Trailblazing collaboration offers erosion help, access

NORTHEAST OHIO LAKEFRONT

Alliance of 13 communities to assist with financing, possibly open new trails

Steven Litt slitt@cleveland.com

Lakefront property owners whose backyards are crumbling into Lake Erie have a new place to turn for help.

The City of Euclid and 12 Lake County communities recently incorporated Ohio's first lakefront special improvement district to help property owners finance expensive and urgently needed erosion control projects along the Lake Erie shoreline.

Ultimately, however, the district could become a vehicle to open new public trails along vast stretches of private lakefront land that limit access to one of Ohio's greatest natural resources.

Such trails could be modeled after a highly innovative project underway in Euclid, where the city persuaded property owners to grant easements for a shoreline trail in exchange for an extensive erosion control project funded by federal, state, and local dollars, and foundation grants.

''The future of this for many of the communities we've spoken to is to look at this as a way to fund an expansion of the Euclid model,'' said Euclid city Planning Director Allison Lukacsy-Love.

But property owners within the new special improvement district don't have to grant public access in order to qualify for help with the financing of erosion control projects. Any such participation in future trail projects would be completely voluntary, as it was in Euclid, Lukacsy-Love said.

SOLVING A PROBLEM

Enabled by a state law enacted in 2018, the special improvement district was incorporated as a nonprofit organization in March. Its board is comprised of mayors or other officials, including Lukacsy-Love, from the 13 participating communities.

The district is designed to help property owners qualify for low-interest financing to build revetments with heavy stones or other shoreline structures to prevent waves from chewing away their land during increasingly frequent heavy storms and periods of high water levels.

This year, the district could fund projects worth up to $10 million for 30 to 50 Lake County homeowners, said Cleveland lawyer Amanda E. Gordon, who is advising the organization. Interest rates are expected to be under 3%, she said.

A new lakefront special improvement district in Euclid and 12 Lake county communities could lead to the construction of more lakefront trails like the one underway in Euclid, where property owners granted shoreline easements in exchange for erosion control measures along the shoreline. John Pana, cleveland.com

Steven Litt, cleveland.com

John Pana, cleveland.com

EROSION CONTROL

Financing would be provided through Mentor-based Erie Bank, which would purchase bonds issued by Lake County's port authority. The bonds would be backed by property assessments paid by participating homeowners, said Lake County Administrator Jason Boyd. The port is pledging $300,000 from the county's new hotel and motel bed tax as security to keep down the interest rate on the financing, he said.

Another dozen projects are cued up and ready for financing in Euclid, where the city hopes to negotiate similar terms with lenders, Lukacsy-Love said.

Any property owner petitioning for financing would need permits from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said Scudder Mackey, chief of coastal management for ODNR.

Gordon said the special improvement district would help guide property owners through the permitting process.

REGIONAL COLLABORATION

She called the district an unusual example of collaboration across municipal and county lines in a home rule state where localities often compete.

Participating communities are Euclid, Willowick, Eastlake, Village of Lakeline, Village of Timberlake, Willoughby, Mentor, Mentor-on-the-Lake, Fairport Harbor, Painesville, Perry Township, North Perry Village and Madison Township.

The district's board will act as a public body and hold online meetings at 10 a.m. on the first Tuesday of every month, members said. Details, including links, will be shared on the website of participating communities.

Beyond solving a headache for individual property owners, Lukacsy-Love and other planners say the district could become a stable, long-term mechanism to fund more trails like the $12.3 million project scheduled for completion late this year in Euclid The trail, now two-thirds finished, will extend three-quarters of a mile east from the city's new fishing pier at Sims Park to East 246th Street, where the city will create a new paddle craft beach by the end of the year, and where it may someday add a marina and a restaurant.

BIG POTENTIAL

Nine individual property owners or entities including private beach clubs granted easements in exchange for extensive erosion control measures that include construction of rocky ''cobble beaches'' designed to break up waves and to provide habitat for fish, birds and insects.

Projects like Euclid's, which involve multiple contiguous properties, are more beneficial to the environment and more cost-effective to build than individual, piecemeal erosion measures on isolated parcels, whether or not public access is involved, Mackey said.

Communities across Lake, Lorain, and Cuyahoga counties are working on plans to improve lakefront access through projects including trails.

NOACA, the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, has launched a $250,000, multi-county planning project through its TLCI program, short for Transportation for Livable Communities Initiative, to explore such connections.

NOACA oversees the spending of federal and state money on transportation in Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, and Medina counties.

In Lake County, NOACA is looking at how the county's 30-mile shoreline could be connected to trails in spots including the Chagrin River Valley, the agency's Director, Grace Gallucci, said.

PROVING A CONCEPT

In the meantime, the new special improvement district needs to demonstrate there's a high demand from multiple property owners for erosion control financing, which will attract lenders, Mackey said. From there, projects could increase to larger efforts on the scale of Euclid's new trail.

''As you look at the success of Euclid, there will be an impetus to look at much larger projects,'' Mackey said. ''We have to crawl first, then we can run and then get into a sprint, down the road.''

In theory, Lukacsy-Love said, larger trail projects could qualify for public or philanthropic funding that would reduce or eliminate the cost to a property owner.

Gordon cautioned that ''public access can be a touchy subject'' for some property owners. ''Not everyone wants it.''

She underscored that property owners don't have to grant public access in order to qualify for financing from the new special improvement district. No plans for trails like Euclid's are underway in Lake County, she said. She also said that the district would not engage in any taking of private property.

Willoughby Mayor Robert Fiala, the secretary of the new special improvement district board, said that persuading groups of property owners to grant easements for new lakefront trails will ''be a community-by-community decision.''

Dennis Morley, mayor of Eastlake and chairman of the special improvement district, said it's critical to prove it can efficiently help individual property owners before it attempts anything bigger.

But he's also convinced that communities will aim higher in the future.

''It's not going to happen overnight,'' he said. But once communities see projects such as the new Euclid trail, ''it changes a lot of people's minds of what they want to do.''

The partially finished lakefront trail in Euclid attracted residents on a recent sunny afternoon. Steven Litt, cleveland.com

Euclid City Planning Director Allison Lukacsy-Love believes a new lakefront special improvement district in Euclid and 12 Lake county communities could lead in the future to the construction of more lakefront trails like one underway in Euclid. Steven Litt, cleveland.com