Thursday, September 30, 1999
Plan for riverfront: Join with downtown
BY LUCY MAY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A plan for Cincinnati's central riverfront to be unveiled this morning will recommend creating a new, waterfront neighborhood filled with apartments and condominiums, shops, restaurants and green space to reconnect downtown with its Ohio River roots.
But the Cincinnati Riverfront Advisory Commission's recommendations also will cost about $50 million more than the $196 million that city and Hamilton County officials have budgeted for parking, utilities and riverfront roadwork.
With city and county officials already stretching their budgets for the community's $1 billion riverfront transformation, the question of money is sure to become the 16-member advisory commission's most immediate challenge.
“It looked delightful,” said Hamilton County Commissioner John Dowlin, who was briefed on the plan Wednesday. “But
where do we come up with the money to do it?”
The advisory group insists none of its recommendations would require any new taxes. Mr. Dowlin questions whether the city or county has enough resources to cover whatever part of the $50 million funding gap needs to be publicly subsidized.
The group's recommendations will include:
• Building a structure over part of the reconstructed Fort Washington Way. The $39 million undertaking would create a 1,200-foot tunnel for drivers with a park-like setting on top to help connect the riverfront development and downtown.
• Moving $17 million worth of parking garages from the riverfront to three locations north of Third Street. The group argues that would help spur back-burner development plans in that part of downtown and clear prime riverfront land for other types of development.
The group expects that development between the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge and the new Paul Brown Stadium could be completed in 2003. Development between the suspension bridge and the new Reds ballpark could be completed in 2006, according to minutes of the panel's Sept. 20 meeting obtained by The Cincinnati Enquirer through an Ohio Open Records Act request.
That gives city and county officials — and the community — time to decide which parts of the plan to embrace and which parts need tweaking, said Hamilton County Commissioner Bob Bedinghaus.
But the advisory group doesn't want the city, county or community to take so long to decide that the development never happens.
That's why the advisory panel will recommend the creation of a smaller oversight group to help ensure the recommendations become “more than a wish list,” said Norm Miller, director of the University of Cincinnati's real estate program and a commission member.
The recommendations concerning Fort Washington Way and parking are an attempt to make sure all the money being invested in the riverfront will pay off for the rest of downtown, too, said Jack Rouse, chairman of the riverfront advisers.
Mainly, though, the recommendations are designed to create a new, downtown neighborhood complete with housing, shops, restaurants and office space. In some ways, that design re-creates the riverfront that existed generations ago.
“To that extent, we're going back to the river,” Mr. Rouse said. “What was a good idea a few hundred years ago is still a good idea.”
This time, though, these homes, shops, offices and restaurants will be built on parking garages designed to lift the structures out of the flood plain and provide the parking needed for the Bengals, the Reds, Firstar Center, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and downtown office workers.
That parking, in fact, is designed to meet so many needs that it's unclear whether any of it could be moved from the riverfront into downtown, as the advisory group wants.
Hamilton County has agreements with the Bengals, Reds and Firstar Center that require a certain number of parking spaces be located within a certain distance from the stadium, ballpark and arena.
If some of that parking were to shift just north of Third Street — to the block between Broadway and Sycamore streets, the block between Race and Vine streets and the block between Elm and Race streets — those agreements would have to be modified, Mr. Bedinghaus said.
But that's not insurmountable if that's what makes the most sense, he stressed.
The Bengals are open to the advisory group's recommendations and will study them in detail, said Troy Blackburn, the team's director of stadium development.
Mr. Rouse and Mr. Miller stressed that the advisers listened to what the public wanted on the riverfront and tried to answer those needs.
Of course, not everyone will be happy, Mr. Miller said, adding that the man who wanted a new Hooter's on the riverfront won't see one recommended in the plan.
“People could say, "Oh, it's too expensive. It's unrealistic because you're wrong on this,'” he said. “But I think we can prove everything we assert. We've done the research.”
County Commission President Tom Neyer Jr., a developer, said he agrees there's a market for the kind of development the advisers will unveil today.
“To be competitive, however, that development will require some public subsidy,” he said.
And that raises the questions “how much?” and “who pays?”
But Mr. Neyer said the advisers' report doesn't have to answer all those questions today.
“I don't expect this group to provide a silver-bullet solution,” he said. “If they produce a great vision with a potentially feasible financing structure and then a series of questions that need to be researched to prove the plan's feasibility — that's a wonderful report.”
The Cincinnati Riverfront Advisory Commission will unveil its recommendations at 8 a.m. in rooms 260 and 261 of the Dr. Albert B. Sabin Convention Center downtown at Fifth and Elm streets. The meeting is open to the public.
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