BY LUCY MAY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Hamilton County has a new vision -- and a new price tag -- for riverfront parking to serve downtown office workers and new stadiums for the Bengals and the Reds.
Hamilton County Commissioner Bob Bedinghaus views the parking plans as the final piece of the three goals the county set out to accomplish after voters approved a sales tax increase to fund the construction of the two new stadiums.
"From where we sit, this is the final step in the development we started in 1996," he said.
The latest two parking plans, obtained by The Cincinnati Enquirer -->through an Ohio public records request, each cost roughly $88 million to build.
That cost does not include the price of land owned by Hilltop Basic Resources needed in the two new plans. It also doesn't include millions of dollars in roadwork that would be built to connect city streets to the garages envisioned on the riverfront.
County officials have not settled on a parking configuration and do not plan to until after they discuss the options with the city of Cincinnati and other groups such as Downtown Cincinnati Inc., the downtown marketing group known as DCI. The city would be responsible for commercial developments built on top of the garages.
But their latest revenue projections make Mr. Bedinghaus confident the county can afford any of the options, with monthly riverfront parking rates ranging from $45 to $100, based on 2002 dollars.
All the parking plans assume a new Reds ballpark would be built on the riverfront at the site known as Baseball on Main or the "Wedge." That assumption is the subject of the Issue 11 ballot measure, which asks voters to reject the riverfront by creating a county charter that would require commissioners to build any new Reds ballpark at Broadway and Reading Road.
Cincinnati City Councilman Jim Tarbell, the biggest booster of the Broadway Commons site, said it isn't "appropriate" for the county to be working on such plans before the vote Nov. 3.
"Their parking suggestions change every day, and it seems like they're making it up as they go along," he said.
One of the latest parking plans includes a county-funded 850-space garage at Third Street and Broadway on property owned by Western-Southern Life Insurance Co.
Mr. Tarbell pointed to that garage as proof that powerful downtown businesses are involved in the stadium debate because of the riverfront parking.
Western-Southern spokesman Herb Brown said he was not familiar with the specific plans for the garage, but the company certainly was not pushing a stadium site to try to get parking out of it.
