ASHTABULA —
Public stakeholders in the Lake Erie shoreline gathered at the Ashtabula Area Chamber of Commerce Monday evening to work on the county coastal management plan.
Poggemeyer Design Group was hired by the county to pick up the project after commissioners folded the county’s planning department into the community services department earlier this year. The county originally planned to use $25,000 of in-kind planning department services to match the $25,000 grant it received to develop the plan. After both planning department employees left their jobs, no one was left to do the work.
The plan pertains only to the public portion of the lakefront in Ashtabula County, although private development is taken into consideration in areas topics such as economic development.
Where existing plans exist, such as the one for Walnut Beach and the downtown plan for Geneva-on-the-Lake, they are incorporated into the larger county plan. Both Lake County to the west and Erie County, Pa., to the east, have plans, and commissioners have wanted to have a comprehensive county-wide document so it could go after grant money and other opportunities.
Monday’s meeting was the second with stakeholders, which included representatives from park boards, tourism and lakefront village and city officials. During the prior meeting, the plan was broken down into topical areas: public access, cultural features, general transportation, natural features, non-motorized transportation network, land use and economic development.
During the meeting, Mielnik and Charlene Kerr, also of Poggemeyer, reviewed the progress to date and asked the group for additional input in each category. More public access to the lake and infrastructure for multi-modal transportation routes, such as golf carts lanes in the tourist areas and a lakefront bicycle path, were the most common cross-topical issues to come out of the discussions.
The discussion also waded into the need for additional lodging to accommodate the crowds that use Spire Institute during national events. Several persons also expressed concerns about the impact hydraulic fracturing will have on area lodging: companies that do the drilling often rent a large block of rooms to house their workers. When they do that under a single credit card number, they pay the bed tax for only one night, depriving the local economy of both the tax and the room availability.
“Lodging is going to become a big issue for us during the tourism season,” predicted Ashtabula City Manager James Timonere.
Other hot topics brought up during the discussion included the need for public boat rentals on the rivers and lake, a lack of transient public dock space in Ashtabula and the absence of a public beach at Geneva-on-the-Lake. Access to the Ashtabula Lighthouse also was listed as a critical need.
Mielnik said another meeting will be held in November to review a draft of the document, which should be wrapped up by the end of the year.
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