October 8, 201014 yr Reading the Enquirer comments, I laughed when I saw that someone confused Roxanne Q with Laure Q. Anyway, I think we can look forward to years of these clowns attacking the operations budget of the streetcar. They couldn't stop it from getting built, but now they will try to stop it from running. This ballot issue will have absolutely no effect on that, since the city can just fund it from the general budget. If given up to the people, the knee-jerk reaction of increased funding to schools, police, and fire gets us nowhere. Ask these clowns precisely how many police officers and firemen our city should have, and precisely how much teachers should be paid and they will not have a precise answer.
October 8, 201014 yr Cincinnati streetcar spur could connect downtown casino Developer Rock Ventures may fund line extension Business Courier of Cincinnati - by Dan Monk Courier Senior Staff Reporter The developers of Harrah’s Entertainment casino at Broadway Commons are talking with city officials about paying for a streetcar spur that would run to the downown casino district. At least one local rail transit supporter said the casino’s endorsement of Cincinnati’s streetcar system could act as a catalyst for a regional light-rail system. http://cincinnati.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2010/10/11/story1.html?b=1286769600^4058481
October 8, 201014 yr Reading the Enquirer comments, I laughed when I saw that someone confused Roxanne Q with Laure Q. Anyway, I think we can look forward to years of these clowns attacking the operations budget of the streetcar. They couldn't stop it from getting built, but now they will try to stop it from running. This ballot issue will have absolutely no effect on that, since the city can just fund it from the general budget. If given up to the people, the knee-jerk reaction of increased funding to schools, police, and fire gets us nowhere. Ask these clowns precisely how many police officers and firemen our city should have, and precisely how much teachers should be paid and they will not have a precise answer. It's desperation on their part. At this point, their collective ego's and pride are now directly involved. They just want to win for winning sake. They know it will be built but instead of doing whats best for the city and coming together to help ensure this project succeeds, they are trying their best to make sure it fails. Sad really.
October 8, 201014 yr Big Enquirer story on the streetcar on Sunday. Do you know who's writing it? Hopefully not Horstman
October 8, 201014 yr ^ He's writing it. He's been working on it for a couple of months and has talked with a lot of people.
October 8, 201014 yr ^ He's writing it. He's been working on it for a couple of months and has talked with a lot of people. So basically just another hit job? They really are pathetic. I love that the business courier has an article about how Harrah's wants a streetcar spur to the casino but the enquirer has nothing about it. (as of 11AM)
October 8, 201014 yr ^ We're just going to have to deal with the critics until the streetcar is up and running and beginning to promote repopulation of the core and redevelopment of under-used land. My guess is, we'll get another spike in fuel prices sooner rather than later, and that will dampen the enthusiasm of the opponents. Or at least the audience that might otherwise listen to them. Cincinnati is shaping up to have a breakthrough year in 2013, the 225th anniversary of its founding. Everything is finally coming together.
October 8, 201014 yr Author Consider during Mallory's Term as Mayor 2005-2013: *New Tallest Building *Decrease in Crime *Washington Park *Streetcar *Banks *Casino *Central Riverfront Park *Gateway Quarter Phases I-IV
October 8, 201014 yr Don't forget Boi Na Braza! "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
October 8, 201014 yr The Fishwrap's Sunday Preview of the story: Streetcar debate inflames passions When a news conference last fall on a ballot measure that would have effectively killed Cincinnati’s streetcar plan nearly erupted into a fist fight, the episode offered vivid proof of the white-hot emotions aroused by an issue that has dominated local politics and civic discourse like few others. Nearly a year later, with the $128 million Downtown-to-Uptown streetcar project on the verge of breaking ground, the zeal and passions on both sides remain inflamed. “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.” -Friedrich Nietzsche
October 8, 201014 yr Ah yes. The funniest part is probably the look on Bobby Maly's face. http://www.youtube.com/user/explorecincinnati#p/u/4/H69oOBLFnOg
October 8, 201014 yr Ah yes. The funniest part is probably the look on Bobby Maly's face. http://www.youtube.com/user/explorecincinnati#p/u/4/H69oOBLFnOg I love how the other Issue 9 supporters told him to settle down and kept saying "It's alright" and how stupid the guys looks when he realizes his friends didn't jump on his "assault" bandwagon.
October 8, 201014 yr Author the shoving match at City Hall was the best. That dude was completely unhinged. What kind of 20 something year old tries to beat up Don Mooney?
October 8, 201014 yr Someone mentioned earlier about how the Enquirer hasn't posted about the Casino's recent comments. It's up. http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20101008/BIZ01/310080111/Casino-interested-in-streetcar-link Interestingly enough, I had no idea about Detroit in the article.
October 8, 201014 yr Consider during Mallory's Term as Mayor 2005-2013: *New Tallest Building *Decrease in Crime *Washington Park *Streetcar *Banks *Casino *Central Riverfront Park *Gateway Quarter Phases I-IV Some of those projects have been long in the pipeline (the banks); or have had nothing to do with Mallory (The Casino Vote)
October 8, 201014 yr ^Very true, but many of those things could have been discouraged/killed by a mayor with a less optimistic vision of the city.
October 8, 201014 yr ^Very true, but many of those things could have been discouraged/killed by a mayor with a less optimistic vision of the city. The amount of negativity and disdain for the city is incredible. This project has been scrutinized to death from every which angle and has survived the fire. It has endured letters and articles from the enquirer, ballot initiatives, Election cycles, litigation, 700 wlw mantra, and even fistfights. Its been a tough road but the project has survived.
October 8, 201014 yr Consider during Mallory's Term as Mayor 2005-2013: *New Tallest Building *Decrease in Crime *Washington Park *Streetcar *Banks *Casino *Central Riverfront Park *Gateway Quarter Phases I-IV Music Hall will be under construction Expansion at Riverbend P&G moved hundreds of jobs into the city from the suburbs World Choir games will have made their American Debut as one of the largest conferences ever held in Cincinnati with 80,000 hotel night/bookings in just a couple weeks. Census posted first increase in Population in the city since 1950. Dunnhumby moved its USA headquarters to the city... Between Mallory and Dohoney I can't imagine a duo spending more time to court businesses and progress in Cincinnati. And I can't imagine how the Enquirer could possibly hate the city more.
October 8, 201014 yr Consider during Mallory's Term as Mayor 2005-2013: *New Tallest Building *Decrease in Crime *Washington Park *Streetcar *Banks *Casino *Central Riverfront Park *Gateway Quarter Phases I-IV Some of those projects have been long in the pipeline (the banks); or have had nothing to do with Mallory (The Casino Vote) Sure- the banks have been in the pipeline since 1996- It was supposed to start construction in 2002. But the Mallory Administration with City Council pushed HARD to get it from being talked about for a decade, to being done- and ground breaking finally happened under his mayorship.
October 8, 201014 yr Consider during Mallory's Term as Mayor 2005-2013: *New Tallest Building *Decrease in Crime *Washington Park *Streetcar *Banks *Casino *Central Riverfront Park *Gateway Quarter Phases I-IV Some of those projects have been long in the pipeline (the banks); or have had nothing to do with Mallory (The Casino Vote) Sure- the banks have been in the pipeline since 1996 More like December 1, 1999.
October 8, 201014 yr Quote from: Jimmy_James on Today at 02:20:04 PM ^Very true, but many of those things could have been discouraged/killed by a mayor with a less optimistic vision of the city. The amount of negativity and disdain for the city is incredible. This project has been scrutinized to death from every which angle and has survived the fire. It has endured letters and articles from the enquirer, ballot initiatives, Election cycles, litigation, 700 wlw mantra, and even fistfights. Its been a tough road but the project has survived. I think the project has survived because the elites in Cincinnati support it. Both 3CDC and one of the execs at Proctor and Gamble have shown their support for it. If the top supports something it gets done, I think that's doubly true in Cincinnati's case.
October 9, 201014 yr Consider during Mallory's Term as Mayor 2005-2013: *New Tallest Building *Decrease in Crime *Washington Park *Streetcar *Banks *Casino *Central Riverfront Park *Gateway Quarter Phases I-IV Some of those projects have been long in the pipeline (the banks); or have had nothing to do with Mallory (The Casino Vote) Sure- the banks have been in the pipeline since 1996 More like December 1, 1999. No- It was October 1996 that Hamilton County first began the plan of siteing new stadiums for the reds/bengals and creating an urban framework at the riverfront. In 1997 they published the concept plan- and then things got under way after a slight delay in 1998 (when the city voted on where to put the reds stadium).
October 9, 201014 yr ^ I only spent a few minutes finding this- but this article dated 2007 has several people saying the banks has been a public project for "over 10 years". http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20071029/NEWS01/710290318/Why-the-rush-on-Banks-
October 9, 201014 yr Consider during Mallory's Term as Mayor 2005-2013: *New Tallest Building *Decrease in Crime *Washington Park *Streetcar *Banks *Casino *Central Riverfront Park *Gateway Quarter Phases I-IV Some of those projects have been long in the pipeline (the banks); or have had nothing to do with Mallory (The Casino Vote) Sure- the banks have been in the pipeline since 1996 More like December 1, 1999. No- It was October 1996 that Hamilton County first began the plan of siteing new stadiums for the reds/bengals and creating an urban framework at the riverfront. In 1997 they published the concept plan- and then things got under way after a slight delay in 1998 (when the city voted on where to put the reds stadium). Nope. In 1996, there was no official planning going on, and there was certainly no consensus about what should be on the Cincinnati's riverfront. The Bengals sort of wanted to be there. They actually considered building at Broadway Commons too, but their super-sized stadium wouldn't fit on the site. The Reds didn't know what they wanted to do in 1996 or 1997. The Reds' business manager, John Allen, wanted a new ball park, but Marge Schott couldn't make up her mind whether to renovate Riverfront Stadium or build something new, somewhere. Until mid-1998 when the state finally came up with a substantial sum of money, Fort Washington Way was still going to be 750 feet wide, double what is today, making the the Reds' ball park and Banks impossible to build. The Bengals grabbed the western riverfront in 1997, but there were no plans for anything around it -- no parking decks to lift the land out of the flood plain, no riverfront park, nothing except what came to be called Paul Brown Stadium amid a sea of mostly surface parking. Around this time, since no one else was doing it, Downtown Cincinnati Inc. commissioned planner Eric Doepke to draw up what a new riverfront might look like. It showed the large riverfront park, a narrowed Fort Washington Way, and the street grid extended across FWW to a large park. The campaign for the new Reds stadium did not contemplate the level of private riverfront development that you're seeing today. In mid-1998, architect Michael Schuster refined Doepke's concept of a grand space on the central riverfront consisting of a large park with public buildings and not many of them. City Planning Commission maps continued to show the entire eastern riverfront unchanged throughout 1998. After the Reds ball park siting issue was settled in November, 1998, the city and county formed the Riverfront Advisors in early-1999. Advised by Urban Development Associates, a Pittsburgh firm, the Riverfront Advisors delivered its plan for the Banks late that year and soon morphed into a reconstituted Hamilton County Port Authority (with no port and no authority). The Port Authority was unsuccessful in its efforts to develop the project and eventually lost control of it. The Advisors/Port Authority's assumptions for the Banks were very unrealistic. There was a suburban, greenfield approach to the planing process. The entire project -- almost a third of downtown Cincinnati -- was to be completed in five or six years. In reality, the Port Authority should have known it would take a generation to complete if the Banks were to done correctly, with quality, and in light of the probable demand. I think the confusion on the timeline has served to frustrate Cincinnatians. The schedule for the Banks was over-promised and, until lately, under-delivered. Given Cincinnatians' expectations for a quickly-built project, it's bad enough that it's been almost eleven years in the making so far. Worse if you say it's been on the drawing board for fourteen years. It hasn't.
October 9, 201014 yr Redevelopment plans for the Cincinnati Riverfront go way back farther than that. Ideas for redevelopment were proposed in the 1920's. A football stadium on the riverfront was proposed in the 1930's. The 1948 Master Plan put into print a concept including Fort Washington Way, Stadiums, and parkland, plus a ridiculous government campus that didn't get built. More recently, there was a picture published by the Enquirer in 1996 I believe that included two new stadiums, a re-built Fort-Washington way, a boat marina, lots of park space, a residential and commercial components, and so on. I wish I had saved that picture; that single picture explains so much of what happened in the last 15 years. The stadium tax was supposed to raise $260 million, which was supposed to pay for everything in that picture, or at least that's what people thought. Obviously, the numbers were never anywhere close; the football stadium alone cost more than $260 million by itself, and Hamilton County never saw the increased sales tax revenue that the stadium project was supposed to generate. Financially, the stadium project has been a dismal failure; the only good news is that it attracted the attention of the state and feds, who sent some money our way for the new FWW and transit center, and some utility improvements, if you can even call that good news. So, since the Banks is associated with the stadium tax, and since the streetcar is associated with the Banks ("A streetcar between Over-the-Rhine and The Banks"), the streetcar had a sour reputation before it even got started. I don't think some of the UO forumers realize how much indifference there is toward the urban core outside of the core itself. The Cincinnati riverfront, like the core area of a lot of other cities, is seen as a sort of politician's playground, a place to build a pet project and take postcard photos. The majority of the people in the Cincinnati metro have been to a Reds or Bengals game, they have been to Riverfest, they have been to the Museum Center and the Zoo, but beyond that they have very little ties to the urban core. I am dismayed at the number of people who have told me that they intentionally left Hamilton County, or they intend to, or they would never buy another house in Hamilton County. Sure, downtown Cincinnati is looking up; but the rest of Hamilton County is hurting.
October 9, 201014 yr Sure, downtown Cincinnati is looking up; but the rest of Hamilton County is hurting. If true, is this Cincinnati's fault? Just asking. For the last fifteen years, Cincinnati has been improving its core strengths as the center of our region's service economy. Cincinnati will never be a manufacturing center again, and so it has made some smart investments in transportation, recreation, the arts, education and public safety. These are the kinds of things that appeal to people holding jobs in finance, health care, higher education, law, and so on. Over time, I'm guessing a lot of these people will want to live closer to where they work for a lot of reasons. And Cincinnati stands to gain from that. If Cincinnati can become a better place to live and work, the private investment that results is what pays a lot of the bills around here. The question for all the small cities, villages and unincorporated areas of Hamilton County is, what can they do to improve their comparative advantages? It's a tough problem to think through and develop a strategy for, tougher to successfully execute. The point is, Cincinnati has acted purposefully, and we're starting to see some payback. Hopefully, other communities can find their way too.
October 9, 201014 yr Here is the general timeline starting in 1996: May 1996: Voters passes the 1/2% sales tax referendum October 1996: Planning process begins April 1997: A concept plan is completed showing three possible stadium siting scenarios November 1998: Public referendum on siting the Reds ballpark January 1999: City and County officials appoint 16 citizens to the Riverfront Advisors Commission Sept. 1999: The Banks report is the fruition of their works and is made public April 2000: Urban Design Associates creates the Central Riverfront Urban Design Master Plan which includes the Riverfront Advisors' "The Banks" design and due diligence work Obviously there were other factors involved not mentioned here: the selection of private developers that came and went, the responsibility given to the Port Authority (which was then taken away by the County), and other starts and stops. I have full copies of the Central Riverfront Urban Design Master Plan as well as the original "The Banks" report, which speak to the dates and all the pretty pictures we all fell in love with if anyone has any questions.
October 9, 201014 yr More recently, there was a picture published by the Enquirer in 1996 I believe that included two new stadiums, a re-built Fort-Washington way, a boat marina, lots of park space, a residential and commercial components, and so on. I wish I had saved that picture; that single picture explains so much of what happened in the last 15 years. The stadium tax was supposed to raise $260 million, which was supposed to pay for everything in that picture, or at least that's what people thought. Eighth & State, I have a copy of that rendering somewhere and I will try to dig it out, I actually met the guy who did when he brought it into DCI (where I worked at the time).
October 9, 201014 yr >The stadium tax was supposed to raise $260 million, Where have you been? It raises $60 million a year. It has raised somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 billion since it was enacted in 1996. I seem to recall Mike Brown signing some sort of agreement that the Bengals would play in a new stadium by the 2000 season around 1996. There were a lot of hold ups in purchasing the land, in part because the stadium was moved about a block west, which required buying all property west to the Clay Wade Bailey Bridge for the Bengals practice field. I've been suspicious for a long time that the "delay" in getting all of that land was intentional. I remember the Enquirer making a big deal out of Bob Castellini moving his fruit and vegetable business to Kentucky -- it was bundled into the whole Millenium Tower/Newport on the Levee narrative. Then, Bob Castellini somehow becomes owner of the Reds after making a killing off the sale of riverfront land, but nobody seems to mind.
October 9, 201014 yr Jmeck, you are correct. The Bengals actually wanted to be right next to the Suspension Bridge on its west side, the City/County/powers that be pushed them to accept a site to the far west to not clog up the central riverfront with stadia (thank God)! Plus anytime you acquire private property for the public use, with or without condemnation, it is a lengthy process.
October 9, 201014 yr I could only imagine how much more congested things would be when events like what is going on tomorrow (NLDS game & Bengals game) occur. The pedestrian congestion would be crazy. I don't think it would have been impossible though. Keeping them separate really does allow for greater potential for development between the stadia.
October 9, 201014 yr Can someone post a map of the area of the streetcar vs. the location of the casino showing how the casino could be served by it? "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
October 9, 201014 yr So I just made this- nothing fancy- These are the conceivable routes I see. the third one is unlikely but totally possible. The San Diego Trolley frequently goes through pedestrian plaza's and other systems do the same.
October 9, 201014 yr Granted, this is an outsider's point of view. But I recall there being future streetcar routes proposed, including one running east-west through downtown. Rather than modify the current planning, why not use this casino offer as part of the local share of a larger project to start the first segment(s) of the east-west route? It bugs me when bus routes wander around trying to serve everybody but instead discourage more riders being going off onto tangents. Stick with the plan. EDIT: thanks for making the map. It helps outsiders and newcomers get oriented. "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
October 9, 201014 yr ^Exactly what I was thinking. You could have an East-West zig zag route from the casino to the convention center, passing by the Aronoff and Fountain Square. Or you could change Phase I to the direct route between The Banks and the Zoo that Eigth and State keeps pushing, and connect the casino to Music Hall and Findlay Market with Phase 2.
October 10, 201014 yr Oh gee, the proposed casino is only 3 BLOCKS from the proposed streetcar, as shown by the blue line. If Americans won't take the streetcar as it is proposed today to the proposed casino because 3 blocks is too far to walk, then both the streetcar and the casino are hopeless as pedestrian traffic generators. By the way, the proposed casino has a HUGE parking garage, just as expected.
October 10, 201014 yr Here is the image I was remembering. Thanks Cincinnati Kid for posting this in The Banks thread. <img src="http://www.pbase.com/csdameron/image/129263695.jpg> As I remember, this was the last image of the proposed stadiums that the Enquirer published before the stadium campaign. By the way, there was never a ballot issue to pass a 1/2% tax levy for the stadiums. The County Commissioners took it upon themselves to enact the sales tax, and the voter of Hamilton County collected 80,000 signatures to put a measure on the ballot to REPEAL the sales tax. The repeal of the sales tax failed. As I remember, election day had brutally nasty weather, and the ballot language was as confusing as ever, requiring a "YES" vote if you wanted to repeal the tax, and a "NO" vote if you wanted the tax, or in other words, "YES" if you didn't want the stadiums and "NO" if you did want them. After the Florida mess in the 2000 election, I wouldn't be surprised if a good number of voters got confused and voted the wrong way. But I digress... The picture shows an awful lot of things besides two stadiums, including a new bridge, new light rail, a new Fort Washington Way, and an awful lot of other development. There are plenty of technical details wrong, such as a bridge over the entrance to the marina that will be too low to pass boats, but all in all, they got most things right. The FWW looks remarkably like the real thing as it was built. The stadiums are reversed. This is what people were expecting when they voted. Sure, everyone on UO knows the difference between a rendering and a real plan, but most people do not. The Banks, and the streetcar too, have been associated with the riverfront development. Quite frankly, the streetcar has probably suffered from The Banks, at least so far, because voters have been mislead about The Banks. They thought that The Banks were part of the stadium package; "excess" funds from the stadiums were supposed to pay for it. We all know that some of the bridges across FWW were designed with Light Rail in mind; the Kingsport (Airport to Kings Island) light rail was supposed to use these very streets. At least on the local level, the light rail concept morphed directly into the streetcar concept. (Normal people outside of UO don't know the difference between a streetcar and light rail anyway). Even though the stadiums got built, there is still widespread bitterness about them. (Sports fans thought it was a good idea.) What good are stadiums when our schools are failing? Whether it is fair or not, the streetcar is still associated with the stadiums, and there is no doubt that the stadiums generated a widespread mistrust of the local governments of Cincinnati and Hamilton County which haunts the streetcar project to this day.
October 10, 201014 yr Interesting discussion history of the inside game/outside game in Cincinnati in the last page. ^ We're just going to have to deal with the critics until the streetcar is up and running and beginning to promote repopulation of the core and redevelopment of under-used land. My guess is, we'll get another spike in fuel prices sooner rather than later, and that will dampen the enthusiasm of the opponents. Or at least the audience that might otherwise listen to them. Cincinnati is shaping up to have a breakthrough year in 2013, the 225th anniversary of its founding. Everything is finally coming together. Any big celebration planned for the 225th? Consider during Mallory's Term as Mayor 2005-2013: *New Tallest Building *Decrease in Crime *Washington Park *Streetcar *Banks *Casino *Central Riverfront Park *Gateway Quarter Phases I-IV Truly remarkable. Mallory is a good mayor and should be applauded as much for not screwing things as for supporting projects like the streetcar. Poor Charlie Luken, he was Cincinnati's first strong mayor and is convinced he will be remembered for the riots (probably right about that). But he also helped form 3CDC after his term in office was over. One is left to wonder what effect the "stronger mayor" reform has played in City Hall.
October 10, 201014 yr The special election in 1996 did not have bad weather. I remember because it was the first time I voted. >the ballot language was as confusing as ever The ballot language followed Ohio's Form of Ballot laws. There is usually no other way to phrase these things. >"excess" funds from the stadiums were supposed to pay for it Yes, they were, and would have if not for the Paul Brown Stadium cost overruns. As stated previously, I'm suspicious that those overruns were at least in part rigged, and that rigging was helped in large part by the contractual timetable agreed to between Mike Brown and the county. Art Model moving the Browns to Baltimore was the greatest thing that ever happened to Mike Brown's bank account because it put all the cards in his hands, and they were all trump cards. The whole stadium thing was a magnificent big-money concoction. Bob Bedinghaus's political career was destroyed by the overruns and he was given a token job by Mike Brown. Jeff Berding, who led the campaign, also was given a job. Part 2 of the stadium thing was the successful effort to push Marge Schott out of ownership of the Reds before she died. She probably had one gang of people telling her one thing and another telling her another so that Mike Brown could dictate the whole thing. >What good are stadiums when our schools are failing? The stadium tax has money earmarked for Cincinnati Public Schools. This was part of the way the tax was sold to the public. Ironically, if Citizens for Choice in Taxation had never challenged the tax enacted by the Hamilton County Commission, the stadium fund would be solvent and The Banks would be much further along. Why? First because of the relatively minor gift to Cincinnati Public Schools, second because the property tax rollback would never have happened.
October 10, 201014 yr Nope. In 1996, there was no official planning going on, and there was certainly no consensus about what should be on the Cincinnati's riverfront. The Bengals sort of wanted to be there. They actually considered building at Broadway Commons too, but their super-sized stadium wouldn't fit on the site. The Reds didn't know what they wanted to do in 1996 or 1997. The Reds' business manager, John Allen, wanted a new ball park, but Marge Schott couldn't make up her mind whether to renovate Riverfront Stadium or build something new, somewhere. Until mid-1998 when the state finally came up with a substantial sum of money, Fort Washington Way was still going to be 750 feet wide, double what is today, making the the Reds' ball park and Banks impossible to build. The Bengals grabbed the western riverfront in 1997, but there were no plans for anything around it -- no parking decks to lift the land out of the flood plain, no riverfront park, nothing except what came to be called Paul Brown Stadium amid a sea of mostly surface parking. Around this time, since no one else was doing it, Downtown Cincinnati Inc. commissioned planner Eric Doepke to draw up what a new riverfront might look like. It showed the large riverfront park, a narrowed Fort Washington Way, and the street grid extended across FWW to a large park. The campaign for the new Reds stadium did not contemplate the level of private riverfront development that you're seeing today. In mid-1998, architect Michael Schuster refined Doepke's concept of a grand space on the central riverfront consisting of a large park with public buildings and not many of them. City Planning Commission maps continued to show the entire eastern riverfront unchanged throughout 1998. After the Reds ball park siting issue was settled in November, 1998, the city and county formed the Riverfront Advisors in early-1999. Advised by Urban Development Associates, a Pittsburgh firm, the Riverfront Advisors delivered its plan for the Banks late that year and soon morphed into a reconstituted Hamilton County Port Authority (with no port and no authority). The Port Authority was unsuccessful in its efforts to develop the project and eventually lost control of it. The Advisors/Port Authority's assumptions for the Banks were very unrealistic. There was a suburban, greenfield approach to the planing process. The entire project -- almost a third of downtown Cincinnati -- was to be completed in five or six years. In reality, the Port Authority should have known it would take a generation to complete if the Banks were to done correctly, with quality, and in light of the probable demand. I think the confusion on the timeline has served to frustrate Cincinnatians. The schedule for the Banks was over-promised and, until lately, under-delivered. Given Cincinnatians' expectations for a quickly-built project, it's bad enough that it's been almost eleven years in the making so far. Worse if you say it's been on the drawing board for fourteen years. It hasn't. This all seems like it happened a really long time ago because the riverfront area has seen so many projects since then. It's affecting people's perception.
October 10, 201014 yr By the way, there was never a ballot issue to pass a 1/2% tax levy for the stadiums. The County Commissioners took it upon themselves to enact the sales tax, and the voter of Hamilton County collected 80,000 signatures to put a measure on the ballot to REPEAL the sales tax. The repeal of the sales tax failed. As I remember, election day had brutally nasty weather, and the ballot language was as confusing as ever, requiring a "YES" vote if you wanted to repeal the tax, and a "NO" vote if you wanted the tax, or in other words, "YES" if you didn't want the stadiums and "NO" if you did want them. After the Florida mess in the 2000 election, I wouldn't be surprised if a good number of voters got confused and voted the wrong way. But I digress... Jmeck sort of alluded to this already, but keep in mind that this all happened immediately after the NFL decided to make an example out of the city of Cleveland. Take a look at how many stadiums got rammed through after 1996 (~18). Plenty of people hated the new tax, but didn't see any other way to guarantee that the Bengals stayed. There's only 32 teams and a lot of people didn't want to take the chance that Cincinnati would ever get another one if Brown moved the team. I don't think he would have done that, but no one called his bluff so now we'll never know. I totally agree that there is a lot of lingering animosity about the stadium(s) though.
October 10, 201014 yr There was all kind of crazy discussion about letting the Bengals leave back then, some of which had the Bengals heading to Cleveland and Cincinnati going after the Colts (which were still terrible and losing money). Voting for that stadium in 96 is in the top 5 worst votes I've made (#1 Chris Smitherman the first time he ran for Council). Mike Brown is a cancer on the Greater Cincinnati region.
October 10, 201014 yr The NFL probably had the whole Browns to Baltimore thing in mind years ahead of time to make an example to everyone and accelerate new stadium construction. The whole issue was that the NFL changed its profit sharing at some point in the early 90's so that general attendance revenue was shared but not luxury box revenue. Luxury boxes could, of course, have been built in existing stadiums (if you recall, the yellow level of Riverfront Stadium was designed for them but few were built), but the whole luxury box thing was designed to trigger a round of new stadiums so that owners could renegotiate their leases with their respective municipalities. The forced renegotiation of the leases is where the real money came from, not just the new luxury boxes. The real issue with Mike Brown is that he inherited that team, which is basically a monopoly, from his father. He's making $10-20 million annually without having built the business himself. I regard building a business as one of the higher things anyone can achieve but taking over you father's business as one of the lowest. It would be a bit different if he acted appreciative in public and gave away his money on a somewhat regular basis, but to my knowledge he has given no money to civic projects other than $250,000 to the riverfront park.
October 10, 201014 yr Big Enquirer story on the streetcar on Sunday. I didnt see the story in the Enquirer today. Anyone else see it?
October 10, 201014 yr Big Enquirer story on the streetcar on Sunday. I didnt see the story in the Enquirer today. Anyone else see it? The article is titled "Streetcar Debate Inflames Passions" and it's in the Forum section (only in print so I haven't read it)
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