Irishtown Bend Park

Cleveland, OH

Plural Principal Scott Cataffa led an award-winning, decade-long planning effort to improve public access to the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie waterfronts in downtown Cleveland. The Cleveland Foundation Centennial Lake Link Trail was the organizing spine of that planning effort, bringing the public to a once inaccessible waterfront and connecting a series of new public parks along its length. Irishtown Bend Park is one of the new public parks and the missing link in the trail network. This 34-acre site was once home to a bustling Irish American immigrant community and subsequent waves of eastern European immigrants and Black Americans during the Great Migration. The site is a steep embankment along a hairpin turn of the river’s oxbow, which serves as the city’s inner harbor, supporting a multi-billion-dollar shipping industry. The severely eroded slope is sliding into the Cuyahoga River, and the Port of Cleveland is developing stabilization plans, including a new bulkhead along the length to protect and maintain the shipping channel. The project sponsors are leveraging this infrastructure investment with a new urban waterfront park, providing open space and recreational opportunities for the surrounding neighborhoods. The Park celebrates the site’s rich cultural and industrial history, demonstrating that a vibrant neighborhood and an active industrial port can not only coexist but thrive together.

CLIENT
LAND Studio
Ohio City Incorporated

COLLABORATORS
Port of Cleveland
Cleveland Metroparks
City of Clevel
Osborn Engineering Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency

SIZE
26 Acres

COMPLETED
2019 – present