corridor and adjacent acres planned to include so-called green infrastructure, which would capture and filter storm runoff rather than add more flow to overtaxed sewers. Accordingly, the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District needs to be a full partner in the urban design of the corridor zone as the road moves ahead.

University Circle also needs to think ahead about how to avoid construction of giant parking garages that would mar the city’s cultural and medical neighborhood.

The biggest prize of all would be that completion of Opportunity Corridor would draw so much traffic away from the downtown Inner Belt freeway that ODOT would have to rethink the design of that slow and deeply uninspired $3 billion project.

All of these benefits are wrapped up in the Opportunity Corridor package. For that reason, the project bears very close watching in the coming months.

The work done so far by ODOT and its partners give reason to hope it will be a very different kind of roadway project for the city, not a repeat of the past. The months ahead will show whether Opportunity Corridor can truly live up to its name.

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