CLEVELAND, Ohio - Case Western Reserve University is planning a dramatic new greenway that will slice across the Cleveland Museum of Art's south front and across Rockefeller Park to connect CWRU's main campus to its emerging western campus along East 105th Street.

Designed by Sasaki Associates of Watertown, Massachusetts, one of America's leading landscape architecture firms, the greenway will stretch from Freiberger Field on the west side of the recently completed Tinkham Veale University Center to CWRU's Maltz Performing Arts Center at the Temple-Tifereth Israel.

A detail of the plan for the proposed Nord Family Greenway shows how the long, rectangular open space would slice across the northern portion of the Fine Arts Garden, just south of the Cleveland Museum of Art, without major changes to the existing landscape. The bulk of the work involves clearing under-maintained and under-used slopes to the west, descending to Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, and clearing brush and small trees along the Doan Brook Valley, or Rockefeller Park.

A city-sponsored greenway path, to be built concurrently with the CWRU project, will extend the main greenway from East 105th to East 101st Street, just north of the Cleveland Clinic, where the university and the medical institution are building a joint, $515 million Health Education Campus designed by Lord Norman Foster.

The project will involve clearing brush and sculpting gentler slopes to create an easily walkable commons measuring 2,200 feet in length, with hilltop vistas punctuated by clusters of mature trees.

The greenway will be 300 feet wide, framed on the north and south by parallel rows of trees.

It will cut across the north end of the Fine Arts Garden, just south of the museum, and will include an event lawn, an amphitheater with sloped grass steps and a bridge that cantilevers over the north end of a large culvert where Doan Brook emerges from underground, near the museum's southwest corner.

The culvert, now crumbling and in need of replacement, occupies an unsightly area choked with weeds and brush and marked off with warning signs.

Embracing landmarks

The greenway plan embraces the Chinese Cultural Garden in Rockefeller Park and the historic Zodiac Garden south of the museum, which overlooks Wade Lagoon.

The design would preserve the mature Liberty Oaks planted along Martin Luther King Jr. Drive after World War I to commemorate fallen veterans, and a group of mature beeches on the ridge southwest of the museum.

The plan calls for three pairs of pedestrian-controlled traffic lights at East Boulevard, Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and East 105th Street.

The project will also include stairs with a special "runnel" that cyclists could use to easily push bikes uphill, along with gently sloping walkways designed for wheelchair users.

Stronger link to Hough

Apart from linking two portions of the university, the new landscape could create a stronger connection between University Circle's cultural and educational institutions and the long-struggling Hough neighborhood, where riots occurred 50 years ago this summer.

"It's a real opportunity to connect and create this civic space, which won't just get people from one place to another," CWRU President Barbara R. Snyder said in a recent interview. "It's a place to bring people together, and that's how we see it."

William Griswold, director of the museum, said the project presents an opportunity to enliven the west side of the museum's property, along with a seven-acre, city-owned parcel along Doan Brook, which the museum controls under a lease.

"It will open up the property around the museum to our neighbors to the west," Griswold said. "The opportunity to reclaim this area, and the area to the west of the museum surrounding Doan Brook -- to me, that's incredibly compelling."

In coordination with the museum, the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District plans to spend $2.3 million to adjust the course of Doan Brook north of the culvert, where heavy erosion is occurring.

Sasaki, which is also involved in planning the Doan Brook project, envisions moving the stream slightly to the west and sculpting more gradual banks with a wider floodplain. Pedestrian paths would also be introduced.

Big gifts

The university and the museum described the greenway project as a partnership, although CWRU has raised the $15 million construction cost through private contributions.

The landscape will be named the Nord Family Greenway in honor of an undisclosed gift. The second-highest gift was an anonymous $3 million donation from a CWRU trustee.

In addition to the $15 million, the Cleveland Foundation donated $1 million to support the project and the cause of community integration, a university news release said.

CWRU is also raising money for long-term maintenance.

Schedule



The university will seek official city approval in coming weeks for the project, developed in consultation with the city, the museum, the sewer district, the Doan Brook Watershed Partners, the nonprofit LAND Studio, the Holden Parks Trust, the Cleveland Metroparks, the Fine Arts Garden Commission and University Circle Inc.

CWRU officials said construction would begin in the fall, after the museum concludes its centennial celebrations, and would be completed in about a year.

History of the plan

Snyder said the university began thinking about the need for such a project in 2010, after it acquired the Temple-Tifereth Israel's historic 1923 synagogue at East 105th Street and Ansel Road.

The university is using the facility - which it is sharing with the temple congregation for 99 years - as a performing arts center. The temple will also house CWRU's dance, theater and music programs in the future.

Snyder said the university felt it needed to create a clear and inviting pedestrian connection from the temple to its main campus.

The university first engaged Boston architect Miguel Rosales, who in 2011 proposed building an iconic, S-shaped bridge across Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.

Seeking alternatives, the Cleveland Foundation then sponsored a private design competition in which three firms, including Sasaki, were invited to compete. Snyder did not reveal the names of the runners-up.

Idea was obvious to Sasaki

Sources at the museum, University Circle and the foundation who watched the plan evolve over the past two years, have said its geometry is clearly suggested by the spatial relationships among the CWRU university center, the temple and the museum.

Yet no one saw the potential until Sasaki presented the idea, in part because landscape west of the art museum is overgrown and too steep to be traversed easily.

Isabel Zempel, the Sasaki principal who led the design process, said she immediately spotted the opportunity during a visit prior to the design competition.

"It was a very bold move we made right away," she said. It was a very easy move for us and we strongly believed in it, and that's how we went into the competition."

Snyder said she was instantly impressed - and convinced.

"When we saw the Sasaki presentation, it is not an exaggeration to say we were blown away," Snyder said. "We had been thinking 'bridge' all along. But what Sasaki proposed was so much more than a bridge could ever be."