Euclid's waterfront plan gains ground: Kenny Yuko Park opens, $10M Beach House next

Kenny Yuko grew up in Euclid when most of the Lake Erie shoreline his neighbors could see from their own blocks was fenced off. On August 7, 2024, the city put his name on 5.6 acres of it — a new park on the bluff at Lakeshore Boulevard and East 247th Street. Two years later, the city is promoting that park as it turns toward the next phase: a $10 million Beach House for which it has announced neither a construction date nor a plan to pay for it.

For decades, the lake Euclid residents could see from East 200th or East 222nd was mostly someone else's. Roughly 94 to 95 percent of the city's shoreline was privately controlled — homeowners, developers, beach clubs — leaving the public a sliver. To open it up, the city traded publicly funded erosion control for easements from nearly 100 lakefront property owners, enough to string together a three-quarter-mile public trail. The promise dates to 2009, when the city adopted a Waterfront Improvements Plan calling for public access, beaches, habitat, trail connections, and a marina. Kenny Yuko Park is the third phase of that plan, following Sims Park, the Joseph M. Farrell Fishing Pier, and the Lakefront Trail.

The park covers 5.6 acres of new parkland with a multi-purpose trail connection linking the Lakefront Trail to Lakeshore Boulevard, vehicle parking, and greenspace.

Kenny Yuko is a Euclid kid who made good and came back: he graduated from Brush High School, spent about 30 years as a union organizer for Laborers' Local #860, and represented District 25 in Columbus, rising to Senate Minority Leader. Now his name sits on the lake he grew up near.

At the grand opening, Kenny Yuko told the crowd, "So many of you have known me for so long and you know I'm never at a loss for words, but today, holy cow."

Mayor Kirsten Holzheimer Gail said the park "will be a major asset to our community and will provide residents with even more opportunities to enjoy our beautiful lakefront." She added, "We are proud to be leading the way in innovative projects and to be creating a world-class destination that is accessible to all."

The next $10 million

The next phase is a $10 million Beach House: a bar and lounge, a restaurant, public restrooms, an outdoor terrace, paddle craft rental and storage, and trail maintenance space. The Beach House was always planned as a separate project from the park, expected to come later.

The money committed so far is for the park, not the Beach House. Cuyahoga County awarded Euclid a not-to-exceed $300,000 American Rescue Plan Act grant toward Kenny Yuko Park construction, supporting the $1.8 million first phase of a park project totaling about $11 million.

Planning for the shoreline ahead

The city hosted a nature-based shoreline resilience workshop on September 10 at the Lakefront Community Center, 1 Bliss Lane, presented with federal, state, regional, academic, and nonprofit partners including the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The focus was nature-based strategies for the shoreline — the kind of planning that will shape what residents get next.

Euclid City Council voted on April 21, 2025, to accept up to $243,168.19 from the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation's National Coastal Resilience Fund for a shoreline erosion-control study and community outreach, with the city providing about a $49,000 local match from the Harbour Town TIF fund.

The park's public elements — the trail connection, the parking, the greenspace — answer the question of who the shoreline is for: the people who live on the streets behind the bluff can now walk or drive to the lake from their own blocks. The Beach House leaves the next question open. A bar and lounge and a restaurant on the water are not the same thing as a public beach, and the question for the residents of East 200th and East 222nd is whether the $10 million phase is being built for them — or for a destination crowd from somewhere else.