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The University Village Association’s plan to hold festivals to control crowds in Corryville could be called a best-laid plan gone awry. Corryville business owners have canceled plans to hold street festivals, possibly charging an admission fee, on Sunday nights because of what they are calling a lack of support from the city of Cincinnati.
The idea was proposed by the merchants as an alternative solution in dealing with the young African-Americans who gather on Short Vine Street.
“The University Village Association has asked the city to solve this problem of the crowd many times,” said Peter Mello, owner of Daniels’ Pub & Restaurant. “This suggestion was made to the city, and we wanted them to try to do a legitimate festival.”
Mello said the reason the merchants dropped out of the plan was because of the lack of support the city was willing to give them.
The city passed an ordinance two weeks ago that approved $105,000 to help pay for the events. But that would supply only half of the cost of operating the street festival for four weeks. Mello said that it was going to cost about $44,000 for each street festival.
He also said the ordinance made it sound as though the street festivals were only a University Village Association event instead of a city event.
“We decided that we are not willing to run a festival at our liability,” he said. “The city has to address this issue. We were just looking for a potential solution.”
For the past four summers, the business district has been battling the consequences of the large crowd of teen-agers and young adults that spill over into Corryville after Eden Park closes at dusk.
Business owners complain that the large crowds do not patronize businesses and drive away other potential customers.
Last summer, the complaints of some business owners escalated after several businesses like Pizza Hut and Perkins began to shut down or move to other areas.
The University Village Association met with the city manager and former Councilman Dwight Tillery to discuss its concerns. The merchants had been reluctant for several years to discuss the problem because they feared the publicity might keep customers away.
But after two highly publicized 1997 incidents in which two women, including one who was taking her sick child to Children’s Hospital, were attacked, the businesses lost even more customers. Police said that both attacks were racially motivated.
But even with all these problems, the Corryville business owners complain that the city has been slow to respond, leaving proposals to come from the merchants.
“I don’t believe we should be throwing concerts and festivals as city events,” Councilman Phil Heimlich said. “The response seems to be that if there is a civil disturbance, then we should throw a taxpayer-paid festival.”
Heimlich said he went along with the festival idea because the village association was pleading for help.
Vice Mayor Minette Cooper said she did not understand why the association backed out.
“(The city) did what they wanted us to do,” she said. “We discussed it and worked with it. I think we embraced it.”
After council allotted some money toward the festivals, Cincinnati lawyer Ken Lawson filed a lawsuit on behalf of self-described political activist Nathaniel Livingston against the city and the University Village Association for unconstitutionally charging a $5 admission fee to young African-Americans who gather on Short Vine Street.
According to an affidavit Livingston signed, another reason for the lawsuit was special wording in the ordinance that prohibited Livingston from carrying a sign into the festival that could be elevated with a pole or a stick.
According to the affidavit, Livingston said, “I am only 5-feet, 4-inches tall and, normally, when I protest, I carry a sign with a stick attached to it so that my message can be read by those in a crowd.”
Although the festivals will not happen, Lawson said that he would go ahead with the lawsuit to prevent the city from passing another, similar ordinance .
“This ordinance targets African Americans,” Lawson said. “Cruising and loafing are constitutional rights.”
Lawson said that if the teen-agers or young adults broke the law, they should be arrested.
Mello said the lawsuit was a “moot issue” in the University Village Association’s decision not to go ahead with the festival plan.
“We wanted there to be structure to the festival and make the area more comfortable for our customers,” Mello said.
But that would not be possible if the city was not willing to embrace the idea, Mello said.
Last year, the city manager formed a Task Force on Youth and Young Adult Summer Activities to create a forum where youths, police and business owners could discuss the issues.
As a result of those meetings, the task force made two recommendations to city council. The first already had been done last year by the city, sponsoring free concerts in Eden Park’s Seasongood Pavilion to reduce traffic flocking to Corryville. The other came from the University Village Association’s idea of a street festival.
All nine members of council voted to approve the funding for the plans.
In a CityBeat cover story about these proposed ideas, Safety Director Kent Ryan warned that the safety division would only support the concerts and street festivals if they were “inclusive,” or inviting to the youths who gather there.
Ryan said that now that the University Village Association had backed out of the plan, there was not much the city could do differently this year to alleviate the crowd.
“The ordinance was passed to assist them,” he said. “Since they elected not to proceed with it, we are back to square one.”
The city does not have any alternative plan to take the place of the street festival, he said.
It will, however, proceed with the free concerts in Eden Park.
“We will continue our usual monitoring,” Ryan said.
In the meantime, the effort might equate to eight months down the drain for those who have put the time and effort into the planning of a festival.
“We were trying to meet the needs of the youth and the Corryville residents,” said Lamont Taylor, Corryville Community Council president. “I’m not sure if this has been fair on us, and I’m not sure what is going to happen. I know that it is eight months of hard work gone.”
This article appears in Jun 2-8, 1999.
