Cleveland, Ohio is moving forward with a trail segment along the Irishtown Bend hillside that city planners have wanted for years but couldn't safely build — because the hillside itself was on the verge of collapse.

A $750,000 federal grant administered through the Ohio Department of Transportation will fund construction of a shared-use path connecting the existing trail at Detroit Avenue to Columbus Road along the west bank of the Cuyahoga River. The project also includes new sidewalks, landscaping, and pedestrian lighting along Franklin Avenue, linking the trail to the Ohio City and Tremont neighborhoods nearby.

The work is part of the Cleveland Foundation Centennial Lake Link Trail, a planned 3.5-mile continuous route connecting Lake Erie to the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail, which runs more than 80 miles south to New Philadelphia. The Foundation, one of the country's oldest community foundations, committed roughly $50 million toward the trail as its signature centennial project more than a decade ago.

But Irishtown Bend posed a serious obstacle. The steep, unstable hillside carried a real risk of dumping millions of cubic yards of earth into the Cuyahoga River's federal shipping channel, which would have shut down commercial navigation to the Port of Cleveland. For years, the landslide threat put any trail construction on hold. The Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority led a $157 million stabilization effort, backed in part by a $51.3 million federal RAISE grant awarded in 2022, one of the largest such grants nationally that year. That work had to come first.

With stabilization underway, this trail segment represents a tangible return on that investment. The Cuyahoga River, once infamous for catching fire in 1969 and helping catalyze the creation of the EPA, has become a symbol of Cleveland's environmental recovery. A trail along its banks carries weight beyond recreation.

Lakefront access has been a defining civic challenge in Cleveland for generations. Interstate 90, freight rail corridors, and industrial sites have physically cut most of the city off from Lake Erie. Mayor Justin Bibb, who took office in 2022, has made reconnecting residents to the waterfront a stated priority.

The trail investment also arrives in neighborhoods undergoing significant change. Ohio City and Tremont have seen substantial new development and rising property values over the past 15 years, and some longtime residents have raised concerns about whether infrastructure like this primarily benefits newer, wealthier arrivals rather than long-standing communities.

The federal funding flows through the Highway Planning and Construction program, with Transportation Alternatives dollars from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Construction details and a timeline have not been publicly specified in the grant award.