Cleveland — Historic Trolleys a Goal to Revitalize Downtown

Sun Newspapers, January 12 2006

By KEN PRENDERGAST
Staff Writer

Jan. 12, 2006

Downtown Cleveland's lakefront soon could feature more than just new housing, offices and shops. It might gain an historic and fun way to get around.

Later this year, a collection of antique electric trolleys of the former Trolleyville USA, now called Lakeshore Electric Railway, will be moving downtown. RTA has given Lake Shore Electric a green signal to build a car barn at the end of the Waterfront Line near East 26th Street. The 50-car collection has called Olmsted Township home for more than four decades.

The $40 million collection sits behind the old Trolleyville USA lot on Columbia Road. All the trolleys must be moved by July, in accordance with a sales agreement Gary Brookins made when he sold the Town & Country Plaza and Columbia Mobile Home Park in 2001.

Once the new car barn is finished, the next stop for Lakeshore Electric is to build a lakefront trolley museum, to display the impact trolleys made on urban development in the first half of the 20th century. And, it will explain Cleveland's importance to the streetcar era, as many cars used nationwide were built here, said Steve Frye, a consultant to the museum.

Lakeshore Electric's third initiative has especially intrigued city officials and downtown developers about the potential for making downtown more of a neighborhood. The museum's goal ultimately is to replace RTA's downtown circulator buses with streetcars, and link Ohio City and downtown using the subway decks of the Detroit-Superior and Lorain-Carnegie high-level bridges.

"We already have the trolleys," said Frye. "The goal is to connect areas of development and encourage new development. In Dallas, they put in two miles of trolley line and saw $300 million in new development along the tracks."

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