CLEVELAND — The removal of parking spots along Cleveland's West 25th Street continues to divide businesses and public transportation users.
The West 25th Bus Rapid Transit project will replace 55 street parking spots with two dedicated bus lanes.
Micro Garden Brewery Owner Sam McNulty has been in the neighborhood for about 25 years. He believes the project from Greater Cleveland RTA and the City of Cleveland will stop the area from growing.
"I'm a big fan of public transportation," he said. "Except when public transportation takes the place of important parking spaces and speeds up traffic in a dense, walk able neighborhood."
But, GCRTA said the goal of the project is to improve the response times of the 12 RTA buses that travel the street in either direction.
"We are reducing the travel time by just a couple of minutes from our scheduled time," Michael Schipper, GCRTA's deputy general manager of engineering and project management, said. "But, from a reliability standpoint, we are going to gain 15 minutes of reliability."
The project has divided the West 25th Street community for the past year.
When News 5 spoke with businesses in June of last year, there were business owners like Koula Lazar who were concerned with the removal of the parking spots.
"They can't get rid of parking," Lazar, who owns Something Different, said. "Parking is important."
But there were people like Brady Riser, who co-owns Tabletop Games, who were OK with the changes.
"If we lose a couple of parking spots, is it going to make a huge difference for parking? Not really. If we added a couple of parking spots, would it make a huge difference? Probably not either, so how about we invest in some things that could change the culture?" Riser said.
Since then, business owners like McNulty said their concerns are not being heard.
"The business community was handed a plan," he said. "It was said this is the only way. So, it was fully decided what was going to happen to our neighborhood before we had any input into it."
McNulty and other business owners reached out to the City of Cleveland and GCRTA with their own proposed changes, which included moving the start of the bus lanes south of Monroe Avenue. The group did not receive a response from either entity.
About two weeks ago, McNulty and 23 other businesses sent a letter directly to GCRTA and the city. That did not receive a response either.
"RTA and city hall are just ignoring the business community in Ohio City," McNulty said.
In a GCRTA board meeting last Tuesday, the city and RTA said they were listening to the businesses. A reduction in the number of affected parking spots, safety improvements, and proposed camera enforcement are changes to the project resulting from several discussions with business owners.
News 5 also reached out to the City of Cleveland. The city shared via email a letter sent to the business owners after we met with McNulty. In that letter, the city said it met with the business owners multiple times, including in community and one-on-one meetings. Given the project's federal funding, changes cannot be made.
McNulty and other business owners still do not want the project to proceed. While they want to reach a compromise with the GCRTA and the city, the businesses are willing to take their fight to the state level.
"We are going to ask our senator to cut the funding for the plan," McNulty said.
A move, he said, might save the neighborhood before construction begins in 2027.
