CLEVELAND — As the city architect, Mark Duluk isn’t used to all this attention.
But when you’re preparing to move something as high-profile – and unwieldy – as the historic Euclid Beach Park arch, everybody wants to talk.
On a recent Tuesday, he kept getting interrupted during an interview at East 159th Street and Lakeshore Boulevard in the Collinwood neighborhood.
Drivers stopped to shout out their car windows. They wanted reassurances that the city isn’t tearing down the landmark gateway, which is all that’s left of a once-bustling amusement park on the Lake Erie shore. And they wanted to know where it will end up.
“The act of preservation … now it’s becoming an event,” said Duluk, the manager of the division of architecture and site development in the Mayor’s Office of Capital Projects at Cleveland City Hall.
“People say ‘Oh, I remember going through the arch to the amusement park,’” he said. “People now will say, ‘I remember when they moved the Euclid Beach arch.’”
The city is getting ready to shift the century-old structure about 150 feet to the west, to an empty lot where a McDonald’s once stood. The move is set to take place by the end of June, but the city hasn't firmed up the date yet.
It's part of an $800,000 effort to protect and restore the arch.
“It’s really too narrow to have modern cars going through, the way it does now,” said Duluk, pointing out where drivers have slammed into the base, at one point partially knocking the arch off its foundation.
Moving the arch also will allow the city to redo East 159th, the pitted concrete street that runs beneath it, leading to a cluster of lakefront apartment buildings.
“The long-term idea is to keep the arch out of harm’s way so that we can preserve it,” Duluk said. “But the impetus to do it now is the reconstruction of the street.”
'I'm gonna take pictures'
Cleveland has moved unusual things before.
In the 1930s, the city relocated Fire Station 21 in the Flats so that workers could widen a tight stretch of the Cuyahoga River. And records show Cleveland shifted the old Cudell House on the West Side in the 1970s, to make way for a road project and a park expansion.
Moving the Euclid Beach arch will be a feat of engineering, though – and a spectacle.
“I’m gonna take pictures. I’m gonna try to video it,” said Wayne Cater, 66, who lives in one of the senior high-rises off East 159th.
“I’m scared it’s gonna disintegrate when y’all move it,” neighbor Cydney Telford told Duluk.
Workers are already peeling off the stucco-like facade, a fake stone that hides the original, wooden structure. That’s part of the city’s restoration plan. Removing it now will make the arch much lighter, easier to lift with a system of wood, slings, ropes and a crane.
Duluk said workers will cover the arch with protective plywood. They’ll run beams through the reinforced second-story windows to create a frame. Then they’ll wrap slings around the ends of those beams and the curved middle section of the arch to distribute the weight.
Using a crane, they’ll pick the arch up and swing it over to set it on new foundations. The path is a short one, free of overhead power lines and other obstacles.
City officials and Councilman Mike Polensek have talked about moving the arch for a few years now. They originally hoped to work with the Cleveland Metroparks to install it in the Euclid Creek Reservation, which occupies part of the old amusement-park site.
But for a variety of reasons, that deal didn’t work out.
Duluk said a structural engineer studied the arch and determined that it can’t be dismantled and put back together. The interlocking wood construction means it needs to stay in one piece.
That limited how far the city could move it.
The prospect was so daunting, at times, that officials talked about whether to simply raze the arch and build a replica somewhere in the area. But Duluk said there’s no substitute for the real thing. Reproducing history isn’t the same as restoring it.
“Once I became city architect … I thought, I’m not gonna be the city architect that tears down the Euclid Beach arch,” he said, laughing. “And I wanted to preserve it.”
'A story that needs to be told'
McDonald’s agreed to donate the vacant lot next door to the city, with the condition that the land must always be open space. The arch will become the focal point of a new park.
A preliminary drawing from the city shows how the arch will be placed at an angle – the way it originally sat, according to old photographs and maps. At some point, after the amusement park closed but before Cleveland took ownership of the arch, the portal was shifted slightly to face Lakeshore straight on.
The city plans to fix up the arch by replicating the old wood trim and paneling with cement board, a more durable product. The project budget also includes rewiring and illuminating the old Euclid Beach Park sign, which used to beckon passersby.
The design for the new park is still a work in progress, Duluk said. The city expects to ask neighbors for ideas starting in July, with the goal of beginning construction next year.
One aspect of the plans that won’t change, though, is a path that will run beneath the arch. That walkway will mimic the original driveway into the amusement park.
Euclid Beach Park closed in 1969, after a 74-year run.
It left behind a complicated legacy of rollercoasters, bumper cars and family-friendly fun, against a backdrop of segregation, racial conflicts and exclusion.
“The good memories, the not-so-good-memories, the associations of all kinds – it’s a story that needs to be told,” Duluk said.
The city designated the arch as a protected landmark in 1973.
Now it stands on a forlorn commercial corridor, where many nearby retail buildings are sitting empty. Early this year, the city bought the former Dave’s Markets grocery store across the street to prepare the site for redevelopment.
RELATED: Cleveland is buying a vacant grocery store. It's part of a bigger revitalization effort.
“This vacancy is a challenge. But it’s also an opportunity,” Duluk said, describing the arch as part of an investment in a resurgent Collinwood.
Telford is frustrated by the loss of businesses and basic services in her neighborhood. She’s not sure she’ll stick around to see if things change.
At 63, though, she hasn’t forgotten that amusement park. And her memories are all good.
“When we came here, it was the best thing in the world,” she said, recalling the taffy, the cotton candy and an oversized, animatronic woman called Laffing Sal.
When Cater looks up at the arch, he’s transported back to his childhood. He hopes the new park will have places where he and other neighbors can sit, to take a break and contemplate the past.
“I’m glad that they decided to keep this,” he said. “You know … wherever they put it in this area is fine with me.”
