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One room best explains why Media Bridges, the non-profit group managing the city of Cincinnati’s cable access programming, wants to move from its long-time location at 2114 Reading Road. Makeshift video editing bays line the walls of a small conference room, which is also the only room large enough to hold orientation classes.
An active evening stacks people on top of people against equipment. Basically, Media Bridges doesn’t have adequate space to service its clientele — the people of Cincinnati.
Of course, none of these space concerns ultimately matter. Media Bridges has 51 weeks remaining on the lease of the Mount Auburn building it currently rents, and there’s no opportunity to extend the contract. Like it or not, the organization will be in a new home by spring 2001.
“We’ve been looking at new properties for years,” says Media Bridges Executive Director Joyce Miller, speaking at the current facility. “But this deadline has made it impossible for us to have any kind of long-range plan. We need to make a decision by the end of summer.”
Plans by Media Bridges to convert the old Channel 5 studios at Crosley Square into a mixed media center fell though after Christian Hills Academy bought the property to rehab it into a private elementary school. Besides, Miller says, additional costs for asbestos removal made Crosley Square unaffordable for Media Bridges and participating groups such as the Cincinnati Film Society and WAIF-FM.
Miller has toured various buildings in and around downtown with Media Bridges staff and trustees in recent months. On June 2, they did a follow-up tour of Longworth Hall on Pete Rose Way. They looked at the Pembrooke Building on 12th Street, the future home of the Art Academy of Cincinnati, as well as the basement of the old Lazarus department store on Seventh Street.
Miller says that any new home would have to meet some basic requirements: 9,000 sq. ft. of open space, accessibility to Time-Warner Cable wiring and a location in the city’s empowerment zone. Close proximity to bus lines, adequate parking and natural lighting would be a plus. Finally, any new building should help Media Bridges boost its profile among the Cincinnati arts community.
“I’d love to be in Over-the-Rhine, either in a building on Main Street or around Music Hall,” Miller says. “A new building would be a focal point for us, just as the change of our name from Cincinnati Community Video to Media Bridges was part of a long-range plan. We have a broad scope and vision, and we want to be able to implement that once we move into a new facility.”
The mixed media center proposed by Media Bridges could be part of an “avenue of the arts” that CityBeat first proposed as part of our annual arts issue (issue of May 4-10). This arts “T” would run from the corner of Sixth and Walnut streets, site of the new Contemporary Arts Center, and up Walnut past the Aronoff Center and the Main Public Library to 12th Street, near the shuttered Emery Theatre and the Art Academy’s future home.
A similar avenue of sorts runs across 12th from Memorial and Music halls on Elm to Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati on Vine to art galleries and workspace on Main and in the Pendleton area to the School for Creative and Performing Arts (SCPA).
Miller says that, if money were no object, Media Bridges’ participation in the “T” district would be “ideal.”
Among other news updates related to the proposed arts avenues:
· Art Academy President Greg Smith confirms that, until negotiations are completed with Pembrooke Building tenant Barrelhouse Brewery, there will be no renderings or architectural drawings released for the academy’s new Over-the-Rhine facility.
· A funding setback has stalled plans to open a renovated Emery Theatre as a full-scale performance hall by 2004. Construction crews are busy converting the former OMI-College of Applied Sciences building into 62 market-rate apartments and a three-floor interior parking garage. But not being included in the state of Ohio’s current budget has derailed plans to complete infrastructure repairs necessary for future theater renovation.
“You can do whatever you want to do, it just costs money,” says Cincinnati Preservation Association and Emery Center Corporation Director Beth Sullebarger.
Apartments will be ready by early 2001 at a cost of a $9.7 million. Without the necessary $2 million in funding for theater renovation, though, additional renovations to make the hall compatible for large-scale opera performances now will occur sometime after 2004.
Sullebarger says that some basic renovations will still happen in the near future — temporary heat installation, hazardous material abatement and removal of outmoded boiler and oil tanks. She says that pushing renovations back 10 years might increase the project’s overall budget of $17.3 million by 25 percent.
Sullebarger hopes the Emery is part of the city of Cincinnati’s 2001-02 budget. Still, there’s a slim possibility to receive the necessary funds this year.
“If the Nordstrom deal goes through, there’s talk about an additional $50 million for neighborhood projects and we’ve been mentioned as one of those projects,” Sullebarger says. “It’s a big if, but a lot of times when you’re dealing with City Hall you’re dealing with ifs.”
· SCPA Principal Jeff Brokamp continues to lead efforts to build a new school facility adjacent to Washington Park and Music Hall at a cost of approximately $60 million. The political fall-out between Cincinnati Pops Conductor Erich Kunzel, who first initiated plans for a Greater Cincinnati Arts & Education Center, and Drop Inn Center officials Bonnie Neumeier and Pat Clifford led to Kunzel and his volunteers withdrawing from the project.
It’s evident that an emerging cultural district is underway in Over-the-Rhine. What’s yet to be determined is whether it’s for the better.
“The biggest problem facing any arts group wanting to move to 12th Street is the homeless issue,” says OTR-based architect and documentary filmmaker Steve Gebhardt. “You’ll fight your way into an impasse trying to face these people. But a potential arts neighborhood can happen anywhere in Over-the-Rhine. I’d even look at buildings above Findlay Market. These buildings are on bus lines and have the space to serve as artist lofts and a mixed media center. More importantly, it’s not like anybody lives up there.”
Media Bridges and the Cincinnati Film Society are hosting a planning session for their mixed media center at 9:30 a.m. Saturday at Old St. George Church, 42 Calhoun St. To RSVP, call 651-4171.
This article appears in Jun 7-13, 2000.