Saturday, August 21, 1999
Riverfront park a place to breathe
Green-space plans on the way to city council
BY LUCY MAY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Six-acre lawn would stretch from Mehring Way to the river's edge.
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A $71 million central riverfront park would offer a place for picnics along the river's edge, a fountain for kids to frolic and a path for cycling in the shadow of the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge.
New drawings of Cincinnati's proposed 51-acre park and a report that describes it were scheduled to be delivered this morning to city officials. The drawings offer a ground-level glimpse of the new park, which likely won't be finished until 2005 or 2006.
The proposed park has been billed as one of the major public benefits of the nearly $1 billion taxpayers are spending to spruce up the riverfront with a new football stadium, a new Reds ballpark and a reconfigured Fort Washington Way.
But for Cincinnati Park Board President Marian Lindberg, the park would simply provide relief from downtown's bricks, asphalt and traffic.
“The human psyche just needs a space to take a deep breath,” Mrs. Lindberg said. “I think it's, perhaps, a matter of keeping our sanity with just a little space to move or breathe.”
The park's main portion is 35 acres stretching from Central Avenue to Main Street. Its features include:
• A 6-acre lawn, stretching from a reconfigured Mehring Way to the river's edge. It would offer an open green space for viewing the river, the Suspension Bridge and occasional concerts.
• A 6-acre festival-event space above Mehring Way, stretching between Elm and Main streets. The area would accommodate festivals under the shade of trees and without any cars. A carousel and playground would keep the area active between festivals, and there would be room to accommodate a seasonal ice-skating rink.
• A large, interactive fountain where children and adults could play in the water's spray.
• A continuous bike path.
• An accessible walk along the length of the park that links the existing public landing to a similar cobblestone wharf west of Race Street. Planners envision a 400-foot-long dock for pleasure craft just south of the Bengals' new Paul Brown Stadium.
Park planners also want to commemorate the accomplishments of the Big Red Machine on the site of Cinergy Field, which will be torn down to finish construction of the new Reds ballpark just west of Firstar Center.
The new price tag for the park includes $61.4 million for construction, which includes a 10-percent contingency, architecture, construction management and engineering fees and is based on a 2003 start for construction. It does not include street infrastructure, property acquisition or construction of restaurants or the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center's garden block.
The total cost also includes a $9.6 million endowment to help maintain the park. Planners also expect the park's restaurants and concessions to generate income to be used for maintenance.
The westernmost portion of the proposed park is a 16-acre parcel owned by Hilltop Basic Resources. Hamilton County lawyers have been negotiating with Hilltop to buy the land, but no deals have been announced.
Should the land be acquired for park space, planners want to turn it into a grass meadow with informal play fields that could accommodate baseball, football or soccer. An alternative use would be a marina.
The new report does not discuss the idea of building an extension of the park out into the river just south of the new Reds stadium, something planners are considering.
For about two years, planners from the Cincinnati Park Board, the Cincinnati Recreation Commission and consultants KZF Inc. and Hargreaves Associates have been planning the park.
While at times other projects on the riverfront have threatened to squeeze parts of the park out of existence, the pressure those projects presented encouraged planners to make decisions more quickly and helped create momentum for the plan, said Kirt Rieder, an associate with Hargreaves Associates in Cambridge, Mass., and the project landscape architect.
In addition to being the one major attraction planned for the riverfront that doesn't require paying admission, planners argue the park is important for the future of downtown housing and economic development.
“Part of economic development is quality of life,” said Todd Ward, Gov. Bob Taft's economic development representative in Cincinnati, a member of the park's advisory council.
The more amenities a city has, the easier it is for its big corporations to attract and keep top people, Mr. Ward said.
Providing the cultural infrastructure of parks, open space and amenities like sports and museums also makes a community a more attractive place for developers, said Jack Rouse, chairman of the Cincinnati Riverfront Advisory Commission that's developing recommendations for other types of development between the two sports facilities.
“It is what drives the economic health of the region and attracts developers,” said Mr. Rouse, whose group expects to make its recommendations toward the end of September.
The Rouse group has been work ing closely with park planners to make sure the two plans complement each other.
“I can't think of anything more important on the riverfront than the parks and riverfront housing,” Mr. Rouse said.
The Rouse report will include features the park plan lacks, such as a restaurant at the southwest corner of the new Theodore M. Berry Way and Race Street, said Dave Prather, a park board official overseeing the plan.
That's only because park planners haven't updated their drawings to catch up with the Rouse group's thinking, Mr. Prather said.
“This is the beginning of the beginning,” he said.
The next step for park planners will be the “preliminary design,” where they take a closer look at how all the pieces of the park fit together and how they might be able to pay for the project.
Mrs. Lindberg said she expects any funding plan to include a mix of private contributions and public dollars.
“We will explore absolutely every possible source,” she said. “There will be no stone left unturned.”
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