Meeting draws large crowd

Plans for community connectivity discussed

Community members from around the Lorain County gathered Oct. 5 at Sunset Terrace in Lakeview Park for the final Lakefront Connectivity Plan meeting.

This was the fifth such meeting and drew the largest crowd of any, said Lorain County Commissioner Matt Lundy.

Whereas previous meetings focused on residents

pitching ideas for ways that people can travel along U.S. 6 without their cars, this meeting’s focus was to show the plans developed from the former meetings and get the assembled to vote on which part of the project they would like to see money spent on.

In fact, the voting took a very economic turn, as instead of secret ballots, the assembled were each given 10 stickers that looked like $1 million “bills.” The participants were tasked with placing the bills on the parts of the project they would fund.

Michelle L. Johnson, director of Environmental Design Group who synthesized the plans, described what each section of the project would entail. She said the

group learned from previous meetings that no one is interested in keeping the current road/bike/sidewalk structure.

According to Johnson, this would be solved by opening up the sidewalks and bike lanes as space allows. In areas such as U.S. 6 at Baumhart, she said there’s plenty of room for a 10-foot wide trail that would welcome both pedestrian and bike traffic, whereas in downtown Vermilion, the layout would impede any such expansion.

Johnson also presented assorted concepts along the trail that would act as attractions to bring more people to the area. They included a public park near Baumhart, a conference center in Lorain, a marina in Sheffield Lake and a “Lakefront District” in Avon Lake.

According to Johnson, the project will cost about $30

million which will be paid for in part through state and federal funding. She said the shoreway project in Cleveland that seeks to connect the western neighborhoods to Edgewater Park costs about $44 million despite being shorter.

Lundy said that residents weary of such development plans should be optimistic about this one, because they are using a different process.

“I think this is a layered and thought-through process,” he said. “In other words, we have told the consultants not to just come up with concepts, we need numbers with these concepts and we also have to put together where we go from here.”

According to Lundy, the plan will be finished before the end of the year, and in 2018 the commissioners, the Lorain County Metro Parks and the shoreline communities will begin seeking the grants to finance the plan

Lorain Police Department Traffic Commissioner Sgt. Rick Soto was late arriving at the meeting because of a separate meeting he was attending earlier in the day in Columbus. After looking at the displayed plan and conferring with his wife, he said he likes the idea of putting a conference center in downtown Lorain.

“This is fabulous that we hope this happens,” he said. “From my standpoint as the traffic commissioner, I would welcome the traffic coming into the city of Lorain because it’s something positive that’s happening.

“It will definitely increase the traffic and our responsibility, but with improvement comes responsibility and we have to understand that that comes with what we do.”