Over $3 billion in public and private investment is converging on Cleveland's lakefront, and city leaders continue proselytizing about the once-in-a-generation opportunity to reconnect downtown with Lake Erie.

Why it matters: Previous iterations of waterfront planning stalled out "somewhere between the renderings and the fundraising," City Club of Cleveland CEO Dan Moulthrop said at a summit this week.

• But Mayor Justin Bibb has made the waterfront a tentpole of his tenure, and Cleveland is finally moving from planning to execution.

Flashback: Among Bibb's first and most pivotal decisions was creating the North Coast Waterfront Development Corp.

• This was an acknowledgement that a reimagined lakefront would be decades in the making — beyond any one administration — and a focused, independent organization would be necessary to see it through, NCWDC president Scott Skinner told the summit.

What they're saying: "My organization started with 25 acres of land and an NFL stadium as an anchor," he said.

• "We're now looking at potentially 550 acres of land. This is an opportunity that does not exist in North America and probably doesn't exist anywhere in the world."

The big picture: Skinner believes almost every challenge Cleveland faces as a city "is downstream of a declining tax base."

• Bringing back residents and businesses to underused land on the water, therefore, is a "critically important" piece of how we should be thinking about the future.

Scott Skinner provided a snapshot of the ongoing waterfront work, separating the major development projects into four buckets.

🚧 The North Coast Connector

The nearly $500 million infrastructure project to realign the Shoreway, build a pedestrian land bridge and create a multimodal transit hub is moving toward construction.

By the numbers: The $284 million first phase is fully funded, with construction expected to begin in late 2027.

🏙️ The Browns stadium site

It's back to the drawing board for the 50-acre site where the stadium now sits. Master planning is underway for a new mixed-use neighborhood.

What's next: The stadium itself is scheduled to be demolished in 2029, but Skinner said construction on "permanent public space" and potentially public art north of the stadium could begin as early as next year.

✈️ Burke Lakefront Airport

Despite recent headlines, Skinner cautioned the closing of Burke Lakefront Airport is not at all a done deal.

The intrigue: Katie Lincoln, board chair of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, which partnered with the City Club on the summit, said in opening remarks that she believes the 450-acre Burke site will always be an airport.

State of play: NCWDC is working with regional stakeholders to clarify priorities should the airport close, including private financing.

• "We can't be doing all this advocacy to close Burke and rely solely on public grants and subsidies," Skinner said.

🌳 North Coast Yard

Skinner described the seasonal pop-up park that opened last year as an early proof of concept, demonstrating that Clevelanders want to spend time on the waterfront.

• The space drew roughly 25,000 visitors in its first season and is expected to surpass that total this year.

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🌳 Cuyahoga Valley National Park and its volunteers have planted 33,000 trees since 2012, with plans for 40,000 more in the next decade. (Signal Akron)

👀 Cain Park general manager Suzanne Conway has abruptly resigned after only six months on the job. (Cleveland.com)

🚰 The Ohio EPA has decided against a proposal that would have allowed data centers to send polluted water into the state's lakes, rivers and streams. (Columbus Dispatch)

🍻 Plans for an Urban Meyer's Pint House in the former downtown Winking Lizard location have been scrapped. (Crain's Cleveland Business 🔐)

🐙 If left uncontrolled, vampiric sea lampreys could collapse the Great Lakes' fish stocks in just five years. (CNN)

The Glenville Shootout on July 23, 1968 was one of the most incendiary moments of the 1960s in Cleveland.

State of play: The violence left seven people dead, including three police officers, and Mayor Carl Stokes controversially pulled white officers from the neighborhood in the aftermath.

The big picture: The unrest deepened racial divisions and accelerated white flight on Cleveland's east side.

• Nearly six decades later, the incident continues to be a touchstone in conversations about policing, race and political leadership in Cleveland.

💭 Sam's thought bubble: My favorite piece of reporting on the subject was Roldo Bartimole's 1969 essay for The Nation, which I reprinted in Scene Magazine on the shootout's 50th anniversary in 2018.

• Roldo exhaustively documented the events leading up to the violence and argued the local media and criminal justice system advanced a "law and order" narrative that overlooked police provocation.

👋 Sam here. Yesterday was Cleveland's 230th birthday, so I popped down to Edgewater Park to snap a photo of the Cleveland script sign wearing a birthday hat.

Between the lines: I wouldn't say I did so ironically, but I'll admit to not feeling any enhanced civic pride this week. I find the concept of a city's birthday to be pretty silly!

• Nevertheless, I appreciate the opportunity to reflect on our history — see: The Glenville Shootout — and the complicated dynamics that made Cleveland what it is today.

Stop by: You can't deny the views!

• Three of the script signs — at Edgewater Park, North Coast Harbor and Euclid Beach Park — have been crowned with caps through July 26 as part of Destination Cleveland's weeklong festivities.

📫 Reply to this email with how you're celebrating Cleveland's birthday week ... if at all.