BY PAUL DAUGHERTY
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Now that city and county public servants are done congratulating themselves for their efforts at giving away the vault to the Cincinnati Bengals, they can start trying to please the Reds.

(By the way, thank goodness council-person Jeanette Cissell is all right. The way she sprinted for that radio interview just before midnight Saturday, I feared she'd pulled a hamstring.)

It's almost too scary to contemplate. The Bengals deal was like giving birth. But with the Bengals, we dealt with a rational human being. Mike Brown knew what he wanted, and how to get it. Boy, did he ever.

Now, it's . . . Marge. Who, despite her Baseball-ordered exile, is still a player. It's Carl Lindner, who is accountable to no one, and has his own interests to serve. It's Bud Selig, Baseball's interim commissioner for life, and National League president Len Coleman.

It's Reds stand-in CEO John Allen, who is caught squarely in the middle. Allen must feel like a grape in a vise.

There is money for the Reds. Or there isn't. The Wedge will work. No, it won't. A Cinergy Field makeover is unacceptable. Au contraire, we'd love it. When Yogi Berra said, ''In baseball, you don't know nothin','' he wasn't talking about building stadiums. He should have been.

Causes not always popular

The only sane answer is Broadway Commons.

I know. We've been down this road before. We've worn it into a rut. We are told there are two options on the table. Broadway is No. 3.

I don't care. Great causes aren't always popular. And Broadway is one great cause.

I'm not an architect, but the architects like it. I'm not an urban planner, but the urban planners like it. I'm not even a dreamer. But Jim Tarbell is.

''We have one choice left to provide some sanity,'' Tarbell said. He has been talking about Broadway Commons for five years. I remember meeting Tarbell there in 1994, just after he'd painted the parking lot at Eggleston and Central Parkway a rich, baseball green.

He laid out his vision then. He didn't sound like a self-promoting nut. He said then what he says now: A ballpark at Broadway would spur the sort of development needed to keep downtown vital.

Tarbell is no gadfly. He is an urban animal. He grew up downtown. He attended the old St. Xavier High. He lived downtown for 16 years. He met his wife there. His children were born at home, downtown. He has rehabbed more than a dozen buildings there.

Tarbell has vision

He lives in Clifton now; his soul stayed a few miles distant. ''My entertainment, '' he said. ''My work, my cultural life, is all downtown.''

He's a huckster, sure. But he's one of the few people in this mess who has the city's welfare at heart. He is not a Fourth Street bigshot. He is not under Fourth Street's thumb. He owns no property downtown; Tarbell rents the building that houses his restaurant.

He has a vision the politicians either don't have, or are afraid to use. It's time to take him seriously.

I believe the Reds still have an open mind about Broadway, despite the riverfront leanings of Lindner and Schott. I believe the Reds will go where they feel they can get the best deal. If the team's contribution to the project is comparable at each place, you tell me what's better:

A rehabbed Cinergy Field, which wouldn't be open until 2002? Or a new Broadway, ready for Opening Day 2001? A print, or an original? The chance to spread the economic wealth downtown? Or concentrate it on the river, leaving downtown more barren than it is now?

Broadway is beautiful. Go look at it sometime, from the corner of Eggleston and Central, toward the green slope of Mount Adams. Broadway is practical: A new playpen, finished earlier than a made-over Cinergy.

Broadway works. ''We've got to start doing things differently,'' Jim Tarbell said Monday. Who's arguing that?

REDS PAGE

Enquirer columnist Paul Daugherty welcomes your comments at 768-8454.

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