BY LUCY MAY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The Cincinnati Reds spent $300,000 to play ball on the riverfront. The team's contribution accounted for nearly 60 percent of the $511,630 raised to defeat a referendum that would have put a new ballpark at Broadway Commons.
Cincinnati financier Carl Lindner, a part-owner of the team, contributed $10,000.
"It was critical to us that we have success in getting our location here on the riverfront," Reds Managing Executive John Allen said Friday. "The margin of victory in the election shows that we did get the message out."
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TOP RIVERFRONT CONTRIBUTORS
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These individuals and organizations made some of the biggest contributions to put a new Reds stadium on the riverfront:
Cincinnati Reds:
$300,000.
Cincinnati Bengals: $50,000.
Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce:
$32,500.
Procter & Gamble: $30,000.
Carl H. Lindner: $10,000.
Fifth Third Bank of Kentucky: $6,000.
Cincinnati Bell: $5,000.
Cincinnati Milacron: $5,000.
Cinergy Services: $5,000.
Comair: $5,000.
Delta Air Lines: $5,000.
Federated Corporate Services: $5,000.
John J. Schiff Jr.: $5,000.
Seasongood & Mayer: $5,000.
Star Bank: $5,000.
Frisch's Restaurants: $3,000.
Sencorp: $3,000.
Toyota Motor Manufacturing North America: $3,000.
Source: Campaign finance report
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The referendum - Issue 11 - was defeated nearly 2 to 1, with voters endorsing the riverfront site just west of the Crown, known as Baseball on Main or the "Wedge."
According to campaign finance reports filed Friday, the pro-riverfront group spent $511,630, more than twice the amount spent by backers of the Broadway Commons site at Broadway and Reading Road.
Cincinnati City Councilman Jim Tarbell, Broadway's biggest booster, said he wasn't surprised that his campaign was outspent by so much. In fact, he thinks riverfront supporters were surprised that Broadway supporters were able to force the issue on the ballot.
"The only way they could win at that point was with money," he said. "I thought it would be more."
Riverfront backers say they had to catch up with the years that Mr. Tarbell and others had spent promoting Broadway.
"I think we had a harder task and a very short time to do it in," said John Schneider, chairman of the pro-riverfront Move Greater Cincinnati Forward campaign. "We had a very complicated message, and the only way to tell it was visually."
That translated into more than $300,000 to Bonnie K. White & Associates, Hamilton County Commissioner Bob Bedinghaus's former employer, for television commercials and newspaper ads.
The campaign also paid Greg Haas Consulting of Columbus nearly $74,000 for a direct mailing piece and work on a phone bank. Mr. Schneider, who promoted the riverfront site for two years before becoming the campaign's chairman, was paid nearly $14,000, and his First Valley Corp. was paid about $8,000 for consulting.
Mr. Bedinghaus said supporters of the riverfront site weren't shy about raising whatever it took to get their message across.
"I think this will go down in history as the vote that solidified Cincinnati's riverfront for generations to come," he said. "And I think that's something worth fighting for."
The Broadway Commons campaign spent just over $200,000 over the life of the campaign, its campaign finance reports show. But the group still has about $70,000 in unpaid bills and $80,000 in outstanding loans.
Mr. Tarbell sent a letter Friday to the 1,200 people who circulated petitions to force the stadium issue on the ballot. The letter asks them to help retire the debt and invites them to a Broadway Commons banquet Jan. 15 at The Phoenix downtown.
The pro-riverfront campaign has a debt, too, of nearly $70,000. But Mr. Bedinghaus said he doesn't expect the group will have any trouble paying it off since it won.
Among the other major contributors to the pro-riverfront campaign were the Cincinnati Bengals, which gave $50,000. The Bengals contributed $300,000 to the million-dollar campaign to pass the stadium sales tax in 1996. The Bengals stadium is now under construction.
The Reds did not contribute during the 1996 campaign, but Reds CEO Marge Schott retired the campaign's debt of about $41,000.
"Mike Brown takes it on the chin," Mr. Bedinghaus said of the Bengals president. "But when we talked to Mike Brown, he didn't miss a breath before contributing. He was convinced it was in the community's best interests to embrace the whole riverfront vision."
The Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce contributed a total of $32,500, as well as giving more than $6,000 of in-kind contributions of campaign buttons and flyers.
Some of the community's biggest corporate citizens contributed, too, including Procter and Gamble Co., which gave $30,000.
"Cincinnati is our home, and we have a vested interest in its future," said Simon Denegri, a spokesman for the company.
He stressed that the company thought both sides of the stadium campaign made good arguments. But the company thought the riverfront site for the Reds offered the best chance to develop the city's central riverfront and offered the best chance at creating a housing and retail development at Broadway Commons, he said.
Several members of the team that underwrote the bond issues for the Bengals stadium also contributed to the riverfront campaign. Seasongood & Mayer gave $5,000, Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith of New York gave $5,000, Connors & Co. gave $2,500 and Quantum Capital Corp. gave $1,000.
Public Financial Management of Philadelphia, the county's financial consultant on stadium matters, gave $2,500.
