Raiven, 4, had a look of bliss as she pumped the swing at Thurgood Marshall Green in Hough.
“I like the park and I like the swings,” she said, punctuating her comment with giggles before skipping to some playground equipment that offered the opportunity to climb and slide.
When the weather is nice, her mother brings Raiven and Ky’len, her 1 ½-year-old brother, to the park a couple of times a week.
The real goal of this was to bring something that is downtown quality in the middle of the neighborhood, directly adjacent to people’s houses.”
Andrew Sargeant, the landscape architect who designed Thurgood Marshall Green in Hough.
“This is definitely something good for the neighborhood,” said Kourtni Dansby, who lives within walking distance. “A year ago, there wasn’t anything here.”
Last fall, the nonprofit Western Reserve Land Conservancy (WRLC) turned the once-desolate 2.6-acre parcel into a city park designed to be a community amenity. Now mornings bring seniors walking the pathway in the park. Lunchtime entices young families, such as Dansby’s, to the park, and afternoons draw youngsters getting out of school. Weekends in warm weather bring families barbecuing on the grills in the picnic area.
Situated on East 85th Street near Linwood Avenue behind the Thurgood Marshall Recreation Center, this is not just any park. Thurgood Marshall Green was designed with community input, down to the salmon-colored pathway, in a neighborhood where residents had long said more parks were needed.
While parks aren’t often considered the top idea for redevelopment, what they add to a neighborhood can help address vital quality of life issues, such as they well-being of residents.
Redevelopment is increasing in Hough because of its many empty lots and proximity to jobs and culture in University Circle and jobs at the Cleveland Clinic. This almost always has meant housing. By pitching to the city that a park be developed on the site of the former John W. Raper Elementary School, which closed in 2011 and was later demolished, WRLC bucked this trend. For example, the former MLK Jr. Career Campus on East 71st Street in Hough is slated for housing.
The park has such things as sleek, minimalist lampposts and “outdoor urban furniture,” which includes loungers. They resemble what you’d find poolside at a resort, but they’re made of robina wood, a premium, rot-resistant hardwood.
Thurgood Marshall Green has a sophistication not often found at the 120-plus city parks and on recreation center grounds. WRLC raised $3 million in private and public money for the project, including $500,000 in federal funding and $500,000 from the city in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) money.
“The real goal of this was to bring something that is downtown quality in the middle of the neighborhood, directly adjacent to people’s houses,” said landscape architect Andrew Sargeant, principal at LayerCake LLC, who designed the park.
A standout tree to honor a trailblazer
A Merlot Redbud tree, with deep purple heart-shaped leaves, stands out among the roughly 120 other young trees planted in the park. In early spring it blended in with the eight other redbuds of a different variety along the pathway. They all had bright lavender-pink buds. When the foliage later came in, the eight looked similar with their variegated white-and-green leaves. But the rich color of the Merlot Redbud’s leaves of the ninth tree catch the eye.
This is more than just an example of diversity in nature. It’s a take on history. In 1967, Marshall became the first Black U.S. Supreme Court justice. This collection of trees represents the nine-member Supreme Court after he was appointed. The historymaker founded what is now the Legal Defense Fund, which won many groundbreaking civil rights decisions. This included Marshall successfully arguing Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1954 declared state-sanctioned segregation in public schools unconstitutional.
“It’s the idea that we have trees that coincide with his legacy and his life,” said Sargeant. “The one tree that is darker represents Thurgood Marshall.”
In addition to providing an inviting green space for the neighborhood, Thurgood Marshall Green offers a brief history about him. There are signs throughout the park offering snapshots of the historymaker’s life.
“Especially in a place where you have a lot of children, any kind of educational component is great to have,” Sargeant said. “I’ve seen people walk and stop and read as they go around the park.”
A group of residents helped shape what would go on the signs, he said in explaining the collaborative process in which he was involved. They wanted to reflect what was going on in Hough during the various parts of Marshall’s life. For example, one of the signs centers on his early life in Baltimore, where he was born in 1908.
At that time, Hough had a small Black population, as did most Cleveland neighborhoods. The Great Migration, especially after World War II, brought African American Southerners North. Hough was a majority white neighborhood until the 1950s and wouldn’t become a mostly Black neighborhood until the 1960s, according to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland history.
It is part of grouping of eight other redbud trees. The others have variegated white-and-green leaves. The dark leaves symbolize that Marshall was the only Black justice at the time.
Credit: Photo courtesy of Andrew Sargeant
Hough needed more park space, report said
Hough was deemed to have a “severe lack of park space,” in a 2020 report by Famicos, the non-profit community development corporation. The parks that did exist, such as one honoring the late City Council Member Fannie Lewis, provided little “beyond monument signage and occasional events.” The report was among the factors that persuaded WRLC to redevelop the vacant land into Thurgood Marshall Green, said Khalid Ali, WRLC’s urban greenspace coordinator.
The organization didn’t want residents to deem useless any park it created. WRLC determined there was only one way to keep this from happening.
“This was the big thing with us throughout the community engagement process: listening to folks about what they actually wanted to use the park for,” Ali said.
When Ali approached Jamel Rahkeera to get his views about redeveloping the lot into a park, he was ready to offer his opinion. The vacant lot had often been used as an unofficial track to race dirt bikes and cars, said the founder and owner of the one-acre Village Family Farms, which is adjacent to what is now the park. The first community engagement meeting was held at his farm.
Rahkeera said he let WRLC know that he wasn’t interested in any superficial community involvement process. The conservancy wasn’t either. Staff of the nonprofit often went door-to-door seeking neighbors’ opinions or updating them on plans. During more than 10 community engagement sessions, WRLC worked closely with a group of residents, including Rahkeera, to shape the vision and reality of the park. He’ll remain active as a member of the Friends of Thurgood Marshall Green, whose work will include helping to provide programming for the park and serving as advocates for the park to remain well-maintained.
Community involvement also included instilling trust, Rahkeera said. For example, he said broad community input wasn’t sought when the elementary school was demolished.
“It actually had a nice playground that they tore down with the school,” he said. “For over a 10-year period, we’re talking about a generation of children that didn’t have a place where they could go and play.”
The issue of how to redevelop closed school buildings, or the vacant lots on which they once stood, is timely. This month, the Cleveland Municipal School District will be looking at closing 18 buildings.
Since the park is adjacent to the rec center and they are both named in honor of Marshall, the goal was to tie them together in some way. What emerged during the community planning process was that bookends on the age spectrum – toddlers through elementary students and seniors – often felt there wasn’t enough programming at the rec center for them. The aim became to build a playground that would meet any kid’s dream to “swing, spin, slide and scale [climb],” Sargeant said.
There is the pendulum swing, which looks like a big piece of rope and can hold several riders. The Saturn 4 Carousel, which has four rope-suspended seats with overhead handles, offers riders the option to sit, stand or hang while rotating at varying speeds. Rhombus Twister, a “rotating climbing net” made of galvanized metal, is designed for group play.
Much of the playground equipment is made of robina wood. One thing jumps out at you – or maybe it doesn’t – about the playground equipment.
“There aren’t these flashy, crazy colors,” Sergeant said. “What will pop is the green of the grass, the flowers, etc. Everything else is kind of going to fade. You’re really supposed to be immersed in nature directly adjacent to a residential area.”
The residents mostly bought into the subdued color theme, but not for the pathway that rings around the park. Its hue ended up going to a vote, and the residents chose salmon-colored concrete over a more natural tone.
“We were leaning towards the muted palette because it was a little bit more natural,” said Tim Dehm, WRLC’s planning and design specialist. “The feedback the residents gave us is that they really wanted the colors to pop out and add a little bit of excitement and spark to the park.”
The picnic area with the grills is another definitive mark of residents’ participation. It wasn’t in the early plans for the park, but residents said it should have been. They knew the area would be a hit – and it has been.
The Rhombus Twister is in the foreground. The other playground equipment is a Double Tower with Spider Net. Credit: Photo courtesy of Andrew Sargeant
Trees play a starring role at Thurgood Marshall Green
Trees play a big role in the park’s design, which initially gave both residents and the city pause. When the mix of roughly 120 large native species shade trees and smaller ornamental trees are grown, they will give the park the feel of a clearing in a forest, Dehm said.
The first three or so years after planting, trees need watering and often a lot of nurturing.
“The city was a little nervous about that, because they don’t really have a lot of capacity to maintain trees,” he said.
WRLC has agreed to care for the trees, at least until they can make it on their own, Dehm said.
Ali remembers the early community engagement meetings when many residents gasped at the thought of so many trees being planted within a few acres. They viewed trees as problematic. They fell down. They clogged pipes. They damaged sidewalks. He told them not to worry. Arborists had selected the right trees and placed them in the right spots, so that all of these things had little chance of happening.
“I also highlighted the benefits of trees,” Ali said. “Trees provide oxygen, clean air, provide shade, which lowers temperatures, help remove toxins and collect storm water. Trees do all of these things that can help a neighborhood. And I think that kind of helped ease folks’ minds.”
Residents believed their opinions were taken seriously during the planning process, Rahkeera said. Because of this, he said, the community not only uses Thurgood Marshall Green but has taken “ownership” of this space. Village Family Farms will use the park as part of the summer STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Math) camp it is running with other neighborhood organizations. Seniors have asked for yoga classes to be held at the park. Community groups want to use the pavilion for events. Area day care centers bring van-loads of children to play in the park.
Sometimes Rahkeera sees all this activity and thinks back to the days of the desolate lot.
“This has been a gamechanger,” he said of Thurgood Marshall Green.
