CLEVELAND, Ohio - The soggy, unstable slope on the city's West Side known as Irishtown Bend has thwarted redevelopment along West 25th Street in Ohio City for decades over fears that a landslide there could erase roads and a major sewer line and possibly even block shipping on the Cuyahoga River.

The latest project that could be delayed or blocked is the Lake Link Trail, a 3-mile pathway that would edge the river at the base of Irishtown Bend to connect the 110-mile Towpath Trail to Lake Erie at Whiskey Island.

A slide from the Barr & Prevost PowerPoint on Irishtown Bend.

The trail project gained momentum with a $3.3 million federal grant awarded Jan. 23. But on Tuesday, an official of the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority recommended that the trail - for which more than half of the estimated $15 million cost has been raised - should not be built until Irishtown Bend is fixed.

"We think you have to shore it up first and then build the trail," said Jim White, the port's director of sustainable infrastructure.

The good news, White said, is that an engineering study commissioned by the Port and completed in December shows that stabilizing the slope would cost roughly $49 million - not the $80 million to $219 million identified in 2009 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as the potential cost.

The new study (see the Port's PowerPoint at the bottom of this post) also shows that the danger of a landslide is limited to a discrete portion of Irishtown Bend just south of the Detroit-Superior Bridge and east of West 25th Street - not the entire 31-acre hillside.

However, within that zone, the danger is real.

"The engineers looked at super heavy rains and the [computer] model predicted it could slide," White said.

According to the new report, the slope could be fixed by plugging leaks in water lines that seem to be collecting beneath the intersection of West 25th Street and Detroit Avenue and then emerging on the surface of the Irishtown Bend slope to the southeast.

"We have an amazing amount of water that saturates the north side of the property in the first few hundred feet from Riverbed [Street] up to West 25th street," White said. "It's a perpetual source of water supply; it's lubricating the hillside."

A map of test borings shows how engineers examined the Irishtown Bend slope.

White said the engineers haven't pinpointed the source yet, but believe it may be a water line installed around the time of the completion of the Detroit-Superior Bridge in 1918.

In addition to finding and fixing the leak, the report recommended:

- Installing new bulkheads along 3,200 feet of the river's edge between Columbus Road and the Detroit-Superior Bridge.

- Cleaning up a brownfield left behind by a long-demolished 19th-century rail terminal and coal docks along the river's edge.

- Rebuilding portions of Franklin Avenue, which descends the Irishtown Bend slope.

- Repairing the important sewer line that descends the slope.

Carrying out the plan would take a year, White said, but that period would not include time for the environmental review that would likely be required before the plan could be carried out.

Will Friedman, the Port Authority's director, said that the agency doesn't have the cash to fix the slope but is willing to collaborate on a solution with other parties.

They could include the city, Cuyahoga County, the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority, the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, Cleveland Metroparks, the Trust for Public Land, Ohio City Inc., and the non-profit LAND Studio.

According to the Port, Irishtown Bend is carved into 25 parcels owned by 14 entities, principally the housing authority.

"The next step is to convene the key players and see if we can come up with a game plan," Friedman said.

Tom McNair, executive director of Ohio City Inc., the non-profit community development corporation, said that problems with the slope wouldn't stymie any current plans for residential or commercial development in his fast-growing district.

But the unstable hillside has blocked housing and park proposals on the east side of West 25th Street for many years.

"It's an unbelievably connected piece of land that has the ability to pull a lot of things together," he said. "We have to work together to find what's in the best interests of everyone."

Ann Zoller, executive director of LAND Studio, which has spearheaded plans for the Lake Link Trail, said she hopes to organize a meeting soon with the government and nonprofit agencies that have an interest in Irishtown Bend.

"It really is about trying to craft a solution that makes sense for everybody and that makes the most sense for the region," she said.

The port authority would have been able to fix Irishtown Bend, Friedman said, if voters in 2012 had approved a five-year levy that would have increased the property tax from $3.50 to $20 for every $100,000 of valuation.

Instead the renewal levy approved by voters in 2013 enabled the Port to conduct the 17-month, $282,000 geological and engineering analysis conducted by the Columbus-based firm of Barr & Prevost.

White said the new study is more credible than the Army Corp's 2009 study, which called for installing large retaining walls at the base of the hill.

A map of brownfield conditions at Irishtown Bend.

"Engineers in town thought it was overkill and not a good solution," White said of the Army Corps proposal.

Once home to a 19th-century Irish shantytown from which it took its name, Irishtown Bend has become a shaggy, marshy eyesore along a waterfront that should be poised for rebirth, given the surge of redevelopment in downtown Cleveland and in Ohio City.

In 1928, Margaret Bourke-White stood atop the hill and took a photograph of the Terminal Tower surrounded by smoke and clouds that became one of the most famous images of Cleveland.

Today, the bend is home to thickly matted vegetation, crumbling roads and parking lots and, at times, a colony of homeless who camp in the thick brush just north of Columbus Road on the river's west bank.

Last summer, the Cleveland Foundation committed $5 million to the Trust for Public Land for the Lake Link Trail, following a $2 million grant from the Gund Foundation in 2013.

Grace Gallucci, director of NOACA, the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, said Tuesday that the $3.3 million in federal money awarded to the Lake Link project would not have to be spent until 2020, giving time for the Port and other agencies to craft a solution for the hill.

She said the deadline to draw down the money could be extended, or the funds could be spent on another, related project, such as the West Side's Red Line Greenway.

Brian Zimmerman, CEO of Metroparks, said in a written statement Tuesday that his agency, which may manage the trail in the future, remains committed to the Lake Link Trail, despite the need to fix Irishtown Bend.

"We knew it would not happen without challenges," he wrote of the trail. "Cleveland Metroparks will continue to work with our partners to make this access a reality."