Have you ever thought about living in a cooperative environment? Where one day you might end up cooking for others, and the next day you might be sitting down to a meal prepared by the same friends? Picture a house where responsibilities are shared amongst the residents…  these types of living environments thrive on social situations, and might not be right for everyone, but then there are those of us who thrive in cooperative living quarters.

The Nickel City Housing Cooperative (NCHC) is opening its doors on Saturday July 6 from 2-5pm, showcasing its two living environments – Ol’ Wondermoth and Plankton. The occasion marks the International Day of the Cooperative, “an annual celebration of the co-operative movement observed on the first Saturday in July since 1923 by the International Co-operative Alliance.”

Cola Bickford is one of the dwellers who lives in the fantastic brick home located at the corner of North and Elmwood. ”I love cooperative living and I am excited to open our doors to people who are curious to learn about who we are, what we do, and what it means to be a cooperative!” says Cola, a resident member of NCHC, Ol’ Wondermoth.

It’s hard for me to believe that NCHC has been around for over a decade. I remember that the cooperative was one of the first articles that we ever covered… right after the launch of Buffalo Rising in print. It was then that I learned that the mission of the group was to find vacant buildings in the city, fix them up, and then occupy them with residents. It’s still a great formula – maybe it’s time to see a third project spring up somewhere?

*Members of both houses will be offering tours of the houses that will detail the history of the property to date and how the houses operate today as a cooperative living environment. Refreshments will be offered and people of all ages are welcome. For more information, please contact nickelcityhousing@gmail.com. 

Have you ever thought about living in a cooperative environment? Where one day you might end up cooking for others, and the next day you might be sitting down to a meal prepared by the same friends? Picture a house where responsibilities are shared amongst the residents…  these types of living environments thrive on social situations, and might not be right for everyone, but then there are those of us who thrive in cooperative living quarters.

The Nickel City Housing Cooperative (NCHC) is opening its doors on Saturday July 6 from 2-5pm, showcasing its two living environments – Ol’ Wondermoth and Plankton. The occasion marks the International Day of the Cooperative, “an annual celebration of the co-operative movement observed on the first Saturday in July since 1923 by the International Co-operative Alliance.”

Cola Bickford is one of the dwellers who lives in the fantastic brick home located at the corner of North and Elmwood. ”I love cooperative living and I am excited to open our doors to people who are curious to learn about who we are, what we do, and what it means to be a cooperative!” says Cola, a resident member of NCHC, Ol’ Wondermoth.

It’s hard for me to believe that NCHC has been around for over a decade. I remember that the cooperative was one of the first articles that we ever covered… right after the launch of Buffalo Rising in print. It was then that I learned that the mission of the group was to find vacant buildings in the city, fix them up, and then occupy them with residents. It’s still a great formula – maybe it’s time to see a third project spring up somewhere?

*Members of both houses will be offering tours of the houses that will detail the history of the property to date and how the houses operate today as a cooperative living environment. Refreshments will be offered and people of all ages are welcome. For more information, please contact nickelcityhousing@gmail.com. 

Have you ever thought about living in a cooperative environment? Where one day you might end up cooking for others, and the next day you might be sitting down to a meal prepared by the same friends? Picture a house where responsibilities are shared amongst the residents…  these types of living environments thrive on social situations, and might not be right for everyone, but then there are those of us who thrive in cooperative living quarters.

The Nickel City Housing Cooperative (NCHC) is opening its doors on Saturday July 6 from 2-5pm, showcasing its two living environments – Ol’ Wondermoth and Plankton. The occasion marks the International Day of the Cooperative, “an annual celebration of the co-operative movement observed on the first Saturday in July since 1923 by the International Co-operative Alliance.”

Cola Bickford is one of the dwellers who lives in the fantastic brick home located at the corner of North and Elmwood. ”I love cooperative living and I am excited to open our doors to people who are curious to learn about who we are, what we do, and what it means to be a cooperative!” says Cola, a resident member of NCHC, Ol’ Wondermoth.

It’s hard for me to believe that NCHC has been around for over a decade. I remember that the cooperative was one of the first articles that we ever covered… right after the launch of Buffalo Rising in print. It was then that I learned that the mission of the group was to find vacant buildings in the city, fix them up, and then occupy them with residents. It’s still a great formula – maybe it’s time to see a third project spring up somewhere?

*Members of both houses will be offering tours of the houses that will detail the history of the property to date and how the houses operate today as a cooperative living environment. Refreshments will be offered and people of all ages are welcome. For more information, please contact nickelcityhousing@gmail.com. 

View full sizeCyclists arrive for a Critical Mass event at Public Square in 2012.Gus Chan, The Plain Dealer 

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The nationwide urban bike revolution is poised to shift into higher gear in Cleveland.

The question is whether the city can accelerate quickly and become more competitive with capitals of bike-friendliness such as New York, Chicago and San Francisco and regional standouts such as Pittsburgh.

With only 47 miles of a proposed 89.5 miles of bike paths and trails complete within its boundaries, Cleveland isn’t yet a star performer, but it appears ready to improve soon.

The city’s Office of Sustainability is nearly finished with an ambitious inventory of streets aimed at ranking which ones are most eligible for upgrades as “Complete and Green Streets” with enhanced landscaping and amenities for cyclists and pedestrians.

And the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, which oversees how federal transportation dollars are spent, just completed a four-year update of its regional bike plan.

Activists and civic volunteers, meanwhile, are coming forward with terrific proposals to repurpose and re-use traffic lanes and other pieces of baggy, loose-fitting infrastructure built when the city’s population was more than 50 percent larger than it is today.

View full sizeA photo of the proposed Red Line greenway viewed from Lorain Avenue.Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer

 To wit:

• The Rotary Club of Cleveland is raising awareness about a concept four years in the making to turn part of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s Red Line right-of-way into a three-mile bike path on the city’s West Side.
• A second brilliant idea is that of turning former streetcar median lanes on 50 to 70 miles of city streets into “bicycle boulevards” for commuting and recreation. The prime movers behind this notion are John McGovern, board president of the Ohio City Bike Cooperative; and Barb Clint, director of Community Health and Advocacy at the Cleveland YMCA.
• Meanwhile, the Kent State University Urban Design Collaborative recently completed a detailed study on the feasibility of turning the lower level of the Detroit-Superior (Veterans Memorial) Bridge, once used by streetcars, into an all-weather bike and pedestrian link.

(Incidentally, the lower level of the bridge, normally off-limits, will be open for free public tours on Saturday, July 6, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.).

All of these ideas are deeply inspiring, and deserve to be realized immediately.

View full sizeRotary volunteers Jason Rohal, left, and Leonard Stover, visited the site of the proposed Red Line Rapid greenway site earlier this week.Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer

The problem – and it’s a good one to have – is that a plethora of great proposals requires making choices. 

Not everything can happen all at once, and the new ideas join an already substantial portfolio of projects for bike paths and trails in Cleveland that are under way in various stages, including the long-delayed completion of the northernmost section of the 110-mile Towpath Trail.

Also, obviously, moving from concept to reality requires highly detailed and expensive planning, not to mention construction dollars. Yet money to fix potholes in the city, much less revamp entire rights-of-way, is always scarce.

All of this shows why this is absolutely the perfect moment for a new, citywide bike summit to sort through all the great ideas, to rank them in order of importance and urgency, and then to raise the money to realize them sooner rather than later.

View full sizeA proposal developed by members of Bike Cleveland’s board of trustees including Barb Clint and John McGovern calls for turning miles of former streetcar medians in Cleveland into bicycle expressways.Bike Cleveland

 Such a process could further energize Cleveland’s efforts to make itself a greener, healthier and more beautiful city. It would give greater confidence to local government, foundations and private philanthropists about the critical next steps needed to create a strong, citywide bicycle network.

Bike Cleveland, the city’s leading advocacy group, would be the most likely convener of such a summit. The young organization held its first summit in 2011 to craft its mission of building “livable communities by promoting all forms of cycling and advocating for the rights and equality of the cycling community.”

The logical next step is for Bike Cleveland to help the community sort through and prioritize the many excellent proposals for transforming city streets – in collaboration with the city, NOACA and other agencies.

“I think it definitely makes sense,” said Jacob VanSickle, Bike Cleveland’s director since 2012, when I called him earlier this week about the idea of a new bike summit.

He estimated that there are “dozens” of large and small bike plans that have been funded by sources including NOACA.

“Maybe some of them are getting implemented, but a lot are sitting on shelves gathering dust,” VanSickle said.

NOACA Director Grace Gallucci, who moved to Cleveland less than a year ago after leaving a high-ranking transit post in Chicago, said her agency’s updated regional bike plan is based on extensive public participation by bicycle advocacy groups, but to her thinking it is still “probably not bold enough.”

She also said the plan lacks any methodology to rank and prioritize projects, and that such consensus is needed. She’d welcome the chance to refine NOACA’s plans and has proposed to her agency’s board of directors that an update be completed within a year.

The city of Cleveland, meanwhile, wants to update its 2007 Bikeway Master Plan.

View full sizeA proposal to install bike lanes on the lower level of the Detroit-Superior Bridge, envisioned here in a digital rendering, could cost from $2 million to $11 million according to a new estimate.Detroit-Superior Bridge Project Connectivity Plan

“We are fully on board with the idea of being comprehensive and not piecemeal,” said Robert Brown, the city’s planning director.

“One of the next steps is updating and making more robust our citywide bicycle plan,” he said. “We would do that in a way that would engage a broad range of stakeholders.”

Well, a summit could be one way to get started. The need is urgent because the physical transformation of Cleveland’s hard, gray public realm would improve livability for all residents – and help Cleveland attract new ones.

A new report from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Mass., shows that the percentage of residents aged 25 to 34 in Cleveland is still shrinking as a proportion of the city’s overall population.

This makes it even more important to capitalize on the influx of millennials in neighborhoods that are growing, such as University Circle, Ohio City, Tremont and Detroit Shoreway.

Linking those and other neighborhoods to downtown and regional parks with better bike trails and paths would be an enormous boon to newcomers and existing residents.

So here’s what I envision for the summit: The event would begin with a Critical Mass bike ride attracting hundreds of cyclists to the city’s new downtown Mall, which doubles as the roof of the new convention center.

The meeting would then proceed inside the new Global Center for Health Innovation, which faces east toward the Mall with glassy, four-story atrium.

A bike summit at the Global Center would underscore the message that cycling and physical exercise are very much part of Cleveland’s desire to become a green, healthy city.

It would also be a way for the cycling community to assert itself dramatically, at least for a day, in the heart of downtown, and to show that the big new civic investments downtown can serve as a jumping off point for a transformation of city neighborhoods as a whole.

Dave Johnson, director of public relations and marketing for the convention and global centers, said he’s open to the idea of such a meeting and that he likes the sound of it.

Here’s hoping that such a meeting can take place – and soon. It would be exciting to see a mighty convergence of cyclists, health advocates and great plans for the future of city streets that could balance bikes, pedestrians, cars, transit and safety.

A new bike summit could be a solid step toward the transformation of Cleveland – a city that finally, after two recessions and a mortgage foreclosure meltdown, seems to be gaining traction toward a better future.

View full sizeCyclists arrive for a Critical Mass event at Public Square in 2012.Gus Chan, The Plain Dealer 

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The nationwide urban bike revolution is poised to shift into higher gear in Cleveland.

The question is whether the city can accelerate quickly and become more competitive with capitals of bike-friendliness such as New York, Chicago and San Francisco and regional standouts such as Pittsburgh.

With only 47 miles of a proposed 89.5 miles of bike paths and trails complete within its boundaries, Cleveland isn’t yet a star performer, but it appears ready to improve soon.

The city’s Office of Sustainability is nearly finished with an ambitious inventory of streets aimed at ranking which ones are most eligible for upgrades as “Complete and Green Streets” with enhanced landscaping and amenities for cyclists and pedestrians.

And the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, which oversees how federal transportation dollars are spent, just completed a four-year update of its regional bike plan.

Activists and civic volunteers, meanwhile, are coming forward with terrific proposals to repurpose and re-use traffic lanes and other pieces of baggy, loose-fitting infrastructure built when the city’s population was more than 50 percent larger than it is today.

View full sizeA photo of the proposed Red Line greenway viewed from Lorain Avenue.Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer

 To wit:

• The Rotary Club of Cleveland is raising awareness about a concept four years in the making to turn part of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s Red Line right-of-way into a three-mile bike path on the city’s West Side.
• A second brilliant idea is that of turning former streetcar median lanes on 50 to 70 miles of city streets into “bicycle boulevards” for commuting and recreation. The prime movers behind this notion are John McGovern, board president of the Ohio City Bike Cooperative; and Barb Clint, director of Community Health and Advocacy at the Cleveland YMCA.
• Meanwhile, the Kent State University Urban Design Collaborative recently completed a detailed study on the feasibility of turning the lower level of the Detroit-Superior (Veterans Memorial) Bridge, once used by streetcars, into an all-weather bike and pedestrian link.

(Incidentally, the lower level of the bridge, normally off-limits, will be open for free public tours on Saturday, July 6, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.).

All of these ideas are deeply inspiring, and deserve to be realized immediately.

View full sizeRotary volunteers Jason Rohal, left, and Leonard Stover, visited the site of the proposed Red Line Rapid greenway site earlier this week.Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer

The problem – and it’s a good one to have – is that a plethora of great proposals requires making choices. 

Not everything can happen all at once, and the new ideas join an already substantial portfolio of projects for bike paths and trails in Cleveland that are under way in various stages, including the long-delayed completion of the northernmost section of the 110-mile Towpath Trail.

Also, obviously, moving from concept to reality requires highly detailed and expensive planning, not to mention construction dollars. Yet money to fix potholes in the city, much less revamp entire rights-of-way, is always scarce.

All of this shows why this is absolutely the perfect moment for a new, citywide bike summit to sort through all the great ideas, to rank them in order of importance and urgency, and then to raise the money to realize them sooner rather than later.

View full sizeA proposal developed by members of Bike Cleveland’s board of trustees including Barb Clint and John McGovern calls for turning miles of former streetcar medians in Cleveland into bicycle expressways.Bike Cleveland

 Such a process could further energize Cleveland’s efforts to make itself a greener, healthier and more beautiful city. It would give greater confidence to local government, foundations and private philanthropists about the critical next steps needed to create a strong, citywide bicycle network.

Bike Cleveland, the city’s leading advocacy group, would be the most likely convener of such a summit. The young organization held its first summit in 2011 to craft its mission of building “livable communities by promoting all forms of cycling and advocating for the rights and equality of the cycling community.”

The logical next step is for Bike Cleveland to help the community sort through and prioritize the many excellent proposals for transforming city streets – in collaboration with the city, NOACA and other agencies.

“I think it definitely makes sense,” said Jacob VanSickle, Bike Cleveland’s director since 2012, when I called him earlier this week about the idea of a new bike summit.

He estimated that there are “dozens” of large and small bike plans that have been funded by sources including NOACA.

“Maybe some of them are getting implemented, but a lot are sitting on shelves gathering dust,” VanSickle said.

NOACA Director Grace Gallucci, who moved to Cleveland less than a year ago after leaving a high-ranking transit post in Chicago, said her agency’s updated regional bike plan is based on extensive public participation by bicycle advocacy groups, but to her thinking it is still “probably not bold enough.”

She also said the plan lacks any methodology to rank and prioritize projects, and that such consensus is needed. She’d welcome the chance to refine NOACA’s plans and has proposed to her agency’s board of directors that an update be completed within a year.

The city of Cleveland, meanwhile, wants to update its 2007 Bikeway Master Plan.

View full sizeA proposal to install bike lanes on the lower level of the Detroit-Superior Bridge, envisioned here in a digital rendering, could cost from $2 million to $11 million according to a new estimate.Detroit-Superior Bridge Project Connectivity Plan

“We are fully on board with the idea of being comprehensive and not piecemeal,” said Robert Brown, the city’s planning director.

“One of the next steps is updating and making more robust our citywide bicycle plan,” he said. “We would do that in a way that would engage a broad range of stakeholders.”

Well, a summit could be one way to get started. The need is urgent because the physical transformation of Cleveland’s hard, gray public realm would improve livability for all residents – and help Cleveland attract new ones.

A new report from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Mass., shows that the percentage of residents aged 25 to 34 in Cleveland is still shrinking as a proportion of the city’s overall population.

This makes it even more important to capitalize on the influx of millennials in neighborhoods that are growing, such as University Circle, Ohio City, Tremont and Detroit Shoreway.

Linking those and other neighborhoods to downtown and regional parks with better bike trails and paths would be an enormous boon to newcomers and existing residents.

So here’s what I envision for the summit: The event would begin with a Critical Mass bike ride attracting hundreds of cyclists to the city’s new downtown Mall, which doubles as the roof of the new convention center.

The meeting would then proceed inside the new Global Center for Health Innovation, which faces east toward the Mall with glassy, four-story atrium.

A bike summit at the Global Center would underscore the message that cycling and physical exercise are very much part of Cleveland’s desire to become a green, healthy city.

It would also be a way for the cycling community to assert itself dramatically, at least for a day, in the heart of downtown, and to show that the big new civic investments downtown can serve as a jumping off point for a transformation of city neighborhoods as a whole.

Dave Johnson, director of public relations and marketing for the convention and global centers, said he’s open to the idea of such a meeting and that he likes the sound of it.

Here’s hoping that such a meeting can take place – and soon. It would be exciting to see a mighty convergence of cyclists, health advocates and great plans for the future of city streets that could balance bikes, pedestrians, cars, transit and safety.

A new bike summit could be a solid step toward the transformation of Cleveland – a city that finally, after two recessions and a mortgage foreclosure meltdown, seems to be gaining traction toward a better future.

View full sizeCyclists arrive for a Critical Mass event at Public Square in 2012.Gus Chan, The Plain Dealer 

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The nationwide urban bike revolution is poised to shift into higher gear in Cleveland.

The question is whether the city can accelerate quickly and become more competitive with capitals of bike-friendliness such as New York, Chicago and San Francisco and regional standouts such as Pittsburgh.

With only 47 miles of a proposed 89.5 miles of bike paths and trails complete within its boundaries, Cleveland isn’t yet a star performer, but it appears ready to improve soon.

The city’s Office of Sustainability is nearly finished with an ambitious inventory of streets aimed at ranking which ones are most eligible for upgrades as “Complete and Green Streets” with enhanced landscaping and amenities for cyclists and pedestrians.

And the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, which oversees how federal transportation dollars are spent, just completed a four-year update of its regional bike plan.

Activists and civic volunteers, meanwhile, are coming forward with terrific proposals to repurpose and re-use traffic lanes and other pieces of baggy, loose-fitting infrastructure built when the city’s population was more than 50 percent larger than it is today.

View full sizeA photo of the proposed Red Line greenway viewed from Lorain Avenue.Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer

 To wit:

• The Rotary Club of Cleveland is raising awareness about a concept four years in the making to turn part of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s Red Line right-of-way into a three-mile bike path on the city’s West Side.
• A second brilliant idea is that of turning former streetcar median lanes on 50 to 70 miles of city streets into “bicycle boulevards” for commuting and recreation. The prime movers behind this notion are John McGovern, board president of the Ohio City Bike Cooperative; and Barb Clint, director of Community Health and Advocacy at the Cleveland YMCA.
• Meanwhile, the Kent State University Urban Design Collaborative recently completed a detailed study on the feasibility of turning the lower level of the Detroit-Superior (Veterans Memorial) Bridge, once used by streetcars, into an all-weather bike and pedestrian link.

(Incidentally, the lower level of the bridge, normally off-limits, will be open for free public tours on Saturday, July 6, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.).

All of these ideas are deeply inspiring, and deserve to be realized immediately.

View full sizeRotary volunteers Jason Rohal, left, and Leonard Stover, visited the site of the proposed Red Line Rapid greenway site earlier this week.Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer

The problem – and it’s a good one to have – is that a plethora of great proposals requires making choices. 

Not everything can happen all at once, and the new ideas join an already substantial portfolio of projects for bike paths and trails in Cleveland that are under way in various stages, including the long-delayed completion of the northernmost section of the 110-mile Towpath Trail.

Also, obviously, moving from concept to reality requires highly detailed and expensive planning, not to mention construction dollars. Yet money to fix potholes in the city, much less revamp entire rights-of-way, is always scarce.

All of this shows why this is absolutely the perfect moment for a new, citywide bike summit to sort through all the great ideas, to rank them in order of importance and urgency, and then to raise the money to realize them sooner rather than later.

View full sizeA proposal developed by members of Bike Cleveland’s board of trustees including Barb Clint and John McGovern calls for turning miles of former streetcar medians in Cleveland into bicycle expressways.Bike Cleveland

 Such a process could further energize Cleveland’s efforts to make itself a greener, healthier and more beautiful city. It would give greater confidence to local government, foundations and private philanthropists about the critical next steps needed to create a strong, citywide bicycle network.

Bike Cleveland, the city’s leading advocacy group, would be the most likely convener of such a summit. The young organization held its first summit in 2011 to craft its mission of building “livable communities by promoting all forms of cycling and advocating for the rights and equality of the cycling community.”

The logical next step is for Bike Cleveland to help the community sort through and prioritize the many excellent proposals for transforming city streets – in collaboration with the city, NOACA and other agencies.

“I think it definitely makes sense,” said Jacob VanSickle, Bike Cleveland’s director since 2012, when I called him earlier this week about the idea of a new bike summit.

He estimated that there are “dozens” of large and small bike plans that have been funded by sources including NOACA.

“Maybe some of them are getting implemented, but a lot are sitting on shelves gathering dust,” VanSickle said.

NOACA Director Grace Gallucci, who moved to Cleveland less than a year ago after leaving a high-ranking transit post in Chicago, said her agency’s updated regional bike plan is based on extensive public participation by bicycle advocacy groups, but to her thinking it is still “probably not bold enough.”

She also said the plan lacks any methodology to rank and prioritize projects, and that such consensus is needed. She’d welcome the chance to refine NOACA’s plans and has proposed to her agency’s board of directors that an update be completed within a year.

The city of Cleveland, meanwhile, wants to update its 2007 Bikeway Master Plan.

View full sizeA proposal to install bike lanes on the lower level of the Detroit-Superior Bridge, envisioned here in a digital rendering, could cost from $2 million to $11 million according to a new estimate.Detroit-Superior Bridge Project Connectivity Plan

“We are fully on board with the idea of being comprehensive and not piecemeal,” said Robert Brown, the city’s planning director.

“One of the next steps is updating and making more robust our citywide bicycle plan,” he said. “We would do that in a way that would engage a broad range of stakeholders.”

Well, a summit could be one way to get started. The need is urgent because the physical transformation of Cleveland’s hard, gray public realm would improve livability for all residents – and help Cleveland attract new ones.

A new report from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Mass., shows that the percentage of residents aged 25 to 34 in Cleveland is still shrinking as a proportion of the city’s overall population.

This makes it even more important to capitalize on the influx of millennials in neighborhoods that are growing, such as University Circle, Ohio City, Tremont and Detroit Shoreway.

Linking those and other neighborhoods to downtown and regional parks with better bike trails and paths would be an enormous boon to newcomers and existing residents.

So here’s what I envision for the summit: The event would begin with a Critical Mass bike ride attracting hundreds of cyclists to the city’s new downtown Mall, which doubles as the roof of the new convention center.

The meeting would then proceed inside the new Global Center for Health Innovation, which faces east toward the Mall with glassy, four-story atrium.

A bike summit at the Global Center would underscore the message that cycling and physical exercise are very much part of Cleveland’s desire to become a green, healthy city.

It would also be a way for the cycling community to assert itself dramatically, at least for a day, in the heart of downtown, and to show that the big new civic investments downtown can serve as a jumping off point for a transformation of city neighborhoods as a whole.

Dave Johnson, director of public relations and marketing for the convention and global centers, said he’s open to the idea of such a meeting and that he likes the sound of it.

Here’s hoping that such a meeting can take place – and soon. It would be exciting to see a mighty convergence of cyclists, health advocates and great plans for the future of city streets that could balance bikes, pedestrians, cars, transit and safety.

A new bike summit could be a solid step toward the transformation of Cleveland – a city that finally, after two recessions and a mortgage foreclosure meltdown, seems to be gaining traction toward a better future.

View full sizeCyclists arrive for a Critical Mass event at Public Square in 2012.Gus Chan, The Plain Dealer 

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The nationwide urban bike revolution is poised to shift into higher gear in Cleveland.

The question is whether the city can accelerate quickly and become more competitive with capitals of bike-friendliness such as New York, Chicago and San Francisco and regional standouts such as Pittsburgh.

With only 47 miles of a proposed 89.5 miles of bike paths and trails complete within its boundaries, Cleveland isn’t yet a star performer, but it appears ready to improve soon.

The city’s Office of Sustainability is nearly finished with an ambitious inventory of streets aimed at ranking which ones are most eligible for upgrades as “Complete and Green Streets” with enhanced landscaping and amenities for cyclists and pedestrians.

And the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, which oversees how federal transportation dollars are spent, just completed a four-year update of its regional bike plan.

Activists and civic volunteers, meanwhile, are coming forward with terrific proposals to repurpose and re-use traffic lanes and other pieces of baggy, loose-fitting infrastructure built when the city’s population was more than 50 percent larger than it is today.

View full sizeA photo of the proposed Red Line greenway viewed from Lorain Avenue.Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer

 To wit:

• The Rotary Club of Cleveland is raising awareness about a concept four years in the making to turn part of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s Red Line right-of-way into a three-mile bike path on the city’s West Side.
• A second brilliant idea is that of turning former streetcar median lanes on 50 to 70 miles of city streets into “bicycle boulevards” for commuting and recreation. The prime movers behind this notion are John McGovern, board president of the Ohio City Bike Cooperative; and Barb Clint, director of Community Health and Advocacy at the Cleveland YMCA.
• Meanwhile, the Kent State University Urban Design Collaborative recently completed a detailed study on the feasibility of turning the lower level of the Detroit-Superior (Veterans Memorial) Bridge, once used by streetcars, into an all-weather bike and pedestrian link.

(Incidentally, the lower level of the bridge, normally off-limits, will be open for free public tours on Saturday, July 6, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.).

All of these ideas are deeply inspiring, and deserve to be realized immediately.

View full sizeRotary volunteers Jason Rohal, left, and Leonard Stover, visited the site of the proposed Red Line Rapid greenway site earlier this week.Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer

The problem – and it’s a good one to have – is that a plethora of great proposals requires making choices. 

Not everything can happen all at once, and the new ideas join an already substantial portfolio of projects for bike paths and trails in Cleveland that are under way in various stages, including the long-delayed completion of the northernmost section of the 110-mile Towpath Trail.

Also, obviously, moving from concept to reality requires highly detailed and expensive planning, not to mention construction dollars. Yet money to fix potholes in the city, much less revamp entire rights-of-way, is always scarce.

All of this shows why this is absolutely the perfect moment for a new, citywide bike summit to sort through all the great ideas, to rank them in order of importance and urgency, and then to raise the money to realize them sooner rather than later.

View full sizeA proposal developed by members of Bike Cleveland’s board of trustees including Barb Clint and John McGovern calls for turning miles of former streetcar medians in Cleveland into bicycle expressways.Bike Cleveland

 Such a process could further energize Cleveland’s efforts to make itself a greener, healthier and more beautiful city. It would give greater confidence to local government, foundations and private philanthropists about the critical next steps needed to create a strong, citywide bicycle network.

Bike Cleveland, the city’s leading advocacy group, would be the most likely convener of such a summit. The young organization held its first summit in 2011 to craft its mission of building “livable communities by promoting all forms of cycling and advocating for the rights and equality of the cycling community.”

The logical next step is for Bike Cleveland to help the community sort through and prioritize the many excellent proposals for transforming city streets – in collaboration with the city, NOACA and other agencies.

“I think it definitely makes sense,” said Jacob VanSickle, Bike Cleveland’s director since 2012, when I called him earlier this week about the idea of a new bike summit.

He estimated that there are “dozens” of large and small bike plans that have been funded by sources including NOACA.

“Maybe some of them are getting implemented, but a lot are sitting on shelves gathering dust,” VanSickle said.

NOACA Director Grace Gallucci, who moved to Cleveland less than a year ago after leaving a high-ranking transit post in Chicago, said her agency’s updated regional bike plan is based on extensive public participation by bicycle advocacy groups, but to her thinking it is still “probably not bold enough.”

She also said the plan lacks any methodology to rank and prioritize projects, and that such consensus is needed. She’d welcome the chance to refine NOACA’s plans and has proposed to her agency’s board of directors that an update be completed within a year.

The city of Cleveland, meanwhile, wants to update its 2007 Bikeway Master Plan.

View full sizeA proposal to install bike lanes on the lower level of the Detroit-Superior Bridge, envisioned here in a digital rendering, could cost from $2 million to $11 million according to a new estimate.Detroit-Superior Bridge Project Connectivity Plan

“We are fully on board with the idea of being comprehensive and not piecemeal,” said Robert Brown, the city’s planning director.

“One of the next steps is updating and making more robust our citywide bicycle plan,” he said. “We would do that in a way that would engage a broad range of stakeholders.”

Well, a summit could be one way to get started. The need is urgent because the physical transformation of Cleveland’s hard, gray public realm would improve livability for all residents – and help Cleveland attract new ones.

A new report from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Mass., shows that the percentage of residents aged 25 to 34 in Cleveland is still shrinking as a proportion of the city’s overall population.

This makes it even more important to capitalize on the influx of millennials in neighborhoods that are growing, such as University Circle, Ohio City, Tremont and Detroit Shoreway.

Linking those and other neighborhoods to downtown and regional parks with better bike trails and paths would be an enormous boon to newcomers and existing residents.

So here’s what I envision for the summit: The event would begin with a Critical Mass bike ride attracting hundreds of cyclists to the city’s new downtown Mall, which doubles as the roof of the new convention center.

The meeting would then proceed inside the new Global Center for Health Innovation, which faces east toward the Mall with glassy, four-story atrium.

A bike summit at the Global Center would underscore the message that cycling and physical exercise are very much part of Cleveland’s desire to become a green, healthy city.

It would also be a way for the cycling community to assert itself dramatically, at least for a day, in the heart of downtown, and to show that the big new civic investments downtown can serve as a jumping off point for a transformation of city neighborhoods as a whole.

Dave Johnson, director of public relations and marketing for the convention and global centers, said he’s open to the idea of such a meeting and that he likes the sound of it.

Here’s hoping that such a meeting can take place – and soon. It would be exciting to see a mighty convergence of cyclists, health advocates and great plans for the future of city streets that could balance bikes, pedestrians, cars, transit and safety.

A new bike summit could be a solid step toward the transformation of Cleveland – a city that finally, after two recessions and a mortgage foreclosure meltdown, seems to be gaining traction toward a better future.

After being cooped up indoors for a typical long Western New York winter, people like to spend as much time outside as possible once summer finally rolls around.

People all over are tending to their properties to create that ideal summer paradise in their backyards. That means that the folks over at Pinelli Landscaping, located at 4524 Clinton St in West Seneca are hard at work turning the chore of lawn work into works of art.

“I worked for another company for four years,” said owner Tony Pinelli. “That’s where I started to get into design and installation and my passion grew from there. I felt I had the capabilities and talent to do good work so that’s what drove me into starting my own business.”

Pinelli Landscaping first opened in January of 1994. Over the years they have progressed from a lawn cutting service to paving and blocking (laying out bricks for walls and walkways), they’ve turned what they do into as much a form of art as it is a business.

“We have a full-time blocking crew, two full-time maintenance crews, who do smaller landscaping projects, a crew that does both, and I have two landscaping crews,” Pinelli said. “There’s also a lawn cutting crew.”

He added that in order to keep busy during the winter months they do snow removal, snow plowing and salting. In the past few years they have also been in service installing Christmas lights at local residences.

“What drives me every day is the satisfaction of my customers,” Pinelli said. “My goal when I first started was to build a reputable company. The customer needs to be 100 percent satisfied, not 95 percent, not 90, 100 percent. That’s how I operate, how the crew operates. That’s how I train them.”

Pinelli Landscape takes a great deal of care when planning out a project. First they consult with the customer to discuss their visions and try to put ideas together. Then a blueprint is drawn up so they can see if everyone is on the same page.

He says that once the design is on paper, several different budget options will be assessed and presented to the customer so they can pick which works best for them.

“It’s not difficult if you’re open minded when you assess the property,” Pinelli said of working with other people’s visions for their lawns. “You want their ideas as much as possible because it is so wide open, the same project can be done hundreds of different ways, I want to know what they want to look at.”

Pinelli does just offer landscaping services, his office is also a licensed nursery, they have examples of the plants they work with in the store so they people can come in and choose. He says that it helps make it easier to visualize the designs.

While they do have a retails aspect to the business, they mostly focus on the design and lawn care, although he says they might get more into it in the future.

According to Pinelli that best part about the job is getting to go out and work in the field, the actual installation of plants is what got him into landscaping and it’s his reputation for great customer service and creativity that has kept him here for nearly 20 years.

“It’s turning things from what it was to what it will be,” he said. “That’s what I like to do.”

After being cooped up indoors for a typical long Western New York winter, people like to spend as much time outside as possible once summer finally rolls around.

People all over are tending to their properties to create that ideal summer paradise in their backyards. That means that the folks over at Pinelli Landscaping, located at 4524 Clinton St in West Seneca are hard at work turning the chore of lawn work into works of art.

“I worked for another company for four years,” said owner Tony Pinelli. “That’s where I started to get into design and installation and my passion grew from there. I felt I had the capabilities and talent to do good work so that’s what drove me into starting my own business.”

Pinelli Landscaping first opened in January of 1994. Over the years they have progressed from a lawn cutting service to paving and blocking (laying out bricks for walls and walkways), they’ve turned what they do into as much a form of art as it is a business.

“We have a full-time blocking crew, two full-time maintenance crews, who do smaller landscaping projects, a crew that does both, and I have two landscaping crews,” Pinelli said. “There’s also a lawn cutting crew.”

He added that in order to keep busy during the winter months they do snow removal, snow plowing and salting. In the past few years they have also been in service installing Christmas lights at local residences.

“What drives me every day is the satisfaction of my customers,” Pinelli said. “My goal when I first started was to build a reputable company. The customer needs to be 100 percent satisfied, not 95 percent, not 90, 100 percent. That’s how I operate, how the crew operates. That’s how I train them.”

Pinelli Landscape takes a great deal of care when planning out a project. First they consult with the customer to discuss their visions and try to put ideas together. Then a blueprint is drawn up so they can see if everyone is on the same page.

He says that once the design is on paper, several different budget options will be assessed and presented to the customer so they can pick which works best for them.

“It’s not difficult if you’re open minded when you assess the property,” Pinelli said of working with other people’s visions for their lawns. “You want their ideas as much as possible because it is so wide open, the same project can be done hundreds of different ways, I want to know what they want to look at.”

Pinelli does just offer landscaping services, his office is also a licensed nursery, they have examples of the plants they work with in the store so they people can come in and choose. He says that it helps make it easier to visualize the designs.

While they do have a retails aspect to the business, they mostly focus on the design and lawn care, although he says they might get more into it in the future.

According to Pinelli that best part about the job is getting to go out and work in the field, the actual installation of plants is what got him into landscaping and it’s his reputation for great customer service and creativity that has kept him here for nearly 20 years.

“It’s turning things from what it was to what it will be,” he said. “That’s what I like to do.”

After being cooped up indoors for a typical long Western New York winter, people like to spend as much time outside as possible once summer finally rolls around.

People all over are tending to their properties to create that ideal summer paradise in their backyards. That means that the folks over at Pinelli Landscaping, located at 4524 Clinton St in West Seneca are hard at work turning the chore of lawn work into works of art.

“I worked for another company for four years,” said owner Tony Pinelli. “That’s where I started to get into design and installation and my passion grew from there. I felt I had the capabilities and talent to do good work so that’s what drove me into starting my own business.”

Pinelli Landscaping first opened in January of 1994. Over the years they have progressed from a lawn cutting service to paving and blocking (laying out bricks for walls and walkways), they’ve turned what they do into as much a form of art as it is a business.

“We have a full-time blocking crew, two full-time maintenance crews, who do smaller landscaping projects, a crew that does both, and I have two landscaping crews,” Pinelli said. “There’s also a lawn cutting crew.”

He added that in order to keep busy during the winter months they do snow removal, snow plowing and salting. In the past few years they have also been in service installing Christmas lights at local residences.

“What drives me every day is the satisfaction of my customers,” Pinelli said. “My goal when I first started was to build a reputable company. The customer needs to be 100 percent satisfied, not 95 percent, not 90, 100 percent. That’s how I operate, how the crew operates. That’s how I train them.”

Pinelli Landscape takes a great deal of care when planning out a project. First they consult with the customer to discuss their visions and try to put ideas together. Then a blueprint is drawn up so they can see if everyone is on the same page.

He says that once the design is on paper, several different budget options will be assessed and presented to the customer so they can pick which works best for them.

“It’s not difficult if you’re open minded when you assess the property,” Pinelli said of working with other people’s visions for their lawns. “You want their ideas as much as possible because it is so wide open, the same project can be done hundreds of different ways, I want to know what they want to look at.”

Pinelli does just offer landscaping services, his office is also a licensed nursery, they have examples of the plants they work with in the store so they people can come in and choose. He says that it helps make it easier to visualize the designs.

While they do have a retails aspect to the business, they mostly focus on the design and lawn care, although he says they might get more into it in the future.

According to Pinelli that best part about the job is getting to go out and work in the field, the actual installation of plants is what got him into landscaping and it’s his reputation for great customer service and creativity that has kept him here for nearly 20 years.

“It’s turning things from what it was to what it will be,” he said. “That’s what I like to do.”