Eight months ago, there were two big questions looming over Cincinnati's construction-clogged riverfront: Who would guide The Banks -- the widely supported plan to create a 24-hour riverfront neighborhood with housing, stores and offices -- to completion, and who would cover the shortfall in its $248 million plan?
Now the answers are in. Or at least partial answers.
The Riverfront Advisors Commission (RAC), the 16-member city/county-appointed panel that proposed The Banks after hours upon hours of public input, recommends the city of Cincinnati and Hamilton County revamp the existing but largely ineffective countywide Port Authority for Brownfields Redevelopment to oversee riverfront development. The quasi-government group has been trying to redevelop old industrial sites but has been slowed by its early lack of support and complicated nature of its task, according to its executive director, Randy Welker.
But, just as the passing of Hamilton County's half-cent sales tax increase in 1996 spawned questions about the location of new Reds and Bengals stadiums, the RAC's recommendations have prompted a round of new questions, including:
· How will the new port authority be structured?
· Will it still redevelop old industrial sites? Will it delve into other projects, such as Cincinnati's underfunded $50 million convention center expansion?
· What will its jurisdiction be?
· Who will serve on it?
· What government powers will it have?
· How accountable will it be to the public?
But this time, the answers must come from the city and the county, not the RAC, because the city and county need to pass laws adjusting the port authority's powers. And these answers must come relatively quickly -- before the end of the summer, according to Jack Rouse, the RAC's chair -- to give officials time to pick a developer and give that developer time to market the project.
If that doesn't happen, The Banks will gradually lose momentum as developers stop thinking of it as a viable project, and the riverfront could become a half-baked mixture of parking garages, surface parking and stadiums.
And there's still a shortage of money. The latest all-inclusive, $2.14 billion estimated cost of riverfront development still needs $177 million more for infrastructure and other specific projects such as the planned 52-acre riverfront park.
A Complex Project
Although no one knows what the riverfront will look like in several years, the known projects are more concrete with each passing week.
The narrowing of Fort Washington Way is expected to end sometime in August, with the extension of Elm Street from Third Street to Paul Brown Stadium finished by Aug. 19 -- the day of the Bengals' first preseason game. County stadium managers have also promised that Paul Brown Stadium will be ready by then.
The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center recently reached the halfway point on its fundraising campaign (see sidebar, "Freedom Center Halfway to Funding Goal," on page 25), and the Reds stadium is down to final design details.
The city's transit center, which will initially handle buses but could later accommodate light rail, still is being designed and is hoped to open in time for Riverfest in September 2001, according to Metro spokesperson Sallie Hilvers. The center will be located under Second Street, with an above-ground street entrance north of the Freedom Center.
The Cincinnati Park Board has begun looking for ways to pay for a 52-acre, $78-million riverfront park in The Banks. The park, conceived through public workshops beginning in 1997, would include a 6-acre great lawn southwest of Paul Brown Stadium, a boardwalk, a multi-use trail, a fountain and a carrousel. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources has already budgeted $1 million, and might provide more if the area becomes a state park. Federal money also is a possibility.
The county's new 1,254-space parking garage, located east of the Firstar Center, is on schedule for an August opening.
A Higher Authority ...
In December, after the Hamilton County Commission torpedoed the RAC's idea to cover The Banks' $52 million gap with stadium sales tax dollars, the RAC formed a finance committee and began going over the numbers again. Meanwhile, the question of who would manage The Banks went to the backburner.
Throughout the six months of number-crunching and legal research, Rouse presented an optimistic face, saying a couple of times he thought a solution was weeks away.
During that research, the RAC examined Ohio's port authorities and their powers. Commission members visited some of the authorities and talked with staff from others on the phone.
Then, on the last Thursday in May, a majority of city and county leaders gathered at the convention center to hear the RAC's answer to who would manage The Banks and how they'd pay for it. Amidst a swarm of media, Rouse and Tom Humes, chair of the RAC's finance committee, unveiled the RAC's plan to take the existing Port Authority for Brownfields Redevelopment of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, expand its legal powers, reconfigure its board and give it control of The Banks.
Why? Rouse said that a port authority, unlike the current city/county partnership, offers:
· A single point of accountability, making it easier and more attractive for developers to work on the riverfront;
· The ability to change course quickly when facing unexpected problems;
· And a commitment to The Banks vision as provided by the RAC.
Under Ohio law, a port authority can also issue tax-exempt bonds, ask voters to pass taxes, charge rent, own land, sign contracts and is exempt from paying state sales taxes, which would save millions of dollars in construction costs, Rouse said. Of course, city council and county commission must first grant these powers to the port authority.
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Construction of Elm Street as it crosses the newly
narrowed Fort Washington Way, intersects with the
new Second Street and meets Paul Brown Stadium.
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Right now there's no one agency in charge of the riverfront. The county is building the stadiums and related parking -- including the underground garages needed to literally support The Banks -- and the city is narrowing Fort Washington Way, building the new riverfront streets and transit center and planning the riverfront park and most of the rest of the surface projects.
The port authority could hire one contractor to build both the underground parking garages and the buildings above it, which Rouse said could also save a great deal of money compared to hiring separate contractors for each job.
"We've studied this thing to death," he said. "The city and the county ... simply cannot do it alone."
The port authority, he said, would also give the city and county time to work on other projects, such as schools, roads, hospitals, the justice system and so on.
Rouse said several developers have already called him, wondering when they can begin working on projects at The Banks. But that doesn't mean The Banks is a slam-dunk, he said. It still needs great care and expertise to guide it.
"The board and the staff must be strong," Rouse said, and be willing to adapt while maintaining the Banks' vision.
The Banks remains $177 million short -- for streets, the park, and other costs -- when all the riverfront projects are combined into a $2.14 billion package. The RAC didn't have any answer for that shortfall, except to hope that future leaders of the project could assemble a financial package with enough private investment to narrow the gap and that more state and federal funding could be attracted to the riverfront.
... But Not the First Authority
Using a port authority for economic development isn't a new idea in Cincinnati. The first local port authority was created about 15 years ago but, unlike many of its counterparts in Ohio, (of which there are 32 today) didn't operate a port or airport or do a great deal of economic development.
The Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce, among others, successfully lobbied for the first area port authority to be created in the mid-1980s. It issued some bonds for industrial projects, but this tool became useless after changes in federal law eliminated certain tax exemptions favoring the authority's bonds, according to Joe Kramer, who worked in the chamber's economic development section then and now is vice president of the same department.
Also, the authority never had a clear goal and consequently never had the consensus it needed to accomplish much. It essentially shut down after it stopped issuing bonds, Kramer said.
The port authority was revived in 1997 with a 10-member board after the county received a $200,000 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grant. This time, the authority was given a specific goal: Redeveloping old, often polluted industrial sites called brownfields. There are more than 500 acres of them along the Mill Creek valley alone, Kramer said.
Three years later, after a couple of false starts, the second authority has yet to complete a project, although it anticipates buying the nine-acre former Green Industries site in Sharonville, which is soon headed for a Sheriff's auction because of overdue taxes.
The current authority has also been limited by the inability to set up tax-increment financing for redevelopment projects, which is a way of borrowing against future tax revenues. On top of that, environmental projects are complicated by unknown cleanup costs and extensive regulations.
The authority recently gained momentum by partnering with the University of Cincinnati to compile a master list of brownfields and draw five redevelopment districts, mostly in the city.
So how might a new port authority work better? For one thing, there's now a specific goal -- The Banks -- plus a concept of how to do it. In other words, a foundation of successful planning. As a consequence, there's wide political support for it, which likely means the new authority will have an easier time getting its job done.
"There's no doubt in my mind that they're very focused (now)," Welker said.
Fear of the Known & Unknown
A new authority still could face one major obstacle: politicians afraid to give power to another entity and business leaders and citizens afraid the authority will be too powerful or unaccountable.
There's a built-in tension in port authorities, said Ralph B. Greime, owner/broker of the Remax Greater Cincinnati Commercial Group, based in Mount Adams. On one hand, people need to understand what their government is doing so they can form an educated opinion, he said.
Port authorities, however, tend to do a lot of their work, especially negotiations, out of the public eye and do it faster than cities or counties.
"That's the tension in a port authority," Greime said.
Attorney Tim Mara, known for his lawsuit against Hamilton County for what he believes were abuses of its closed-meetings privilege, is concerned about the power a port authority can wield under Ohio law. After a couple of days of research, he sent a nine-page letter to city council members detailing his concerns about this potential new government agency.
While some see port authorities as streamlined government separated from politics and therefore more efficient, Mara sees an unaccountable body that might have many powers equal to the city and county. There's great potential for abuse there, he said, even though they hold public meetings.
Mara's biggest concern is port authorities' exemptions to Ohio's public records laws. Specifically, Ohio law states port authorities don't have to provide "... records of information relating to marketing plans, specific business strategy, financial projections, financial statements, or secret processes or secret methods of manufacture or production. ..."
"That's so broad, in my opinion, that the port authority could deny about any request," Mara said. "So how is a citizen supposed to get together intelligent opposition to a project when they're working in the dark?"
Mara is also concerned about the close relationship between the existing port authority and the city's chamber of commerce. The chamber pays the salary of the authority's executive director, Welker, and houses the authority's offices in its Carew Tower headquarters. The authority also reports its activities regularly to the chamber's president.
"They've practically turned over a unit of government to the chamber," Mara said, adding that a new authority should be separated from the chamber and have offices that are more accessible to the public.
Mara believes part of the eagerness to have a riverfront port authority comes from the bad publicity and headaches the stadiums and other projects gave county and city officials, who should have been doing a better job.
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Paul Brown Stadium under construction
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"Turning it over to someone else is a poor substitute for good leadership," Mara said.
But after speaking to two-thirds of the elected city and county leaders about the port authority concept, County Commissioner John Dowlin was the only one to bring up fears of unaccountable power to CityBeat without prompting. Dowlin mentioned the legendary Robert Moses, creator of New York's port authority, which enabled him to control the city's port, airports, bridges and tunnels.
Through the authority, Moses became the most powerful man in New York from the 1930s to 1960s -- even more powerful than the mayors who appointed him to his various posts, according to The Power Broker, the 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography by Robert A. Caro. Stories abound about Moses building things just because he wanted to or moving buildings from one street to another as a simple show of his power.
"And that's pretty scary," Dowlin said.
Humes, however, said these fears are unjustified. The city and county will always have control of the port authority.
"They could close (the port authority) down anytime they want to, if they don't like the way it's working," he said.
Still, the board's composition is critical, Humes said.
"It doesn't mean they should be developers," he said, noting that it's probably a good idea to include some attorneys, accountants, bankers and financial specialists -- a mix much like the RAC has.
How to Build a Port Authority
A sampling of city and county leaders' opinions revealed strong support for a port authority managing The Banks and for the need to keep working on brownfields. But opinions varied on how this new agency should be structured and if it should tackle other work.
City Councilman Todd Portune wants the port authority to have jurisdiction over the county's rivers, their tributaries, and flood plains.
"That really addresses the full breadth and scope of what a port authority can do for a region," Portune said, including reclaiming and flood-proofing old industrial sites.
But City Councilmen Pat DeWine and Phil Heimlich and County Commissioner Bob Bedinghaus disagreed, saying the agency will have its hands full just handling brownfields and The Banks.
Portune also wanted a completely new board of directors, with subcommittees handling different subjects such as brownfields.
"So, for example, we don't have brownfield people overseeing The Banks," he said.
Heimlich agreed, adding that he wants the best available minds in development, people with "real world experience," to serve on the new port authority. People like the RAC.
"The fact of the matter is that government people don't do (development) well," Heimlich said.
DeWine hoped the authority's creation won't become tangled in politics. Bedinghaus, whose political reputation has become quite tangled with the $45 million cost overrun on the Bengals stadium, expressed a similar sentiment.
"I think that it's right that we get riverfront development out of politicians' hands," Bedinghaus said.
Dowlin was the least opinionated about the port authority.
"I guess I don't know where I stand," he said on June 24. "I don't know enough about it."
Dowlin wants a second opinion from county or city staff or maybe from the chamber of commerce.
"I need somebody to tell me that the benefits are what the (RAC) said," he said. "I have not seen anything in writing about any of that."
Dowlin would like to have someone else manage some of the riverfront development. The administrative work on the Bengals stadium has slowed down recently, but for a while the commissioners were spending about eight hours per week in closed meetings on stadium development issues.
No matter what happens, Councilwoman Alicia Reece wants a full public hearing on the port authority proposal. Although the matter was being dealt with in regular council and committee meetings, it wasn't clear at press time on June 27 if there would be separate public hearings.
The Work Begins
As of press time, the port authority debate was headed for the June 28 city council meeting, where a vote on a port authority ordinance introduced by Mayor Charlie Luken could send it to the county for more discussion. The ordinance, likely to be amended, was introduced at the June 26 Community Development Committee meeting as a way to get the city/county talks going.
As written, it would re-create the existing port authority as the "Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority," basically taking the old port authority and weaving it into a new, bigger one. It would have two committees -- one for brownfields and one for The Banks -- and a 10-member board overseeing both, with five members appointed by the county and five by the city. The new authority would receive no expanded legal power to develop brownfields, no power to take land for public projects, nor the ability to ask voters to pass taxes.
It would, however, be able to assemble financing for The Banks, sign contracts and own land.
Portune, who abstained from the June 26 committee vote, countered that he wants the part of the authority working on brownfield redevelopment to have the same powers as the part building The Banks.
Heimlich, DeWine and Councilman Jim Tarbell supported Luken's ordinance. If a majority of council does as well at the June 28 council meeting, the county commission would review it next.
If not, council won't deal with it until it returns from its summer recess on Aug. 2.
Feeling Left Out
While negotiations on funding and building the riverfront move forward, Firstar Center CEO Doug Kirchhofer is feeling a little underappreciated. Although the county has kept him informed on riverfront parking and stadium issues, he can't help but wonder how his facility will fare once all the building is finished.
He's not really concerned with the Reds stadium location, a few hundred feet from the Firstar Center's front door, or with the number of parking spaces (the center is guaranteed 5,000). But how difficult will it be for the Firstar Center's one million annual guests to reach the building during and after Banks construction?
"Parking and access are huge issues for us," Kirchhofer said. "The majority of our events are really optional."
While people will go out of their way to see a Bruce Springsteen concert, he said, families will stay home or go see a movie if they believe getting to the Disney on Ice show or the circus will be difficult.
The major complication is that the Firstar Center and Cinergy Field plazas were built 530 feet above sea level -- the same height as Fourth Street. But The Banks and the new Reds stadium are being built 15 feet lower, at the Third Street level. And Kirchhofer doesn't know how easily pedestrians will be able to move between the two levels.
Kirchhofer likes the prospect of the Reds stadium bringing 3 million people annually to his facility's doorstep. These ballpark guests will be learning how to get to the Firstar Center and park.
"I think, long-term, that's a good thing," Kirchhofer said. "Short term, we've got some challenges."
He's paying close attention to what the back of the Reds scoreboard -- which faces the Firstar Center -- will look like. Although he understands why it was put there, the last thing he wants is for people walking into the center to "feel like you're standing in an alley."
Right now, Kirchhofer and the county are taking wait-and-see positions on these issues. Talks continue.
"Although it's getting late, it's too early for me to give you any specifics of how we're going to resolve these things with the county," Kirchhofer said.
The Clock Is Ticking
Initially, the RAC asked the city and county to revamp the port authority by July 1. But that's not a hard deadline, Rouse said later.
But there are hard deadlines surrounding the stadium openings and the parking they require.
The Reds parking contract hasn't been negotiated, but they'll probably need about 3,500 spaces, said Terrence Evans, the county's assistant director of stadium development. And the county must build the Bengals:
· 3,260 parking spaces by August;
· 4,110 by August 2002;
· And 5,000 by August 2004.
So construction on those garages has to meet those deadlines.
But first, the port authority must be revamped and given a new board, which could take weeks or months. Then the new board must hire one or more developers to build The Banks, which Rouse estimates will take several months, possibly concluding in the late winter or early spring of 2001.
And then that developer must figure out what to build on top of the planned garages -- generally starting on the western riverfront and heading east -- in time to meet the parking deadlines.
The longer it takes to revamp the port authority, the more developers become nervous about investing in the riverfront. And the less demand, the more difficult it is to build The Banks.
"If it's done right, there's no question about demand," said Norm Miller, RAC member and director of the University of Cincinnati's real estate program. "Can you screw it up? Sure."
If The Banks doesn't work out, Humes said, there will be a few six- to eight-story parking garages surrounding the Freedom Center, with a stadium on each end. That's it.
"If it's July 10 (and there's no new port authority), the world's not going to end," Rouse said. "If it gets into the fall, it gets close to the world ending."
"This isn't rocket science," Heimlich said. "We ought to be able to get this done." ©
