Heavy equipment at work turning the former lush, green, Oakwood Country Club into the Oakwood Commons shopping center. Bare dirt where stores and restaurants will be lies between the already finished asphalt parking lots, sidewalks and curbs. The former private club split between South Euclid and Cleveland Heights was sold to developer First Interstate last year. And while South Euclid city officials could not dictate the property’s future, they jumped at the chance to rezone it to allow retail. Community Services Director Keith Benjamin.                              

“The recession, the foreclosure crisis and the devastating state cuts have put us in the position where we need the economic tax base to maintain our communities and provide essential services.”

Tax bases increase, but there are fewer trees
Benjamin says Oakwood Commons is expected to generate $1.7 million a year in property taxes, and create 700 full-time and part-time jobs that will produce about $200,000 in income taxes. Fran Mentch of Cleveland Heights lives near the Oakwood development.  She helped lead last year’s fight against turning the golf club into a shopping center. She and other opponents mounted a referendum campaign asking voters if the property should be rezoned for retail or left residential. Voters sided with shopping center. Standing by the security fence off a residential street at the rear of the Oakwood property, Mentch talks about the changes.
 

“All of the trees were taken down, the site plan shows 218 trees were removed. And the land has been graded. You can see the very short buffer.  Citizens and the city of Cleveland Heights asked for a wider buffer between the building and this street, and my understanding is that was not respected, so it’s very close.”

The 63-acre retail development will be a mix of national retailers and chain restaurants. The exact list will be announced in the coming months, but a Wal Mart is coming in, which means an existing WalMart about a mile away at Severence Town Center will close.

“It’s going to be a 24 hour Super WalMart, there’s going to be a drive thru pharmacy, so this will have bright lights and noise and activity that comes with a 24 hour operation. If you can imagine for a moment what kind of economic vitality and property value this would have had if it were a park.”

Opening new retail near older stores just shuffles jobs and taxes
The Trust for Public Land tried to buy the Oakwood Country Club and turn it into a park. Case Western Reserve University economics professor Robin Dubin, says long range regional planning is necessary to end the cycle of new stores opening and older ones going out of business. And she believes there’s too much retail is the South Euclid, Beachwood and Lyndhurst area.

“You can that because existing shopping center have a lot of vacancies. So every time you build a new shopping center in that area you cause more vacancies here because the population is not growing.  There is a distinction you can make based on how close these places are to a freeway. If they’re near a freeway you can hope to attract people from other towns to shop. If they’re not near a freeway you’re depending on local shoppers to support the stores.”

Measuring how much is too much
Oakwood Commons and Cedar Center are about three miles from the nearest highway, Interstate 271, which Dubin says is too far for most out of town shoppers. But South Euclid’s Benjamin, says the new retail going into that city is expected to draw from the 350,000 people living within a 5-mile radius.

“When you look at what’s coming to Cedar Center, many of the retailers are new to the area, new to Northeast Ohio, or have never opened stores in inner-ring suburbs. Bob Evans is one of them. Bob Evans typically opens near freeways.”

New retail bumping off existing stores is a natural part of that industry according to Cleveland State University urban affairs professor Robert Simons.

“Retail is pretty diverse. One part of that is that retail is always reinventing itself, taking different forms. To have the evolution of retail in certain places where new stuff opens up and it’s exciting and people go it, and the older stores that can’t compete fall away over time, that’s a natural part of the process.”

But what if Oakwood was left green rather than converted into a shopping center? Fran Mentch says nearby property values would rise, and there would be environmental benefits was well.

There is an environmental cost as well
“It serves as a heat sink, a sound barrier, in the summer it would help cool off this area, and in the winter, depending on which way the wind blows it could also have an impact. It served as a water shed which is important as we have less rain, but more heavy downpours. It pulled toxins from the air and water. The wildlife that was living here including the pollinators. So there are all kinds of costs that we have to start thinking about that are associated with not having green space.”