Civil Municipal - Oct 2023

166 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 4, ISSUE 10 how Strongsville is a “welcoming, safe community that does a lot for our residents and that’s very secure financially. It’s a city that will be able to draw employees in who’ll feel safe coming to work here and want to shop after work because of the amenities and restaurants. That’s a really big part of our business attraction and retention: to make sure that we’re an appealing place where potential workers want to travel to and go to work each day.” Preserving the past Strongsville has an active historical society. Painter cited the historical village that offers a glimpse of old Strongsville right in its modern downtown area. Preserving this proud past is important to this community, as is improving local walking trails to make for a more walkable city. “Right now,” he says, “it’s not as walkable as we want it to be, so we’re going to clean that up and make it more walkable so you can go from the public library to the historical village to our recreation center to our city commons without getting into a car. The other thing we are doing is we are creating a better brand in the area with better way-finding signage.” Painter extols Metro Park as an amazing asset and so important to Strongsville. It features a toboggan chute, one of the few in the state of Ohio, and there are pavilions the public may rent. There’s also a zipline course. Plus, being in such proximity to the big city of Cleveland is a thing of inestimable economic importance. Countless commuters want to work there but reside in Strongsville or other such smaller bedroom communities. “One of the advantages of the city of Strongsville is we have Interstate-71 that runs through our city and the Ohio Turnpike,” as Painter points out, “so they intersect in the city of Strongsville. It’s very easy to go