By Ken Alltucker
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Two years after Nordstrom Co. ditched plans for a downtown store at Fifth and Race streets, the city's selected developer for the site said Friday it would build several smaller stores and a parking garage that could one day be topped by a high-rise residential tower and hotel.

Eagle Realty said two-plus years of attempts to lure a large department store to fill the whole block have proved fruitless. Instead, the company's courting smaller retailers for a development expected to more closely resemble Rookwood Commons than a large department store or mall.

Eagle Realty officials told a city design board that the new project would include 120,000 square feet of retail and 840 parking spaces above and below two levels of shops.

A high-rise residential tower with either apartments or condos facing Sixth Street and a hotel abutting Fifth Street could eventually be built if demand warrants, said Tom Stapleton, senior vice president of Eagle Realty, a subsidiary of Western & Southern Financial Group.

It's Eagle Realty's first public update on the city-owned site since November 2000, when Seattle-based Nordstrom rejected Cincinnati's $48.7 million aid package to build an upscale store there. Eagle holds development rights to the sit, now a surface parking lot.

No retailers have committed to the project, and Eagle officials didn't say when construction would start. They will seek approval of the Urban Design Review Board - a group that reviews all major downtown projects - by early December.

If there's one thing that distinguishes this plan from Eagle's previous efforts for Fifth and Race, it's that it attempts to encourage pedestrian traffic.

"Some members of the design review board were skeptical of the project.

"I wish the leasing efforts all the luck in the world," said James Fitzgerald, a board member and chief executive officer of FRCH Design Worldwide, a downtown architectural firm. "But I don't think you are going to get that many two-level tenants in downtown Cincinnati."

Eagle Realty President Mario San Marco said the development also would fill a desperate need for more parking.

E- mail kalltucker@enquirer.com