Cleveland working on plan to target support for mid-level neighborhoods before they decline

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson’s community development team is working up a plan to shore up some of Cleveland’s neighborhoods, such as this one in Old Brooklyn, that can still compete with middle-class suburbs. This view is from a street in Old Brooklyn, which is one of those neighborhoods.

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson’s community development team is working up a plan to shore up some of Cleveland’s neighborhoods, such as this one in Old Brooklyn, that can still compete with middle-class suburbs. This view is from a street in Old Brooklyn, which is one of those neighborhoods.

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Mayor Frank Jackson’s community development team told City Council on Wednesday it hopes to soon have a plan to shore up some of Cleveland’s neighborhoods that can still compete with middle-class suburbs.

The reaction from many council members: It’s about time.

They argue that such a plan – an aggressive approach to fund repairs and improvements to housing stock and to code enforcement -- is needed immediately.

“I’m asking, in some respects, I’m begging, that in 2021 something really be done to … try to stabilize our neighborhoods because if you don’t, there won’t be a Lee-Harvard, there won’t be a North Shore Collinwood, there won’t be an Old Brooklyn,” Councilman Mike Polensek said during a hearing for the Community Development Department’s budget.

“Many of our once stable neighborhoods are under great distress and great pressure,” said Polensek, whose ward includes Collinwood. “Historically, the city has never really had a game plan to deal with those neighborhoods.”

The so-called middle neighborhoods still have tracts of mostly owner-occupied housing. Residents are mostly working class with low- and middle-class incomes. And they resemble neighborhoods in adjacent suburbs, such as Brooklyn, Lakewood, Garfield Heights, Warrensville Heights or Cleveland Heights.

The challenge is that similar properties in suburban communities often will provide a greater return for the homeowner when they sell.

Community Development is working up a package of targeted measures to help maintain and improve homes, hoping to close that gap in investment return.

City Council President Kevin Kelley, in an interview Wednesday with cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer, said he thinks that could happen soon.

“I like calling them critical neighborhoods,” Kelley said, adding that “middle neighborhoods” sounded bland. “I think that there’s enough of a plan developed that we could come up with something quickly.”

Kelley represents Old Brooklyn, Cleveland’s most populous neighborhood with more than 30,000 residents.

Councilman Brian Kazy urged that the complete plan be unveiled by the end of budget hearings later this month.

“We see a vision, but we don’t have a path toward that vision,” Kazy said.

Michiel Wackers, interim community development director, said a comprehensive plan will require buy in from non-profits, such as the Cleveland Foundation, and the city’s major lenders.

“It’s not something the city can do alone,” Wackers told the council’s Development, Planning and Sustainability Committee. “My goal is to do a concrete ask [for funding]. … I won’t come to the table until we line up other participants.”

That was the approach the Jackson administration took with its neighborhood transformation initiative. A plan launched in 2017 targeting specific corridors – East 105th Street and East 93rd Street on the East Side and the Clark-Fulton area to the west. Cleveland put up $25 million and got banking institutions to contribute another $40 million for neighborhood lending to spark development.

The plan has had some impact in Glenville, where growth progressed up East 105th Street north of the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center and University Circle.

Polensek recalled longtime Councilwoman Fannie Lewis telling him three decades ago that if Cleveland didn’t find a way to deal with neighborhood issues, all of council would be wrestling with problems she already was seeing in Hough. Lewis represented that area 28 years until her death in 2008.

“It’s like she had a crystal ball,” Polensek said.

Those issues include a need for housing code enforcement, programs to help residents maintain the older housing stock and cracking down on absentee landlords who don’t keep up their properties, Polensek said.

Ultimately, Cleveland will have to convince home buyers that the stable neighborhoods aren’t just places for buyers to get a starter home, said Councilman Charles Slife, whose ward includes the West Park and Kamm’s Corners areas.

“We have a lot of development throughout Cleveland and it seems to be attracting higher income buyers, younger buyers and retirees,” Slife said. “It’s really important that we have a city where families with children can live and we see that in our middle neighborhoods and we need to work hard to retain those residents.”

If not, Cleveland will end up with a tremendous wealth gap, Councilman Basheer Jones said.

“Until we bring the middle neighborhoods in, we’re going to have a gap between very low incomes and high incomes,” Jones said. “Until we get that middle in order, we’re going to continue to have neighborhoods that suffer.”

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