For Heather Malone, the Euclid Beach Mobile Home Community was an oasis.
She lived just steps from Lake Erie for 14 years in a tidy trailer surrounded by hand-painted statues and flowers. It’s the place where she found peace after striving for sobriety, where walking near the water helped her reconnect with herself.
In mid-November, Malone was one of the last tenants to leave, a witness to the final days of a place unlike any other in Cleveland.
Now the mobile home park is vacant. The land, off Lakeshore Boulevard in the city’s North Collinwood neighborhood, is being cleared to become part of a park. And the people who lived there – some for just a few years, some for generations – are settling into different homes scattered across the region and beyond.
“This whole experience has been unprecedented,” said Isaac Robb, vice president of planning, research and urban projects at the Western Reserve Land Conservancy.
The nonprofit bought the 28.5-acre site in late 2021 to protect it from development and bring it back into local hands.