Op-Ed: How the Cleveland Tree Coalition is improving quality of life throughout the city

The Cleveland Tree Coalition (CTC) “strives to create a healthy, vibrant, sustainable, and equitable urban forest by working collaboratively and leveraging resources,” as detailed in their mission statement. The CTC’s goal is a 30% tree cover from the current 18% by 2040. With this in mind, it has been supporting the development of urban green space since its inception in 2015 through community tree giveaways, plantings, and grants for other local green space initiatives.

Tree canopy is integral to the health of urban environments and those who live in them. As reported in the 2019 Cuyahoga County Urban Tree Canopy Assessment, “Tree canopy provides many benefits to society including moderating climate, reducing building energy use and atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), improving air and water quality, mitigating rainfall runoff and flooding, enhancing human health and social well-being and lowering noise impacts … It provides wildlife habitat, enhances property values, and has aesthetic impacts to an environment.” Unfortunately, Cleveland has lost about half of its trees since the 1950s, declining by five percent just between 2011 and 2017. 

The Cleveland Tree Plan, created in 2015 and updated in 2020, is a community initiative aimed at restoring Cleveland’s tree canopy. In order to organize and allocate resources and efforts effectively, the Cleveland Tree Coalition was formed out of the Tree Plan. Since 2015, the CTC has grown to more than 50 members, with four working committees and an executive committee. Through its efforts, the CTC has improved the lives of community members throughout Cleveland.

Between 1957 and 1962, the Ohio Department of Transportation constructed State Route 20 running directly through Lakeview in Ohio City, isolating the northern portion of the community from the rest of the city.

In the past year, Ohio City Inc., a nonprofit community development corporation for Ohio City, has enacted a grant it received from the Cleveland Tree Coalition. According to Cleveland Arts and Events, “Ohio City Incorporated’s mission is to promote, preserve and develop our diverse, historic, urban community as a desirable place to live, work, study, play and worship. It provides assistance to neighborhood residents, businesses and institutions including community building and organizing, safety, code enforcement, vacant property remediation, marketing, special events and programming, neighborhood planning, real estate technical assistance, and tenant attraction and retention.”

Using a CTC grant, Ohio City Inc. started with a 30-tree tree planting event on Earth Day 2024, in the Lakeview neighborhood of Ohio City. Since then, they have held a tree giveaway for which they distributed 100 trees, partnered with schools and other institutions, planted trees on tree lawns and forested parks. In an interview, Public Spaces and Planning Manager Julia Mettler-Grove insisted that “It’s important that we continue to show up for the trees and maintain them … so that especially people like Lakeview residents don’t feel neglected. Already, they are being cut off from the rest of the neighborhood, there’s already a lot of neglect there. The quality of the streets are worse, street lights are out more there than in the rest of the neighborhood, more crime, they are already feeling neglected in so many [ways], so this cannot be another way that they feel neglected.” The Cleveland Tree Coalition funds will support the maintenance of these trees for the first two essential years. 

Looking forward into the fall, Ohio City Inc. plans to plant the next round of trees in Riverview. 

One of the Cleveland Tree Coalition’s first events of 2025 was a tree planting in the Union Miles neighborhood on April 16, which was led by Western Reserve Land Conservancy and NuPoint Community Development Corporation (CDC). As Demisha Alexander, neighborhood sustainability manager for the NuPoint CDC relayed, “The tree planting event is part of our revitalization project that we’re working on, bringing new trees and new life to this pocket park … We wanted to bring a better green space into the neighborhood.”

At the April 16 tree planting, planting representatives from the Western Reserve Land Conservancy, the Cleveland Tree Coalition, and NuPoint CDC were all present. Union Miles is a known heat island, and as Devon Range, a community forester with Western Reserve Land Conservancy states, “I think it’s really exciting to take an area that’s pretty devoid of trees, very grey, brown, dreary, but is highly utilized and is high traffic – there’s tons of people who walk through here, there’s senior housing right next door – and to unify and create a healthier, more accessible space.” 

The Western Reserve Land Conservancy will water these trees for three years after the planting and will prune them in years four and six.

Alexander expressed the impact of these plantings on the community. “The residents love it. They are like ‘It’s about time something happened within these neighborhoods.’ That’s why a lot of them want to get heavily involved because it symbolizes ownership and accountability and just pride and care that people are giving back to their community in whichever way it is. That’s why we are so grateful to our lovely volunteers today.”

The Cleveland Tree Coalition is helping to improve the quality of life for residents throughout Cleveland. It is a model for how cities can serve the environment and their people, one tree at a time.