CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cleveland’s tortured relationship with Burke Lakefront Airport runs deeper than a debate over aviation — it reflects our chronic failure to think big.

That a shabby little airport has squatted on Cleveland’s most valuable waterfront for 78 years says less about the land’s limitations than our leaders’ lack of imagination. For the first time in decades, that’s starting to change.

What’s on the table is a once-in-a-century opportunity: 450 acres of downtown, city-owned shoreline — a scale no modern city would devote to a shrinking airport serving a small, wealthy slice of the population. If Cleveland announced tomorrow that it had suddenly acquired such a tract, leaders would be tripping over each other to imagine parks, neighborhoods, trails and public spaces. Yet bec

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