August 11, 2015
A grand opening was held for a newly built rapid transit station in the University Circle neighborhood on the east side of Cleveland. This station, which is part of the Red Line of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority — best known as RTA — is specifically located at the intersection of Mayfield Road (part of U.S. Route 322) and East 119th Street. In addition, the station is near the west end of Little Italy (the historic center of the city’s Italian American community).
Construction on Little Italy-University Circle station began in October 2013. This facility replaced a nearby Red Line station at the intersection of Euclid Avenue (part of U.S. Route 20) and East 120th Street. Euclid-East 120th station, which was deemed functionally obsolete after having been in service since 1955, remains the only RTA station to be permanently closed. Little Italy-University Circle station has the added distinction of being the first Red Line station to be opened since the 1969 introduction of the one bordering Cleveland and its fellow Cuyahoga County city of Brook Park.
Those participating in the ribbon-cutting ceremony for Little Italy-University Circle station included Frank G. Jackson, mayor of Cleveland; Joe Calabrese, chief executive officer and general manager of RTA; and Valarie J. McCall, Cleveland’s chief of government & international affairs and also the vice chair (and later chair) of the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) Board of Directors.
Chris Ronayne, who was serving at the time as president of the neighborhood advocacy organization named University Circle, Inc. and is now Cuyahoga County executive, highlighted the potential benefits of the new station. “The opening of the Little Italy-University Circle Red Line Station is incredibly exciting for University Circle,” he asserted. “A connector between University Circle, Little Italy, Downtown and the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, this new station will improve transit access to our neighborhood and is an important step towards building University Circle as a complete neighborhood.”
The artwork within the Little Italy-University station includes terrazzo flooring with a leaf pattern designed by Susie Frazier; chandelier sculpture elements created by Jennifer Cecere and on display in the headhouse (the part of a station not containing any tracks or platforms); and Italian poetry engraved into the facility’s lobby steps by Gabriella Mileti.
The RTA Red Line encompasses 18 stations altogether. This line covers a total of 19 miles (31 kilometers).
Photo Credit: Cards84664 (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en)
For more information on the Little Italy-University Circle station, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Italy%E2%80%93University_Circle_station
Additional information on the opening of this station is available at https://www.metro-magazine.com/10036584/cleveland-rta-unveils-new-little-italy-university-circle-station
Transportation History 
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