THE VISION ISSUE - City of Shaker Heights

Turning the Corner
Next up: revitalizing Lee Road, whose
main commercial district is the half
mile or so that starts just south of Chagrin
and runs to the Cleveland border.
“This area has really seen no significant
investment in 50 years,” says Tania
Menesse. Of course, that makes it a
hard sell when it comes to attracting
new businesses. The first investment is
the new Lee Road Rapid Station slated
to get underway in the next year or so.
Menesse recalls visiting Lee Road
with an orthodontist who wanted to
bring his practice to the area. “He
looked at the configuration of the
street and he couldn’t figure out a way
to do it. The street has all these little
buildings, with five parking spaces,”
she says. “He said he couldn’t have his
employees and patients park on the
opposite side of the street – because
they couldn’t cross the street.”
So the City is looking at how to
improve Lee to make it appealing to
business owners, as part of the economic
development plan adopted in
2010. In following the Shaker Town
Center template for improvement,
plans include upgrades to the road’s
infrastructure, improving sidewalks,
streetscaping, pedestrian crossings,
and new traffic patterns to make it
easier to walk and bicycle in the area.
The study phase for the infrastructure
improvements has now wrapped
up. The next step is to secure funding.
This will likely come from the Northeast
Ohio Areawide Coordinating
Agency, the regional transportation
authority that is the City’s numberone
source for these kinds of improvements.
But revitalizing Lee, says Menesse,
also means demonstrating that the
City is willing and able to work with
businesses in innovative ways. That’s
already happening.
It started in 2010 when Shaker
agreed to renovate the former Zalud
Oldsmobile building, which it acquired
in 2005, into a home for the
business accelerator Shaker Launch-
House.
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