By Tony Lang
Enquirer staff writer

After recent stopovers in Cincinnati by 15,000 veterans, President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, John Kerry, first lady Laura Bush, Oprah Winfrey and other celebrities, it may seem a "duh" sort of question to ask: How are we doing?

But it's the right question, and begs other questions such as - Compared to whom? How can we do even better? How do we make a good city a great one? How do we make more people want to visit or move here?

Q&A WITH THE MAYORS

• What separates good cities from great cities? Mayors of the region's major cities answer Enquirer questions on how to become "great" cities. • How have you defined success for your city? • What does it take to raise a good city into a great city? • Do you try to run your city as a business? What investments are needed in housing, commercial development, industrial development, technological development and tourism to make a great city? • What do you need from partners to make a great city? • How do you reduce city vs. suburban rivalries and build a more united metro area? • Who is your competition for development and tourism? Each other? Out-of-state cities? Who are your benchmarks? • Would additional mayoral powers help you make your city more successful, and if so, what powers? • What action do you need to take if city "product lines" (housing, etc.) don't meet their goals? • What's your impression of Cincinnati, and what advice would you give Cincinnati? • Cincinnati Mayor Charlie Luken • Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell • Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman • Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson • Louisville Mayor Jerry E. Abramson • Enquirer editorial: Great development strategies

First you get organized. That has helped Cincinnati post some big wins lately. The George Schaefer-Valerie Lemmie Economic Development Task Force and its 3CDC brainchild, Cincinnati Center City Development Corp., are changing the way Cincinnati does development. Cincinnati's hustle captured $50 million in federal New Market Tax Credits, and 3CDC is moving on four fronts to upgrade the city:

• The Fountain Square district.

• Over-the-Rhine's Washington Park district.

• "The Banks" central riverfront district.

• Uptown's university/hospital district.

Invest in new products

While Cincinnati never has lacked for plans and grand goals, it has not systematically invested in "new products" to generate new revenue. Despite a 38 percent homeownership rate, it still invests heavily in rental housing.

Laura Long, the Cincinnati Business Committee's executive director, has put together an economic development model to help guide city officials and their corporate partners in making the smartest investments. New "products" in housing, tourism, high-tech, retail and industrial development can rebuild the tax base. She agrees with this region's mayors that each city's culture is unique, and requiresunique strategies.

But we need to understand where the dollars for growth come from. Every city's police and firefighters want raises every year. Cities have to create new money. When Long was Newport's economic development director, she kept telling elected officials, "You will never have new money unless the private sector makes money for you."

It's all about investing to produce a bigger tax-base pie. Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Columbus, Louisville and Cleveland are for the most part well-run cities, which helps retain residents and companies and attract newcomers, but "well-managed" isn't enough to make a city great. Great cities constantly rebuild and add "new products" - or, just as in business, the competition eats their lunch.

3CDC's Fountain Square makeover isn't about planting trees or moving the Genius of Water. It's about creating real estate values, making leases work, attracting new consumer spending. Restaurants and retail ought to be clamoring for that location.

"But physical design is critical," Long says, or it won't attract new capital.

Smart cities invest in assets that allow them to do things competing cities can't do. CBC and 3CDC aim to raise the number of downtown residents to 10,000 by 2010 and generate another $73 million a year in consumer spending.

Cincinnati is doing lots of things right. That Convention Center the national leaders descended on is finally being expanded, and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center that hosted the glitterati is a powerful new addition to our cultural attractions. But in the 1990s, Cincinnati lost 33,000 people, 9 percent of its population, while the metro area gained about 9 percent. As population shrinks, so does retail and other revenue sources. Those 33,000 gone from Cincinnati represented an estimated $220 million a year in consumer spending.

It matters to suburbs

Cincinnati doesn't need to look at other cities to know it needs to grow its tax base. And if you are out in the suburbs wondering what Cincinnati's tax base has to do with you, other mayors in this region have a good answer for you. Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic remembers how the suburbs thought they were walled off during Cleveland's fiscal crisis. But, "It even hurt Akron," Plusquellic says. "Companies complained, 'We can't recruit top people here.'"

Dayton Mayor Rhine McLin even warns that a center city can be a sinkhole. "If we don't make it, we will drag everybody else in the region down with us," she told the Enquirer editorial board.

During the last few years, growth of Cincinnati's earnings taxes flatlined, and they account for 61 percent of the city's income.

Officials console themselves that total households stayed roughly the same, that Cincinnati mostly lost families with school-age children, that the downtown condo market shows strong demand. City politics are roiling from projected budget deficits for years to come, a new campaign to abolish the city's property tax, and council initiatives to bring private-business competition and efficiencies to city operations.

But whether those ideas are worthy or not, the city needs to expand its tax base, or it won't have the resources to rebuild a great downtown and great neighborhoods. Cities can't cut their way to greatness.

In 1998, growth consultant Michael Gallis commented, "Cincinnati has remnants of a once great city." That sounds like something that belongs on a tombstone, but it was meant as an appeal to civic pride, that this generation can still compete with top-tier cities.

Build from the center

Great center cities make for great metro areas. Cincinnati's arts and sports generate a $1 billion-a-year economic impact here. Smartly marketed, they can pull in even more outside dollars. Long and others view development as an "inside-out" game. Rebuild the center and world-class development radiates outward.

The Partnership for Greater Cincinnati's 1999-2003 Growth Report identified $8.3 billion in new metro Cincinnati investment and 101,500 new or retained jobs. About $3.7 billion was in manufacturing and $227 million in research and development. The economic impact was spread across the Tristate's eight counties, with Hamilton County accounting for more than 40 percent.

Successful cities market to their demographics rather than deny them. Several of the region's mayors said racial distrust simmers just below the surface of feuding between their suburbs and central cities. Akron Mayor Plusquellic, president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, is convinced those racial divisions "prevent us from being as good as we could be."

Unified cities and unified metros have an edge, whether competing for state or federal dollars or in the global marketplace. Cincinnati is playing catch-up in strengthening bonds to fast-growing Northern Kentucky and Southwest Ohio counties. One prediction: By 2010, the Census Bureau will combine Cincinnati and Dayton into a single metro area - CIN-DAY. All of Greater Cincinnati should make the most of that larger market to step up as a competitive "market performer."

People in great cities still quarrel, but almost everybody's pulling in the same general direction. They share the same vision and the same "brand." They're competitive, which allows them to snap back faster from a recession or a disaster like 9/11. New Yorkers even compete with wisecracks and comebacks. It's a point of pride to uphold their end in the daily contest.

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Tony Lang is a member of the Enquirer's editorial board.