Sunday, March 21, 1999
Race St. tower to be razed
Retail area renewal is city goal
BY LISA DONOVAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
When the wrecking ball smashes through downtown Cincinnati's Fifth & Race Tower Monday, it will begin what officials hope is a rebirth for the retail site.
Over the next six months, the city will knock down the 14-story tower and surrounding structure to make way for a department store — possibly the upscale Seattle-based Nordstrom — in the downtown retail core.
On Friday, a crew with Security Fence Group Inc. of Northside put up 10-foot-tall plywood barriers in the curb lane on the west side of Race Street. The entire demolition project includes tearing down the Fifth & Race Tower, the Convention Way walkway between Race Street and the Regal Hotel, and the former Neisner Building and Parkade Garage at Sixth and Race streets. With few exceptions, the area should remain open to pedestrians and traffic.
Bay City, Mich.-based Dore and Associates Contracting Inc. won the $768,900 demolition contract for the tower. The second phase of demolition will be the Parkade garage, closed in late February because of structural problems. It's scheduled to go out for bid next week.
City Economic Development Director Andi Udris said the demolition of the office and retail space, which included tenants Walgreen's and Burger King, as well as the Par kade, will pave the way for a more marketable retail spot and better parking.
“Our retail is concentrating at Fifth and Race,” Mr. Udris said. “The office building was obsolete years ago. They were having trouble leasing it from the get-go.”
Former mayor Arn Bortz is happy to see the Fifth and Race structure go.
“It really has no merit, architectural or otherwise,” said Mr. Bortz, whose Towne Properties is developing Shillito Place, the former downtown Lazarus building at Seventh and Race streets, into apartments and stores.
“We need to be mindful of the. .. decent architecture from the late 19th century and balance some of these mega projects with the (architecture) that sets downtown Cincinnati apart from Blue Ash and others,” he said.
What will go up once the Fifth & Race structure comes down remains to be seen.
The city and the Fifth & Race developer, Western-Southern Life Insurance Co.'s subsidiary Eagle Realty Group, have been working to put a retail tenant on the site. The plan was to build a department store and a 700-space or larger garage. A pad atop the structure would accommodate an office tower.
But the deal to put an upscale Maison Blanche department store in the space collapsed this year when the store's parent, Mercantile Stores Co. Inc., was acquired by Dillard's Inc. Dillard's has not picked up Mercantile's non-binding agreement to put a store at Fifth & Race.
A spokesman for Western-Southern's real estate arm would not say which retailer it's talking to about the site.
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