Flats Kuntz.JPG

The Main Avenue Bridge soars over the Cuyahoga River in this 2012 photo. A new plan for the long-conflicted district attempts to rally conflicting land uses around a shared vision.

(John Kuntz, The Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A new Framework Plan for Cleveland's Flats district is intended to show that a bitter, slow-motion war over land use has ended in the waterfront zone along the Cuyahoga River.

Instead, the plan identifies a shared vision about how industry, nightclubs, residents and visitors can coexist peacefully in the city's historic and visually striking riverfront neighborhood.

The new document (posted below in full) was unveiled Thursday afternoon at a free public meeting of the nonprofit organization at the Music Box Supper Club.

A page from the new Flats Framework Plan identifies the 450 acres studied in the document.

"Everybody almost universally came to an agreement that there needed to be a new framework for the Flats," Mark Lammon, the outgoing president of Flats Forward, the area's new community development corporation, said Monday in an interview.

"For too long, different groups hijacked the Flats and left the others out to pasture," he said.

The consensus articulated by the plan is that the riverside district now wants to capitalize on its central location and miles of underused waterfronts, plus the ongoing surge of development in surrounding areas including downtown, Ohio City and Tremont.

"The Flats has gone from being latent to being blatant," said city councilman Joe Cimperman, whose 3rd Ward includes the district. "The Flats needs to be fully integrated into the city's grid. It has kind of taken itself out over the past decade."

The plan, authored by the Cleveland firm of City Architecture, doesn't identify major changes or suggest that housing should expand to overwhelm traditional waterfront industries or vice versa. Instead, the plan identifies key transportation routes on the west and east banks of the Flats to show how they might be redesigned and improved to clarify access for visitors, truckers, local traffic and bicyclists.

The study examined 450 acres of land on both sides of the river from Whiskey Island and the mouth of the river south to the Scranton Road Peninsula opposite Tower City Center. The plan categorizes various routes in the roadway network and includes several hypothetical cross-sections to show how the streets could be redesigned to better serve industry, visitors and local traffic in various combinations.

For example, the plan includes four potential variations for Main Avenue, one of which shows three vehicular lanes separated from a 10-foot-wide, two-way bike lane by a four-foot planted buffer.

The main thrust of the plan, Cimperman said, is to establish goals for specific road improvements and to help the district seek funding from the city and other sources.

He said the Flats was not included in a study by the city's Service Department within the past half-decade that graded city streets to determine those most in need of repairs.

A page from the new Framework Plan for the Flats describes a proposed classification system for streets in the district to clarify which routes are best for industry, residents and visitors.

With the new framework plan in place, the Flats will have more clout to demand attention, Cimperman said.

"Now we'll have an apple-to-apple conversation over what's worst in the Flats," he said.

Adam Fishman, chairman of the 28-member board of Flats Forward, said the plan would become "a rallying point for this organization to share its message with civic leaders, government leaders and foundation leaders, that we have a singular voice with a singular agenda and a singular mission, even though we have many interests."

Fishman is a principal of Fairmount Properties, which is co-developing the $250 million mixed-use Flats East Bank development with the Wolstein Group.

Flats Forward emerged in 2012 after the collapse of the Flats Oxbow Association, the now-defunct community development corporation that formerly represented the district.

Flats Oxbow imploded after the organization's former head, Tom Newman, pleaded guilty to charges that he had embezzled and laundered money through the organization. Newman died in 2013 before sentencing.

The new organization grew out of discussions among Cimperman, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, the Downtown Cleveland Alliance and the Historic Warehouse District, and community development organizations in Tremont and Ohio City.

The Flats Forward board is designed to mirror the complex mix of land uses in the Flats.

Representatives include three residential members, three from entertainment and commercial interests, three from tourism groups, nine from industrial, local business and real estate development organizations, five from partner organizations including the Port of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, and several representing the city, Cuyahoga County and the Cleveland Metroparks.

The next steps recommended by the Framework Plan include formal adoption of the categorization of local roads, plus identification of sources to pay for repairs and redesign.

Other goals include improvement of branding and signage for the district and conducting a deeper analysis of market demand for future development.

Cimperman said he's especially eager to solve the problem of Franklin Road Hill, also known as Irishtown Bend, a marshy slope that has been sliding steadily toward the river. The Port of Cleveland launched a new study of the problem in 2013.

Fishman said his top priority would be building a pedestrian bridge over the lakefront rail tracks to connect Wendy Park at Whiskey Island to the west bank of the Flats and neighborhoods to the south.

But Fishman said the most important message of the new plan is that the Flats is no longer a divided district.

"Industry, entertainment and residents are now all working together on a shared agenda," he said. "The infrastructure [in the Flats] has to follow this agenda, or none of us will be successful."