Saturday, March 13, 1999
Ramp may squeeze new park
Stadium area being tweaked for traffic flow
BY LUCY MAY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A new proposal to ease riverfront traffic could put the squeeze on park space just south of the new Reds ballpark.
Consultants unveiled the idea of a ramp to connect Broadway to the riverfront road network during a meeting Friday of the Cincinnati-Hamilton County Riverfront Steering Committee.
The ramp would run east from the new Second Street, to be built as part of the city's $146.9 overhaul of Fort Washington Way.
The ramp would better serve major employers Western-Southern Life Insurance Co. and Procter & Gamble Co., said Don Carter, the consultant from Urban Design Associates in Pittsburgh, which oversees riverfront planning.
“But we'd be pinching the Reds,” he said, because the new ramp would mean shifting the Reds ballpark about 50 feet south.
Shifting the Reds means eating into the thin ribbon of green space planned just south of the Reds stadium.
Already, planners are looking into extending that part of the riverfront park into the river.
“If we extend much further into the Ohio River, perhaps we can make that a Kentucky state park,” joked Jack Wilson, director of the Cincinnati Park Board, which is planning as much as 50 acres of riverfront park land.
Dave Prather, a park board official working on the riverfront plan, said the park can extend only so far into the river because that section already is difficult to navigate.
Park planners have had preliminary talks with the Army Corps of Engineers, he said. He doesn't yet know how much it would cost to extend the park into the river.
Park planners want to connect the new, central riverfront park space with Cincinnati's existing riverfront parks to the east. The land south of the Firstar Center and the new Reds ballpark is the place to provide that connection.
Plus, Paddle Wheel Park, designed to commemorate the city's riverboat heritage with a 60-ton paddle wheel, was planned near the foot of Broad way just south of the new stadium.
Mr. Carter said the question will be, “Are we pinching Paddle Wheel Park out of existence?”
A 150-foot tower planned for Paddle Wheel Park has been put on hold until planners can study whether it would interfere with the new ballpark.
An all-day meeting will be held March 31 to discuss how to make everything work on that part of the riverfront. Mr. Carter said the architects designing the new ballpark might find a creative solution.
“Baseball parks are kind of elastic,” he said. “You can kind of squeeze them a little bit and get some eccentricities based on the site.”
The committee also discussed the riverfront street system.
Consultants are studying whether streets should be one-way, two-way or a combination. Mayor Roxanne Qualls asked planners to keep in mind that the riverfront is being developed for pedestrians and not cars.
“There is a tremendous amount of public subsidy going into the creation of this grid system. Part of the value of that is based on people actually patronizing and attending and being present on the riverfront,” she said. “Anything that works against that goal really needs to be scrutinized.”
Mr. Carter agreed, saying his bias is for two-way streets because they're safer for pedestrians and better for the businesses on the riverfront.
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