Business View Civil & Municipal Apr-2023

117 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 4, ISSUE 4 which looks at connecting the Lake Erie lakefront through to nearby historic Downtown Willoughby, is exploring options for additional Lake Tran transit-stop locations and more robust bicycle- friendly roadways, as well as identifying areas where potential changes for land use could create a more harmonic development overall. “The ultimate goal would be to make this a destination place,” Mayor Vanni says. “Where you can go to Downtown Willoughby, with their great shops, restaurants, and bars, and then head down through Eastlake, to all of their great shops, and then take Vine Street all the way down to Willowick to get on the lake. Because there’s nothing like this in Lake County right now, where you can shop, go down and see the lake, or even live on the lake. Once we get a developer on board, we’re hoping we can make it a mixed-use, with condos on top of commercial property. I don’t think it’s going to be a hard draw—Commissioner Regovich has already had those talks. And once this development comes to fruition, it’s not just going to help Willowick, but Eastlake and Willoughby as well.” WI LLOWICK , OHIO Included as part of the Master Plan for Vine Street are sustainable efforts incorporating green building and green space, to create an environment where residents can live longer, healthier lives. “We’re adding some bike trails, improving the streetscape, planting more trees,” Mayor Vanni notes. “Any new development that we invite to Willowick is going to be tailored to be as energy efficient and as green as possible. That’s just kind of where we’re trending.” “We did a senior living facility on Lake Shore back in 2015 that achieved a Silver LEED certification,” Regovich offers. “We actually saw that a lot in our new build back before Covid. I think the pushback on that lately has been the availability of materials to get stuff done these days. If the federal or state governments were to offer incentives, we’d certainly encourage those kinds of things a lot more.” The city is also in receipt of a $36,000 NOPEC grant to be used on “energy efficient projects in 2023”, according to Mayor Vanni.