A Cleveland Metroparks rendering shows a future parklet between Abbey Avenue, top, and Lorain Avenue, below, that would create an access point to the east side of the Red Line Greenway along the RTA rapid transit Red Line. The RTA West 25th Street Station is in the foreground.

CLEVELAND, Ohio – This should be a time for rejoicing among trail advocates in Northeast Ohio and particularly on Cleveland’s West Side.

Instead, there’s an air of conflict over part of the $6 million, 2.3-mile Red Line Greenway, which Cleveland Metroparks plans to build starting this summer on land leased from the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority along the rapid transit Red Line.

When finished in 2020, the greenway will run from West 65th Street at the Zone Recreation Center to Columbus Road at Franklin Avenue along the Cuyahoga River.

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A Cleveland Metroparks map shows the 2.3-mile route of the Red Line Greenway, highlighting the site of a potential development on RTA land, which is causing controversy.

At the river, it will intersect with the Cleveland Foundation Centennial Lake Link Trail, which connects to the Towpath Trail, the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Akron, and points beyond.

This is great news for West Siders and for a project that began more than 40 years ago as “Rapid Recovery.”

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Trail advocate Lennie Stover. Photo: Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer

Volunteers led by the Rotary Club of Cleveland spent countless hours cleaning and maintaining the fenced-off wasteland along the Red Line, which runs from downtown to Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.

Thanks in large part to volunteer Lennie Stover, a tireless advocate for the Red Line, the Rotary’s project morphed into a vision for a publicly accessible trail along the RTA tracks.

Stover helped persuade Metroparks to lease the land for the greenway and make it part of an emerging regional network. That’s a great accomplishment.

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A Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority map shows the site of a potential development on RTA land next to the Red Line Greenway.

Yet Stover is raising a ruckus now over whether RTA should develop a sliver of land along the greenway that’s big enough to support housing and possibly retail. The transit agency could pick a developer as soon as its meeting Tuesday.

The property in question is a 1.3-acre parcel south of Abbey Avenue, sandwiched between the Red Line right-of-way to the west, and Columbus Road to the east.

The largely wooded property measures 85 feet wide and 700 feet long. It slopes 30 feet downhill from Columbus Road to the edge of the greenway route and the Red Line tracks.

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View of land that could be developed adjacent to the W. 25th-Ohio City RTA station, Friday, February 11, 2019. (Marvin Fong / The Plain Dealer) The Plain Dealer

Stover and contributors to a letter-writing campaign he’s aiming at the RTA Board of Trustees want the land preserved as habitat for deer, monarch butterflies, foxes and other creatures. He also sees it as a location for community events and art festivals.

Others, however, see the logic of RTA leveraging the greenway for development and ridership in a shrinking city that needs all the growth it can get. They also believe new housing could dovetail with the trail – if RTA insists on excellent design.

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A Metroparks map of a parcel it will lease from RTA for its upcoming Red Line Greenway.

They include Tom McNair, executive director of Ohio City Inc., Cory Riordan, executive of the Tremont West Development Corp., Jacob VanSickle, executive director of Bike Cleveland, and Terry Schwarz, director of the Kent State University Urban Design Collaborative in Cleveland.

In sum, what’s happening is a clash of positive values. It’s a case of nature versus transit-oriented development, which is unfortunate.

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View of land that could be developed adjacent to the W. 25th-Ohio City RTA station, Friday, February 11, 2019. (Marvin Fong / The Plain Dealer) The Plain Dealer

In his email and letter-writing campaign, Stover has tilted the facts in his direction by claiming that the greenway would be narrowed to a 12-foot “cattle chute” next to the development.

Metroparks rejects the “cattle chute” description. The trail will be roughly 23 feet wide at its narrowest, the agency said, and it will flare in width north and south of the development site.

The trail will be separated on the west from RTA’s tracks and a maintenance road by a 6-foot-high chain link fence coated in black vinyl to make it fade into the landscape.

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View of land that could be developed adjacent to the W. 25th-Ohio City RTA station, Friday, February 11, 2019. (Marvin Fong / The Plain Dealer) The Plain Dealer

As for the potential development, the parks agency has an understanding that RTA “will incorporate the trail into the [project’s] concepts,” said Sean McDermott, Metroparks’ chief planning and design officer.

The case for developing the RTA property is strong because it’s a stone’s throw from RTA’s West 25th Street rapid station. It’s also just a quarter mile south of the Lake Link Trail and the future 23-acre park planned at Irishtown Bend along the Cuyahoga River. Great public spaces will be available nearby.

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Sign protests the development of land near the RTA Red Line, near the W. 25th-Ohio City station, Friday, February 11, 2019. (Marvin Fong / The Plain Dealer) The Plain Dealer

Any development on the RTA land would also undergo extensive design review at the local level and at City Hall.

But RTA needs to ensure excellence even before the developer is chosen. As a public agency, RTA needs to pursue higher imperatives than maximizing profit for a private business.

RTA could simply require, for example, that any development along the greenway should omit driveways, fences, windowless walls, or garage doors. The agency could also require that a proportion of residential units in the development should be affordable, to avoid contributing to rising rents in Ohio City.

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The path of the future Red Line Greenway, in the summer of 2013.

A great design could benefit from proximity to the trail and add to public safety by providing eyes on the greenway, to paraphrase the great urban design critic Jane Jacobs.

Such criteria could and should be written into any letter of intent and memorandum of understanding between the developer and RTA.

Cleveland shouldn’t have to choose between green space and transit oriented development. The two can, and should, work together.

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A rendering of the Red Line Greenway proposal. A future phase of the project will take the trail onto and across the RTA viaduct over the Cuyahoga River, into downtown Cleveland. (Original photo courtesy of Share the River, Rendering by Evan Peterson, LSU Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture.

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Volunteers, Lennie Stover and Jason Rohal, right, from the Rotary Club of Cleveland have proposed an outstanding concept to turn part of the Red Line Rapid right-of-way on the city's West Side into a recreational and commuter trail for bicyclists and pedestrians. Photographed on Friday, July 5, 2013. (Lonnie Timmons III/The Plain Dealer) The Plain Dealer

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Riders wait to board RTA trains at the W. 25th-Ohio City station, Friday, February 11, 2019. (Marvin Fong / The Plain Dealer) The Plain Dealer

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Markers designate where land could be developed near the W. 25th-Ohio City RTA station, Friday, February 11, 2019. (Marvin Fong / The Plain Dealer) The Plain Dealer

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Riders await their RTA train at the W. 25th-Ohio City station, Friday, February 11, 2019. The view from the station will encompass part of the Red Line Greenway, starting next summer. (Marvin Fong / The Plain Dealer) The Plain Dealer

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