With a focus on the nearly five mile stretch of Brookpark Road in the cities of Brooklyn, Parma, and the Old Brooklyn neighborhood of Cleveland, the Brookpark Road Streetscape Improvement Plan offers practical ideas for managing and beautifying the roadway with ideas for stormwater management, business development, and place-making.
Brookpark Road Streetscape Improvement Plan
The Brookpark Road Streetscape Improvement Plan includes an analysis of traffic crashes, flooding events, and a review of the zoning ordinances of each community that led to a broad list of recommended actions and potential funding sources for the implementation of projects to recast the Brookpark Road corridor as a modern, inviting gateway.
Background and Research
Brookpark Road is a thriving commercial corridor that is a notable employment hub in the Greater Cleveland area. Largely zoned for commercial and industrial uses, Brookpark Road businesses employ thousands in the retail, management, service, and manufacturing industries. Serving an immediate area population of 125,000 in the cities of Brooklyn, Parma, and the Old Brooklyn neighborhood of Cleveland, with a variety of housing types available on the corridor and nearby, workers employed at Brookpark Road businesses can live close to jobs and shopping. These businesses also present plentiful employment opportunities in a variety of industries to students attending area trade schools, colleges, and universities.
Brookpark Road is a corridor with heavy vehicular traffic that hosts numerous manufacturing, commercial, and retail businesses. It has a large business employment base and attracts a high volume of daily shoppers. It has immediate access to highways and is a short drive to the airport and downtown Cleveland. Land uses in the corridor include heavy industry, light industry, big box retail, small retail, single and multi-family housing, and a Cleveland Metroparks nature preserve. A portion of the corridor lies within a FEMA flood plain.
Process
The Brookpark Road Streetscape Improvement Plan was awarded a competitive planning grant from the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission. The grant award provided County Planning’s professional planning services free of charge to Brooklyn, Parma, and the Old Brooklyn neighborhood of Cleveland.
The Plan was shaped through research, meetings, and ideas gathered from city leaders, city staff, business owners, and regional stakeholders including the Ohio Department of Transportation, GCRTA, Cleveland Metroparks, and the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and public health guidelines for in-person meetings, all interviews and surveys were done online.
Contact Us
We welcome and encourage your questions, comments, and feedback about the Brookpark Road Streetscape Improvement Plan. Please contact our project team with your thoughts:
- Susan Infeld, Manager, Special Initiatives
- Rachel Novak, AICP, Senior Planner
- Micah Stryker, AICP, Senior Planner