CLEVELAND, Ohio - A $700,000 Clean Ohio grant announced Friday by the city will kick off the final round of land acquisitions needed to finish the next segment of the long-awaited Towpath Trail to be built in the city.

The money will help trigger the final design and construction of Stage 3 of the trail, a $17.5 million segment nearly two miles long that will pass through the industrial portion of the city's Flats, extending north from the Steelyard Commons shopping center to University Road at Literary Avenue in Tremont, just south of the Innerbelt Bridge.

Stage 3 of the Towpath Trail will include some of the most dramatic scenery in the 100 miles of the reclaimed towpath from Cleveland south to New Philadelphia.

Stage 3 is one of four planned sections of trail extending six miles from Harvard Avenue at the city's southern border with Newburgh Heights.

From there, the trail is designed to run north through the industrial valley to the future Canal Basin Park on Columbus Road Peninsula, where the original northern terminus of the 19th-century Ohio & Erie Canal - and its original towpath - was located.

The $700,000 grant from the Clean Ohio Greenspace Conservation Fund will be used to help buy and environmentally restore two vacant parcels totaling 21.7 acres next to Tremont's 50-acre Clark Fields, essentially enlarging the city park.

Impressive views planned

At nearly two miles in length, Stage 3 will traverse some of the most dramatic scenery on the entire Towpath Trail, which stretches 85 miles south to New Philadelphia.

Stage 3 will include landscaped mounds sculpted from piles of construction and demolition debris south of the I-490 bridge. City officials believe the debris came at least in part from the old Municipal Stadium on the lakefront and the former Valley View Homes Estate apartments, which stood just north of the bridge.

The trail will also offer views of the ArcelorMittal steel plant, the downtown skyline and the onion domes of St. Theodosius Orthodox Cathedral in Tremont.

"It's going to be a unique experience and you'll have some great viewing angles," said Cleveland city planner George Cantor. "It's the part of Cleveland that built the city."

Cantor and other planners described the latest details of the Towpath project in an interview at City Hall on Wednesday.

In all, completing the remaining sections of the six miles of Towpath in Cleveland will cost an estimated $43 million.

A lengthy process

Much of the money will come from the state and federal governments, plus the non-school portion of increased taxes generated by the Steelyard Commons shopping center. The "TIF," or tax increment financing portion of revenues, is $3.6 million.

The nearly mile-long Scranton/Flats trail opened last year as part of Stage 4 of the Towpath Trail project in Cleveland. The segment will be connected to sections to the north and south by 2019.

South of Cleveland, the largely completed Towpath has functioned over the past two decades as a recreational pathway linking the southern suburbs of Cuyahoga County to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Akron and points south.

Building the six miles in Cleveland has taken more than a decade - and longer than other sections - because of numerous challenges including buying and cleaning former industrial land.

"You have unstable slopes, you have seeping springs, you have 100 years of manufacturing processes going on with different rules and regulations, and you're dealing with the cost of property in an urban area," said Tim Donovan, director of the nonprofit Canalway Partners, the lead fundraiser for the project.

(Donovan declined to comment earlier this year after Cleveland.com reported that he had failed to pay $16,000 in back taxes and grass cutting fees before losing his Cleveland home to foreclosure last November.

Critics including the editorial board of The Plain Dealer and the Northeast Ohio Media Group have called on Donovan to resign from his position on the city's Board of Zoning Appeals. City officials and the board of Canalway Partners have stood by Donovan).

A map shows the four stages of the six-mile section of Towpath Trail planned for Cleveland at a cost of $50 million, and scheduled for completion in 2019.

Gathering money for the Cleveland section of the Towpath has involved cobbling together grants bit by bit from federal and state programs with different funding cycles and technical requirements for each pot of money.

"It's just a very complicated process of making sure we leverage whatever dollars are available," said planner Richard Kerber of Cleveland Metroparks, which is partnering on the Towpath project with the city, Cuyahoga County and Canalway Partners.

"These projects end up being timed, based on when dollars are available," Kerber said. "And there's only so much available out of various pots, so we work based on what funding is available and when."

Update on trail sections

Of the four trail "stages" in Cleveland, only one is complete: Stage 2, the mile-long section at Steelyard, which opened in 2009.

Another section, slightly less than a mile in length, opened in 2014. Called the Scranton/Flats Trail, it is part of what the planners call Stage 4 of the project, and it skirts the south side of Scranton Road Peninsula just north of the Innerbelt Bridge.

A cyclist barrels along the completed Stage 2 section of the Towpath Trail behind the Steelyard Commons shopping center on Wednesday.

The remaining portions of Stage 4, reaching south from the Innerbelt to Literary Avenue in Tremont and north from Scranton Peninsula into the future Canal Basin Park, are scheduled for completion in late 2018.

Finishing Stage 4 is estimated to cost $12.3 million.

The last piece scheduled for completion will be Stage 1, a short section extending north from Harvard Road to Steelyard.

Kerber, Donovan and the other planners said the section has been difficult to plan because it must pass around a now demolished plant operated by the Harshaw Chemical Co., which produced uranium for atomic bombs during World War II.

Stage 1 will carry hikers and cyclists through the area largely on bridges and walkways raised above the ground, and threaded beneath the high-level Harvard-Denison Bridge. The substantial amount of construction needed for Stage 1 will bring the cost of that segment to $13 million.

Stage 3, scheduled for completion in late 2017, is coming soonest.

It will cross storied terrain. As it heads north from Steelyard Commons, the trail will traverse Holmden Avenue, site of the location shots in the 1978 Robert De Niro film, "The Deer Hunter."

From there, the trail will loop around the west and north sides of the enlarged Clark Fields and curve northeast along Quigley Road toward West Third Street.

As it approaches the I-490 underpass, the trail will ascend a series of the overlook hills fashioned from demolition debris deposited on land owned by the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority, Kerber and the other planners said.

A 19th-century Sanborn map details part of the area to be traversed by Stage 3 of the Towpath Trail, an area that included a 19th-century railroad roundhouse.

The overlook mounds may include a viewing platform styled to resemble structures in the nearby ArcelorMittal plant.

After turning north underneath the I-490 bridge, the trail will traverse the hillside at the eastern edge of Tremont, overlooking the industries along the Cuyahoga River south of the Innerbelt Bridge.

At Literary Avenue in Tremont, the trail may include a partial reconstruction of a 19th-century roundhouse that once stood at what was once called Railway Street.

More than a narrow trail

Throughout its journey, Stage 3 will be far more than a 10-foot-wide strip of asphalt, Kerber said. New segments of the trail right-of-way north and south of Clark Fields will measure 200 to 400 feet wide, placing the pathway within restored wetlands and other habitats skirting rail yards, industrial plants and highways.

"It's really taking the trail within a greenbelt that has a natural feel to it while at the same time making sure we have views" of industries in the valley, Kerber said.

"The whole idea is it's a green buffer to separate the industrial zone from the residential district,'' Cantor said.

A map prepared by scholar Alan Mallach shows how housing values have risen sharply in certain Cleveland neighborhoods with social, cultural and geographical amenities, including Tremont, located along the anticipated route of the Towpath Trail.

Anticipated for a decade by developers and residents in Tremont, the trail has been a significant factor in sharply raising home prices in the neighborhood.

Equity concerns

But Cantor said the trail would provide mobility and a high-quality recreational amenity to low income residents without cars.

"It's almost like you go outside your door and you'll have a free health club," Cantor said. "It's providing mobility to an otherwise immobile population with all the health benefits that flow from that."

Donovan said that Stage 3 would be notable for its contrast to more bucolic sections of the Towpath south of Cleveland in the national park.

"It's a manufacturing, industrial flavor," he said. "You'll hear highway traffic and sometimes trains, and they'll be very noisy."

The planners haven't attempted to hide the industrial scenery. To the contrary, they want to celebrate it.

"You want to include it and make it part of the visitor experience," Donovan said.