Sharpen your ice skates and dig out your warmest red mittens. You don’t need to go to Rockefeller Center in New York City to enjoy recreational ice skating in the heart of a city. The splash zone fountains in Cleveland’s redesigned Public Square have been toned down until warmer weather returns. But in their place is a skating rink for families, friends, lovers and future (maybe, who knows?) Olympians practicing axel jumps.
No longer just a pass-through, Public Square is a destination — a $50 million, 10-acre, redefined, world-class space that Clevelanders and out-of-towners use like it’s been there a long time, according to Ann Zoller, executive director of LAND studio, a nonprofit organization that helped coordinate the redesign. Engaging programming provided by Cuyahoga Arts and Culture will help “celebrate the winter festivities.”
“And LAND studio is working with the folks who do the holiday lighting to make sure its quality matches the bar set by the square’s new design,” says Zoller.
There is no reason to believe it won’t. Public Square is the result of what some are calling the unprecedented Herculean cooperation and effort between the region’s government entities, business community and nonprofits.
How did we get to the point where we lace up our skates, sip hot chocolate from a nearby cafe or hum carols while enjoying the pedestrian-friendly square? Truly, the scene is almost too Currier & Ives to be true. But 2016 is the year Cleveland has learned to believe.
“The first conversations about doing something dramatic about Public Square started 14 years ago,” says Zoller. “We were the constant. Our role as a nonprofit was to match the ‘what could be’ opportunities with key partners and to see that those civic discussions stayed alive.”
“It started with a shared vision between Mayor Frank G. Jackson and Tony Coyne, then chairman of the City Planning Commission,” adds Edward W. Rybka, chief of regional development for the City of Cleveland. “There was a lot of discussion that it was a project just for RNC visitors. But that couldn’t have been further from the truth. It was an opportunity to create a dramatic, pedestrian-friendly green space in the heart of downtown for Clevelanders.”
Still, as Zoller says, nothing motivates like a deadline. And when it was announced in 2014 that Cleveland would be the host city for the 2016 Republican National Convention, suddenly we all realized we had to play nice together or we’d be showing the world DO NOT CROSS yellow construction tape and orange barrels instead of a Public Square that includes a pleasing perimeter walkway, exceptional landscaping and greater respect for the square’s statues and landmarks.
“But you can’t build something great by just cobbling it all together,” explains Jeremy Paris, executive director, Group Plan Commission, a coordinating body that set the goals for Cleveland’s growth and investment in 2011. “We had to find a way to work together. Part of that was the understanding by the corporate community of the value of investing in public spaces. For every dollar we spend, there is $6 in economic development.”
The project, designed by James Corner Field Operations of New York, needed money. Lots of it, and from different sources. Cleveland has a reputation for being a philanthropic town. But recent shaky economic times and city poverty put a dent in the coffers of many nonprofit foundations and organizations. Would the big players in town dig deep to help out?
The Cleveland Foundation chipped in $8 million. The KeyBank Foundation presented the project with a $4 million gift, the single-largest donation in its history. Another $5 million dollars came from the Gund Foundation.
Add in a $2.5 million grant to the Group Plan Commission from the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation and the Mandel Supporting Foundations. (The northeast edge of the redesigned Public Square is now called the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Concert Hill.) Other nonprofits generously contributed as well.
The importance of government support could not be underestimated. Cuyahoga County stepped in wearing a white hat.
“The county’s role was part of the financial equation,” says Nathan Kelly, director, innovation and strategic initiatives for Cuyahoga County. “When the need was identified, we had to find a way to close the gap. We lent the project about $10 million to be repaid through tax increment financing. We are getting repaid by the increase in property values that occurred because of the project. It is a very secure approach for us.”
Armond Budish, Cuyahoga County executive, is proud of the county’s efforts to be part of Cleveland’s success, saying the entire region benefits.
“The Group Plan Commission, largely volunteers, did an outstanding job. I would single out (executive director) Jeremy Paris for his time, energy and effort,” says Budish, who encourages Clevelanders to visit the Cuyahoga County Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument on Public Square, a Civil War memorial many Clevelanders don’t know contains an exhibit room.
The State of Ohio reallocated $3.5 million of its capital re-appropriation bill that was earmarked for a lakefront pedestrian bridge in order to ensure the square was completed last summer. The Greater Cleveland Partnership and Group Plan Commission were instrumental in the request.
Eventually, 60 percent of funding came from private (corporate and foundation) sources, 40 percent from public, according to Paris.
With money in hand or promised, construction crews and utility companies could start pushing dirt. That was an extraordinary case of cooperation and knowing whose turn it was to put on the hard hat.
Dan Gess, senior project manager for Donley’s Inc., says his construction company was interested in the Public Square project for its obvious historical and economic impact. But, although most people think of it as a city project, it was more “analogous to a private project” because of the Group Plan Commission’s role, and that held special appeal for Donley’s.
“While we were still respectful of the city’s rules and regulations, we weren’t necessarily bound by long procurements and bidding, and that streamlined everything. It eliminated some of the back-and-forth and problematic finger-pointing,” says Gess, who calls the design/build agreement with the architect “an arranged marriage” that was successful.
He also praises the work of managing director Jeffrey Appelbaum of Project Management Consultants (the project owners’ representative) for instigating cooperation.
(And for some Public Square trivia, Gess says, 1,300 pieces of white concrete planters, raised architectural seating walls and other pieces were pre-cast in Wisconsin.)
And don’t forget about the spaghetti tangle of underground utility cables under Public Square that had to be changed.
“It started out that there were going to be a lot of utility people in the same area doing work at the same time,” says John Skory, regional president of Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. “We decided to coordinate with other utilities, including AT&T and Dominion East Ohio,” which is a big reason the project went smoothly. “Because of traffic and concerns about congestion downtown, we started pulling out old cable and putting in new cable on midnight shifts.
“When you start working with equipment that has been in the ground for 70 to 80 years, there is always a possibility things could go wrong just because you are disturbing things,” Skory says.
Seventeen major circuits, about 200 customers, including downtown hotels and the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, could have been without power, even though there was a backup feed. But none of that happened.
In the end, parent company FirstEnergy spent $1.4 million to completely update the electrical infrastructure that sits under Public Square and affects much
of downtown.
“We didn’t get any money back from the redesign fund,” Skory says. “That was our contribution to the redesign as a partner.”
(Changing the underground utilities required a total of $13 million. The City of Cleveland provided $5 million and private utilities provided $8 million.)
Shortly after the square opened, Rybka received a phone call from a mayor of a “sizable city” in California that is taking ownership of and demolishing an 8-acre shopping center. Rybka says the mayor was impressed with Cleveland’s Public Square and wants to replicate the idea.
“Public Square is having a significant impact not just on Clevelanders but across the country,” Rybka explains. He is most proud of the area’s ability to function as a beautiful recreation area for RNC visitors, as well as serve “as a historic space for free speech.”
To complement the infrastructure, support poured in from the National Endowment for the Arts, which awarded Cuyahoga Arts and Culture a $50,000 Art Works matching grant for events on Public Square. (The Group Plan Commission is providing the $50,000 local matching funds.) In addition, the Char and Chuck Fowler Family Foundation of Cleveland provided a $1.5 million grant to Land studio for the three-year art installation of giant, colorful animals, part of a Cracking Art collective exhibit.
“The report card is still five years away,” says Paris, using that timeframe to judge the success of Public Square’s redesign. “But it is a place where people are discovering their own uses. I have a young son and watching him play in the fountain is just special. At the end, it was a fun project because a lot of people deserve credit for delivering it, and that makes a lot of people feel responsible for its success.”