Good progress being made on Euclid’s impressive water improvement project | Editorial – News-Herald.com

Sometimes, it's nice for people to be reminded of good things happening in their community.

That's why we believe that a recent program helped Euclid residents remember that they should appreciate a major project taking place on the city's Lake Erie shoreline.

The Euclid Public Library hosted a virtual presentation during which city Planning and Development Director Allison Lukacsy-Love updated residents about the ongoing waterfront improvement project.

First conceptualized in public meetings back in 2009, the $30 million plan consists of three phases.

Phase I, completed in 2013, was the fishing pier at Sims Park.Phase II, currently underway, consists of shoreline stabilization and a lakefront public-access walking trail which is under construction. Phase III consists of a future transient marina.

In the presentation on June 15, Lukacsy-Love explained that the project is on track to finish the three-quarter-mile trail by the end of the year. The walking path runs along the lakeshore from Sims Park to just west of Normandy Towers Apartments, located at 24801 Lakeshore Blvd.

"Thanks to the lower water level and and the pretty cooperative weather we've been having here in Northeast Ohio, we're aiming towards substantial completion by the end of 2021," she said, "And it's very exciting, if you've not had the opportunity to go down and walk on the currently paved section of trail, which has been paved since about fall of 2019, I highly encourage you to do that."

Also in the near future, Lukacsy-Love added, plans call for creating a paddle craft beach, where locals will be able to launch kayaks, paddle boards and other nonmotorized craft. The paddle craft beach will be located at the eastern end of the trail, near Normandy Towers, where a new park is being built to provide access to it.

If a marina were to be built in Phase III, she said, it would also be near that location, and the park would serve as the landward access point to it.

Lukacsy-Love said that Phase II the trail, park and paddle craft beach totals about $13.4 million. That funding came from local, state and federal sources.

"The funding sources are really quite varied," she said, "And when you talk about federal, state, and local grants, we're talking about state funding from the OEPA (Ohio Environmental Protection Agency) in a small order of magnitude of $30,000, all the way up to the FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) grant, which was really catalytic at $2.67 million."

Lukacsy-Love explained that the waterfront improvement project is continuing to make Lake Erie a more accessible asset for Euclid residents, who may not have ever truly resonated with living in a lakefront city due to a lack of public access to the lake itself.

She noted that while Euclid has been using "The Lakefront City" as part of its logo for many years, that branding has not been the most accurate up until now, as historically only 6 percent of Euclid's lakefront has been publicly accessible.

"For a community that is right around 50,000 residents, only having 6 percent of your four-plus miles of lakefront accessible, just wasn't cutting it," Lukacsy-Love said.

Thanks to a partnership with lakefront property owners and other stakeholders who granted property easements in exchange for erosion control measures, she explained, the project is opening up a significant amount of lakefront to the public, and addressing the major issue of erosion while protecting private property.

"This project, once it's done, will open up over 3,000 linear feet of privatized shoreline to public access," she said, "That's quadrupling the amount of public shoreline accessible to the public, and it's promoting equitable access to Lake Erie."

We commend the city of Euclid for its efforts to plan, secure funding and ensure that work is completed for each phase of this ambitious waterfront improvement project. Hopefully, the city's residents share our enthusiasm for an undertaking that will make Lake Erie much more accessible in Euclid.

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Good progress being made on Euclid's impressive water improvement project | Editorial - News-Herald.com