Cleveland鈥檚 University Circle is one of Ohio鈥檚 greatest urban centers for art, culture, education and medicine, but it has longstanding problems, including streets and traffic patterns that create physical barriers to surrounding neighborhoods and safety issues for pedestrians.
Those points are among highlights of 鈥淐onnecting the Circle,鈥欌�� a new master plan for the public realm and land use in Cleveland鈥檚 second downtown, located four miles east of the city鈥檚 business and government core.
The nonprofit University Circle, Inc., which led the plan, will present it to the city鈥檚 Central East Design Review Committee on Thursday, May 14 and the city's planning commission on Friday, May 15 for adoption as a guide for future improvements.
UCI shared the vision with 精东影业 and plans to post the document on its after it has been presented to the planning commission.
鈥淥ur institutions are incredible,鈥欌�� said Kate Borders, now in her third year as president of UCI. But she said that 鈥渢he experience of getting to them or among them is uncomfortable and in some cases for our lower mobility or challenged mobility users, dangerous. We really needed to change that.鈥�
Developed over 15 months at a cost of $750,000, the new plan grew out of 15 major public engagement events, plus workshops and institutional meetings, walking and cycling audits and other forms of outreach that netted 900-plus comments. It was funded by the State of Ohio and the Holden Parks Trust.
Shaping a vision
The new plan is the first in nearly 20 years to take a comprehensive look at public space in University Circle and is a major venture led by Borders, who came to Cleveland after serving as president and CEO of the Downtown Tempe Authority in Arizona from 2014 to 2023.
The plan was led by the Boston-area landscape architecture firm of Sasaki, along with the Cleveland office of Toole Design, a national specialist in streetscapes and transportation. Other consultants included Nelson Nygaard, a San Francisco-based traffic engineering firm and the Cleveland-based nonprofit Third Space Action Lab, which led community engagement.
The in-house leader for the project was Elise Yablonsky, UCI鈥檚 chief place management officer.
On Thursday, May 28, Borders will moderate a discussion about the at The City Club of Cleveland, with Dan Biederman, president of Biederman Redevelopment Ventures, Bryant Park Corporation, and 34th Street Partnership. He launched his career in the 1980s by leading a major revamp of New York鈥檚 Bryant Park, located on West 42nd Street between the New York Public Library and the Avenue of the Americas.
The good, the bad and the fixes
The University Circle study calls out strengths and weaknesses and sketches out long-term, higher-cost improvements that will need additional design, engineering and development. It also maps out low-cost 鈥渜uick win鈥� projects such as improved trail signs, intersection safety upgrades and plans for new public events.
With 70,000 employees, 6,500 residents and millions of annual visitors, the circle, named for a one-time streetcar turnaround, is one of the busiest and most consequential urban centers in Ohio and the Great Lakes. Since 2005, the circle and the surrounding area have seen nearly $7 billion in investment, a number that includes the Cleveland Clinic, which partially overlaps University Circle.
For all its growth, pedestrian safety remains a vexing problem in the district. Since 2016, there have been 203 bike or pedestrian crashes within UCI鈥檚 service area, the organization said. Of the total, 87 crashes involved possible injuries or worse, 21 resulted in suspected serious injuries, according to city data monitored by UCI. Two crashes involved fatalities. A pedestrian was killed crossing East 105th Street in 2019, and a 2025 incident on Adelbert Road claimed the life of a worker struck by a truck.
Major items
The new master plan is organized around the idea of University Circle as a 鈥淐onnected Civic Commons.鈥欌�� Its 鈥淪ignature Moves鈥欌�� include improving major spines such as Euclid Avenue, East 105th Street, and the corridor formed by Mayfield Road, Ford Drive and a section of East Boulevard.
All are represented in pairs of before-and-after images, including photos of present conditions and conceptual, but highly realistic, renderings of ground-level and aerial vistas of future solutions for pedestrian safety and landscaping upgrades.
Big-ticket items include untangling the intersection at Cedar Avenue, Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and Stearns Road, where 16 lanes of traffic converge in a spaghetti tangle that can baffle or intimidate pedestrians and cyclists, not to mention motorists.
The plan suggests closing Stearns Road and turning MLK Drive into a two-way thoroughfare between Carnegie and Euclid avenues. This could help enlarge what is known as South Rockefeller Park, located between Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland School of the Arts.
The area now feels more like a traffic median than a park, UCI officials said. Whether the organization pursues the road closure and interchange modification depends on a more detailed upcoming 鈥渄istrict network study鈥� that is not yet funded, Yablonsky said.
At Wade Oval, a park flanked by the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Cleveland Botanical Garden and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, the plan suggests adding a formal concert stage with restrooms. A rendering of the Oval in winter shows how it could have a Winter Market, a skating rink, decorated pine trees and a large, outdoor fire pit.
Evolving mission
The plan shows that University Circle Inc., founded in 1957 as the University Circle Development Foundation (UCDF), is evolving as an organization. It originally served the district by assembling land to make way for real estate development or expansion of institutions, including Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals. It also managed the area鈥檚 police force and provided parking, shuttle service and other amenities.
Now, UCI has sold or leased much of its property. The organization鈥檚 roughly 60 trustees, who voted to approve the plan in late March, want to focus more strongly on enhancing the district鈥檚 appeal, navigability, safety and sense of place. UCI sees itself as an advocacy organization that can represent all member institutions on issues such as improving lighting beneath bridges that carry transit and freight rail lines over Mayfield Road and Euclid Avenue 鈥斺�痮ne of the topics called out in the new plan.
Some things aren鈥檛 changing, however. Through a Special Improvement District that went into effect in 2025, UCI鈥檚 roughly 40-plus member institutions and area property owners formalized how they pool resources to pay for a 39-member police force, with a payroll that accounts for about half of UCI鈥檚 annual budget of $10 million. Beyond the police force, UCI has 22 employees.
Reckoning with the past
Part of UCI鈥檚 evolution involves a reckoning with the area鈥檚 history. Institutional expansion from the 1940s to the 1970s resulted in the displacement and erasure of Black-owned businesses and entertainment venues in the current Uptown portion of the district and areas along East 105th Street. the city-led University-Euclid urban renewal project as at fault, along with the area鈥檚 institutions and the earlier incarnation of UCI.
The era saw the loss of businesses such as the at Euclid Avenue and Mayfield Road, where luminaries such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Dizzy Gillespie once performed. Owned by the entrepreneur , the establishment closed after a 1965 bombing that was never thoroughly investigated, according to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. The Jazz Temple鈥檚 footprint is now occupied by the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland.
In the past, University Circle and its members prioritized 鈥渋nstitutional growth and automobile access over neighborhood connectivity and public space connectivity,鈥欌�� Borders said. 鈥淚t created real physical barriers that we're still dealing with. And it also created social barriers further exacerbated by a sense that we don't fully recognize our history, particularly our Black history.鈥�
Celebrating an icon
One early objective identified in the plan is that of clearly identifying and improving the Harrison Dillard Trail, also known as the . It鈥檚 the Cleveland portion of the longer Lake to Lakes Trail, which connects Lake Erie at Gordon Park to the Shaker Lakes portion of Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights along the route of Doan Brook, a major urban stream.
Dillard, (1923-2019), a native Clevelander, was a four-time Olympic gold medal winner in track in the 1948 and 1952 games. He was also a Cleveland Press columnist, a radio show host and served as a Cleveland schools business manager.
The trail named for him, built in 1997 at a cost of $660,000, extends 3.7 miles along MLK Drive and traverses part of the Cleveland Cultural Gardens and some of University Circle鈥檚 more challenging intersections. Borders said it is poorly marked and needs improvement.
Addressing such shortcomings is essential to UCI鈥檚 understanding of its mission.
鈥淥ur current strategy or mission is people, place and story,鈥欌�� she said. 鈥淗ow do we connect the people, improve the place and then tell the story?鈥欌�� The new plan, she said, offers some answers.
