\n(This essay was in the <\/em>Cleveland Plain Dealer on Sunday.)<\/em><\/p>\n
Even if<\/strong><\/span> you\u2019re rich, you can\u2019t always get what you want. For example, you can\u2019t buy Horseshoe Lake, which straddles Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights. An assortment of neighborhood high-rollers, medium-rollers and salt-of-the-earth ex-hippies tried to save Horseshoe Lake. These lake-lovers funded lawsuits against the cities of Shaker Heights, Cleveland Heights and the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District.<\/p>\n We fought the law and the law won.<\/p>\n I was a founder of Friends of Horseshoe Lake. We paid for the lawsuits and an engineer\u2019s evaluation of the defunct dam. We wrangled a couple thousand signatures on a petition to save the lake, but not enough people cared.<\/p>\n Horseshoe Lake when it was a lake. (Photo by Lucy Stratton)<\/p><\/div>\n The Sewer District is going to turn the former lake — which was drained almost six years ago — into a boardwalk and nature preserve. They plan to rip down some trees and put in a paved service road. Is the road a homage to the never-built Clark Freeway that the county wanted to put through the Shaker Lakes area in the 1960s?<\/p>\n I have<\/strong><\/span> a friend who lives a mile from Horseshoe Lake. He lives near Lower Shaker Lake. He said, \u201cI have my lake. I don\u2019t care about yours.\u201d The notion of NIMBY (Not in my Backyard) doesn\u2019t travel well; you get about a mile from the Horseshoe Lake, and not that many people get worked up about its disappearance.<\/p>\n Granted, there are more pressing issues than Horseshoe Lake, like crime, housing matters and leaf blowers. But how many boardwalks and little playgrounds do we need? We already have the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes. Even a \u201clake feature\u201d is lacking at the upcoming Horseshoe park. The Sewer Board is spending $28.7 million \u2013 up from the original $14 million \u2013 and that doesn\u2019t include another $8.6 million for amenities, which supposedly Shaker Heights and somewhat-financially-strapped Cleveland Heights are expected to cover.<\/p>\n The Sewer District and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources claim the goal is to prevent a flood disaster downstream in University Circle. Nobody has died from a flood there, but you never know. Every hundred years a person might die in a storm under the Cedar Road Rapid tracks. And I might get hit by a bus tomorrow.<\/p>\n I live about a football-field away from the late great Horseshoe Lake. I used to live several miles away and visited often. Horseshoe Lake was calming. It was blue and serene. I couldn\u2019t bike out to Lake Erie that often; that\u2019s a six-mile schlep from Cleveland Heights. The Metroparks aren\u2019t too close to the Heights either. Speaking of which, our lawyer talked with Metroparks\u2019 people, and the park system wasn\u2019t highly motivated to save Horseshoe Lake. On a stroll around the Heights, I ran into retired Cleveland city planner Bob Brown. He said he thought the Sewer District\u2019s plan for the Horseshoe area \u201cdoesn\u2019t look so horrible.\u201d I hope Bob is right.<\/p>\n In winters<\/strong> <\/span>I used to walk across the frozen lake. There were signs posted against it, but the water wasn\u2019t that deep, and I figured if I fell into the lake. it would be a classy exit. Now what can I fall into? A playground amenity? No thanks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (This essay was in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on Sunday.) Even if you\u2019re rich, you can\u2019t always get what you want. For example, you can\u2019t buy Horseshoe Lake, which straddles Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights. An assortment of neighborhood high-rollers, medium-rollers and salt-of-the-earth ex-hippies tried to save Horseshoe Lake. These lake-lovers funded lawsuits against […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32891"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33457,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32891\/revisions\/33457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/horseshoe-lake.-lucy-photo-300x225.jpg\")