Over the past year or so,
the tens of thousands visitors
to The Nature Center at
Shaker Lakes surely have
noticed the transformation
taking place. The Nature
Center is undergoing muchneeded
improvements to
what President and CEO
Kay Carlson calls “our
outdoor infrastructure” – the
amphitheater, pavilion, trails,
public access points, and the
natural environment itself.
52 FALL 2019 | WWW.SHAKER.LIFE
As one of the region’s preeminent
outdoor educational and recreational
facilities, the Nature Center’s 20
acres are a small, but perhaps the
most significant, part of a much
larger area known as the Shaker
Parklands — certainly the most
historically significant. The Nature
Center was formed on paper in
1966, in the middle of a hard-fought citizen-based battle with Cuyahoga
County Engineer Albert Porter to stop a series of freeways from being
built through the Parkland’s 279 acres, a swath of the Doan Brook
watershed from Horseshoe Lake on the east and the Nature Center/
Lower Shaker Lake on the west, and roughly between North Park and
Shaker boulevards on the north and south.
The Parklands was donated by the Shaker Heights Land Company in
1895 to the City of Cleveland. The donation stipulated that the land
be used “for park purposes only.” Fifty years later, Cleveland leased
the property to the City of Shaker Heights, which agreed to occupy,
improve, and maintain the Parklands at its own expense. (The lease
was renewed in 1990 for 50 years.) The property was designated a
National Environmental Education Landmark in 1971 and an Important
Bird Area by Audubon Ohio in 2001.
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