About Wendy Park Bridge
The Wendy Park Bridge is a 700-foot pedestrian and bicycle crossing over the Norfolk Southern rail corridor that separated Whiskey Island and Wendy Park from the rest of the shoreline for more than a century. Opened May 27, 2022, it was the culmination of a twenty-year citizen and civic campaign to restore walking access to one of the city's most striking pieces of public shoreline.
The Problem
An Island Hard to Reach
Wendy Park, dedicated in 1979, sat at the northern tip of Whiskey Island with only one land access: a long, car-only road that ran past active rail yards, ore-handling facilities, and a water-treatment plant. Pedestrians were legally permitted but practically discouraged. Cyclists fared no better. For a park within a mile of downtown, Wendy was strangely unreachable.
Proposals for a pedestrian bridge were raised throughout the 1990s and 2000s. The cost, at various points, estimated between $15 million and $22 million, repeatedly killed the project. Competing demands on lakefront-reinvestment dollars — the stadium, the Rock Hall, Voinovich Park — kept the bridge on the perpetual-deferred list.
The Bridge
Seven Hundred Feet of Steel
Funding was finally assembled in 2019 through a combination of federal TIGER grant dollars, Cuyahoga County capital funds, and private philanthropy led by the Trust for Public Land and Cleveland Metroparks. Construction began in 2020 and the bridge opened to pedestrians and cyclists on May 27, 2022.
The bridge runs 700 feet across the rail corridor from the eastern edge of Edgewater Park to the southern edge of Wendy Park, with switchback ramps at each end accommodating ADA-compliant grades. It completes the Cleveland Metroparks' Cleveland Foundation Centennial Lake Link Trail, making it possible, for the first time, to walk continuously from Edgewater Beach to downtown without detours through rail yards or industrial corridors.
Nearby on the Shoreline