BY JANET C. WETZEL
The Cincinnati Enquirer
MIDDLETOWN -- Taxpayers might wind up spending $18 million to raze the roof over downtown shopping.
City commissioners are studying a plan that would remove the canopy from the City Centre Mall, a shopping center plagued with vacant storefronts and struggling businesses.
The city commission will discuss the plan at its meeting today. But a dispute is brewing among business owners over whether the city's plan will save the struggling mall, which has about two dozen tenants. The cure could kill them, some merchants say.
The canopy was put in place in the mid-1970s at a cost of about $3 million, most of which was paid for by the federal government. It was described by one city official Monday as "one of the biggest white elephants I've seen government fund in the history of Middletown."
"We've wasted money on this mistake year after year," said Jim Armbruster, city commission chairman.
The climate-controlled mall is thought to be one of the first in the country to have incorporated existing streets and buildings under one roof.
It also is one of the last of its kind in existence, according to Charles VanRenterghem, director of The Downtown Middletown Partnership Inc., a non-profit organization that is working to revitalize downtown.
The mall has no traditional anchor store; its fortunes seemed to teeter when Swallen's, it's largest tenant, closed in late 1995. Residents and officials say it is poorly lit, lacks trendy stores and has few shoppers.
"It is outdated, inconvenient, uninviting and overall dysfunctional," Mr. VanRenterghem said.
City Manager Ron Olson said officials "intended to create a good, active retail area. What they didn't foresee was all the activity around I-75. Downtown has no hope of competing with that." In addition to removing the roof, the $18 million proposal would restore storefronts and reopen Central Avenue.
Those costs are a bargain, officials say, compared with the estimated $30 million over 20 years that it would cost to repair and maintain the structure.
Still, the mall has its defenders.
"It's not ugly and dark as some people say," said Milton Krumbein, president - owner of Worthmore Clothes, whose store has operated here for 75 years.
He said the estimated two to three years of construction to remove the canopy would destroy the retail businesses.
"If someone wants to buy a suit at Worthmore Clothes, they're not going to put on a hard hat to come in and try it on."
