Canal Basin Park Redesign Aims to Pair Heritage With (More) Waterfront Access

The 20 acres of land off the first bend of the Cuyahoga River, and just south of Settler's Landing, has seen a lot in the past two centuries.

Up until the 1870s, it was Canal Basin, the major entry point for ships from the Erie Canal bound for the Ohio. (It was apparently where Alexis de Tocqueville took his first steps on U.S. soil.) By the mid-19th century it was a rail hub connecting Pennsylvania and Indianapolis.

And in the past 50 years, Canal Basin's done its best, despite the detriments of sprawl and slim budgets, to see fresh life as a city park. Evolution that hasn't exactly balanced perfect design and clear homages to Cleveland history—criticisms that've been circulating since the Cuyahoga's infamous river fires.

"This is where Cleveland started ," Mera Cardenas, the executive director of Canalway Partners, told Scene, standing fifty feet from the Cuyahoga. "I mean, this is where Moses Cleaveland would've landed in 1796. This used to be the western boundary of the United States!"
[content-3] For the past few years, Cardenas has been working in tandem with the city and the county on planning for Canal Basin Park's next phase, one that attempts to merge nicely its role in Cleveland's history and its promise as a gathering spot in Cleveland's future.

Such planning, which kicked off officially in 2013, came to a head last Friday, when Canalway, the city and their hired architects unveiled designs for what those 20 acres or so could look like in the decade to come. Plans that only solidify a certain future for the first mile or so down the Cuyahoga.

With bulldozers already moving for Irishtown Bend Park, and for the Thunderbird Apartments complex across the way, Canal Basin's overhaul is bound to create a central parks cluster that will not only act as a node for the Towpath and the Lakefront trails, but as a mega draw for those eyeing a life in the city.

It's a draw that's long been worthy of a facepalm for weary Clevelanders: finally providing more public access to the waterfronts.

"It's great, because so many spots here you're so removed from the water," Ryan Phile, 38, said sitting at a picnic table in Canal Basin. "Unless you have a boat in this town—you're so removed downtown from the water otherwise."

That redesign, shown in renderings and small scale models displayed at last week's event, shows connectivity and then some. Along with a re-done riverfront boardwalk, which will run from Settler's Landing all the way to Center Street, a brand new Mile Zero Plaza will welcome runners and cyclists from the last leg of the Towpath. (Which opened up next to a converted green space in 2022.)

And, as a nod to historical use, a marshy Canal Stormwater Basin, constructed out of Berea limestone, will sit precisely where the naval throughway of the 19th century used to be—dead in the middle of a playground, dog park and breezy gathering lawn.

Nina Chase is one of half of the principal architects that comprise Merritt Chase, the design consultants hired by the city. She told Scene that her and partner Chris Merritt used contemporary styles in landscape architecture—like how James Corner Field Operations did with Bibb's Lakefront Master Plan—to help enlighten Clevelanders' sense of their own history.

And keep things practical. The redone basin will actually, Chase said, harbor and treat nearby stormwater. And it'll be host to one of the only playgrounds for kids situated downtown.

"We're trying to bring back some of those components to make them really legible in the place and then make it a place that is attractive to families," she said, standing above the model she and Merritt built.

"And of course be host to big events," she added. "You know: music, big crowds, farmers markets—that kind of stuff."

Department of Parks & Rec's Jay Rauschenbach and Alexandria Nichols declined to say how much the construction would cost, though the designs could be, Chase suggested, in the "tens of millions." (And be completed "by 2034," Chase added.) Rauschenbach, who writes grants for Parks & Rec, told Scene that he'll be looking into federal grant or city bond opportunities to pay for its build out.

Canal Basin's overhaul, with its attention to family gatherings and kayak pull-ups and plethora of native plantings, will surely check off a range of boxes included in the Department of Parks & Rec's master plan, which should be going live later this year.

For Nichols, who started as the first Parks & Rec director last week, Canal Basin's redesign signifies a clear pursuit of better urban parks stymied by a tough reality. That the city doesn't, as of now, own as much developable land along the river as they might like to.

"I think there's limited lakefront or riverfront land that's available," she told Scene. "And I think whenever there's an opportunity to incorporate green space into development—it's always, always a win." [content-2]

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