CLEVELAND — There’s been a major effort underway in recent years to connect Ohio’s many parks and trails, giving walkers, cyclists and nature enthusiasts new ways to explore the great outdoors. Now a northeast Ohio city is getting in on that trend, connecting two of its parks to each other and eventually to a nearby Cleveland Metropark. 

What You Need To Know

  • The work starts this fall, where crews will start removing invasive species and creating wetlands
  • In the long run, Mayor Robert Fiala said he is hoping this project expands to something bigger
  • Major effort underway in recent years to connect Ohio’s many parks and trails

“You got one fella fishing for steelhead, you got a couple kids playing in the sand, we see this, we see a one mile corridor of that along the Chagrin River,” Mayor Robert Fiala said, as he watched people along the banks of the Chagrin River.

It’s a sight Fiala said will increase in the coming years, especially once two city parks, Todd Field and Daniels Park, become connected to each other.

“That area right there was the low head dam, and we are thinking that the bridge is going to come somewhere along where the steps were, so our first dam will cross the river in this location and there will be a second one a mile down the stream that will cross over to Todd field,” he said.

Fiala has been the mayor for six years and says this project is one of the most important of his legacy. 

“I was around when the EPA was first founded, when the Cuyahoga River started on fire, so I’ve always had a sensitivity to lakefront riverfronts,” he said. 

The city of Willoughby bought 105 acres of riverfront land that was previously owned by a private school. For years, it was leased to a nursery but has been dormant. The city, with the help of federal, state and local funding, secured that land and looked to provide opportunities for environmentalists, hikers, and those who enjoy fishing.

“Our residents now not only are going to have the arts and entertainment and cultural district of our historic downtown, they’re also going to have the environmental benefit of the two-mile walking trail along the Chagrin River,” he said.

The work starts this fall, where crews will start removing invasive species and creating wetlands, also providing for environmental research to be done in the area. Something Gonzalo Garcia-Pedroso, the head of school at Andrews Osborne Academy, said he is looking forward to.

“Expanding on what we have been doing here at AOA, our students use that almost daily for a real kind of hands-on an outdoor classroom, a learning environment. It’s not just reading about it online but experiencing in firsthand,” he said.

In the long run, Fiala said he is hoping this project expands to something bigger.

“A trail that would go all the way from Cleveland Metroparks north to Chagrin Reservation to Lake Eerie and this, we hope, is going to be the starting point of that. We already have developed a trail plan. We know the route we need to get to,” he said.