Lee Road is getting a serious visual upgrade. Six new murals are appearing on buildings throughout the Cedar Lee Arts District in Cleveland Heights, with several already completed and more underway, while two additional installations are reshaping Coventry Village to the north.
The public art push carries a price tag of more than $250,000, according to Cleveland.com, and is led by the nonprofit Heights Arts, which hired LAND studio to manage the eight total projects. The funding traces back to American Rescue Plan Act dollars awarded by the City of Cleveland Heights to Heights Arts, part of a broader $2.5 million distribution the city made across 15 local nonprofits after soliciting proposals in June 2023, according to a City of Cleveland Heights announcement. That allocation was itself a slice of the roughly $38 million in federal pandemic relief funds the city was required to distribute by late 2026, as reported by NEOtrans.
Six Murals Split Along Lee Road
The Cedar Lee murals are distributed with two north of Cedar Road and four to the south, according to Cleveland.com's reporting. Artist Dante Rodriguez was selected for the Green Olive building at 2214 Lee Road, while Thao Nguyen's work is going up on the Cain Park Bicycle building at 1904 Lee Road. Justin Michael Will was chosen for the Anatolia office building at 2280 Lee Road, and Crystal Miller and Ewuresi Archer were selected together for the Central Outreach building at 2040 Lee Road.
Raphael Valdivieso is bringing his design to the Cozumel Mexican Restaurant building at 2196 Lee Road. And at the Cedar Lee Theatre itself, 2163 Lee Road, artist Arlin Graff's mural depicts migratory barn swallows. The theater's building owner selected Graff's design from a curated list of finalists, per Heights Arts, and the piece marks only the second mural ever installed on that structure — the first mural, by artist Robert Muller, was installed in 2001, during Heights Arts' inaugural year, when founding executive director Peggy Spaeth led a mural project, according to Heights Arts.
A Steep Screening Process
More than 200 artists applied to paint the six Cedar Lee buildings, Cleveland.com reports. LAND studio, which handled the vetting after entering into a project agreement with Heights Arts in April 2025, narrowed that pool down to 50 candidates, then 30, then a final list of 15, before building owners in the Cedar Lee Special Improvement District were asked to identify their top three artists, after which the public art team and LAND studio matched finalists with buildings. Artists were ultimately judged on artistic quality, experience, site compatibility, and their connections to Cleveland Heights, per the seed report.
LAND studio was formed in 2003 through the merger of the nonprofits Cleveland Public Art and Park-Works, and it managed Cleveland's municipal public art program until 2022, as Hoodline previously detailed in its coverage of a similar sculpture initiative in Cleveland's Buckeye Corridor. The firm is managing public-space design and civic-art work for the Cleveland Heights projects.
Coventry Village's Two New Landmarks
North of Cedar Lee, Coventry Village is getting its own additions. Artist Jordan Wong's installation sits at the north end of Coventry Road near Mayfield Road, an area known for its growing cluster of Asian restaurants and locally described as Little Asia Town, according to both Cleveland.com and Heights Arts. Coventry Village is home to more than 50 small businesses along its commercial strip, per Heights Arts. According to the City of Cleveland Heights Strategic Development Plan 2011, the Coventry Village Business District and easy access to downtown were the two attributes to its success.
At the south end of Coventry Road, artist Marika Shioiri-Clark's installation lands at Harvey Pekar Park, the corner dedicated in July 2015 to honor the late American Splendor comic creator, who tested material on passing crowds at that intersection starting in the 1960s, as the Times of Israel reported when the park was dedicated. Pekar lived and died in Cleveland Heights. Shioiri-Clark's piece was designed as a functional structure — a performance venue during public events and a casual seating or play space the rest of the time — planned in coordination with the Coventry Village Special Improvement District.
Timed to a Wave of Anniversaries
The rollout lands squarely in the middle of several milestone years for Cleveland Heights. Heights Arts is marking its 25th anniversary in 2026, having been established after a 2000 citywide visioning process. The Cedar Lee Theatre — which opened on Christmas Day in 1925 as a 1,100-seat single-screen house showing “The King on Main Street” and hosted the first Cleveland International Film Festival in 1977 — is celebrating its own centennial this year, according to Cleveland Historical. Cleveland Heights High School is also marking its 100th anniversary in 2026, per Cleveland.com.
The new public art is meant to establish the Cedar Lee Arts District as a center for arts and culture, adding gathering spaces and points of interest throughout Cleveland Heights, according to the seed report. That placemaking goal echoes broader efforts in the districts to drive foot traffic, including the 2026 Heights Music Hop in late August, which featured 90 acts across 46 venues in four Cleveland Heights districts and was the festival's largest lineup to date, per FreshWater Cleveland.
The murals arrive as Cleveland Heights continues to work through years of federal pandemic relief spending on the arts, a process that has drawn scrutiny elsewhere in the region. Cleveland's own $3 million COVID-era arts fund has drawn criticism and accountability concerns, Hoodline reported in April. In Cleveland Heights, the Cedar Lee mural received approval from the Cleveland Heights Landmark Commission, according to Heights Arts.
