Starting with a $25,000 grant to the Shaker Lakes Garden Center that underwrote a 1974 study by the William A. Behnke Associates landscape architecture firm of ways to improve conditions in Cleveland’s municipal-run parks, the Cleveland Foundation led an effort to restore these invaluable recreational assets.

Recognizing that the City of Cleveland could no longer afford to maintain all of its 3,000 acres of parklands, the foundation guided political discussions that led to the transfer in 1978 of responsibility for the maintenance and management of Edgewater, Gordon and Wildwood (now Euclid Beach) Parks from the city to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR).

The renamed Cleveland Lakefront State Park was immediately restored to cleanliness and working order under state stewardship, and ODNR subsequently spent more than $40 million to outfit the parklands with new fishing piers, boat launches, marinas, bike and jogging paths, restrooms and picnic areas. Within a few years, park patronage skyrocketed, leaping from 750,000 visitors annually to more than 12 million.