Tuesday, January 26, 1999
Riverfront commission ready to go
'Not building a theme park'
BY LUCY MAY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Jack Rouse took the lectern in his first official act as chairman of the Cincinnati Riverfront Advisory Commission and told his audience what the city's central riverfront will not be.
“This will not be CCM south,” he said Monday, referring to the musical theater program at College-Conservatory of Music that he began in 1969.
“We are not building a theme park. We're not building Daytona,” he said, referring to projects designed by his downtown firm, Jack Rouse Associates.
What the new riverfront will be, he said, is a regional front door that is uniquely ours. A development that tells the world that this is Cincinnati — not a cookie-cutter design found in other places.
“We're creating a special place for people that can't be reproduced or duplicated anywhere else,” he said.
That philosophy, Cincinnati and Hamilton County leaders said, is one of the primary reasons Mr. Rouse, 59, was selected as the chief caretaker of the riverfront's future.
The new group he will lead, formed early last month by Cincinnati City Council and the Hamilton County commissioners, is charged with studying the area bounded by Fourth Street to the north, the Ohio River to the south, the Brent Spence Bridge to the west and the L&N Bridge to the east.
In that area, the city and county already have started the riverfront's rebirth:
• In August 2000, the Bengals new Paul Brown Stadium is scheduled to open to the west.
• At the same time, the city's massive reconstruction of Fort Washington Way is scheduled to be finished, freeing up 14 acres of riverfront land for development.
• In 2003, a new Reds ballpark will sit to the east, just next to the Crown.
• That same year, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center expects to open its museum in between, at the entrance to the Roebling Suspension Bridge.
• And to the south, as planners envision it, a riverfront park will become the place where the community can hold its biggest celebrations.
The question is: What kinds of businesses should be built atop the parking garages the county plans to build to connect the football stadium and baseball park?
Mr. Rouse's 16-member panel will be charged with finding the right development for the community and making a recommendation to city council and the county commissioners.
“This group's charge is to make sure that there's icing on the cake,” County Commissioner Bob Bedinghaus said.
The commission is made up of radio executives, architects, professors and entrepreneurs.
What they all have in common, Mr. Rouse said, is experience in figuring out what audiences and customers want and then giving it to them in a way that succeeds.
Mr. Rouse said commission members' understanding of consumers and the importance of a “sense of place” means that they will look out for the riverfront — parks and all.
“I don't think anyone in their right mind who looks at this sea of concrete would dream of not doing something green,” he said, looking out the window of Cinergy Corp.'s 29th-floor conference room, where the panel was introduced.
“People don't like gray. They like green.”
City Councilman Phil Heimlich, one of the leaders of the effort, said the most important thing is that Mr. Rouse is the right person for the job.
“What we were looking for was expertise,” he said. “We want Jack Rouse to do for our riverfront what he's done for cities around the world.”
City council and the county commissioners still must officially approve the group's membership, but that doesn't appear to be a problem.
For more than a year, the riverfront planning process has suffered stops and starts. After months of planning, city council killed a proposal last April for a family entertainment district.
City Manager John Shirey and the city managers of Newport and Covington then offered a joint development strategy, while several council members offered a competing strategy.
Nothing came of those ideas, either.
Finally, the riverfront advisory group was born.
Cincinnati Business Committee executive director Laura Long, a member of the commission and formerly Newport's economic development director, stressed those steps should not be viewed as failures.
“That is a natural evolution of development,” she said. “It's what I call the percolating process.”
Ideas are developed and tested, she said.
“There's no fault, there's no blame; you just test it,” she said.
Cincinnati Riverfront Advisory Commission
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