Cleveland residents who use Rockefeller Park are demanding critical lighting repairs be made at three historic bridges as soon as possible.
Runners and walkers, who use the two-mile stretch of park along Martin Luther King Boulevard, told News 5 the bridge lights have been out for more than two years.
Cleveland safety advocate Robert Carillio said the dozens of broken Rockefeller Park bridge lights are under the control of Cleveland Public Power.
Carillio told News 5 he contacted the utility company more than a dozen times about the hazardous lighting issues at the park, but said, so far, CPP has done nothing.
"I've called the Mayor's action line, I've called CPP," said Carillio. "I've emailed them, I've reported these things, I've encouraged other people to do it, and you go by there, and they're still dead."
Carillio also pointed to a number of broken and vandalized lighting fixtures. In some cases, the wiring to the lights are left hanging down over the sidewalk.
"What is going to have to happen down there before they finally wake up and say we have a problem here?" said Carillio.
"Well somebody could get attacked, and could it be because all of those bridges are just shrouded in darkness at night."
News 5 contacted Cleveland Public Power about the issue. We received this statement in response:
"Cleveland Public Power is committed to providing a safe environment for pedestrians and runners throughout the city of Cleveland. We have found that a wiring and circuit issue is the source of an outage under the 1-90 underpass on MLK and an order has been issued to repair this within the next week.
The underpasses located at St. Clair and Superior Avenues are part of an upgrade project that is currently in progress but in the interim, we will add flood lights to the poles outside of these areas and direct the light into the underpass."
