Destroying nature in the name of "restoring" nature: a deep dive into the NEORSD Horseshoe Park project

Alternate title: Save Doan Brook from the "Doan Brook Restoration"

In December 2022, I attended a public open house at the Shaker Heights library about the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District's plan for a new park at the site of Horseshoe Lake. I was very disappointed about the news that the beautiful, historic lake would be going away, but I was also relieved by the since broken promise that the Sewer District would preserve Lower Shaker Lake, the other historic lake in the Shaker Parklands. I had also heard a lot about how "brook restoration" was "more natural," and I didn't know at the time that this was misleading, so I thought maybe it made sense to return one of the two Shaker Lakes to a more natural state, as long as we kept the other as a treasured community asset.

I went to the open house hoping to try to make the best of an unfortunate situation, hoping that I could contribute my voice to help keep the park as a really nice place where people could enjoy spending time in nature.

Little did I know that by attending the open house, I would be counted by the Sewer District as one of "2,247 community voices" in their public engagement count through 11 events, a number that doesn't account for whether the same people attended multiple events, nor for whether those people expressed support for the plan. The Sewer District used this number to claim that the plan was created using input from the community.

What was most important to me in what a redesigned park would look like was the preservation of as many of the trees in the park as possible and of the existing hiking trails through those wooded areas. I remember well that other attendees at that open house also expressed their strong desire that existing trees be preserved.

How do you think we open house attendees would have responded if the Sewer District representatives at the event had come out and told us that their project would include cutting down over a thousand trees?

How many of those "community voices" touted by the Sewer District would have said "yes" if asked, "Would you support this plan that requires we cut down over a thousand trees?"

Not many, right?

Not until three years later, in December 2025, did the public begin to learn the full details of the plan for the park. By this point, the plan was about to be set in motion. The plan only became public thanks to a public records request. If not for that, the removal of a thousand trees could have begun before any members of the public even knew it was going to happen.

Let's look at a brief timeline so we're all clear on how these events unfolded.

December 2022: I attend an open house about the plan for Horseshoe Park. At the open house, we are presented with basically complete plans for the overall layout of the park and are merely asked to give input on what "amenities" might be added on to that plan. In retrospect, any of the plans would have inevitably required removing at least hundreds of trees, but this wasn't mentioned.

March 2025: A 90% Design Plan is presented to the public by NEORSD. This presentation highlights all the new amenities and revegetation, and also touts the "community engagement" numbers, but does not mention anything about removal of existing trees.

July 18, 2025: The 100% Design Submittal document is finalized. This document, 372 pages in length, includes all the details of the tree removal and other unsettling aspects of the plan. The document is not shared with the public.

 

July 23, 2025: NEORSD announces an about face on their previous promise to restore the dam at Lower Lake, the other historic lake in the Shaker Parklands.

November 26, 2025: Local citizen Erin Flanagan receives the 100% Design plan for Horseshoe after a public records request. This is the first opportunity for the public to learn the details of the plan, including removal of over a thousand trees. In the coming weeks, news gradually begins to spread among concerned community members.

December 15, 2025: Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights city councils agree to contribute millions of dollars in funding to NEORSD's Horseshoe plan, contradicting previous claims by the cities and the District that the plan would be entirely funded by NEORSD and not by taxpayer dollars. This occurs only weeks after any member of the public became aware of the full plan details. Very few people are aware of the plans for tree removal, despite them having been finalized four months prior and in the works for years. Additionally, the vote is held as an "emergency" with almost no advance notice, meaning the public has no meaningful opportunity to comment before the vote.

January 2026: The tree removal plan is scheduled to begin, and is only delayed due to citizen legal action. The legal action is in regards to the lack of a proper review process pertaining to alteration of a place on the National Register for Historic Places.

Oh, and the removal of a thousand trees isn't even the worst part of the plan. 

Let's dive into this plan for the "Doan Brook Restoration Near Horseshoe Lake Park" and see all the ways in which it isn't a restoration at all.

 

The park

What exactly is meant by "Horseshoe Lake Park"? To me, that name has always referred to all the land in the block bordered by Lee Road, North Park Blvd, Park Drive, and South Park Blvd. Perhaps the technical definition of "Horseshoe Lake Park" is smaller than that; I don't know for sure. But it's definitely the case that all the land in that block is public parkland, part of the historic Doan Brook parklands stretching from there all the way down to University Circle.

 

If we look at the plan, we see in a limited area in the eastern part of the block, "Existing Horseshoe Lake Park."

 

Promotion for the plan talks about the creation of a "new 60-acre park," meaning a park covering the whole block.

But the whole block already is a park!

What really strikes me is that what's defined in the plan as the existing park is basically the part of the park that isn't nature. Of course, there isn't a clear divide between something being "nature" or "not nature." It's a continuum. But that part of the park has a parking lot, picnic pavilion, restrooms, playgrounds, and a grass lawn. It's a developed area of the park that isn't really nature (I'm not saying that's bad; I'm just describing it), and it sits inside of a much larger park, most of which is nature.

But apparently, to the people making this plan for a so-called "restoration" of nature, the part of the park that isn't nature is the only part that's really important to keep intact. The whole rest of the park, all of the stuff that is nature, basically has little to no inherent value and can be demolished to make way for the "new park."

2/17/26 edit: I became aware of a June 2025 NEORSD presentation to the Cleveland Heights planning commission that confirmed what I thought about the Sewer District not thinking of most of the land as a currently existing park, even though it very much is. In it, they talk about how their plan "remodels the space from a 6-acre park into a 60-acre park" and mention wanting to create a "a much larger and more exciting park experience." As someone who has loved the whole 60 acre park for many years, this was pretty infuriating!

What's going to happen to all that other stuff?

Here's a map of the "extent of grading" from the NEORSD plan overlaid on the park as it was before dam removal.

 

"Grading" basically means reshaping land. Things are going to be pushed around with bulldozers. The historic landscape that previously existed on these highlighted sections of the map won't exist anymore.

The entire lake falls into this category, which isn't surprising. But so does a lot of other land. I'm especially struck by how much of the forested area to the west of the dam is highlighted. Nearly half of it, it looks like. I've been told that that area is among the most natural, or least touched by humans, along the entire Doan Brook. Having spent a huge amount of time along all sections of the brook from there down to Lake Erie, I believe this. But apparently a lot of it has to be demolished to "restore the brook to its natural state."

What will this currently beautiful nature park look like after construction starts? Here's an overlay of proposed access/haul roads, brook diversion ditches, and primary staging areas (where sediment will be dumped) on the park.

 

Yes, access/haul roads are going to be built through what is currently a beautiful wooded area. The whole park, most of which is currently nature, is going to be a massive construction project, in the name of "restoring nature."

The trees

The most eye-catching aspect of the "restoration" plan certainly has to be that it proposes the removal of over a thousand trees. What sorts of trees would be removed, and from where? Here's a map pulled from slides on the Shaker Lakes Conservancy website; it simply consolidates the tree removal pages of the NEORSD 100% design plan into one page and highlights the removed trees:

 

Over one thousand trees. Trees from all over the park, but especially from the woods to the west (downstream) of the dam. More than 200 of the trees are at least two feet in diameter.

I was shocked when I learned about these plans. I've spent so much time in those woods. It was hard to fathom that this could happen to them. I found myself filled with an urgent need to go visit the park and see the trees that the plan calls for removing. I've done this three times in the last few weeks, and on the most recent visit I brought with me a printout of the tree removal pages from the NEORSD 100% design plan so that I could identify specific trees that the Sewer District plans to kill.

Here are a few examples.

 

 

The two large trees on the left of the above picture are the two 30 inch diameter trees circled on the map inset. Each X represents a tree slated for removal. Many of the trees in the background are also marked.

 

Can I also comment on just how stunning this snowy landscape with the trees and the frozen brook and the 170 year old stonework in the background is? There is already a trail along the brook here because it's already a park. Everything in this picture falls within the "extent of grading" from the previous map. To the people who made this plan, nothing in this picture matters. It's all just an obstacle to the creation of their "new park."

 

 

The tree on the right side of this picture is 85 inches in diameter according to the tree survey. That's about seven feet. This tree has probably stood there next to the brook for longer than any of us has been around. Heck, maybe it could outlast most of us too. But not if this plan goes through and the Sewer District cuts it down.

I think this 50 inch diameter tree that stands alone at the corner of the woods on an embankment over the brook might be the most visually stunning individual tree in the park. Based on the maps of planned work, it looks like it stands too close to where an access/haul road will be built, so it has to go.

The plan calls for the removal of 1,070 trees. From walking around the park and looking at the plans, I suspect this is a significant underestimate, although I can't definitively say this. There are a lot of spots where something is planned to be built, like an access road or artificial stream channel, and there are trees in that spot but they aren't on the map. So we might be talking about far more than a thousand trees when all is said and done.

The 90% design presentation shows renderings of a section of the park in the near future, 20 years from now, and 50 years from now. According to this rendering, in 50 years, when most of us will be dead, there will be some nice tall trees there.

 

Or we could just do nothing and keep the nice tall trees that already exist.

Amazingly, both the cities of Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights proudly advertise our trees in our literal city logos.

 

I would hope that cities that value trees so much wouldn't want to destroy over a thousand trees in a nature park.

I said that I think the tree removal isn't even the worst part of the plan, so let's move on to...

The brook

Around the park there are some signs posted by the Sewer District that say "Protecting Doan Brook."

 

This is... interesting, to say the least. Let's take a look at how the Sewer District plans to "protect" the brook.

Here's a map of the currently existing stream channels according to the 100% design plan's site survey, overlaid on the pre-dam removal satellite image.

 

You'll notice, of course, that some of the stream channels go through where the lake used to be. If we look at more recent satellite imagery, we see those channels. Interestingly, they were already there in a similar form shortly after the lake was drained.

 

Both upstream and downstream of the dam, there are sections of brook that are the same now as they were before the lake was drained. No need to do much with those brook sections for a "restoration to the brook's natural state," right?

Now here's a map with the proposed stream channels from the "restoration" project overlaid on the previous map.

 

Huh.

As it turns out, one of the main reasons that the plan requires cutting down over a thousand trees is that the plan calls for removing most of the currently existing brook and constructing artificial stream channels in a nearby location. And thus, the trees on the bank of the currently existing brook and the trees in the path of the new artificial stream channels have to be cut down.

Something that's pretty crazy is that, unlike the plan to remove over a thousand trees, the plan to reroute the brook and remove most of the existing brook has been out in the open the whole time. The public presentation of the 90% design plan, in an "alternatives analysis" slide, showed three different configurations of the brook that were considered, and all diverge widely from the existing natural brook:

I remember at the open house I attended in December 2022 that those same three brook configurations were presented as possibilities. If I had been paying close attention, I might have noticed that any of the three would have required removing a significant amount of the currently existing brook. But that fact didn't register in my mind. No one ever seemed to notice, even though it's been in front of our faces throughout this process. And it's hard to blame anyone for not noticing, because why would anyone even think to question whether a "restoration of the brook to its natural state" would preserve the currently existing natural route of the brook?

Why in God's name would someone designing a restoration of a brook through a park make a plan that destroys most of the currently existing natural brook in that park?

Let's also talk for a minute about "alternatives analysis."

In planning a project that would result in such drastic changes to a historic landscape, it was important that the Sewer District consider alternative plans and analyze them in comparison to each other. A meaningful consideration of alternatives might have included options such as, oh, I don't know, preserving the lake in some form? Not to mention, did they consider not dramatically rerouting the brook? Instead it seems like the Sewer District wanted to pay lip service to the idea of alternatives analysis without actually considering alternatives that substantively differed from their desired outcome.

Any of the "alternatives" they considered would have resulted in the destruction of most of the existing brook and the removal of at least hundreds of trees. They knew this in 2022. It wasn't revealed to the public until late 2025, and that only happened because of a public records request. Their plan, apparently, was that the public wouldn't know this was going to happen until the trees started coming down and the natural streambed started being bulldozed.

Here are a couple more pictures I took recently of the brook that this plan would eliminate.

 

It's such a precious gift to have this little pocket of wild nature in the middle of a residential neighborhood where so many people can easily walk or ride their bikes. My heart aches thinking of it being destroyed. And I'm absolutely livid at the people who aim to destroy it while saying that they're restoring nature.

There's another aspect of the "restoration" that is more subtle but that also seems strange. Let's talk about...

The wetlands

2/17/26 edit: After looking into this more closely I realize that I'm uncertain about what I said here, so I'm going to heavily revise this section to emphasize this uncertainty. This stems from information having been presented in a confusing way in the Sewer District's presentation.

They showed this map of the existing conditions before dam removal:

On this map, wetlands and floodplain are shown as two separate things.

In the complete design document, we also see that where the lake once was, there is now an 11 acre "Horseshoe Wetland": 

In the "stream restoration plan," the only wetlands shown are 2.165 acres of proposed wetland complexes:

Because in the existing conditions map, wetlands and floodplain were shown as two separate things, I interpreted this map the same way, but upon further review I realize that wetlands can be part of a floodplain. However, we don't actually know for sure with the re-engineered landscape how much of the wetlands will still be there. The total amount of wetlands might end up being similar to what it was before dam removal, or it might be smaller (I had previously said it would be much smaller but I'm not actually sure); it will definitely be much smaller than the current conditions where there is a large wetland where the lake was. It's all very uncertain because the information has not been presented clearly!

Final thoughts

Another thing caught my eye in the 100% design document. There's a page that shows designs for wayfinding signs. Here's an example:

The signs say "Lake-to-Lakes Trail" on them. The Lake-to-Lakes Trail is a bike trail, parts of which I've ridden many, many times, that goes from Lake Erie to the Shaker Lakes. This sign is part of a design plan for a proposal to eliminate one of the Shaker Lakes, and it's a plan that was finalized five days before the Sewer District announced their intentions to eliminate the other of the Shaker Lakes. So in the Sewer District's vision, the "Lakes" of the Lake-to-Lakes Trail no longer exist, but we still have a trail called the Lake-to-Lakes Trail. And also, apparently, a Nature Center at Shaker Lakes.

Kind of a kick in the teeth, huh?

It's a small thing, but I think it's a telling example of the thoughtlessness behind these plans.

Someone looked at this place, this beautiful, special, historic place, and they completely disregarded all the value it has in its current and historic form, and decided that the most important thing for it to do is efficiently convey stormwater downstream. No matter whether doing that means destroying more than a thousand trees and most of the existing natural brook. And then they sold the plan to the public, the plan that destroys most of the existing natural brook, as a plan to "restore the Doan Brook to its natural state."

I'm going to be charitable, though, and not pass judgment on whether they were deliberately trying to con the public with the nature restoration story, or if they somehow managed to con themselves into sincerely believing that this plan is a restoration of nature. Either option is plausible.

The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District does a lot of important things. Many of those things do genuinely benefit the environment. I don't think they're evil. But designing and building a large nature park is far outside their wheelhouse. They've never done something like it before. It was wildly irresponsible of our city leaders to let them have that responsibility over our historic and priceless parklands.

And if someone says they're going to do a nature restoration project and this is the plan they come up with, for a park that is already a beautiful natural place, it really calls into question whether they should be given the job at all.

There's a sign next to Lee Road where the brook passes under the road from Horseshoe Lake Park to the next downstream segment. It says Doan Brook: Ours to Protect.

 

Many times when I've been somewhere out of the city and I happen to be driving up Lee on my return route, I've seen that sign and thought, I'm home. Partly because at that point I'm about to enter Cleveland Heights and I will soon be at my actual home. But also partly because, if I had to summarize in two words why this place where I live is a special place that feels like home to me, those two words would be, "Doan Brook."

Doan Brook, and everything that comes with it - the lakes, the ravines, the trees, the waterfalls, the trails. Everything about our historic parklands is so special and so valuable and so irreplaceable. Someone who doesn't know and love the brook might think it doesn't matter if you demolish a section of it to make way for a green sewer infrastructure project surrounded by a generic new park. I know better than that.

In years past, when I was driving by the Doan Brook: Ours to Protect sign, I never would have thought that we'd have to protect it from the very people who say that they're protecting it. But here we are.

There have been two main sides of the lake debate in the community: lake preservation advocates, and nature restoration advocates.

The Sewer District created a plan that both removes the lake and destroys much of the existing nature in the park. They promoted it as a nature restoration plan. They let the nature restoration advocates help sell their plan to the general public. They kept unpalatable details of the plan secret until, they hoped, it was too late to change course.

It's not too late.

If you agree that this plan should not go forward and needs, at minimum, a thorough independent review and meaningful public engagement, please sign the petition and share with your friends: https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-destruction-save-the-lakes

About the author: I (Jeff McManus) have spent countless hours of my life around the lakes and all other parts of Doan Brook going back to my days as a CWRU cross country runner starting in 2001. I have a PhD in Biology from CWRU and work in research at my alma mater. I've lived in Cleveland Heights since 2012 and the brook and lakes are a large part of what attracted me to living here.