City of Cleveland
Parks & Recreation Plan
| Location: | Completed: | Project Type: | Partners: |
| Cleveland, Ohio | May 2025 | City-Wide Parks and Recreation Master Plan | OLIN, DesignExplorr, OHM Advisors, Rhonda Crowder and Associates, ThirdSpace Action Lab, IG Global Solutions, Neighborhood Connections, ETC Institute, Foote Printing |
PROS Consulting partnered with OLIN Studio to complete Cleveland’s Comprehensive Master Plan. PROS assisted OLIN with community engagement activities, including open houses, focus groups meetings, staff interviews, planning summits, and final master plan development. The additional Master Plan work led and completed by PROS is articulated below.
PROS conducted a system-wide recreation program assessment analyzing the status and performance of Cleveland’s recreation programs, facilities, staffing, and operational practices. Through that work, PROS assessed how effectively Cleveland was meeting recreation program community needs, identified gaps in service delivery, highlighted strengths and challenges, and provided insights into opportunities for improvement. By analyzing demographic trends, participation patterns, facility conditions, financial sustainability, and staff capacity, PROS’ program assessment report provided a comprehensive foundation to guide recreation program strategic decision-making.
PROS also completed an assessment of the physical condition and location of recreation facilities and park maintenance and forestry operations, resulting in a 10-year plan for the reallocation of recreation facilities along with a recreation facilities investment strategy, and recommendations for streamlining park maintenance and forestry operations integrating best practices to improve operational practices, service delivery and responsiveness, and overall park and facility conditions. Additionally, PROS completed a benchmark analysis of the Cleveland park and recreation system, examining staffing levels, distribution of staff, operating and capital budgets, and distribution of financial resources across the system against comparable and industry best park and recreation systems. Following the completion of the benchmarking and the programming, recreation facilities, and park and forestry operational analysis, PROS developed a 10-year plan for facilities, staffing, and operating and capital budgets. Additionally, PROS lead the Strategic Planning efforts for the Cleveland parks and recreation system that included an examination of the current organizational structure and analysis of funding sources. From the organizational structure review, PROS provided organizational structure recommendations resulting in the re-establishment of a parks and recreation department along with an implementation strategy. The funding sources analysis included a review of over 30 different funding alternatives and the feasibility and potential of each for Cleveland, with a funding sources strategy for Cleveland Parks and Recreation.
