Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley has some questions about the site of a planned music venue at riverfront development The Banks, he wrote in a letter to Cincinnati City Council Aug. 22, signaling that the complex development plan for the venue may not be out of the woods just yet.
Cranley says the county should divulge how much it will pay for the property tied up in a complicated land swap; the county says it doesn’t have a contract yet and that discussing numbers would spoil its position in negotiations.
Current plans for the proposed venue by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s concert promotion arm MEMI call for it to be located on a site called Lot 27 near Paul Brown Stadium, where the Cincinnati Bengals could veto the project due to a clause in the team’s lease with the county. The team has indicated it will not stand in the way of the venue provided the city and county replace the parking lot where the venue is slated to go — a space fans use for tailgating.
That, in turn, has set in motion efforts to swap land with longstanding business Hilltop Basic Resources, which owns 15 acres nearby that it uses for its concrete business. It wants land at two sites near the Ohio River in Queensgate and Lower Price Hill in exchange for the land south of the stadium that would be used to replace the Bengals’ parking lot.
Some residents in Lower Price Hill have asked questions about the relocation, though a deal could soon be worked out there as well. Hilltop currently has a purchase option on land it would transfer to the city for the completion of a long-awaited park in Lower Price Hill if the land-swap were to be approved.
Cranley has promoted an alternate location for the MEMI venue, called Lot 24, farther from the stadium. That location doesn’t need the Bengals’ permission and already has a parking garage podium constructed.
In his letter yesterday, Cranley wanted several questions and concerns answered before a Sept. 3 presentation before Cincinnati City Council’s Growth and Zoning Committee. Among them, Cranley asked for detailed plans of Hilltop’s proposed new location, including how trucks and other vehicles will access the site; an unredacted copy of the contract between Hilltop and the county for the site in question; the exact location of a proposed asphalt plant Hilltop wants to construct; that appraisals of both properties in question be published before a deal is made; and other questions about the property transfer related to loss of city revenues, as some of the land Hilltop wants from the city is currently leased to another company.
“I believe it is vital to the public interest and to the city’s consideration of any proposed transaction to know how much money the public is spending on this purchase of Hilltop’s existing site,” Cranley wrote in his letter.
Hamilton County Commission President Denise Driehaus, meanwhile, says the deal is a good one and expressed concerns that without the music venue deal, Lot 27 will remain undeveloped. Driehaus also says she has worked with Cincinnati City Councilmember Amy Murray to broker a deal in Lower Price Hill and get everything lined up for Hilltop’s relocation.
“We have been working with Council Member Murray to engage community members in Price Hill and business owners in Queensgate throughout this process,” she wrote in a statement. “Hilltop has gone above and beyond in their efforts to solicit feedback from the community, resulting in proposal for a state-of-the art facility in Queensgate and a land swap to finish out Price Landing Park. Along the way, Hilltop’s proposal has been presented at three public meetings, Hilltop has invited members of the community to tour its current facility, and another public hearing is scheduled for September 3 in Price Hill. To date, Hilltop has received favorable responses from residents and community leaders in Price Hill and Queensgate.”
As if the deal wasn’t complex enough, the county’s renegotiation of its lease with the Bengals is also tied up in the MEMI negotiations. Driehaus and other county leaders believe those renegotiations could save the county millions of dollars in game day payments and enhancements to the stadium the Bengals could try to make the county fund; Cranley, however, is doubtful and wants the exact calculations made public.
“We are told that this deal makes the county’s stadium deal better,” Cranley wrote in his letter. “But the public won’t know if that’s true until it sees the amount of public money that will be spent to move Hilltop.”
Driehaus, however, is sticking to her guns.
“When the Hilltop relocation is complete, our community stands to gain more vibrancy on the riverfront with a new music venue, a renegotiated lease with the Bengals that will save taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, a new public space with bike and pedestrian infrastructure… and the city will control a parcel of land that is the last piece of the puzzle for the planned Price Landing Park,” Driehaus wrote in a statement. “We also keep a company that employs 100 people in Cincinnati.”
This article appears in Aug 21-28, 2019.
