For over a century, access from Downtown Cleveland to its lakefront has been constrained. There are currently two main access points: East 9th and West 3rd Streets. Both streets have safety concerns where car, truck, bicycle, scooter and pedestrian paths intersect. They are also challenging for people with disabilities, and they have limited capacity to carry large volumes of visitors (such as fans on Cleveland Browns game days) who are not using cars to access the lakefront. This discourages use of our lakefront and creates barriers for general use. We want to change that. With your help, we can make Cleveland's North Coast accessible for everyone by installing a land bridge over and across the infrastructure that divides the community from the lake.

Now is the time to make smart, innovative choices that will bring new investment to the city for decades to come. There is political and civic alignment around this priority and opportunity to attract new funds to Cleveland to implement the community's vision. A renewed and reconnected lakefront is overdue.

During the Feasibility Study, we asked Clevelanders to imagine what the Connector (both the land bridge and the roadway infrastructure) could look like and what it should connect to. At the same time, engineers reviewed Connector alternatives to examine their impacts, both good and bad. Traffic analysis and modeling using the forecast year of 2050 aided decision-makers in eliminating alternatives. Engineers also developed cost estimates for the alternatives. All of this helped guide the City toward the design that will work best for Cleveland.

The City of Cleveland had a budget of $5 million for the alternatives evaluation, with half of the cost covered by a grant from the Ohio Department of Transportation's Office of Jobs & Commerce and the other half by the City. This cost was metered out over several years during the study.

The exact cost of the proposed land bridge and roadway changes depends on many factors, including the land bridge's shape and size, what will be built on top of the bridge, and the extent of changes to the Shoreway. However, estimates suggest the project could cost between $254 million and $329 million. Specific sources of funding are also not known, but they may come from a combination of City of Cleveland investment, private partnerships, and grants from state or federal transportation agencies.

North Coast Harbor is home to world-renowned institutions like the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Families make great memories at the Great Lakes Science Center and aboard the Goodtime III. However, current accessibility challenges have resulted in few residential, restaurant and retail developments. A land bridge and boulevard would create new spaces for development opportunity. The Connector would open up the lakefront to a range of new possibilities and uses, from potential housing and hotels to restaurants and shopping in addition to parks and greenspaces that together support tourism. Visit the North Coast Master Plan page to learn more about development opportunities.

If we build a boulevard, it will have a speed limit of no more than 35 miles per hour. With this slower speed, some of the traffic that travels through downtown, from one side to the other, will divert to other roadways, such as Interstate 90. On these roadways we do see some sections where traffic does not operate as well as it would without the additional vehicles, but overall there aren't significant problems. On the boulevard itself and at downtown intersections, we're still examining how many lanes we would need for through traffic and how and where turn lanes might be. We need to balance these lanes in the best way possible to maintain pedestrian and bicyclist safety.