THE VISION ISSUE - City of Shaker Heights

Jeff Heinen, whose chain of supermarkets
was started in Shaker by his grandfather,
Joe Heinen. The year was 1929.
PHOTO BY KEVIN G. REEVES.
The Lewises couldn’t be happier.
“We feel at home here,” explains Evelyn.
“We’re also pleased that Shaker
continues to make changes to improve
the City overall.”
Indeed, it’s these kinds of changes,
which at Shaker Town Center started
more than a decade ago, that are convincing
more and more business owners
to bring their businesses to Shaker
and, in particular, the revitalized Chagrin
Boulevard-Lee Road district.
Building the Foundation
You could say that the remaking of
the district began with a bunch of red
dots. In the late 1990s, when Shaker
was formulating its Strategic Investment
Plan – a sort of roadmap for citywide
improvements – it held a series of
public meetings.
“One night, we gave everyone three
green dots and three red dots,” recalls
Joyce Braverman, the City’s director
of planning. “We asked them to put
the green dots on the best places in the
City and the red dots on the worst.
Guess what, the worst place was Shaker
Town Center and Lee Road.”
No surprise, then, that when the
Plan was officially adopted in 2000,
that’s where the City started. The
goal: to create a district that businesses
would want to move to, and residents
would want to visit.
“Basically, it was about creating
the conditions that would entice the
private market to engage,” sums up
Director of Economic Development
Tania Menesse.
City leaders had their work cut out.
At the time, Chagrin was difficult for
pedestrians to cross, and had almost
no on-street parking. The buildings on
the south side of Chagrin were in need
of repair. On the north side, the shopping
center, anchored by Heinen’s and
Shaker Hardware, was looking more
than a little tired. The district’s sidewalks
were in bad shape. There was no
public art or attractive signage. Few
benches and railroad tie planters were
in disrepair.
Shaker Town Center also felt like a
different world than the City’s residen-
54 WWW.SHAKERONLINE.COM