I was able to sit down this month with new Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley to spend an hour on such topics as Cincinnati’s incredible historic assets, its history of social conservatism, streetcars and bike lanes, the repopulation of the urban core, and more.
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Mayor John Cranely. Image via City of Cincinnati.
Here are some edited highlights of our discussion. For those who prefer reading to listening, a complete transcript is available.
By far the most provocative thing the mayor talked about to me was his direct challenge to the idea of metropolitan government. Cincinnati hasn’t annexed territory since 1925, leaving it as a smallish, hemmed in city that is only 14% of a very fragmented region. Meanwhile cities like Indianapolis and Nashville had city-county consolidation, Columbus annexed, etc. He thinks that in a new urban era, this model of government is running out of gas and the pendulum is going to swing back the other way:
There’s a real cultural shift and renewed pride in Cincinnati. More specifically though, there are some unique advantages that we have. Think of it this way: if you took our Downtown and Uptown and the corporate base, let’s say it’s 70% of all of our major jobs and income taxpayers. If you take the same exact area and map it in Columbus, they’re going to have 70% of their companies Nationwide, et cetera, all within the same geographic area. The difference is that they have to spread that money among all of Franklin County. We have to provide for 300,000 people. And very quality 19th century historic neighborhoods that already have a sense of place and culture. And we get the benefit of, on a per capita basis, being able to invest way more in these urban neighborhoods than any of our peers because we didn’t annex.
Now, historically, the attitude of urbanists had been, like myself, the we’ve got to have metro government. In essence, the attitude has been, “We poor city.” We need you guys have to play Robin Hood for us. I think the shift is already underway. Now, we have more work to do but the shift is already underway that we’re going to be a better choice for the dollar value because of our historic infrastructure, our density, our diverse economies of scale. The home owner to apartment mix which looks bad at a distance but, candidly, makes it more dense in which it makes labor pools a lot easier to transport inside the city.
What we haven’t done, in my opinion, is be insistent enough on value for the dollar, because we’re spreading our dollar over a much smaller population than cities of size. So why isn’t the quality of customer service of all services of city government superior? You still get complaints today of people who say, “I live in a nice suburb and my snow is picked up immediately and it’s cleaner and my roads paved faster and less litter. Coming to a city, I can immediately tell it’s a city.” There’s no excuse for that. And I believe that we can provide a better customer service because we have more money over less people than our competitors do. Which if you think about the fact that we lost population to cities this way, people kept moving one suburb out — and I think most of us agree we’re going to repopulate from the inside out — we have more resources to invest in economic growth policies than our competitors do, and we intend to use that advantage to become the most exciting urban city in the country.
We’ll have to see how this plays out, but I think there’s something to this. When places like Indy, Columbus, and Nashville annexed all those suburban areas, they were able to capture that tax base to support the central city. Now though they are saddled supporting miles and miles of aging and decaying suburban type development that may ultimately represent a drain on the resurgent urban core tax base. To the extent that the urban core does come back, places like Cincinnati, from a municipal point of view, will get a bigger lift from it because it gets spread over a smaller area. It’s easier to turn around a small ship than a big one.
We also talked about the geography and architecture of neighborhoods like Mt. Adams, which is like a Midwestern San Francisco. Mayor Cranley likes that analogy:
As I always say, if Chicago is the New York of the Midwest, we’re the San Francisco — in fact, that’s exactly my mind is to say Chicago is the New York of the Midwest. We’re the San Francisco. Because we have the hills, the architecture, the arts, the culture, the big league teams, all the advantages of a major city with the livability of a small town. And everyone has an opportunity to be a big fish if you got that kind of ambition. And it really is. Again, we’ve proven that’s true because we’ve been able to maintain such a concentration of Fortune 500 companies which then, of course, leads to all kinds of spin-off businesses and a huge privately held company, group of businesses, that have really been family traditions that have lasted a hundred years and have really continued to come. As I like to point out, what city our size has an entire company dedicated to Shakespeare? We have a theater that does all Shakespeare. And it has full on season.
I pointed out one important difference vs. San Francisco: Cincinnati’s history of extreme social conservatism. A number of wealthy conservatives like billionaire Carl Lindner and Charles Keating (yes, the Keating Five Charles Keating) poured tons of money into anti-pornography campaigns. Hustler publisher Larry Flynt was convicted as recently as the late 90s of obscenity charges. In 1990 locals tried to ban an exhibition of explicit photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe and even put the museum director on trial for obscenity (he was acquitted). An anti-gay rights amendment was added to the city charter by citizen initiative in the early 90s. There was a race riot in Over the Rhine in 2001.
This is clearly a sore point for the mayor, as he answered at length. He acknowledges the history of these things, but says things have changed radically and wants to be able to get the word out on the new attitude in the city:
I think that’s changed. You take one rather prominent issue with gay rights. In 1993 an anti-gay law was passed in the city charter which was awful, and would stain our reputation for ten years. When I was on council we had a transvestite who was murdered, and even the very conservative chief of police said that this was a hate crime. And I led the effort to add sexual orientation to our hate crime law. And that was sort of — this was 2002, I believe, 2002 or ’03, it might have been 2003. And this had only been ten years since the charter thing had been passed. Remember, the charter thing was passed in the aftermath of Bill Clinton being elected and gays in the military, that first debate. And several cities, including Denver, Colorado, passed virtually identical [language] ran by a right wing group around the country.
Here, we went on a major effort and we progressively, in 2004, in the midst of Bush getting reelected in Hamilton County 54 to 46, got the thing repealed by a substantial margin, which showed a real shift in our culture and our attitudes. And then we immediately passed — reinstated — the human rights ordinance. We immediately reinstated the non-discrimination. We passed benefits for domestic partners and many, many other things. So candidly, and this is why I think it’s so important that you’re here, we need to get the message out. I believe that we have moved many, many miles since then.
In addition, we have been incredibly progressive as it comes to civil rights and to police-community relations. We had, in 2001, a very difficult time with police and the community, the black community in particular. And we voted to invite the Justice Department in the Cincinnati to mediate rather than litigate allegations of police misconduct. And we led to the 2002 collaborative agreement — which I’m proud to say I helped negotiate — which is now held up as a role model for how to improve police community relations around the country. In fact, the judge in New York who struck down the “stop and frisk” law in New York City specifically cited Cincinnati’s collaborative agreement as the right way for the police and the community to work together.
And so I respectfully say that I understand that we have some baggage in terms of what happened in 1993 on gay rights, and we’ve had on the 80’s and 70’s…Larry Flynt… So I’m not denying that there isn’t some reason for that reputation, but it’s no longer fair.
In addition to a Harvard Law degree, Mayor Cranley also has a Masters of Theology from Harvard Divinity School as describes himself as a man of deep faith. I asked him how that informs him in his role as mayor:
I think that all of this has to be done in the context of the common good and building a society that expands opportunity. And I think at the end of our lives we’re fundamentally going to be asked did we make the world a better place for those who didn’t have as many advantages as we had and did we leave it better than we found it. A sense of stewardship. And all that comes, I think, deeply from my faith, schooling and family, values, traditions, et cetera.
And so we spend an enormous amount of time thinking about how are we going to reduce the poverty rate. One of my major planks in my campaign was reducing the poverty by at least 5% over the next four years. We are engaged at every level, re-examining the dollars that are — federal dollars that come in to the city budget that are earmarks for low income individuals and must be spent to the benefit of low income individuals — are we really getting the most bang for the buck out of these dollars?
Right now we have a cohort coming out of the Great Recession of folks who have never had high school or college degree, with kids, who have got very bleak prospects, and that is not surprisingly where those folks live tend to be some of our toughest neighborhoods. If we can, I think, rise to the moral challenge of figuring out how to not write off this entire generation but invest in job training and skill set to get them at least ready to work at low skill, low paying jobs and bring the dignity back of having a breadwinner in the family, the social dividends of that are enormous in terms of turning those neighborhoods around, those families around, the city around.
But in addition, if we can do it on a systematic basis, we can then market Cincinnati as a place for companies who want to locate with a large, ready to work population. Now, obviously, 20-30 years from now I’d love for us to have a higher education rate. I’m not saying it’s good and we just want to leave the education rates where they are, but given what we have today, how do we turn all that into an advantage and, at the same time, tackle the moral issues of poverty?
And while it’s not the same thing — a very sensitive issue, this is not the same thing — but building a more inclusive and welcoming society for immigrants and for African-American, Hispanics is also, I think, part of my faith tradition of — it does come from a history of prejudice that Cincinnati has been part of. And so we do have a moral obligation to tackle those issues but I do think from a political standpoint, it’s better — and true, not just better political argument, which it is, but it’s also true — that it’s better for all of us to have a more inclusive and welcoming city.
Looking forward to listening to the who thing.
“Now, we have more work to do but the shift is already underway that we’re going to be a better choice for the dollar value because of our historic infrastructure, our density, our diverse economies of scale. The home owner to apartment mix which looks bad at a distance but, candidly, makes it more dense in which it makes labor pools a lot easier to transport inside the city.”
Exactly. The military, they call this internal lines of communication. It’s a huge benefit- if you don’t actively work to undermine it.
The talk about Pittsburgh having to annex to survive has calmed down. Personally, I favor gradual selective mergers with some bordering communities like Mt. Oliver, Dormont, Wilkinsburg and eventually Mt. Lebanon which share similar urban layouts and transit links.
This must come from a position of strength- after the city shows it can properly manage the space it has.
cranley is a sad figure. He isn’t necessarily a fraud, but he is a visionless hack. He uses the the language of race, discrimination, and poverty to hide his true intentions. He is attempting to use cincinnati’s old boy networks to launch him into state of federal elected or appointed jobs. To do so he has to at least neutralize the black and liberal vote. Contrary to images of Cincinnati, this vote is significant.
There are genuine progressives who have a clear vision of cincinnat’s interests, Yvette Simpson and Chris Sellbach are two such people. Talk to them. Cranley is an example of the problem, not the solution.
I second Matthews comment. If you want to know about Cincinnati, Cranley is not the person to talk to. All he knows how to do is pander. He does not have a vision for the city and has done nothing but get in the way of people that do.
Could one be more specific? I think he came out to oppose the streetcar.
Cranley’s still got some personal vendetta with the “previous administration”. The previous administration was the biggest driver into the rebirth and revitalization of downtown that Cranley loves to take credit for. Anything tied to the Mallory era, he wants to muck up (see the streetcar, and the cycle track).
Hopefully this is one-term hiccup. Maybe he could be a token Dem/stooge Cabinet appointee in a Rand Paul administration.
I’m not taking sides here. Seems like either he has a “vendetta” or he is pandering- not both.
By definition, pandering means appealing to popularity or power. The streetcar advocates failed to attract enough broad support and he reflects that.
A lot of poor residents seem to have seen the project as just a way to force them out- rather than a win-win investment.
OK, he could be both pandering and have a vendetta like Rob Ford in Toronto. But, that would means he is backed by of a large base of people who support his views.
He’s backed by a band of suburban real estate interests who use him to try to prevent economic growth in cincinnati because they don’t want the competition. Only 16 percent of Cincinnati’s registered voters voted for him. He most certainly does NOT have a broad political base in Cincinnati. He staked his entire political career on a virtual holy war against a modest streetcar line and suffered a humiliating defeat. That humiliation is keeping him in check for the moment and the streetcar line is being built now through gentrifying neighborhoods. He’s a useful fool for those invested in real estate outside of cincinnati’s borders who see that the financial winds of the passing era of suburbanization are no longer at their back. How did Cranley even know about Aaron? He must have a PR Team working overtime!
16% of registered voters?
What happened? How is that possible? You mean turnout was that low?
I apologize, if I am really off base.
turn out was shockingly low. look up “2013 cincinnati mayoral election’ to see for yourself. he got 32, 000 votes in a city with 300,000 residents.
This does seem to indicate a lot of apathy. At the very least, a big mass of voters didn’t exactly man the barricades to defend the street car.
The promo video for it years ago- did seem to sell it as an amenity for upper middle class urbanists rather than something that improved the lives of average current residents.
This is a big problem with a model based so much around historic districts. The amount of money needed for repairs usually means renovated properties can’t support affordable housing.
I have along list of issues with the mayor’s comments & a few about Aaron’s questions.
No mention in the entire interview of the city’s financial situation or underfunded pension plans. Yes, most places have these problems, but they certainly can’t be ignored.
His statements line up pretty strongly with main-steam Democratic views (Midwest Version). I suspect that if you looked into the 32,000 votes you’re going to find strong support from the muni employee unions. Union voting participation approaches 100%.
“as nice as Clifton proper, let alone Hyde Park, Mount Lookout, Oakley, Mount Adams. I mean we have incredible density still in our urban core despite the fact that we lost population.” Statement implies that there exist other neighborhoods (both within and outside the city) that are really bad and are experiencing abandonment.
The hostility to Mr. Cranley seems to be about his views on the streetcar issue.
Mainstream democratic midwesterners predominately live in suburbs and rhetoric and action are two different things.
I thought Pittsburgh was obsessed with its past and had a Fortune 500 culture.
Aaron set it up, but the mayor couldn’t get away from how much the city revolves around P&G, Macy’s Kroger and a few other corporate giants.
Large companies are not great job generators, and are least likely to need the deep job pool & social networks a city can provide. Which is why they find it easy to shop for deals & tax subsidies.
The 160,000 in town jobs number seemed pretty underwhelming. Pittsburgh has around 300,000 jobs in town. Hopefully, Cincinnati’s the total number is better than than stated.
The mayor had a poor grasp of why cities exist in the first place and why they benefit the poor. Hand outs and race based hiring & contracting quotas are a pretty poor replacement for a dense, free, dynamic urban economy.
http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/866.html
“Immigrant groups that entered cities like Chicago throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries formed mutual associations that served many functions in their communities. First and foremost, these societies served immigrant economic needs. Before the creation of large insurance companies, mutual benefit societies offered modest risk protection. For low fees organizations like the GrecoSlavonic Brotherhood, formed in Chicago in 1885, sold policies offering benefits to families when an insured member died or was injured. The Lithuanian Alliance of America even offered home mortgages to its members in Chicago.
Frequently these immigrant associations grew from local organizations that had performed comparable functions back home. Before coming to this country most groups had to form voluntary associations to meet the challenges of sickness and death and even foster new forms of job and educational training. Italians, Slovaks, Czechs, Poles, Romanians, and other groups often brought small benefit organizations with them. In the early stages of settlement in America most of these societies consisted of members from the same homeland village. In time, however, these societies nationalized their membership by blending people from different regions and towns. By the 1920s the Sons of Italy in Chicago, for example, recruited members from all regions of the homeland. Similarly, in 1921 the Croatian Catholic Union was created from the merger of different local groups.”
I saw a link that said Cincinnati’s German community once had over 150 mutual aid organizations. Multiply this by every other group and one starts to get an idea of the dense network of possible connections and opportunities.
African American’s, Irish & Jews responded to discrimination through self help networks.
He was at his best when he described the urban advantage.
“Now, historically, the attitude of urbanists had been, like myself, the we’ve got to have metro government. In essence, the attitude has been, “We poor city.” We need you guys have to play Robin Hood for us. I think the shift is already underway. Now, we have more work to do but the shift is already underway that we’re going to be a better choice for the dollar value because of our historic infrastructure, our density, our diverse economies of scale. The home owner to apartment mix which looks bad at a distance but, candidly, makes it more dense in which it makes labor pools a lot easier to transport inside the city.”
Doesn’t the city still invest vast amounts of energy and land on free parking and stadiums for non tax paying suburbanites? (I think all of Hamilton County paid for the stadiums but who wasted their taxable land?)
John, the stadiums and riverfront attractions are built on flood plains. No private developer could have effectively developed it.
So what exactly is The Banks?
If one could have reclaimed part the land for The Banks, mixed use project one could have reclaimed all of it for a similar project or just a park, which might have had more value for residents on a daily basis.
The focus of investment does not put residents and taxpayers first.
BTW, no surprise that some of the restaurants on the Banks are already in financial trouble. No game= no activity.
There is absolutely no way for you or me to determine what a private developer could have done with that land.
Once one takes out the majority of the flood risk, one has a property capable of supporting a huge office or apartment development.
Could this have paid for all the flood control engineering? Possibly.
Right of the bat, the city, county & state decided visitors were more important than residents. Now the highway can’t be removed and the West Side is cut off.
I believe that’s what the Banks is. The city build massive parking garages (justified for stadiums), on top of which is being built (and partially is built) a mixed use development. No stadiums, no parking garage, no Banks. In New York City? Sure. In Cincinnati? Not for decades to come at market rate if ever.
You can’t know that.
What we do know is that with the stadiums & parking, the entire West Side Queensgate area is now very hard to develop and the city is stuck with devastating highway gaps for decades to come.
It’s an endless cycle. Cincinnati needs highways & parking because it lacks walkability and density & it lacks that because of the highways & parking.
Bottom line is the mayor evaded or lied. The city is not concentrating investment on its residents first.
as I wrote, cranley was elected to thwart cincinnati’s development, not support it. it’s like the FBI planting agents in civil rights groups to undermine them in the 1960’s, the agents actually thought they were doing something good, but they were there to stop people fighting for their legal rights.
But the Banks long predates him doesn’t it?
The concept does look like something designed by suburban interests as way of making the highways and parking footprint permanent.
That shows the big different between Cincinnati or Pittsburgh and an average flat city.
A big flat city can make up for sub optimal development patterns. There is just a lot less room for dumb.
This interview makes it very clear how much priority John Cranley places on the city’s corporate community. While important, this is not, generally speaking, what makes cities successful.
All throughout the interview, Cranley also seemed to refer back to things that were accomplished two or more decades ago. He added in a few tired soundbites, but overall I heard very little of substance.
Perhaps what was most telling is when asked more substantive questions about urbanism and public policy, instead of answering the question he rambled on about the Fortune 500 community and how great the city’s chili is. He talks about “turbo-charging” the New Urbanist movement that has been transforming the city, but then his actions as mayor actually undermine that.
I look forward to seeing how Cranley intends to double the population of the Downtown and Over-the-Rhine neighborhoods within the next five years. That’s a lot of new people; and he’s already gotten off to a rocky start having delayed and potentially jeopardized a 30-story apartment tower that was moving forward.
@John: The flood plains of a “big” river are a natural dead zone. If a city feel like it simply must have a stadium with its attendant parking — well it could be a lot worse.
@Randy: “the New Urbanist movement that has been transforming the city, but then his actions as mayor actually undermine that.” Please explain.
What is shameful about Cincinnati having led the fight against pornography? (They failed to anticipate the Internet, admittedly.) what is shameful about social conservatism, other than of course racial issues?
@Hcat, there’s nothing wrong with social conservatism per se. I’m socially conservative in many ways. What distinguishes Cincinnati is:
– The fact that prominent leaders of the anti-pornography crusades and such social issue campaigns were crooked. Keating as you know went to prison during the S&L scandal. Carl Lindner was chairman of Chiquita when it was involved in an overseas bribery scandal (and the nature of the banana business was surely well known to him before buying the company). Nothing brings discredit on people claiming to promote Christian morals like living a life of low moral standards themselves. It’s hypocrisy.
– Prosecuting a museum director for a bona fide art exhibit. Whatever one might think of Mapplethorpe’s photos, that was clearly unconstitutional. I’m not aware of any other city doing this in modern times.
– The race angle is in the mix here as it’s an expression of the thinking that has long permeated Cincinnati culture. Both Mike Doyle and me noted the openly racist comments people in Cincinnati would make to out of town visitors as recently as 5-6 years ago. When you add it that there was a race riot in 2001, clearly something is amiss.
I personally don’t think Cincinnati’s social conservatism is less an expression of genuine Christian morals than it is small minded backwardness – and the stranglehold of power a small group of people long held on the city. I think it was as much about power as anything.
When will Cranley stop whining and start leading? The streetcar is being built, time to realize that citizen groups & the current council voted in favor, and start working to make it a success.
As wkg said several weeks ago about working poor vs. underclass: there is a substantial difference between honest cultural and social conservatism and the kind that longs for the “good old days”, you know, when certain people knew their place and people like Robert Moses made all the “right” choices for society.
The evidence certainly suggests that Cincinnati tends toward the latter, while its nearby competitors (Columbus and Indianapolis) are far more welcoming of diversity. Columbus has an African-American Democrat mayor. Indianapolis has an African-American Muslim Democrat congressman. Neither city is majority African-American.
Cincinnati has a white minority (49% white, 45% African-American, 6% other/multiple races) but it elects its council entirely at-large. I am not generally quick to find racism but this would seem to be a structural white-power bias.
Giuliani; The Daily News and other NY politicians railed against The “Sensation” exhibit @ The Brooklyn Museum. Bloomberg killed of a major show of Street Art and NYC was never perceived as conservative.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/sept99/brooklyn24.htm
Here’s a look at the last Cincinnati election along age lines
http://cincinnati.blogspot.com/2013/12/old-cincinnati-voted-last-month.html
per Cincinnati’s ‘conservatism’, Th porn thing was easy because th big city used it’s muscle to drive everything across the river into the smallerr cities in Kentucky.
I wish I could have heard this interview knowing nothing about Cranley or Cincinnati. Cranley seemed really provincial & I felt like I only knew what he was talking about because I live in Cincinnati.
I remember seeing Bill Cunningham on the Phil Donahue show once & got the same impression.
Anyway, Cranley made it pretty clear – for him bicycles are toys and not transportation.
“having delayed and potentially jeopardized a 30-story apartment tower that was moving forward.”
Wow, a 30 story apartment tower downtown is exactly the kind of thing Cincinnati needs. If a large chunk of the old West Side was taken off the table by highways & OTR is protected by historic zoning, one really has to concentrate population.
The previous mayor does seem to have been removing parking minimums downtown, which is a huge step forward.
http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2013/08/26/city-tosses-out-residential-parking.html?page=all
I was cringing the whole time while reading this interview, there were so many small minded statements and excuses being thrown around, though one thing disgusts me the most about this, and that’s Cranley’s token statements about improving race relations.
Cranley is a key figure who helped caused the riots. Too many people forget that, and its one of the main reasons why he should have NEVER been elected in the first place, his statements about reaching out to the minority communities are complete bs, as he used them as a collation to fight against the young urbanists that are just starting to preliterate the city.
Just watch the first two parts of this video at a public saftey commission on that fateful day in 2011, Cranley is ACTIVELY making a bad situation worse, I’m shocked that Qualls didn’t use this video against him, because it very clearly illustrates his severe lack of leadership: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4Zz9zVvcqg&list=PLIlmcDu2xE0UWp1MhyB7_fO6gE18MrN66
@Aaron – did you see this before interviewing him?
^-I meant fateful day in 2001.
I’m probably going to regret this, but here it goes.
I don’t know much, if anything about Cincy politics. I do know a lot about snark. I find the comments to be pathetic. Yes. The guy is not in favor of street cars. I think he has made himself perfectly clear on the matter. Since you are unable to mount a credible argument against his view, the reaction is to attack the man. I’m going to assume for the time being that all the following a baseless.
@Matt cranley is a sad figure. He isn’t necessarily a fraud, but he is a visionless hack
@Jon “Cranley’s still got some personal vendetta with the “previous administration””
@urban “Maybe he could be a token Dem/stooge Cabinet appointee in a Rand Paul administration.” (Low blows don’t come much lower than that — shame on you)
@ Matt: “He’s backed by a band of suburban real estate interests who use him to try…”
@Matt: “rhetoric and action are two different things.”
@Matt: “it’s like the FBI planting agents in civil rights groups to undermine them in the 1960′s”
@ Randy: “he’s already gotten off to a rocky start having delayed and potentially jeopardized a 30-story apartment tower that was moving forward
@ Krupa : When will Cranley stop whining and start leading?
@Quimbob says: Cranley made it pretty clear — for him bicycles are toys and not transportation.
One thing you have to understand. He is the mayor of the entire city — not just Over the Rhine.
@wkg in bham – watch the video I linked to, it will give you a good idea of Cranley in action, judge for yourself. I feel that you’ll come to the conclusion that he’s an incompetent leader who is happy with a broken status quo.
@neil: will do. Have a crappy data plan and will have to catch it at Starbuck’s tommorow.
In all seriousness, I should not have just went off-the-hip. This could have been Gery Chico as mayor of Chicago (whose base was largely pension-protective “old-school” city workers in the outer Bungalow Belt – similar perhaps to Cranley’s base in West Hills).
@John Morris et al: Perhaps a bit late to offer this up but I think it’s still helpful to explain at least all that The Banks actually encompasses. It’s three distinct but interconnected pieces- the stadiums, the actual mixed-use construction, and the riverfront park. The parking garage is built at “ground level” in the flood plain with the the city’s street grid extended directly over it. The first phase was 300 apartments and 96,000 sq. ft. of retail, and phase 2 calls for even more apartments, a hotel, and more retail and office space.It’s also very likely that General Electric will be constructing a new office building in The Banks, so although it’s currently mostly restaurants, there are plans to diversify it further to eventually add more value for current and future residents.
Smale Riverfront Park is 40 acres and will connect to other parks along the river to make a three-mile long stretch of green space. What’s there is already incredibly nice and will ultimately tie into the city’s bike infrastructure.
The entire project is cut off from downtowm by the Interstate 71 trench, but that trench was recently narrowed and designed for the future inclusion of building or greenspace caps to better connect downtown with The Banks and the riverfront. I’m not really sure what a private investor could have done “better” than what’s currently on the table, but if you have any elaborations I’d love to hear them.
Re: the “where did you go to high school issue.” It’s probably hard for a person from a big city to understand the meaning of the question. In smaller places, a question like this is asking 25 questions in one. I’ve spent my adult life in Atlanta and Birmingham. In Atlanta, no one ever asked where I went to high school. Nobody is “from Atlanta”. What they do ask is “where are you from?” Which also provides a lot of information in a simple question. In Birmingham, it doesn’t happen to me much, since I’m obviously not from here. But the question amongst Birminghamsters is very informative. It’s not a dumb question at all.
But since you did ask, I went to Cocoa High School in a smallish city on the east coast of Florida. It is a sports classification 2A high school. But it plays kick-ass football. Nike sponsors it to fly around the country and play big time programs in Penn, Ohio, Texas, La. Etc. A couple of years ago it flew up to Cincy to play Colerain. Cocoa lost something like 20-14. The game was on ESPN. I was really proud of our little guys going up against a team of monsters and being competitive.
In all the good stuff I’ve read here about Cincy, the one thing I haven’t read is about how good the high school football is. I know Mouller is legendary. But apparently there are a lot of really good teams.
I know that doesn’t mean much to the readers here, since there are no teenagers, or children of any age in Over the Rhine. But it’s a big deal where people do have kids that they care about. Jon commented earlier about volunteer neighborhood associations. I don’t think the importance of these organizations cannot be overstressed.
One of the nice things about small town America is that there’s not the rich people’s high school, or the black high school. There’s just the high school where everybody goes.
@bigdipper80
I am generally aware of what the Banks is.
Quite possibly/ probably a private developer would not have created a big project like this off the bat and the city would have been better off.
What makes the Banks so bad, is that it helps freeze in concrete masses of parking and waterfront highways that without it might eventually be removed or radically downsized.
There is no way to judge this project without looking at the damage these roads do in terms of cutting off The West Side.
But actually, the Banks project did more damage by freezing in height limits on many downtown buildings to protect views from a Football Stadium that probably sits empty over 350 days a year
http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2014/04/19/banks-building-height-deal-preserving-river-view/7900553/
“It was specific enough to say building heights should step down from no more than four stories along Fort Washington Way to two stories at Mehring Way.
“This approach will guarantee that the maximum number of existing and future downtown buildings will share the city’s most prestigious riverfront address,” the plan said.
In 1998, height limitations on some Banks land plots were inserted into the team’s lease with the county.
In the end, they came up with eight principles, including the “scale of development.”
Citizens, the planners wrote in their final concept plan, said the skyline as viewed from the south is “Cincinnati’s signature image.” It called for the development to “preserve the view from downtown to the river and from the river to downtown.”
For a city, with a small area to build up, in desperate need of residents and mixed use density this is a huge price to pay.
In fact, the GE deal requires an exception for a 14 story office building.
If this were Indianapolis or Columbus, the wasted opportunity cost and height limits wouldn’t be a big deal.
Much like Pittsburgh, the stadiums ended up as a package deal. Great American makes some sense since it’s used a lot more and The Reds are so important to the town’s identity. The Football Stadium is a massive negative for the city.
@John, thanks for the insight. I wholeheartedly agree that the stadium was a terrible deal for the county, and it was unfortunate that they let the Bangals talk them into the terrible contract. Those height limits were more of a bargaining chip than anything,and it looks like it worked, seeing as Mike Brown just got the county to pay for stadium improvements in exchange for waiving height restrictions for the possible GE building.
I’m not sure if it is entirely fair to say that Fort Washington Way’s trench running along the south edge of the city cuts off the west side. It is far more the result of I-75, as well as the relative geographic isolation of the western neighborhoods. There are relatively few easy routes from the western hills over the massive rail yard that parallels the base of the hill. The far west side neighborhoods have always been fairly isolated from downtown to an extent, although the inclines certainly lessened that years ago.
There’s is still an awful lot of land to redevelop in and around downtown, and while I would have loved to have seen even more residential density in the Banks, I think there is plenty of room for expansion in the numerous downtown parking lots, and Over the Rhine is now where near its capacity. I think there were something around 30,000 residents in that neighborhood along at its peak.
Ideally, I agree with you about completely removing the garage and the freeway, but I’d rather have the current setup with the garage built on otherwise-unusable land than having a massive above ground structure. Hopefully in the near future it will allow for other lots to be removed throughout the CBD.
Isn’t I75 and The riverfront trench highway part of the same system? One connects to the other- and now both are justified by peak load requirements imposed by the stadiums.
My guess is that for Cincinnati to start reducing car dependency, it needs something close to 50,000 people in and near the downtown- OTR & across the river in Covington. Add offices, retail & hotels.
20-25,000 is about what it takes to have a viable 24 hour neighborhood.
OTR was almost certainly more crowded at its peak than one would allow today. This really means the downtown needs a lot of residents.
With no Bengal’s stadium, The Banks had the makings of a pretty good project, much more balanced by retail, residential and office use.
I-75 has always been a mess and its stretch through the Cincinnati metro is probably the most-clogged road in the state. That traffic is far more a result of the terrible sprawl in northern Kentucky and the northern Ohio cointies rather than the stadiums. Cincinnati has terrible public transit, and it is nearly impossible to travel anywhere outside of the city proper without a car. The trench (Ft. Washington Way) and 75 do join immediately southwest of downtown, but that interchange and Ft Washington Way are nowhere near the actual “west side”.
I think fort Washington Way will be less of a problem once they finally get the cap built over it as planned. Its damage is more psychological and visual than the damage I-75 caused.
I agree that OTR will never hold anywhere near that 30k… That was basically slum conditions. But there is still plenty of room in the basin surrounding downtown (including the mostly I undeveloped West End and Queensgate) to add more residential. There is definitely still a long way to go, but I think its completely feasible to get more apartments downtown even with the relatively low number at The Banks.
But yeah, I’m with you 100% on the Bengals stadium. Bad move for the city and county. Unfortunately, we have to make lemonade with lemons, and as always with this city, it’s an uphill battle to promote walkability and urbanism. At least the tower you mentioned will have a full grocery store, which is key. Last I’ve heard, it’s still moving forward despite Cranley’s stall tactics. Its a really critical development for downtown.
I agree that The old West End/ Queensgate development is critical. Any plans to change the zoning for that area?
One needs a lot more than a few more apartments downtown. One needs at least 20,000 residents.
All of the investment like the highway cap costs real money. The ROI only makes sense if one really builds densely.
Very good points. Given the number of available space though, I still think that magic 20k, and 50k in the core, is very possible, but still a ways off. Most of the northern half of OTR hasn’t been touched yet and the southern half still needs a lot of work.
Just as a reference, the entire basin (Downtown, OTR, and West End) has about 17,500 residents. This is obviously spread out over a large geographic area that isn’t tied together with strong transit networks, so it would be unfair for me to claim that there are only 3,000 more people needed, but as I said it’s purely a reference point.
Downtown itself has about 4800 residents, but geographically OTR and Downtown can serve as a reasonable approximation to a similar-sized city’s downtown due to their relative compactness. That said, there is definitely plenty of need to increase the density throughout the actual “downtown” itself with many more residential options.
West End (or what is left of it) is essentially a residential neighborhood so it’s ready for redevelopment. The biggest problem is the sheer scale of redevelopment still needed to stabilize OTR puts the West End on the back burner. It was pretty much decimated when I-75 plowed through. As far as I am aware, Queensgate is still zoned for mostly light-industrial, although more start-ups have been moving into the neighborhood.
I had a meeting in downtown cincy today. There seems to construction or reconstruction on every corner.
Queensgate also looks like nice place for offices. Zoning should be freed up immediately.
@quimbob interestingly enough Gary Bauer grew up in the Kentucky part of metro Cincinnati, where his father fought against vice.
Interesting take on the annexation topic. He may be right. But as I said before, I think annexation already had a powerful effect on Columbus, and perhaps cities like Indy and Nashville. Columbus spent so much time and resources annexing the burbs that by 1998, when I moved her, it had one of the worst downtowns in America. That has changed, and is evolving, but only after recent efforts to refocus investment in the core instead of annexing. There was a trade-off.
Now, that said, when a new slew of malls were built and all the old malls closed, Columbus was in a position to grab those. they were going to be built regardless, and now they are all generating tax money for Columbus. Given that Columbus is growing twice as fast as Cincinnati, in 25-50 years its likely that the current footprint will be much less than the about half the metro area it is now, and it might be beneficial to have that land.
However, it will be expensive, as much of it is lower-density sprawl development. I guess time will tell.
Oh another impact is the streetcar. Even though Cincinnati had a tough go of it, it’s getting done. Columbus, which is a city you would think would be more supportive of something often labeled a shiny liberal hipster toy, has failed several times to do mass transit beyond buses.
Much of this can be attributed to the fact that folks out in the ‘burbs parts of Columbus see no benefit from it for them. In Cincinnati, these folks are in other municipalities. In Columbus, they are part of the City, so you have a different political reality.
Now granted 10 years ago it never would have been possible in Cincinnati either. But the city has changed. For better or worse, many people fled after the race riot in 2001. The remnant that’s distilled seems more ready to support redevelopment. I guess that makes sense-why give up now when you stuck it out through the tough times and are just starting to catch the wave up?
Exactly, you can’t acquire land without gaining the voters who live there.
Expanding the base of sprawl supporting voters more than offsets the increased tax dollars.
Cincy seems to have the worst of both worlds. A lot of the stadium decisions seem to have been made at the county level.
Toronto is the best example of how a forced urban/suburban merger can cripple an otherwise thriving city.
IMHO, NYC also suffers for having merged. Congestion pricing, parking and tolling policy would be very different if each of the 5 boroughs were independent cities. Anti urban zoning policies in the outer boroughs would have also changed more rapidly.
Columbus has never “annexed the ’burbs”. Beginning in the 1950s, if developing areas wanted water and sewer service, they had to first annex into the city of Columbus. The city never sought to annex or take over existing suburban municipalities.
Effect is the same either way.
Correctin: beginning in the 50s Columbus didn’t annex existing suburbs. That’s why the old suburbs (see: Bexley, Whitehall, Upper Arlington, Grandview Heights, Worthington) are landlocked islands inside an ever growing Columbus.
Aaron, I have enjoyed your interviews with both Mayor Cranley and Louisville’s mayor. I really liked the Louisville interview, and was impressed by Cranley’s knowledge of urban history and how articulate he is. I am uncertain about his stance on zoning and density (which I would have liked you to talk about a little more), and wish as the mayor of a potentially great city that he were more supportive of public transit issues (again, I would like to have seen him offer an alternative vision of how he will expand transit through strategies with more ROI by opposing the streetcar) and bike lanes. That said, it seems like both of these cities have very competent and thoughtful executives.
^-This interview is full of hot air, he fails to address the more crtical concerns that Aaron brings up. Look at his actions not his words, he’s a Lawyer so he’s articulate, but his actions show a ton of incompetency.
Here’s a few incompetent things he’s done over the years:
1) Escalating the riot situation in 2001 due to a non-chalant attitude towards protesters from the murder of Timothy Thomas (see videos I posted above). Keep in mind that meeting was called to address the issue, and Cranley just treated it like nothing bad was going on at all spending lots of time discussing taxi’s of all things. When the room got too roudy he lost control and failed to take leadership needed to keep the situation from going completely out of control. The crowd went out of control which lead to an event that pushed the city back 10 years. Yes the causes of the riots were more complex than this, but a good leader knows how to manage a crisis situation, Cranley does not. He is not fit to be a leader.
2) The whole streetcar debacle which I’m glad to say he lost, but by pausing it, it wound up costing the city upwards of $1million dollars – private money even wanted to step in and help save the cost while they deliberated about the future of the streetcar but he refused to accept it – a sign that “fiscal responsibility” means nothing to him in spite of his campaign.
4) He has yet to hire a proper city manager which is supposed to be one of his most important duties.
5) After the previous council under Mallory developed professionalism as a priority, he threw that out the window with his first council meeting which had no rules. He just told the people to make them up. It led to chaos – this is terrible leadership.
6) Canceling the parking deal which lots of people supported, then coming up with a new deal that was just as bad without additional revenue streams and
7) Hiring 25 new cops in a city that already has one of the highest per-capita police forces in the nation after he had previously beefed it up when on council – lots of expensive unionized workers (which doesn’t make sense given that he ran on a platform of “Fiscal Responsibility”.
8)Stall tactics on the 30 story tower downtown which included a urban grocery as part of its plan. This is critical for urban redevelopment and he’s taking a non nonchalant its downtown approach to it. He’s working very hard undo all achievements that were done under Mallory.
9) The current issue with the bicycle lanes on Central Parkway – he’s allowing one property owner to gum up the works because in his classic Cincinnati petty tribal attitude it was something the last guy did that was going to be successful and we can’t have that.
There are probably more that I didn’t cover, but Cranley is old fashioned Cincinnati petty insular dysfunction at its finest. The only progress I expect to see under his watch is in spite of him not because of him.
@Neil
Thanks. That fits with my view. The interview is reasonably articulate, but a pattern of actions indicates he doesn’t do what he says.
I tried to watch the video you posted but I lacked enough patience and context. Mostly, they talk about taxis and other minor unrelated matters in front of people waving signs.
Unimaginative hack might be a good word. Similar to Pittsburgh’s former mayor Luke Ravenstahl, who seemed to have defended some unknown status quo, old boy network.
That said, the former mayor was above average- with ideas like eliminating parking minimums downtown. Probably a little ahead of his time.
I just noticed that in my fit of writing all of these reasons why Cranley is bad I didn’t finish one of my points:
6) Canceling the parking deal which lots of people supported, then coming up with a new deal that was just as bad without additional revenue streams and *NEW PART* – eliminating the advantages that Xerox would have brought with smartphone enabled technology and app driven parking (much much more innovative than the plan that Cranley has in place that fails to really address the issue but gums things up).
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“That said, the former mayor was above average- with ideas like eliminating parking minimums downtown. Probably a little ahead of his time.”
That’s largely due to a push from Randy Simes at Urbancincy to my understanding – he provided an idea that united both right libertarians and left pro-urban progressives and council ate it up. Then again the last administration/council was unusually open to new ideas for Cincinnati – it had me really feeling like some kind of revolution had happened down there, yet sadly Cranley is pretty good evidence that a very very hard fight is still ahead. (Though I think in the end the pro-urban camp will win and Cincy will return to being a great city).
Whoever came up with the idea, the former mayor deserves credit for not opposing the elimination of parking minimums. In most cities that is still a very courageous stance.
Supporting transit as an upper middle class toy is now common, but taking the next step to eliminate parking requirements is still cutting edge.
Cincinnati back in the news for social conservatism as police blockade entire roads near The University of Cincinnati to stop prostitution- creating a virtual prison.
http://reason.com/blog/2014/05/01/cincinnati-barricades-fight-prostitution
I guess by now, many know that Toyota is pulling its main enginering center in Northern Kentucky & moving operations to Texas & Michigan, resulting in 1600 local layoffs.