People having sex openly in the yard of an Eden Park-area resident has some East Walnut Hills residents fed up with Sunday night gatherings of young adults in the park.
Residents and city leaders agree that incident and several others — such as open drug use, blocked driveways, urinating in front of houses and massive amounts of litter — are clear examples of how the city’s plan to keep the youths from gathering in Corryville after Eden Park closes has backfired.
“There is no excuse for this stuff,” said Councilman Phil Heimlich, who has been openly critical about taxpayer money being used to pay for free Sunday night concerts in the park. “We are trying to increase home ownership and protect the quality of life for residents. When there are disturbances, we shouldn’t buy people off with tax-funded concerts.”
Several residents who live near Eden Park, where the eight-concert series has been planned this summer, complained to Cincinnati City Council’s law committee at its June 21 meeting.
The residents’ complaints of noise and vandalism resulted in a vote to end the summer concerts an hour earlier at 9:30 p.m. starting with the June 27 concert.
Hiring off-duty police officers to deal with traffic so that on-duty police officers can deal with complaints of criminal offenses and providing additional portable toilets were some additional suggestions from council members now under consideration.
“People have a right to use that park, but there needs to be strict enforcement of the laws,” Heimlich said.
In order to do that, there needs to be a stronger police presence inside and outside of the park, he said.
“When you consider the money council has wasted, it would be a slap in the face to say that we don’t have enough to pay for more officers,” Heimlich said.
City council allocated $87,000 for the concerts to curb the large crowds of young adults that congregate and cruise in Eden Park and Corryville on Sunday nights during the summer. Once Eden Park closes at dusk, the crowd gathers on Short Vine Street in the Corryville business district.
But residents of Mount Adams, Walnut Hills and East Walnut Hills, the three neighborhoods that border the park, argue that the concert series has increased problems instead of controlling the situation.
“There are more police in the park but not enough around the perimeters to give us any sort of protection,” said Kent Cleland, a resident of East Walnut Hills. “We could live with the traffic, but it’s now getting out of hand.”
Cleland said it was difficult to tell whether or not ending the concert early helped problems at the June 27 concert because the rain kept numbers down.
“It was as noisy as ever, but there wasn’t as much traffic,” he said.
The biggest problems occur when the police are needed to direct traffic after the concerts end, Cleland said.
When Cleland discussed the problems with two uniformed police officers on June 6, he said they told him that most of the problem was caused by youths who come in from Dayton, Ohio, and Lexington, Ky.
“When there is a police presence around our street there is no problem,” he said. “We don’t blame the officers, but we want more of them to control situations outside of the park. These concerts have brought in too many people.”
Lt. Joe Williams, head of the Park Canine Unit, said that out-of-town concertgoers were not the problem.
“There’s only about 2 percent that come from other cities to cruise in Eden Park,” Williams said. “We can only concentrate on what’s going on inside the park.”
Williams said the complaints are not being directed to the right place.
“I know there is more than one complaint out there,” he said. “But the problem is that complaints are going to city council and District One. When those people were having sex, why did no one call the police?”
Williams said that residents needed to keep their police district updated on what was happening. Residents in East Walnut Hills need to contact neighborhood officer Daphne Law, Williams said.
“Last year, District Four had one complaint,” Williams said. “I’m not questioning their numbers, but I find that hard to believe because it seems that I get tons of complaints from residents when I’m out there. People have got to call and complain to the right place.”
Cleland said he planned to complain to anyone who would listen.
“We absolutely will not allow them to run roughshod over our neighborhoods,” he said. “I’m not sure what the solution is, but this needs to be addressed now.” ©
This article appears in Jun 30 – Jul 6, 1999.