Gordon Park on Cleveland's East Side — part of Cleveland Metroparks' Lakefront Reservation — offers a long list of amenities spread across its 122 lakefront acres. There are boat ramps, walking trails, tennis courts and a picnic lawn.But ever since Interstate 90 was built in the 1950s, East Siders have had a hard time accessing the park, and Lake Erie in general.Cleveland Metroparks has been working on solutions to the problem for several years. And they’ve recently gotten some help from student...

When she was growing up, Marilyn Olsen of North Olmsted says girls didn’t play sports. She herself was a party girl, preferring dancing to any organized exercise.“When I got out of high school, it was the bars or the ballrooms,” Olsen said. “Never, never anything athletic, but the dancing was good.”That changed when she was 45. A coworker recommended that Olsen join her for a race, and from there she fell in love with the sport of running. She ended up placing third in her first 5K.“I tried it a...

Eric Miller says Mansfield has some of the best roads in the state. But it wasn’t always like this.“Our streets were in deplorable condition,” Miller said. “They were falling apart, most of the streets were in terrible shape, and we just needed to do something about it.”Back in the 1980s, Miller — a lawyer — started a group called the Committee for Better Streets, dedicated to fixing the streets for everyone.The idea, he says, was this: “How can you, as a modern-day citizen, do something that he...

St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland's Detroit Shoreway neighborhood distributes fresh produce through the Greater Cleveland Food Bank’s Mobile Pantry Program, which served more than 4,000 families last year.Vidorian Massingale, affectionately known as Chef Vi, is the executive chef for the church’s mobile pantry. Before this job, she was working in food service in schools, but wanted a career that could help people more directly.“I love working here,” Massingale said. “Everybody is just so...