University Circle
University Circle is the cultural, educational, and medical center of Greater Cleveland, and is located on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio. University Circle occupies approximately 550 acres (2.2 km²) around the campus of Case Western Reserve University and the adjacent Wade Park Oval. It borders Cleveland's Little Italy, home to many private art galleries and restaurants.
University Circle is a major source of employment in the Cleveland area, currently providing more than 30,000 jobs in a variety of fields. Over 13,000 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students attend area institutions, and approximately 2.5 million people visit the Circle each year. University Circle Incorporated, a not-for-profit corporation established in 1957, fulfills many administrative and quasi-governmental functions for the area, including security, transportation administration, and marketing.
Institutions
University Circle houses a large number of educational institutions, centers of arts and culture, houses of worship, health care facilities, and neighborhood organizations. The following are members of University Circle Inc.
Education
Case Western Reserve University
The Cleveland Institute of Art
The Cleveland Institute of Music
The Cleveland Music School Settlement
The Cleveland Public Library - Martin Luther King Jr. Branch
Arts & Culture
Children's Museum of Cleveland
Cleveland Hillel Foundation Inc.
Cleveland Museum of Natural History
Dittrick Museum of Medical History
Fine Arts Garden Commission
Gestalt Institute of Cleveland
Hallinan Center
The Sculpture Center
Severance Hall - home to the Cleveland Orchestra
Western Reserve Historical Society and The Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum
Houses of Worship
The Church of The Covenant
Epworth-Euclid United Methodist Church
Mt. Zion Congregational Church
Pentecostal Church of Christ
The Temple-Tifereth Israel
Health Care
Center for Dialysis Care
Cleveland Hearing & Speech Center
The Cleveland Sight Center
Cuyahoga County Coroner's Office
The Free Clinic of Greater Cleveland
The Louis Stokes Veteran's Administration Medical Center
The Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation
University Hospitals of Cleveland
Neighborhood
Ambleside Towers
Cleveland Friends Meeting
Judson at University Circle
The Junior League of Cleveland
The Magnolia Clubhouse
Maximum Accesible Housing of Ohio
Park Lane Villa
The Ronald McDonald House of Cleveland
University Circle Police Department
Events
Parade the Circle – Saturday, June 14, 2008; 11am-4pm
This interactive community arts event features The Cleveland Museum of Art’s vibrant, one-of-a-kind parade and UCI’s Circle Village. Professional and amateur artists work up to six weeks before Parade the Circle to create unique costumes and human-powered floats for the festivities. Main stage performances and hands-on activities provided by more than 20 cultural institutions accompany the parade in Circle Village.
WOW! Wade Oval Wednesdays – June 18-August 27 2008
UCI’s free summer concert series presents an array of top musical entertainment with genres ranging from jazz to reggae to Beatles hits. The event was created to attract visitors to the Circle midweek and to encourage them to take advantage of extended hours and special programming at the Cleveland Botanical Garden, Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and The Cleveland Museum of Art. Over 10,000 people attended this past summer, both the young and the young-at-heart, to enjoy delicious food, drinks, art, music, and family fun.
Holiday CircleFest – Sunday, December 7, 2008; 1pm-5:30pm
UCI kicks off the holiday season by bringing together more than 20 University Circle museums, gardens, galleries, churches, and schools for one free day of music, activities, and holiday shopping. UCI provides shuttle buses with tour guides to chauffeur visitors around the Circle. Holiday CircleFest is capped off by The Cleveland Museum of Art’s Winter Lights Lantern Procession and a public art installation on Wade Oval.
Development
The development cluster of UCI advances the growth of the Circle by providing the essential amenities of urban living, supporting institutional growth, ensuring the optimal use of shared spaces, and improving access with the goal of creating a premier urban district.
Current Projects
• Bring Back Euclid Avenue Campaign – West Gateway, Central Gateway, Lot 45, Visitor & Living in the Circle Center, Wade Oval Visitor Kiosk, New signage
• 1000 Homes Campaign – Mortgage Assistance Program, Housing Projects (Uptown, Wade Park Townhomes, E 118th St Townhomes, Hazel Dr. Townhomes, Circle East, University Circle Place, Park Lane Villa, Chester 82, Upper Chester)
• Supporting Institutional Growth – Cleveland Hearing & Speech Center, Cleveland Institute of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), University Hospitals Case Medical Center, Case Western Reserve University, Mt Zion Congregational Church, Cleveland Clinic
• Linking Public Spaces Campaign – Circle Walk Trailhead, Rockefeller Park Strategic Plan, Wade Oval, Lake-to-Lake Trail, Parklands Trust/Holden Parks Trust
• Improving Access – MLK/105th Traffic Circle, Mayfield Road Streetscape, City Racks/City Seats, Cornell Road Bridge, RTA Stations (Cedar-University & E 120th)
• Encouraging Smart Development – Design Review District, National City Bank Relocation, Cozad-Bates House
History
Today University Circle is a world-class center of innovation in health care, education, and arts & culture. But more than two hundred years ago, it was known as Doan’s Corners, after Nathanial Doan, a member of the Connecticut Land Company, who settled his family and started a community here. The Circle did not take shape until the end of the 19th century when two major institutions made this special place their home, and many institutions followed in the 20th century.
The Beginning – 19th Century
It started when two universities in Cleveland, Western Reserve University and Case Institute of Technology, were looking to relocate. They found this land four miles east of downtown Cleveland in a fledging community with enough open space to develop. Their relocation led to the birth of an educational center and the creation of a new community called University Circle, named in part after these new institutions but also the circular street intersection and traffic turnaround created at Euclid Avenue and Doan Brook Boulevard (Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard).
20th Century Progress
The Circle began to grow rapidly in the 20th century. Its first 50 years were marked by the Cleveland Art Museum opening its doors in 1916. By the 1920s and 1930s, 19 educational and cultural institutions were located in the area, from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History to Cleveland Hearing and Speech to the Cleveland Botanical Garden and others. The arrival of University Hospitals in 1931 (founded in 1866) led to health care becoming another center of innovation in University Circle. Less than one mile away from University Hospitals, the Cleveland Clinic started serving its patients in 1921. The growth of the Circle as a center of innovation in health care, education, and arts & culture provided a foundation for a vibrant urban district along one of its major arteries. During the ‘30s and ‘40s, University Circle was a bustling urban district on its main thoroughfare Euclid Avenue, where one could find six movie theaters, countless boutique shops, a bowling alley, and trolley cars shuttling people from downtown Cleveland to uptown University Circle. But the Circle of the 1890s, once with plenty of land to grow, was now full.
University Circle Development Fund Created
By 1950, 34 institutions had chosen University Circle as their home. But the new world-class center of innovation needed help with its growth. Stanley A. Ferguson, then president of of University Hospitals, captured the sentiment at the time:
"...after nearly 20 years of depression and war, the institutions in University Circle faced a mammoth need for expansion and improvement... the city's population had grown... people were enjoying more leisure time and were looking for worthwhile ways of spending it... museums, libraries and concerts were filled as never before... however, expansion was more than a matter of money or determination because there just wasn't enough room, and because the area was becoming built up like a patchwork quilt."
Enter one of Cleveland's most spirited civic leaders, Mrs. William G. Mather, who recognized that University Circle was at a pivotal point. She wanted a master plan for the Circle and “more relevant relationships for the institutions.” Her vision and generosity made possible the hiring of the renowned Boston planning firm of Adams, Howard & Greeley. After a rigorous 18-month study, the University Circle Master Plan was presented on the afternoon of October 15, 1957, to Cleveland City Council, the Cleveland City Planning Commission, and the Heart of Cleveland Development Committee. The plan gave direction for the Circle's orderly growth and reaffirmed that Cleveland had succeeded in creating the most impressive concentration of health care, education, and arts & cultural institutions in the country and in the world.
One of the most important recommendations made in the 1957 Master Plan of University Circle was to "establish a central organization to administer the plan and give it some real authority." With that charge and full institutional support, the University Circle Development Foundation (UCDF) was formed as a “service organization to all institutions.” Initial efforts focused on creating a land bank to purchase and hold available land needed by institutions for expansion. Soon, services that could be provided more efficiently if done collectively –parking, shuttle bus service, public safety, architectural review, and landscaping of common areas – were added. The stability provided by these services gave new confidence to the institutions, and the Circle's growth skyrocketed.
The 1960s were a tumultuous time in the country and in the University Circle area. In July 1966, riots occurred in the nearby Hough neighborhood that reinforced mounting neighborhood distrust that the Circle was closed off to the surrounding neighborhoods. According to past UCI President Joseph Pigott the “glue that helped hold this area together” was the University Circle Police Department. Amidst the community tension, six more institutions joined the Circle, and tremendous progress occurred with land banking, parking lot construction, and a variety of amenity improvements, such as tree planting and lighting. The issue of community outreach, however, became an important issue for UCDF and the Circle.
University Circle Inc. Formed
In 1970, UCDF was reorganized as University Circle Inc. (UCI) with an added emphasis on strengthening the relationship between University Circle and its surrounding neighborhoods. In its outreach to the broader community, UCI began working closely with neighborhood organizations to build housing and to provide access to broader community resources. UCI's Community Education Program was created in 1973 to bring the assets of the Circle to Cleveland schoolchildren, a collaboration that thrives today with four significant UCI programs serving thousands of Cleveland Municipal School District children yearly from pre-school to high school.
The 1990 University Circle Master Plan, which updated the 1957 Master Plan, strongly reinforced the importance of neighborhood partnerships. UCI's reorganization moved it from simply being the "caretaker" of the Circle's physical environment to being a catalyst for development, an integral service provider, and an advocate for University Circle as a center of innovation in health care, education, and arts & culture.
These ideas were reinforced in Shaping the Future, a vision statement unveiled in January 2000 and designed to take this extraordinary one-square mile into the 21st century as a premier urban district. Shaping the Future provided the appropriate vision for the organization and several key recommendations for UCI during its 2006 strategic planning process.
Looking to the Future
UCI launched a strategic plan aimed at developing a business model going forward and benchmarking the specific deliverables according to UCI’s reinvigorated thrust as a development, service, and advocacy organization that came as a result of UCI’s 2006 Strategic Plan. Aligned with a new mission statement, UCI has tracked its performance under these areas toward its goal of creating a premier urban district in University Circle. From this baseline, UCI is charging forward, and each year its progress will be presented in the annual report card. Last year, UCI achieved remarkable progress toward its goal of becoming a premier urban district.