CLEVELAND, Ohio — Burke Lakefront Airport is far cleaner and easier to build on than many Clevelanders might expect, but redeveloping the full 450-acre site remains complicated because the coastline is an active dump site for sediment dredged from the Cuyahoga River.
Building one- or two-story buildings across most of Burke’s runways would be feasible and require far less environmental remediation than many redeveloped industrial sites, such as Battery Park or the Scranton Peninsula.
“Compared to those sites, Burke is actually a remarkably clean environmental site,” Scott Skinner, head of the North Coast Waterfront Development Corporation, told Cleveland City Council on Wednesday. “Heavy industry creates much more significant environmental remediation costs than dredge-and-fill sites.”…