Along the North side of The Hyacinth Lofts’ gated parking lot stands a long, narrow storage facility graced with an abundance of overhead garage doors. Although it would be perfect for lawn mowers, rusty tools and old holiday decorations, we think it’s an even better spot for rehearsal space!

Though not ready quite yet, this fantastic space will soon receive a complete makeover and eventually provide separate rehearsal facilities ready for your own brand of garage rock (or whatever suits your musical fancy…). So get ready, your chance to follow in the memorable footsteps of the Knickerbockers, the Count Five and the Electric Prunes is coming soon!

No longer will thundering trucks and dusty dumps rumble along the otherwise tidy streets tucked into Cleveland’s St. Hyacinth neighborhood. Nearly ten years in the making, this $8 million project will redirect industrial traffic along a new section of Bessemer Avenue currently under construction on the site of an old scrap yard located between East 55th and East 65th Streets.

Pulling into station by December 2006, the new RTA Rapid Transit stop planned for East 55th Street will provide better access to both North Broadway rail commuters and residents of Hyacinth Lofts. Offering quick and reliable connections to University Circle, Downtown Cleveland, Ohio City and Hopkins International Airport, the coming ADA compliant St. Hyacinth station will get you where you’re going in style.

A bubbling brook once traversed its winding floor. Trees, bursting with springtime blossoms and then again aflame with fall colors, once lined its steep banks. It could have been a perfect jewel in the region’s Emerald Necklace.

Yet this bucolic era lasted but a few years beyond the passing of Cleveland’s first permanent settler, Judge James Kingsbury. Identified as a convenient location for manufactories, 19th century industrial mavens quickly buried the stream and littered the banks of the valley with oil refineries, foundries and steel mills. Then during the middle of the 20th century, descendants of these same industrialists abandoned the spent valley to freeway construction and scrub brush.

Nature, however, is tough to defeat. Although regeneration requires tremendous effort, this local treasure is making a stunning comeback with a helping hand provided by the Kingsbury Run Dream Team. A collective of neighborhood residents, city and county officials and planning professionals, the “Dream Team” is currently in the early stages of planning a multipurpose hike and bike trail that will one day follow the path of the long buried creek connecting the St. Hyacinth neighborhood with the Cuyahoga River and the coming Ohio and Erie Canal Tow Path Trail.

More than just a trail project, this effort currently envisions the addition of green space, unique recreational opportunities and even the restoration of the historic Sidaway Avenue Footbridge. Pictured as the next link in the Broadway-Slavic Village community’s own “Emerald Bracelet” that currently includes the Mill Creek Falls Trail and Scenic Overlook and the Morgana Run Trail, the Kingsbury Run will soon be a jewel in which we may all take pride.