A view of Lake Erie or the downtown skyline from North Coast

Harbor in Cleveland might sound like a frothy topic best suited for

cocktail chatter.

That couldn’t be further from the truth. Cities are judged, often

harshly, by how well they sculpt buildings, streets and parks to frame

panoramas and lines of sight aimed at cathedrals, monuments or the

blue horizon of a Great Lake.

A mistake can mar a city’s image for centuries.

Previous generations of Clevelanders knew this well and literally

moved skyscrapers to bring them in line with critical downtown views.

It’s time for the present generation to follow those historical cues

— and fast.

The city’s recently completed

Global Center for Health Innovation have created new public space and

topography downtown.

Views of Lake Erie and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum from

the city’s downtown Mall, which doubles as the green roof of the

underground convention center, have been altered, in some cases for

the worse and in some for the better.

What matters, next, however, is critical. Views of the lakefront from

the Mall and vice versa were in play even before the chain-link fences

around the convention center’s grassy roof came down Friday.

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and Cuyahoga County Executive Ed

FitzGerald announced a pact several weeks ago to finance a new group

of downtown projects by leveraging some $93 million in unanticipated

savings and sales-tax revenue gathered for the convention and health

innovation centers.

Timely intervention in the mid-1980s by then-Cleveland mayor George Voinovich ensured that the BP America tower aligned with the center line axis of the downtown Mall.

They want

to rise quickly on

the current site of the county’s soon-to-be-vacated administration

building, just west of the convention center and south of Lakeside

Avenue.

Thanks to excellent planning so far by the county and its private

partner, MMPI Inc. of Chicago, the hotel would share an underground

loading dock with the recently finished facilities next door and would

link directly to convention exhibit areas.

The county also wants to help the city build

walkway connecting the downtown Mall directly to North Coast Harbor

and the Rock Hall.

A parking garage would also be part of that project, for which the

city is seeking a highly competitive federal TIGER grant for the third

time in several years. (TIGER stands for Transportation Investment

Generating Economic Recovery).

As if that weren’t enough, the city is also seeking developers

interested in building a 19-acre

neighborhood on lakefront land north of FirstEnergy Stadium, now

occupied by warehouses. Another nine-plus acres around North Coast

Harbor and the Rock Hall would be part of the package.

It’s all great. What’s needed very quickly is a new set of visual

guidelines that clarify the views and relations among all the upcoming

projects and impose limitations on what can be built where to prevent

the blockage of important views.

In planning lingo, these are called urban design guidelines. They

function somewhat like a musical score to keep players in synch. They

govern issues such as the height, location and general size of

structures, and should be in place well before any individual

buildings are designed.

The city deployed such guidelines brilliantly in the early 1990s to

ensure the design success of the Gateway sports complex. It needs to

repeat that performance again for the next wave of downtown projects

near the lake.

The lobby of the new Cleveland Convention Center rises 27 feet from Lakeside Avenue, bisecting the once nearly unified downtown Mall. It's a loss, but there's also a gain; views from atop the roof are terrific.

The most immediate issue is that a preliminary design for the parking

garage and the overhead walkway desired by the city shows that the

structures would block straight-line views of the Rock Hall from

several important vantages.

These include the new convention center ballroom, located beneath

Mall C north of Lakeside Avenue. The view from the surface of Mall C

northeast toward the Rock Hall could also be compromised, as well as

the view of the Rock Hall from the proposed convention center hotel.

(Views of the Great Lakes Science Center looking north from the Mall would not be affected).

Fortunately, in the last few days, the city hired URS Architects of

Cleveland, the firm that originally sketched the walkway and garage,

to amend the design.

The goal is to better preserve views of the Rock Hall from the

convention center and Mall, said Ken Silliman, Jackson’s chief of

staff.

“We view this as an enhancement of the TIGER grant submission and an

update,” Silliman said. “These issues are important to us, and we do

understand them and appreciate them.”

It’s encouraging that the city is moving quickly on the issue; it

will be even better to see that the views along the lakefront are

definitively protected and enhanced.

Planners have given careful thought to the redesigned downtown Mall so far. Note the glass rail at the north end of Mall C, which makes it easier to see Lake Erie than the old stone parapet that previously impeded the view.

Jeff Appelbaum, the attorney representing the county on the

convention center, hotel and innovation center projects, said that

clear, straight-line views would shorten the apparent distance between

the hotel and the Rock Hall, and add significant economic value of both

investments.

Hotel visitors would feel the urge to see the Rock Hall, and Rock

Hall visitors would want to stay at the hotel, he said.

The hotel-Rock Hall connection isn’t the only issue at stake. The

lakefront overhead walkway needs to be designed so that it’s a work of

art in itself, not merely a way to get from here to there.

It also needs to land near the Rock Hall in a way that doesn’t impede

close-in views of the building, designed by the important 20th-century

Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei.

There’s more: The city’s initial plans for developing the lakefront

north of FirstEnergy Stadium ignore the center-line axis of the

downtown Mall, which is the heart of a grand neoclassical urban

ensemble planned 110 years ago by architect Daniel Burnham of Chicago.

In the mid-1980s, then-Mayor (now former U.S. Sen.) George Voinovich

quietly helped Sohio, later BP America, negotiate the purchase of a

strip of land east of Public Square so the company’s 45-story

skyscraper, finished in 1987, could move 100 feet east to align with

the center-line visual axis of the Mall.

Voinovich said Friday that he remembers telling the late Alton

Whitehouse, Sohio’s chairman at the time, that it was essential to

locate the skyscraper properly.

If it weren’t in the right spot, people would ask, “ ‘Why didn’t they

put it on the center axis of the Mall?’ ” Voinovich said. “Burnham

would be rolling in his grave.”

Views of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, such as this perspective from atop the elevated lobby roof of the new Cleveland Convention Center, need to be protected from encroachment by other structures.

From 1903 to the 1930s, the Mall area grew handsomely with landmark

buildings including City Hall, the Cuyahoga County Courthouse, the

Board of Education Building, the Cleveland Public Library and the old

federal post office and courthouse, now the Howard M. Metzenbaum U.S.

Courthouse.

The city’s new convention center, which replaces the earlier

convention center beneath the Mall between St. Clair Avenue and the

Lake Erie overlook north of Lakeside Avenue, has changed the

topography of the parklike space in dramatic ways.

The middle section of the three-block Mall was more or less a flat

garden originally. When the city built its convention center below the

Mall in 1964, it had to raise the park surface above surrounding

streets and sidewalks to accommodate the structures below. This

blocked views of the lake from certain angles.

The new convention center roof alters the views even more. A

pedestrian needs to walk 100 feet or more north of St. Clair Avenue on

service drives that flank the Mall before the lake horizon comes into

view.

The extra height was required by the need to provide the

industry-standard, 30-foot clearance for the convention center beneath

the Mall.

At Lakeside Avenue, the grassy Mall swoops up 27 feet high to reveal

the new convention center lobby. The wavelike roof and the glassy

façade of the lobby slice the Mall into discrete parts.

The design is an unfortunate necessity — but it was better than

alternatives including building a lobby structure on the northern

section of the Mall that would have done even more damage to the Group

Plan District.

If the new convention center caused losses, it also produced gains.

The views north and south from the top of the swooping roof are

magnificent — and they make it crystal-clear how important it is that

the BP tower is in the right place.

Attention now needs to turn to the view north of the Mall along the

lakefront. Should the city’s tatty-looking 1970s-era Amtrak station

remain just north of the Mall? Hiding it with trees, as the county

plans to do, it not a long term solution.

Also: Should future waterfront development mark the northern end of

the Mall axis with a special building or a glimpse of the lake?

Answering those and other questions would be a perfect job for the

city’s nonprofit Group Plan Commission , a group of civic and business

leaders formed by Jackson to build on the work of prior generations.

Such planning can be done faster and with greater accuracy today

because new design software can take the guesswork out of plotting

three-dimensional relationships in city landscapes.

“Successful cities are relentless in pursuit of quality design at the

small scale and the large scale,” said Hunter Morrison, Cleveland’s

planning director from 1982 to 2002, who helped safeguard the Mall

district during his tenure.

Cleveland should be congratulated on its fine new convention center.

But this is no time to rest. It’s time to get relentless — about