WHISKEY ISLAND OFFERS AN HONEST VIEW of the Cleveland skyline. Seen from the landfill peninsula, the city rises behind concrete silos and piles of stone. The steel girders of a railroad lift bridge frame the Terminal Tower, and industry along the river defines everything.

If you haven’t been there, it’s because industry keeps the Whiskey Island secret well. Railroad tracks and the Shoreway ensure that one doesn’t just happen upon it. Starting at Edgewater Park, the road winds east by the water treatment plant, salt mines, and the bulk terminal. If you ignore the feeling that you might be trespassing and continue down the narrow road, you’ll reach the Whiskey Island Marina guardhouse. And if the marina is open, thanks to the terms of a submerged land lease, they’ll let you in.

A year ago, Mayor Jane Campbell announced with great fanfare that she would kickstart her lakefront plan by creating two parks in two years — one at Whiskey Island. With the long-range vision of a Shoreway Boulevard and the resulting hundreds of acres for new housing and other development, the Mayor said it was important to accomplish something in the near term. The problem, as Cleveland Planning Director Chris Ronayne says, is that the city is broke. And it doesn’t own the land.

Dan T. Moore III leads a group of investors who do. And he also wants the 20-acre parcel to become an active park. He’d like to see it named for his daughter, Wendy, who died in a ski accident. He says he has draft documents for a transaction with a non-profit land preservation group, which he declined to name.

Christopher Knopf, Ohio Office Director for the Trust for Public Land, acknowledges that he and Moore have been discussing ways to preserve the land for park purposes. Knopf declined to discuss details, but called the city "a necessary partner."

Despite the common ground in their publicly stated claims, however, Moore and the city aren’t on the same page. It’s not that they disagree over money, though Ronayne and Moore quote substantially different dollar figures with respect to the likely sale price. Ronayne says that, valued as parkland, the price should be about $3 million. Moore says if he were selling to the Port Authority by court order, the land would probably be valued at $20 million. The larger issue, however, is whether people believe the city will use the land as described, and whether moving the port is necessary or good for the city.

Inunanimously aproving a "Memorandum of Understanding" (MOU) Friday, the Planning Commission began to pave the way for a four-part deal with the Port Authority, which Ronayne says would help the cash-strapped city acquire the land. Moore, who used to sit on the Port Authority board, thinks it’s ludicrous for that organization to be involved. And none of the people who spoke at the meeting trusted that the land would ultimately be used as Ronayne described.

The phrase "four-part deal with the Port Authority" covers most of the reasons.

Ronayne describes the memo of understanding as "a vehicle for the city to achieve greater public access on Cleveland Lakefront."
Its four components say the Port will relinquish seven acres of land abutting North Coast Harbor, give up eight more acres along Route 2 near 54th Street, make the effort to buy the eastern portion of Whiskey Island with the provision that most of it be deeded to the city, and in exchange will get an extension of their lease at docks 24 and 26, with a reduction in lease payments from $500,000 per year to $250,000 per year.

While the city technically would receive about 35 acres of land as a gift, it would pay in the form of lost revenue at a rate of $250,000 per year.

"We would be remiss to not take this opportunity to receive and place in public hands 35 acres of new land," Ronayne says. In addition, the Port’s "vacation of docks 20-32 offers the opportunity to create 100 acres of urban harbor front. We’ve always talked about
the Baltimore Inner Harbor, but we’ve never done anything about it."

"Qu’est-ce que fucking c’est?" Moore asks in impeccable French. "Why does the Port need to be in the deal? That makes it suspicious to all of us," particularly when the Port Authority proposed to expand on Whiskey Island while Mike White was mayor.

"They’re just re-introducing the same idea under a new mayor," says Ed Hauser. A systems engineer for LTV until he was laid off, Hauser has devoted countless hours to preserving Whiskey Island as a park. But he doesn’t want to see the Port Authority involved. The 2001 plan called for a new access road connecting the port to Route 2, the creation of an island off shore, and conversion of the marina to commercial use. It didn’t mention contingent development, but was lauded as a first step toward opening lakefront land for a convention center.
The MOU says the city will operate the marina for three years, and afterward will vacate that portion of the property so that the port can use it for commercial maritime purposes. Christine Bucknell, who manages the Whiskey Island Marina, says 500 people who currently keep boats there would then have to look for dock space elsewhere.

John Teel, president of the recreational group Cleveland Plays, likes a concept Moore has described — to make a park for active people with space to roller blade, ride bikes and skateboards, and play volleyball. Cleveland Plays has a volleyball league that brings approximately 650 people per week to the island, which he sees as a boost to the local economy.

"How do you get young people who will have some relevance to the economy to come and stay?" he asks. "We need spaces like this. It doesn’t appear to make sense that the Port needs as much land as they’re asking for. If you watch the number of boats that come in, and then look at where the economy is going, where does it say we need to be prepared with more maritime capacity?"

Hauser adds: "This plan will kick young professionals and 500 boaters out after three years. We cleaned Lorain’s lakefront up by welcoming the pellet terminal, and now we’re going to kick out 500 boaters. Where are they going to go, Lorain? I don’t know whose economic development plan this is."

The city has been emphatic about creating some kind of interpretive center at the decaying and vacant U.S. Coast Guard station at the eastern tip of the peninsula, making it the northern terminus for the Canal Towpath. Its commitment to the rest of the island has been less clear.

Hauser questions whether it is coincidence that Cleveland City Council, in May, expanded a downtown reinvestment area to include 1,000 feet on the eastern end of Whiskey Island. After defining the geography at hand, the remainder of the ordinance is entirely devoted to tax abatement for new construction and remodeling of single, multi-family and low-income housing.

"We’ll have a sliver park," Hauser says, looking at a map of the lakefront. He assumes that with the exception of a towpath promenade along the river, the land will be developed as housing.

In addition to the volleyball courts and boat trailers, which dot the landscape, some of them overgrown and rusted, the land currently houses some 70 species of birds, cottonwood trees and tenacious local greenery. Herons and wild swans have been seen there.

Hauser says the memo of understanding was developed and approved without public input, and without public discussion of a capacity assessment released by the Port Authority in February. He notes that while the Lakefront planning process initially drew praise for incorporation of public comments, no record of public comment has been compiled since July 2002.

Moore cites his experience on the Port Authority board and his business, which ships containers out of town every week, and says the Port Authority doesn’t need as much capacity as it has now. He suggests that if its land holdings were cut in half at the current location, the port could still meet demand, and the city could establish parks on the east side of the Cuyahoga River.

"This is a classic example of the king not having any clothes," he says. "The fact is there is plenty of Port Authority property — more than there needs to be. The amount of land they have on the east side of the river can simultaneously hold as much freight as they handled all last year. Our port has become long-term storage, with more space than it needs. A bigger port doesn’t mean people will buy more steel."

While most of the opposition revolves around whether people trust the city and Port Authority to do what it says, the subject of money also enters the picture. A 2001 study said moving the port west of the river, and building an island there for more dockage, would cost $658 million. A more recent report — without the island — puts the figure at $200-$300 million.

Moore says his plan to give most of the land to a public land trust is also motivated in part by cost — taxes and a submerged land lease. He’s behind on both counts. The bills total more than $200,000 per year.

The cost of the many projects Cleveland now has on the table compounds mistrust of the city’s plan with the Port. In addition to the port move, the proposed conversion of the Shoreway into a boulevard could cost as much as $1 billion. Site selection and design will determine convention center costs. Even if none of the costs is firmly established, they are by all counts staggering. That means any of these plans will require decades to carry out — decades during which the leadership of the city will change, and with it development priorities.

Ronayne says opposition to the deal is "a story told through the eyes of a few —one who stands to profit, one who is part of a private club, and some who aren’t looking out for citywide interest. Our job at the city is to look out for citywide interest."

Moore calls the Whiskey Island deal a land grab. "I don’t trust the Port at all," he says. "Not a bit."

Despite all his questions, however, he says he does have faith in the city. "I think the administration is smart and thoughtful, and they will understand what they are doing and will correct it," he says. "They will let a public nonprofit do this deal."