CLEVELAND, Ohio - The final stage of a multiyear remake of the West Shoreway, scheduled for completion in 2017, is turning into a gift Ohio City is beginning to regret.

Plans by the Ohio Department of Transportation's to revamp Shoreway on- and off-ramps at West 25th, 28th and 45th streets - which nobody likes in their current configurations - are raising worries about whether the project will hurt more than it helps.

The latest revised plans for the West 28th Street-Shoreway interchange, prepared by ODOT for The Plain Dealer on Dec. 17.

ODOT officials, for their part, are frustrated because they think that on balance, their plans will be an improvement. They point to amenities such as a new multipurpose trail that will run the length of the revamped Shoreway, providing a better connection to Edgewater Park.

The issue boils down to this: ODOT's plans would undeniably ameliorate one of the worst highway/neighborhood interfaces in the city.

But improvements are slight in some critical areas, such as pedestrian crosswalks, and may actually do harm in other aspects. These include a potential increase in heavy truck traffic on local streets that could dampen a nascent residential revival.

"This is a [traffic] flow intensive design," said Tom McNair, executive director of Ohio City Inc., the local community development corporation. "It just seems like they're trying to drop highway infrastructure on a residential neighborhood."

Turf war

Controversy over the project highlights a long-running turf war between trucking-intensive industries located in the Flats down by the old river channel of the Cuyahoga, and new residents and developers up the hill to the southwest in Ohio City who are transforming the neighborhood.

Caught in between are low-income residents of the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority's Lakeview Terrace apartments at the brow of the hill between the Flats and Ohio City.

The latest revised plans for the Shoreway-West 25th Street area, prepared by ODOT for The Plain Dealer and dated Dec. 17.

The landmark public housing project was built in 1937 north of Washington Avenue and soon cut off from the rest of Ohio City when the West Shoreway was built.

Today, Lakeview residents have to surpass the massive wall created by the Shoreway by taking dark, narrow underpasses at West 25th and West 28th streets to reach shopping and amenities in Ohio City. And they have to cross wide, dusty intersections traversed regularly by massive trucks driving up from Main Avenue in the Flats.

Roots of the Shoreway plan

A map of the West Shoreway project.

In 2004, an ambitious lakefront plan developed by the city outlined ways to reconnect neighborhoods to Lake Erie that included redesigning the West Shoreway.

The current $95 million redo, which will turn the 50 mph limited-access highway into a 35 mph boulevard from Lake Avenue to West 25th Street, with a green median for much of its length, is an outgrowth of the 2004 plan.

A poster of Cleveland's 2004 Waterfront District Plan.

The first half of the project, which includes renovated pedestrian tunnels leading from Detroit Shoreway to Edgewater Park, and a new railroad underpass at West 73rd Street, is nearly finished.

The second half of the remake is a $42.5 million project scheduled for completion in 2017, and designed by the Cleveland office of the engineering firm of Michael Baker International.

It's details of that second plan that are causing upset in Ohio City.

Troublesome details

A City Architecture rendering of the pedestrian paths that will be built along the West Shoreway near West 73rd Street as part of a $95 million makeover. Critics including Ward 3 Councilman Joe Cimperman say ODOT's plans for amenities and safety around the West 25th and West 28th Street interchanges don't meet this standard of quality.

One contentious item is the proposed removal of the eastbound Shoreway on-ramp at West 28th Street north of Detroit Avenue. ODOT wants to remove the on-ramp to eliminate a short, unsafe merge lane at the top of the ramp, where vehicles would be allowed to speed up from 35 to 50 mph as they cross the Main Avenue Bridge.

(The off-ramp at West 28th would remain).

Removing the on-ramp would solve the merge problem, but would also cause reverberations on surrounding streets.

Namely: It is likely to increase the number of trucks traveling east and west on Detroit Avenue to and from a reconfigured eastbound on-ramp at West 45th Street.

A higher number of trucks would rumble past a planned $60 million, 240-unit apartment complex proposed by the Snavely Group at West 25th Street and Detroit Avenue.

And more trucks would pass through Ohio City's Hingetown section, which includes the Music Settlement's Bop Stop performance venue, the recently completed 62-unit Mariner's Watch apartment complex, and the Max Hayes vocational high school at Detroit Avenue and West 45th Street, which the Cleveland Municipal School District plans to replace with a new building in 2019.

Based on three recent traffic counts, ODOT estimates that removing the West 28th Street on-ramp would increase truck movements by 33 percent on Detroit Avenue between West 25th and West 45th streets, from an average of 217 to 324 a day.

A detail of an ODOT West Shoreway map showing the area of concern to residents and planners in the eastern section of the $95 million project in Ohio City.

Such numbers worry residents, who are also troubled about a deep tunnel dig the Northeast Ohio Sewer District plans to start soon in the area, which could push even more heavy trucks through local streets.

(District officials said last week their plans are still fluid, and they will take neighborhood concerns into account.)

Among worried investors in the neighborhood is Fred Bidwell, the art collector and philanthropist who launched the Transformer Station gallery in 2013 at 1460 West 29th St. with his wife, Laura Bidwell.

"It is disappointing to see there is this remarkable grassroots revival of this neighborhood," he said, "but the headwinds that you get from these brute-force projects that come from the top and and represent millions of dollars are so unresponsive to what's coming up from the grassroots."

Letter of protest

In September, Ohio City Inc.'s McNair and Ward 3 City Councilman Joe Cimperman, who represents much of downtown and Ohio City, wrote a letter to Mayor Frank Jackson, asking the city - the official sponsor of the ODOT project - to terminate the reconstruction of Shoreway ramps at West 28th Street and West 45th Street.

And McNair has said in interviews that he's still fighting with ODOT over the redesign of West 25th Street north of Detroit Avenue, where an eastbound off-ramp spills onto the street opposite Main and Washington avenues and Superior Viaduct.

The closely spaced streets there are often crowded with pedestrians walking from Lakeview south to the St. Malachi Parish church at 2429 Washington Ave., and points in Ohio City.

When asked for comment, the Jackson administration released a statement saying, "The city has in the past and will continue to support the process that will have community input in determining the outcome."

Frustration on both sides

Myron Pakush, director of ODOT's District 12 office in Garfield Heights, who oversees projects in the Cleveland area, said the agency wants to improve both traffic flow and pedestrian safety in Ohio City, but that in order to obtain funding, the Shoreway design had to meet state and national highway standards.

Those standards, he said, determine the lane widths, turning radii and other details objected to by McNair and other critics.

Pakush pointed out that the city's Planning Commission in 2010 approved removing the West 28th Street on-ramp.

He also said that removing the ramp would cut truck traffic on Washington Avenue north of the Shoreway between West 25th and West 28th streets, directly benefiting Lakeview Terrace residents.

At West 25th Street, Pakush said ODOT is now willing to install a push-button-operated traffic light at the West 25th Street-Main Avenue intersection.

A Vocon rendering of the proposed Snavely Group residential development that would overlook the revamped intersection of West 25th Street and Detroit Avenue. Developer Peter Snavely Jr. did not return calls seeking comment about the ODOT Shoreway project.

And ODOT's plans for West 25th Street include new sidewalks, new embossed brick crosswalks and new street lighting. Pakush even said in an interview Wednesday that he'd consider adding pedestrian refuges - curb-protected islands - in the middle of the crosswalks at West 25th Street.

Nimbleness needed

Those offers have convinced some observers, including the Rev. Anthony Schuerger, the pastor at St. Malachi, that ODOT is making concessions.

But McNair isn't satisfied, and he wants to bring ODOT back into a discussion to reduce the 14-foot-wide lanes proposed for West 25th Street and to make other changes.

Bidwell wants to see ODOT maintain a 35 mph speed limit on the Shoreway from West 25th Street east across the Main Avenue Bridge, which could obviate the need to close the on-ramp at West 28th Street.

Schuerger also said he sees wisdom in slowing the Shoreway not just on the bridge, but all the way east into downtown.

McNair and others hope that ODOT will entertain those suggestions. Pakush said he's willing, as long as officials from the Jackson administration also participate. Whether that happens in time to affect the project, for which contracts have already been let, remains to be seen.

"Part of what comes with life in the big city is getting better about compromise and better at listening," Bidwell said, alluding to ODOT and City Hall. "You have to be more nimble, flexible and faster. That's not what I see happening in this case."