EUCLID, Ohio - Euclid City Council on Monday voted to build an innovative and nationally significant lakefront trail made possible by the city's agreement to pay for erosion control on private lakefront properties in exchange for easements allowing public access.

Council voted 5-2 with one abstention to spend $6.8 million to build the western half of the 3/4-mile trail, extending from the city's 2013 fishing pier at Sims Park roughly a quarter mile east to East 238th Street.

A public access stairway at East 238th Street would connect the waterfront to Lakeshore Boulevard, roughly 1,000 feet south, via a city owned strip of land.

The yearlong construction process, based on designs by SmithGroupJJR of Ann Arbor, MI., would begin in September.

The city has raised nearly $5 million in public funds for the first phase of the lakefront trail, of which $4 million came from Cuyahoga County Casino Revenue Funds. Of that amount, $2 million is a non-forgivable loan. Council also voted 5-2 with one abstention to approve issuing a $2 million bond, raising nearly $7 million for phase 1.

A future $5 million east phase, for which the city has already raised $2.6 million from the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) would complete the trail, extending it to a proposed paddle beach at East 250th Street.

More than half of nearly two-dozen residents who spoke at Monday's meeting opposed the project because they said the city can't afford it and that it has more urgent needs, including improving public safety.

Euclid faces a $1 million deficit on a $40 million budget this year, Councilman Daryl Langman said before the meeting. He said supports the lakefront project as a way to help turn the city around.

Mayor Kirsten Holzheimer Gail said during the meeting she sees the project as a way to boost property values and improve quality of life for an inner ring suburb struggling with increasing poverty, loss of jobs and a shrinking tax base.

"It's about opening up the lake to the entire community," she said. "This is public space. This is a public park that puts Euclid on the map."

Financing should not be an obstacle, she said.

"We have the ability to pay this back without impacting other services," she said.

Observers outside Euclid have said the project is highly significant because of the willingness of private property owners to allow public access along the waterfront in their backyards in exchange for publicly financed improvements aimed at halting erosion.

"Urban planners across the United States and Canada are paying close attention," the website Next City wrote in March. "With this small, inconspicuous waterfront trail, Euclid is doing what many Great Lakes cities thought would never be possible to do along their lakeshores."