Abstract
Margaret Cannon talks about her role as Law Director for Shaker Heights. She discusses the traffic diverter issue and how that impacted the relationship between Shaker Heights and the city of Cleveland.
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Interviewee
Cannon, Margaret (interviewee)
Interviewer
Smith, Kelsey (interviewer)
Project
Shaker Heights Centennial
Date
7-26-2012
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
37 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Margaret Cannon Interview, 26 July 2012" (2012). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 915026.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/495
Transcript
Margaret Cannon [00:00:01] I was born in a little town in southern Illinois called Highland, Illinois. My dad was a pipeline engineer with Sohio. And at that time, Sohio had a major office in St. Louis, but their main headquarters, of course, were in Cleveland. And so when I was 12, Sohio closed out their St. Louis office and moved all those people to Cleveland. And so I grew up, starting when I was 12, in Chagrin Falls. Graduated from Chagrin Falls High School, went to Oberlin, went to Case Law School, started practicing law in 1973 with Cleveland firm Kelly, McKennan Livingstone. Walter Kelly was the mayor of Shaker Heights, of course. And so the first house we bought was in Shaker Heights. So I’ve actually lived in Shaker since 1975.
Kelsey Smith [00:01:07] And where did you buy a house in Shaker first?
Margaret Cannon [00:01:10] The first house was 18829 Fairmount, which you probably know from George, was built in 1845. Then our second house in Shaker was 18700 South Park, which was built in 1917 by Caesar Augustus Grasselli. And you may have read about this recently in Shaker Magazine. Caesar Augustus Grasselli invented a commercially viable process for the manufacture of sulfuric acid, which was used in a number of major Cleveland industrial processes. So his original house was Glidden House in University Circle. And he had married Joanna Ireland, which is of course, an old Cleveland family. So when his wife died, he and I think his two surviving unmarried daughters built a huge house on South Park. And for reasons which we’ve never been able to figure out, the big house was torn down and the carriage house, which wasn’t all that little, but was little compared to the big house, remained. And then our third Shaker house, which is the one in which we now live, is 23450 Shaker Boulevard, which was built in 1954. So we’re moving steadily forward. We’ve made it 100 years so far.
Kelsey Smith [00:02:44] What originally attracted you to the Jacob Strong House?
Margaret Cannon [00:02:51] My then husband and I, and we subsequently got divorced, had looked all over for a house. You know, we didn’t want a real big house. And we had looked, you know, in the Chagrin Valley and all of that. And we walked into that house and it was love at first sight. You know, it’s just a beautiful little house and it had been very well, you know, maintained. It had a lot of history to it, and it’s just a wonderful house.
Kelsey Smith [00:03:21] George said you did a lot of work on it.
Margaret Cannon [00:03:22] We did a lot of work on that house. We’ve done a lot of work on every house, actually.
Kelsey Smith [00:03:26] So what do you know about the history of the Jacob Strong house.
Margaret Cannon [00:03:32] George is the better historian than I am. You know, Jacob Strong was one of the key people in Shaker history. And so the original farm was that house and the land basically behind it, which would have been to the north of it. And then when the Van Sweringen came to develop Shaker Heights, as you probably know from others, they wanted everybody to be within a seven minute walk of public transit. And so in the area that they developed, which is basically Fairmount on the north and Chagrin on the south, they tore down, you know, the old houses. So if you’ve ever noticed in Shaker, the remaining century houses are all either along Fairmount or Chagrin or south of Chagrin because everything else was laid out by the Van Sweingens.
Kelsey Smith [00:04:41] So, and then we’re also told you were the legal aid to several of the mayors.
Margaret Cannon [00:04:47] Correct.
Kelsey Smith [00:04:48] What exactly did you do as a legal aide?
Margaret Cannon [00:04:54] The correct term is law director. And I first became the law director in 1984 when Steve Alfred was the mayor. When I first joined Kelly, McKenna and Livingstone in 1973 was when Walter Kelly became the mayor. So Walter had been the law director of Shaker Heights for many years before he became the mayor. But you can’t be both the mayor and the law director, nor can the mayor be in this. You know, the mayor can’t have his law firm be the law director for ethical reasons. So when Walter became the mayor in 1973, the firm ceased to be the law director. And Walter was a fabulous mayor and he was also a fabulous law director. So I was serving as an assistant law director in some other communities. And then when Steve Alford became the mayor in 1984, I became the law director. And then I was the law director until 1992 when Pat Mearns was elected. Cheryl King Binford was the law director. And then I became the law director again in 2000 when Judy Rawson was the mayor. And then I remained the law director until about six months ago. So I was Mayor Lykins law director until February of this year. And the law director is most like the general counsel to a corporation. The law director advises the mayor, the counsel, the various departments on, you know, legislation, contracts, bidding, personnel matters, public meetings, public records, you know, various kinds of litigation. So all of those flow through the law department.
Kelsey Smith [00:06:58] And how, you said you became the law director, were you asked or is there, how does that work?
Margaret Cannon [00:07:05] It varies in different communities. In most communities, including Shaker, it is an appointment by the mayor that is confirmed by the Council. And so Mayor Alfred requested that I be his law director. And I don’t recall whether anyone else applied for the position. I know that when Mayor Rawson became the mayor, you know, there were some other people who expressed an interest in the position and I was selected. And then I just continued on when Mayor Leikin became the mayor.
Kelsey Smith [00:07:44] So do you remember anything, does anything stand out, any project? Not projects, but, you know, things that you advised on stand out?
Margaret Cannon [00:07:55] Well, one of the most notorious, or acrimonious, I suppose, depending on your phrase, was the traffic diverter litigation, which you may have heard of from others. But at the time I became the law director in 1984, there had been a long running legal and policy dispute between the city of Shaker Heights and the city of Cleveland. The city of Shaker Heights, as you know from your other work, has very through very few through streets except for the main arterials. The city was laid out so that to get from point A to point B, you pretty much had to go to one of the main north, south or east west streets, because otherwise you were meandering forever, as you know. And so there were a number of streets. Avalon and Ingleside and Scottsdale were the subject of the litigation that ran south of Chagrin Boulevard that were residential streets that ran all the way through from Shaker to Cleveland. And so after years of studying the traffic issues related to the problems with these cut through streets, the city of Shaker Heights installed diverters to close off those streets to through traffic. In the case of Ingleside and Avalon and in the case of Scottsdale, if you’ve ever been at the Chagrin Boulevard end of Scottsdale, it limits the turning movements. So the city of Cleveland viewed the closure of these streets as a huge racial issue. And the closure of the streets had nothing to do with racial issues. It had to do with traffic issues. But it led to some protracted and very acrimonious litigation. And the city of Shaker Heights ultimately prevailed. The court said the city had the right to regulate traffic on its streets in the manner that we did. And as a matter of public law, it’s become one of the key cases in terms of the right of a city to regulate traffic on its streets. But at the time, it was an extremely difficult, painful process and it really impaired the relationship between Shaker and Cleveland for many years. One of the side effects of that is that a little known fact about the Shaker Lakes is that Shaker doesn’t actually own the Shaker Lakes. Cleveland owns the Shaker Lakes. And so what we think of as the Shaker Lakes, as a whole series of lakes connected, all of which are owned by the City of Cleveland and leased to the City of Shaker Heights, they’re obviously a key part of our heritage. And as part of the freeway process, as I’m sure you’ve heard from others, the Nature Center’s lease was carved out of the Shaker Lakes. In any event, in significant part, because of the acrimony between Cleveland and Shaker about the traffic diverters, Cleveland had declined to renew the lease on the Shaker Lakes. So in my opinion, one of the most significant achievements of Mayor Alfred’s administration is that during the discussions regarding the creation of Chagrin Highlands, because Shaker also had a legal role to play in that, Mayor Alfred was successful in getting the lease on the Shaker lakes renewed for what was then another hundred years. So we have a couple more to go.
Kelsey Smith [00:12:09] What was the Chagrin Highlands?
Margaret Cannon [00:12:14] Chagrin Highlands, which is another significant issue, is you know where they’re building the Eaton world headquarters down at the intersection of Harvard and Richmond? You know where Lifetime Fitness is? Well, Chagrin Highlands is a tract of about, originally 400 acres of land that Cleveland had owned for many, many years. It was where the, what was the original tubercular hospital was. The city workhouse was there and is still there. So there was a huge hospital down on Harvard is where Camp Forbes is. So this was land that Cleveland had owned forever, that it used, but obviously it’s not part of the city of Cleveland. So then Mayor Voinovich had a vision of creating a campus similar to the Golden Triangle [Research Triangle Park] in North Carolina, where you would have this major campus for development. And so a portion of Chagrin Highlands is in Highland Hills. A portion of Chagrin Highlands is in Warrensville Heights, a portion is in Orange, and the biggest chunk is in Beachwood. That’s where the Eaton world headquarters is going up. And so the Highland Hills, the community of Highland Hills, was created out of Warrensville Township, and a portion of Warrensville Township was annexed to these various communities. And Shaker Heights, because we were a contiguous territory to Chagrin Highlands, had the legal right to be heard. So that was our opportunity to get the lease on the lakes renewed. I think another interesting piece which obviously never came to fruition, is that the very exciting work that’s now about to begin at Warrensville-Van Aken, that intersection has been the source of whatever word you want to use, pain, consternation, planning, suffering, et cetera, for many years. And, also in the ’80s, there was a project proposed, that would have been an air rights project that would have built a building over the tracks. And so, you know, where the tracks are, it would have gone over the- Where the terminus is at the loop, there would have been an office building proposed by a Chicago developer that went over those tracks. So obviously, that project never went anywhere. I think one of our other significant projects was what is now Shaker Town Center, was Shaker Hardware, an older Heinen store, because that is the first location of Heinen’s, although the original, original Heinen’s was on the other side of Chagrin Boulevard and a number of gas stations and small shops. And so the city declared that an urban renewal area acquired all that land, you know, cleaned up all the environmental issues related to the gas stations and worked for the development of the center. So.
Kelsey Smith [00:15:50] So, Gabby, did you have a couple questions?
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:15:55] Yeah, just really quickly, with the racial issue, as far as with the traffic diverters, was it because the diverters were in minority neighborhoods or-
Margaret Cannon [00:16:06] Well, I mean, that portion of Cleveland was and is predominantly African American. That portion of Shaker Heights was, you know, a racially diverse neighborhood. But it was very much viewed by the City of Cleveland as an effort to keep African Americans out of Shaker Heights, which was, frankly, ironic and painful because, as you know, Shaker Heights by the mid ’80s, which is when this was going on, you know, had been actively working to promote integration for 20 years. So it was, in my opinion, a really unfortunate, painful, divisive issue that was just completely misperceived as a racial issue. I mean, if you go down, you know, where Avalon is now, obviously, and, you know, it’s a narrow residential street, well, you can imagine what that street was like. If you could go all the way through it, you could cross Chagrin Boulevard, you could keep going, and you could go all the way through further so that you could come up Avalon as an alternative to Lee Road, for example. Well, if you could take an alternative to Lee Road, wouldn’t you do it on your way to work in the morning? Probably you would. You’d certainly think about it. So lots of people did. So the city, you know, after lengthy study by the council and traffic analysis and all of that, decided to go ahead and close the streets to through traffic. But it was very much opposed by Cleveland and its residents.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:18:17] Do you think it was a little insulting for Cleveland to, you know, I guess not insulting, but was it a little, like you said, painful as far as Cleveland kind of saying this is a, you know, a racial problem when Shaker does have a long history of integration, positive integration?
Margaret Cannon [00:18:35] Well, I mean, it was certainly painful to me and a lot of other people who were in the middle of the litigation. I mean, I’m sure, you know, that if you were a Cleveland resident who were used to using those streets, you know, to get to work, you know, you didn’t want them closed. What was most, maybe not most painful, but one of the most painful things is that from our perspective, the traffic issues were so clear. I mean, these were not streets that were ever intended for, you know, through traffic. They were never designed for that. I mean, you all, I’m sure, have spent enough time on Shaker now to know that these residential streets aren’t very wide. They’re filled with little kids on a bicycle and people out walking their dogs. And so the traffic counts on these streets during peak travel times would be tens of thousands of cars. Well, you can imagine if you lived on those streets, you would say, wait a minute, that’s not how these streets were laid out. And I never knew why those streets had ever been laid out as cut through streets. And over the years, and I couldn’t tell you which one, but long before the city decided to close Avalon and Ingleside to through traffic, there had been other streets that had been restructured to prevent through traffic.
Kelsey Smith [00:20:08] I interviewed Mary Webb Scibana, and she’s telling me about how not only was there a lot of traffic, but there was a lot of speeding.
Margaret Cannon [00:20:17] Correct. And I’m sure that Mary told you that her then husband Tom was on counsel at the time and had been on counsel during this whole acutely painful, protracted process to decide to go ahead and close the streets to through traffic. And the Webbs, as I’m sure, as you know from Mary, live on what I think may actually live then and what I think may actually be the oldest house in Shaker. And so, you know, they had young children and, you know, as did their neighbors, and so something had to be done.
Kelsey Smith [00:21:00] Did you have anything else?
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:21:03] No. As far as kind of going through, you said you were law director in the 90s as well as 2000s, correct?
Margaret Cannon [00:21:11] I was not the law director from 1992 until 2000. I was not the- ’92 while Mayor Mearns was in office. I was not the law director then. Cheryl King Binford, who’s now the general counsel for RTA, was the law director there.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:21:26] Okay, so going, coming in 2000, coming back to the law director, what kind of, were the issues kind of the same, or were the issues kind of different as far as before being law director? Were you dealing with the same type of, you know, concerns or-
Margaret Cannon [00:21:48] I would say that a number of things starting in 2000 began to change fairly quickly, although not immediately at 2000. First of all, the whole issues of regionalism in Cleveland and regional economic development and regional relationships were much more significant in, you know, starting in the early 2000s. Shaker is, you know, had been expressly laid out not only to discourage commercial development, but to actually prohibit it. Mayor Leiken has this wonderful quote from some of the original Van Sweringen literature in which they very proudly boast that, you know, you won’t be disturbed by any sort of commercial development. Well, of course, that worked exquisitely well when Shaker was a suburb of Cleveland and people would live in Shaker and work in Cleveland and all of that. As we all know now, local economic development has become absolutely critical to the future of the city. So how we were going to make progress on that was one of the most significant issues of Mayor Rawson’s administration. I think another significant issue in mayor Rawson’s administration was that was when we really, again, looked at some of our physical resources in terms of what would attract and retain young families, you know, so that was when, you know, we started the work on Thornton Park. That was when we started the work on Horseshoe Lake. That was when we did the bike path across the street from my house, which I personally enjoy very much. And then, of course, in the latter part of Mayor Rawson’s administration was when all of the housing issues began to be much more significant, painfully significant.
Kelsey Smith [00:24:03] What did you guys do with the Horseshoe Lake and things like that?
Margaret Cannon [00:24:11] That was not as much a law department project, But Horseshoe lake, which had been an existing park in one of our most beautiful spaces, had fallen into some disrepair. And so the city, you know, tore down the existing pavilion and put a new pavilion, put new picnic spaces, put in the play area and all of that. But before we reached the point of the actual reconstruction, there was a heated debate about whether we should have a dog park at Horseshoe Lake, because there had come to be a kind of a informal dog park. And so advocates of continued use as a dog park were very vocal about whether they should continue as a dog park. And the Shaker lakes are also a major flyway for certain species of birds. And don’t ask me why, because I’m no birder. So people who do a lot of birding around the Shaker lakes, you know, felt very strongly that we shouldn’t have any development. And, of course, now, if I didn’t tell you where the redevelopment was at Horseshoe Lake, you’d probably never find it. I mean, it just blends in so well with what is already there. And it had been a park with a pavilion and so forth for many years. It just needed a major upgrade. So.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:25:50] I am going to leave. It was very nice meeting you.
Margaret Cannon [00:25:53] Thanks, Gabby. Glad we finally connected.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:25:56] Yeah, I apologize for all the rescheduling. But it’s interesting. I don’t know if you guys care, but with the birds, there’s actually. There’s a number of species from South America that actually stop in Cleveland during the winter months. And we don’t know why, but, like, during their winter months, so.
Margaret Cannon [00:26:13] Well, and.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:26:14] Cause their winter is now.
Margaret Cannon [00:26:16] And when we were having these discussions and we were having the public hearings about, you know, the reconstruction of Horseshoe Lake, there are, as you know, I’m sure, a number of really serious birding groups that use the lakes because they are such a major, major flyway.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:26:39] It’s kind of cool how many species actually staff here on their way up to Canada, and some actually stay. So I don’t know. I think it’s cool.
Margaret Cannon [00:26:46] Yeah.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:26:47] But thank you. I’ll see you later.
Kelsey Smith [00:26:54] I was going to ask you about the housing issues then a little bit during Mayor Rawson’s-
Margaret Cannon [00:27:01] Well, one of the- One of the strongest assets of Shaker Heights is its housing stock, the quality of its housing stock, the diversity of its housing stock, and the fact that our housing stock, even though much of it is 75 years old, I mean, our house, which is in the new part of Shaker, okay, the part east of Warrensville, was built in 1954. So the older part of Shaker, as you know, I mean, we happen to live in an exceptionally old house by Shaker hand standards. But there are many houses in Shaker, you know, that were built in the ’20s, you know, and ’30s, when Shaker was originally being developed. So one of, in my opinion, one of the greatest things that the city has ever done is to maintain regular exterior inspections and to do a point of sale so that if you’re going to sell your house, you have to complete an interior inspection. And then during Mayor Rawson’s administration, we took the existing point of sale provisions and we said, all right, if you have existing violations that are not going to be corrected by the time of the sale, you have to deposit into an independent escrow 150% of the estimated cost of correcting the violations. Because one of the things that we were finding is that most people, when they move into a new house, they’ve already sort of stretched financially in order to be able to afford the house and the new refrigerator and whatever. And so we had people who had not set aside enough money to correct the violations. And so if they said to the seller, sure, I’ll assume these violations, I’ll take these on, they then really struggle to be able to afford the correction process. So one of the greatest things that the city did, in my opinion, is to say, all right, we’re not going to allow the sale to close until you put the money into escrow. What began to happen in the course of the crash and the latter part of Mayor Rawson’s term, as you know, is that all sorts of just disastrous things begin to occur in the housing market. I mean, people were getting subprime mortgages, mortgage companies were making loans based on, I’m going to call it sketchy information at best, perhaps fraudulent information. You know, as housing prices began to fall, you know, people ended up in houses where the mortgage was substantially greater than the value of the house. So the circumstance became even greater. So the city’s challenges in terms of maintaining its housing stock just increased dramatically. And for a variety of reasons, Cleveland ended up not being the worst area in the foreclosure crisis, but it was the first. And I’ll always remember when we were in the midst of this, and I was talking to Jim Rokakis, who was the county treasurer at the time, and Jim said, well, the only good news is we’re not number one in the nation anymore. And he said, however, we’re not number one in the nation because our situation has gotten significantly better. We’re no longer number one in the nation because other people’s in California and those places has gotten significantly worse. And as you know, it’s an issue with which the entire nation continues to struggle and will struggle for decades.
Kelsey Smith [00:31:28] I don’t really have any more questions. If there’s anything you’d like to add, even just about living in Shaker in general.
Margaret Cannon [00:31:35] Well, one of the things that is most wonderful to me, two of the things that are most wonderful to me, I would say, is Shaker is such a livable community. I mean, before George and I bought our current house, because we knew that we wanted to downsize and we wanted a smaller house, we wanted to be able to live on one floor because much as we loved the South Park carriage house, the only room on the first floor was the family room. So the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, and some of the bedrooms were on the second floor and the rest of the bedrooms were on the third floor. So all the groceries, all the laundry had to go up and down the stairs. So after our daughter had been away in college for a few months, we looked at each other and said, okay, this is ridiculous. Okay, there are two of us here and we don’t want to be at a point as we get older where we have to schlep everything up and down stairs because it just, long term, would not have been viable. So when we started looking for another house, and because of my work, because at the time I was law director for Shaker Heights, Beachwood and Moreland Hills, and I’m still the law director in Beachwood in Moreland Hills. And so we said, all right, we don’t want to be any further east than the Chagrin River, because when I’m coming home from a council meeting at 10 o’clock on a winter’s night, you know, I don’t want to be any further away than that. But within that sort of geographic boundary between the Heights and the Chagrin river, we looked every place and we ultimately settled on Shaker Heights, partly because, you know, it’s a really livable community. It’s got sidewalks, it’s got streetlights. You know, I can walk to the Bertram Woods Library. You know, I mean, the park didn’t go in until after we bought this house, but you know, I can run around the lakes. And so just the day, you know, not only are there sidewalks, but they’re plowed. And so to us, the day to day livable quality of the community was incredibly important. And the other piece, which is at least as important is Shaker Heights is a real community. And obviously not every person in Shaker knows every other person. But you know, when you go to the Shaker Market, or when you go to the arts and music festival, or when you go to the library, when you go to the grocery store, you know people and you have relationships with people. And it’s a wonderfully strong community set of relationships. And that’s, in my experience, very unusual and incredibly valuable.
Kelsey Smith [00:34:53] It’s a very interesting, definitely a very unique community. I’ve never seen anything like it. So in doing all these interviews, I hear a lot of that.
Margaret Cannon [00:35:02] Well, and you know, we normally go to the Heinen’s right over here on Chagrin. And when our daughter was a teenager, you know, a young teen, and you know, middle school and high school, you know, she would say, I’m just not going to the grocery store with you guys, you know, because it takes you two hours to, you know, buy five things at the grocery store. Because you talk, you see everybody, you know, and admittedly, that might have been a little bit different because, you know, George was in education and I was in city government. And so maybe we knew more people than some, but I don’t think so. I mean, that’s just the way the community is. Or, you know, like, you’ll go to the library and you’ll see somebody. You know, we go to the Shaker Market, partly because George has a woodworking business now that he’s, quote, unquote, retired. And so he sells things at the Shaker Market. And it’s just like a neighborhood. And when we haven’t gone for the last couple of years, but for a lot of years, we went to the night for the red and white for the Shaker schools, which Judge Montgomery was one of the people who started. And so the Night for the red and white is just like a big block party where everybody gets dressed up in fancy clothes. But, you know, that’s what it is, and that’s, to have that in a community is a very rare gift. It’s a treasure.
Kelsey Smith [00:36:36] It is.
Margaret Cannon [00:36:38] Where do you live?
Kelsey Smith [00:36:39] I live in Chesterland, so I live across the river.
Margaret Cannon [00:36:42] Yeah.
Kelsey Smith [00:36:44] Cross into- I love when you’re driving in the winter and I come through Gates Mills and the roads are clear and you can just see where the line is. But I live in an 1838 house, so I was very interested in a 1845 house.
Margaret Cannon [00:37:01] It’s a nifty house. And I don’t know if George told you, but the people who live in it now, Dick and Jude Park. Dick teaches history at US, and they have completely decorated the house as it would have been at the time it was built. It’s really amazing.
Kelsey Smith [00:37:29] My mom does the same thing. She’s actually a folk artist, and she does 18th and 19th century folk art painting.
Margaret Cannon [00:37:37] Well, and Dick and Judy have done a lot of that. And the stenciling on the walls and everything.
Kelsey Smith [00:37:44] Yeah stencils and all that. She does it for other people as well, but obviously she does it in our house.
Margaret Cannon [00:37:50] You know where to find me if you have any other questions.
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