Cleveland native Tim Donovan spent three decades conceiving, planning, fundraising and campaigning to realize the 101-mile Towpath Trail from Cleveland to New Philadelphia before his death last year at age 74.
His devotion now includes a posthumous six-figure gift from his estate to improve the partially completed 20-acre Canal Basin Park, the northern trailhead of the Towpath along the Cuyahoga River at Columbus Road Peninsula.
Tom Yablonsky, Donovan鈥檚 executor, longtime friend and , will formally announce the $275,000 gift from Donovan鈥檚 estate at a public event memorializing Donovan Monday from 4 to 7 p.m. at Great Lakes Brewing, 2516 Market Ave., Cleveland. Remarks are scheduled for 5:30 p.m. No RSVP is needed.
Speakers will include Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne, who said in an interview that Donovan played a pivotal role in establishing the Towpath Trail.
鈥淓ven if you didn't know Tim, his legacy has touched us all,鈥欌�� Ronayne said.
Donovan鈥檚 gift will go to Canalway Partners, which Donovan led from 1990 to 2020. The donation is intended to help raise the first $1 million to pay for a riverfront boardwalk at Canal Basin Park, Yablonsky said.
The boardwalk will extend from Settler鈥檚 Landing along the Cuyahoga River roughly 1,000 feet west to Center Street, said Mera Cardenas, executive director of Canalway Partners.
Donovan鈥檚 estate includes money he inherited in 2023 from his late brother Kevin Donovan, a onetime steelworker, Yablonsky said.
Ronayne said the county has contributed $450,000 to the project from federal American Rescue Plan Act funds.
The boardwalk will be part of an eight-phase plan that will include a partial recreation of the onetime canal turning basin, where Lake Erie schooners transferred cargo to and from canal barges.
A national first
The canal, completed in 1832, created the first inland water route from New York to New Orleans via the Erie Canal and the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. It was outmoded within a quarter century by railroads and fell into disrepair by the early 20th century.
In 1996, Donovan and other activists helped secure Congressional designation of the Towpath as the spine of a National Heritage Area, a new kind of national park. is one of 62 such areas created since 1984, after the government established the Illinois and Michigan Canal National Heritage Area as the first.
After 1996, Donovan helped secure a series of grants leveraged through the federal designation that aided restoration of more than 90 miles of the 101-mile Towpath, which connects Cleveland to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Akron and points south.
Yablonsky said Donovan also helped the Cuyahoga River attain designation as an in 1998 and the heritage corridor in 2000 as a .
In 2021, Cuyahoga County and partners, including the City of Cleveland, Cleveland Metroparks and Canalway Partners, of the Towpath.
The trail extends north from Harvard Road through industries in Cleveland鈥檚 Flats and the Tremont neighborhood to reach Canal Basin Park.
The Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency contributed $30 million to the $54 million project. Canal Basin Park, though still unfinished, .
Looking ahead
Cardenas said the first three phases of the new project at Canal Basin Park, including the recreated turning basin, are estimated to cost $15 million. Plans for the park should be ready for bidding late this year, Cardenas said.
Yablonsky said his goal with the $275,000 donation is to carry out Donovan鈥檚 wishes, and to reach a $1 million goal by the end of 2026 to help finance the boardwalk. He hopes other donors will contribute $275,000 to reach the goal.
Cardenas called Donovan a visionary.
鈥淚n every community you have to have activists, you have to have visionaries, you have to have people who believe in improving their community, whatever that looks like,鈥欌�� she said.
Ronayne said Donovan鈥檚 career exemplified the power that can be exerted by someone with a big idea, but who wasn鈥檛 a professional planner or a government official.
鈥淲e should never underestimate the power of a citizen advocate and a citizen activist,鈥欌�� Ronayne said. 鈥淲hen I think of Tim and what he truly was, he was just a gift to our community. He stayed so focused, and building the Towpath Trail required that kind of focus.鈥�
