The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
WALK THIS WAY
Walkability promoted amid renewed appreciation of outdoors
“Maybe it’s woken up the sleeping giant on walkability again” — Tom Thielman, Willoughby economic director
There is a renewed appreciation of being outdoors and moving - something that won’t be going away anytime soon, according to Willoughby Mayor Robert Fiala.
“I think we’re going to see an increased level of people wanting to bike and walk to places,” Fiala said. “We’ve been cooped up, sheltered and isolated for so long. We think people are just yearning to be out and have experiences, so historic downtowns like Willoughby are experience.”
With not much to do during the height of the novel coronavirus pandemic, people were out walking left and right, said Tom Thielman, Willoughby’s economic director.
“Maybe it’s woken up the sleeping giant on walkability again,” he said. “I think the young kids embrace it, but it’s not about two feet. It’s about bicycles, too. We were given some information - we even put it in our capital grant when we were talking to the state about our Chagrin River trail — and walkability in our downtown area was a high priority.”
In Lake County, downtown Painesville and downtown Willoughby have the highest scores in walkability due to the concentration of businesses that are walkable, Thielman said.
He said Willoughby has more than 150 years of residents living in a home and being able to walk to a restaurant, shop, coffee house, library, lawyer, accountant or insurance within five or 10 minutes of the home.
“A good portion of our city is like that,” Thielman said. “We were successful in receiving a $300,000 capital grant from the state for our Chagrin River trail. That was for the portion of our trail that we envision just at Todd Field, and since paths and trails are important to us, we’re interested in putting more paved trails along the Chagrin River to provide access there.
“That would be another connection to the downtown walkability and now you can connect to nature too from downtown Willoughby.”
Within the city’s master plan, it speaks liberally about bike trails, walking and the completion of sidewalks, Thielman said.
“We have areas in town where there are gaps in our sidewalks,” Thielman said. “We were just successful in receiving a $2 million grant from NOACA to do a bike pedestrian trail that starts at our border on State Route 84 in Wickliffe and then travels all the way down SOM Center.
“Right now, if you look at State Route 91 in Willoughby, there are areas where sidewalks don’t exist,” he added. “There are muddy paths because the kids find a way with their bicycles. A kid who lives up off of Ridge Road who wants to travel down and go to Taco Bell, they don’t have a clear path on a trail the whole way. That will be made possible by this grant.”
Walkability is a large selling point of a house in the historic area of downtown or near downtown, Thielman said.
“I don’t hear a resident not say, who lives near downtown, how much they love being able to walk their dog to downtown and stop at a coffee shop, or just see what’s going on - the action, the vibe in Wes Point Park during an afternoon or early morning,” Thielman said. “Those small town urban experiences are hard to find and we’re just fortunate to have one of the best local downtown experiences in Northeastern Ohio.”
While all cities want to try to achieve walkability, it’s a challenge without being laid out with a quaint downtown, Thielman said.
“I don’t want to speak for Mentor, but Mentor has done a lot of work on putting bike paths in and trying to connect amenities together,” Thielman said. “In Willowick, they’re working toward that with their new Lake Shore Boulevard study — more connectivity to the lake front via walking paths and bike paths.”
Willowick is also talking about traffic calming aspects of Lake Shore Boulevard to make it more walkable because there, they have a large population that lives near the lake, Thielman said.
Also, there’s Shoregate Town Center.
“I grew up in Wickliffe and as a kid, my mom used to walk to Shoregate,” he said. “We’ve gotten out of that. Everybody hops in a car to go two seconds to the corner store now. You have to remember back to your days of walking the college campus.”
Additionally, new bike racks have been installed in downtown Willoughby, Thielman said, and with every new development, the city has an eye on how future sidewalks are going to be incorporated and how biking is going to be incorporated.
“Now, a lot of times, fast food restaurants have put bike racks in and they make accommodations. It interconnects,” he said.
Fiala said walkability shouldn’t be just to find where people can walk to in five minutes to great restaurants and stores. It should also address extended areas they can go to and how they can get from downtown Willoughby to Lake Erie along the river and make it walkable or bike-able.
“I’m not sure, at least in my 20-plus years of being a public servant, that I’ve seen this much collaboration by a group of people with one common focus to make our riverfront accessible all the way from Lake County’s border to Lake Erie,” Fiala said. “It’s exciting, but it’s going to take more than a couple of years before we can start to see it implemented.”