Tag: developments

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Business Development News

Great Traditions breaks ground on phase two of Stetson Square

Nearly seven years after phase one of the $84 million Village at Stetson Square development opened, developers stood with city and neighborhood leaders in Corryville this morning to celebrate the groundbreaking of the project’s next phase.

Once fully complete, phase two will include a total of 18 condominiums in four different buildings, with prices ranging from $200,000 to $275,000.

In order to help compliment the development, the City of Cincinnati will be contributing $340,000 towards infrastructure improvements in the immediate area. The development team expects the first residents to begin moving in by August 2013.

The Stetson Square development got off to a fast start with its large first phase. Until phase two designs were revealed in May 2012, the second and third remaining phases of work had been left undeveloped and up in the air with regards to when they would get started.


The second phase of work at Stetson Square kicked off today – nearly 13 years after the original plan was developed for the project in 2000. Image provided.

“We are very proud of Stetson Square and what it has contributed to the Corryville neighborhood and Uptown area,” explained Jamie Humes, Vice President, Great Traditions Land & Development. “It is an exciting, transformative time for people to live within the City of Cincinnati.”

In addition to adding new owner-occupied housing units to the Corryville neighborhood near the booming medical research block, the developers are also pursuing Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification.

In December 2012, Cincinnati City Council passed new measures overseeing the tax incentives distributed for LEED-certified project.

But while phase two is finally getting started, the prominently located phase three has yet to have its future defined. When asked about the future of phase three, Humes stated that there is no definitive plan or use for it yet.

“Our perspective is that the marketplace will ultimately determine what the best land use and timing for development will be,” Humes clarified. “Corryville Community Development Corporation (CCDC) will then make the decision on how to proceed.”


Phase two of Stetson Square is considerably smaller than phase one, and will welcome its first residents by fall 2013. Rendering provided.

In 2006, Great Traditions informed UrbanCincy that phase three would eventually result in either apartments or condominiums, with a preference for additional owner-occupied units if the market would allow. The undeveloped lot sits at the corner of Martin Luther King Drive and Eden Avenue, and the CCDC currently retains ownership of the property.

Great Traditions touts that Stetson Square has 100% of its 79,000 square feet of office space and 92% of its 15,000 square feet of retail space occupied, more than 400 people living within the first phase’s 53 condominiums and 205 apartments.

The extended period it has taken to build out the development may be attributable to a sluggish economy, or even the fact that Stetson Square was Great Tradition’s first major foray into the urban real estate market.

“When Stetson Square was originally conceived, it was designed not only to be a great project, but also to serve as a catalyst for the revitalization of Corryville,” Humes told UrbanCincy. “To have the opportunity to translate this concept into an urban context with Stetson Square has been a natural and exciting progression for our company.”

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Business Development News

Cincinnati Central Riverfront Plan wins national award for excellence

The original Banks plan as envisioned by the Riverfront Steering Committee which was established Qualls.

In 1997 officials from the City of Cincinnati and Hamilton County set out on a path to transform the city’s central riverfront. What became known as the Cincinnati Central Riverfront Plan laid out a bold vision to accomplish just that, and has now been recognized by the American Planning Association (APA) for the implementation of the plan first laid out nearly two decades ago.

The APA will present local leaders with the National Planning Excellence Award for Implementation at its annual conference to be held in Chicago on April 16.

“The Cincinnati Central Riverfront redevelopment is an excellent example of plan brought to reality,” Ann C. Bagley, 2013 APA Awards Jury chair, stated in a prepared release. “The fact that this development happened during an economic downturn demonstrates the strength of the plan and the importance of the public commitment that brought it into being.”


Cincinnati’s central riverfront has shifted dramatically from its form in the 1980s [LEFT], to that of the 2010s [RIGHT].

Local leaders have taken an incremental approach towards implementing the vision laid out in the Cincinnati Central Riverfront Plan. Between 1998 and 2002, the first major investments included the reconstruction Fort Washington Way (FWW), and the development of Paul Brown Stadium, Great American Ball Park, and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

The consolidated FWW opened up dozens of acres of waterfront property, and the development of two stadiums and a major museum were intended to serve as cultural and entertainment anchors that would draw Cincinnatians back to the riverfront.

These significant public investments laid a critical foundation that would enable the next phase of work, historically located in one of the most flood-prone areas of the city, out of the 500-year floodplain.

Once a private development team had been selected, the City of Cincinnati and Hamilton County began to work with Carter-Dawson on the construction of the plan’s most ambitious element known as The Banks.


Phase two of The Banks will deliver another 300 residential units along with more than 60,000 square feet of commercial space, and a future office tower.

The $91 million first phase of the mixed-use development began in 2007 and resulted in 300 apartments, 76,000 square feet of commercial space, and 6,000 structured parking spaces. Emboldened by the success of phase one, developers are set to break ground on phase two in the coming months which will include another 300 residential units and more than 60,000 square feet of commercial space.

Two office towers, a hotel and townhomes are still to come within the first two phases of The Banks. At ultimate build out, officials envision The Banks to result in $600 million worth of private investment and become the home for more than 3,000 residents.

Meanwhile, construction of the $120 million, 45-acre Smale Riverfront Park is progressing concurrently with the development of The Banks. To date, the first phase of the new central riverfront park has been completed and work is beginning on phase two. Future phases will be timed with future construction of The Banks, and as funding is allocated.

“In planning terms, a project that goes from a concept to implementation in less than 20 years is impressive to say the least,” stated Todd Kinskey, Executive Director of the Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission. “It is that much more impressive because, in this case, the implementation involved seemingly insurmountable physical, economic, and political barriers.”

The early discussions surrounding The Banks, however, were tumultuous at best as local leaders grappled with complaints about too much office space being introduced into an already competitive marketplace.


The original vision of the Cincinnati Central Riverfront Plan [LEFT] included more traditional types of architecture with greater use of natural building materials [RIGHT].

“The current plan to include 30-story buildings along the riverfront would harm downtown and violate the riverfront plans adopted by the community many years ago,” then Councilman Jeff Berding (D) told the Business Courier in 2007. “We need to remember that the plan adopted several years ago was not simply pulled out of the air, but was the result of intense public input and driven by professional urban planners.”

While design elements may not be of the same caliber as those originally envisioned, the urban form of the private investment appears to be as desired. But even more gratifying than that, for many of the early people involved in the planning, it is that the project has happened against all odds and skeptics.

“The successful implementation of the plan is the result of unprecedented cooperation between the city, the county and their partners,” exclaimed Vice Mayor Qualls (C), who was one of the original driving forces behind the development of the Cincinnati Central Riverfront Plan.

Her thoughts were further validated when Bagley concluded, “The fact that this development happened during an economic downturn demonstrates the strength of the plan and the importance of the public commitment that brought it into being.”

In addition to the future phases of the Smale Riverfront Park and The Banks, city leaders are now soliciting ideas for how to cap a 300-foot span of FWW. City and county officials say that the work to cap the short stretch of interstate will commence once a design is in place, and funding has been secured.

In 2010, UrbanCincy published an exclusive three–part series profiling the dramatic transformation of Cincinnati’s central riverfront over the past two decades.

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Development News Politics

John Schneider on the ‘Cincinnati Process’

When millions of fresh eyes recently trained on our city, Great American Ball Park (GABP) bore no scars from its labored birth which required a divisive election, moving an interstate highway, and seven years from the evening it was sketched-out on a restaurant placemat until the first pitch was thrown.

Nested comfortably in Cincinnati’s new riverfront, GABP’s unlikely location in the former eastbound lanes of Fort Washington Way (I-71) entailed narrowing the highway by half and extending downtown’s street grid to the Ohio River shore. Consolidating the garage and roadway budgets for the Reds and the Bengals in one place gave us a flood-proof waterfront for the first time in our 225-year history and provided the foundation for The Banks.


The construction of Great American Ball Park on the riverfront allowed for the rest of the land to be lifted out of the Ohio River floodplain, thus leading to the development of The Banks and Smale Riverfront Park. Photograph by Randy Simes for UrbanCincy.

Proponents of an alternative ball park site at Broadway Commons park gathered signatures to place the stadium location question on the November, 1998 Hamilton County ballot. Shown how the Reds could be the keystone of a new neighborhood on the Ohio, the site at Second and Main won by a 2-1 margin.

Great American Ball Park wasn’t the first time Cincinnatians resisted progress. In the mid-Nineties, we actually voted not to build the Aronoff Center for the Arts. Influential arts patrons feared its construction would cause the abandonment of Music Hall. So they put a proposal to scuttle the project on the city ballot, and it passed. But the Aronoff was a project of the state of Ohio, which built it anyway.

Remember the ridiculous debate about moving the Tyler Davidson Fountain? Many influential Cincinnatians opposed 3CDC’s total renovation of Fountain Square a few years ago, which was the decisive building block for a 24/7 downtown. Getting property owners to underwrite Downtown Cincinnati Inc. also took some doing, but the central business district is now clean and safe with energized stakeholders.


Not building Great American Ball Park at Broadway Commons has allowed for that site’s development into the new Horseshoe Casino Cincinnati in Pendleton. Photograph by Randy Simes for UrbanCincy.

We argued about expanding our convention center, but that eventually got done too. More meetings came to Cincinnati, a spiffy new hotel opened, another will open soon, and money flowed into our economy.

So tell me, had the naysayers prevailed, which of these civic assets would we happily do without?

Such is The Cincinnati Process. We reflexively enforce the status quo, yet we often succeed spectacularly in spite of ourselves. Detractors can easily challenge any public proposal if they set their minds to it. They can exploit uncertainty. They can delay and drive up the costs. And they have the referendum as a ready tool. Successful sponsors learn to right-size their projects for local appetites, adapt in response to new information, and gain supporters as complex issues are resolved. The ironic result is that the most criticized ideas—the ridiculed ones, the ones they said would never happen—those are often the ones able to run the gantlet and exceed expectations.

The circumstances that shaped our 21st century waterfront were so rare and of such scale they won’t be repeated in any of our lifetimes. Fortunately, agile planning and execution has given us momentum and confidence for seizing other opportunities for improving our city. Going forward, Cincinnati can have progress or The Process but probably not both.

This guest editorial was authored by John Schneider, who led citizens’ efforts to build Great American Ball Park and the Cincinnati Streetcar, and was originally published in the November 15, 2012 print edition of the Cincinnati Enquirer. The editorial, however, was never published on the Internet until now with permission from the Cincinnati Enquirer. If you would like to have your thoughts published on UrbanCincy you can do so by submitting your guest editorial to urbancincy@gmail.com.

Categories
Business Development News Opinion

Large vacant buildings should be transitioned into urban community centers

Could the Bartlett Building be transformed into something completely different? Photograph by Thadd Fiala for UrbanCincy.

Throughout the United States there are cities that have large vacant buildings and spaces in their central business district that could be utilized in a new efficient way.

In Cincinnati, the old School for the Creative & Performing Arts was recently auctioned off and is slated to be turned into apartments. In the CBD the Bartlett Building, Tower Place Mall, and Terrace Plaza Hotel remain empty or nearly empty and take up about one-fourth of a city block each.

Some think these buildings could be prime residential properties, but they could be that and more. A large vacant building, for example, could be developed into a mixed use community center.

My inspiration actually came from the Up To Speed story on UrbanCincy about a rock climbing gym in St. Louis. I thought to myself that Cincinnati can have something similar and better. Downtown Cincinnati and OTR/Pendleton are becoming destinations for young adults and families for both restaurants and bars.

Turning a large vacant building into a destination point for physical and social activity would add a whole new dimension to the city. The following ideas are what could go collectively into a large empty building:

  • Rock Climbing Gym – With the exception of the UC recreation center, all of the rock climbing centers are on the outer edge of the city.
  • Paintball Arena – This would be an extremely unique idea for the area as there are minimal indoor paintball facilities and could be a draw for different work or teambuilding groups.
  • Exercise Gym/Running Track – The gyms downtown are mostly old and do not offer enough space or have odd floor plans. Renovating a vacant building would allow plenty of space with tall ceilings and large windows that could allow natural light and have a large open space for exercise equipment. A downtown gym with enough space can offer a full menu of classes including Crossfit, spinning, yoga and Zumba, to bring in a broad range of people looking to exercise. A running track a fraction of the size of an outdoor track could be installed for those that do not like treadmill, but want to run indoors.
  • Basketball Court/Indoor Soccer – Large office buildings could utilize a few stories to carve out a basketball/indoor soccer surface and hold leagues and practices for area schools and AAU teams.
  • Batting Cages/Pitching Tunnels – The basement of a building could be an ideal area for batting cages and pitching tunnels for baseball and softball practice during the cold months. These cages and tunnels are easily moved and can be repositioned to make room for more activities inside the building.
  • Golf Simulators/Nets/Putting Green – This would be another unique addition to an urban area with little green space for golf. Workers could play a quick round during their lunch break or warm up before they go out to one of Cincinnati or Hamilton County’s public courses. This would also allow for urban dwellers a space they could walk to for golf lessons.
  • Offices – With additional amenities a building would become more attractive to businesses.
  • Apartments – To make the building a true mixed use development, apartments could be added as this would be a true “luxury apartment” with a real gym (unlike those found at too many apartment complexes that only have a treadmill and Bowflex and call it a gym) and the ability to walk to some of the most popular dining destinations in the city.

To compare a potential community center downtown with other recreational centers, the Recreation & Physical Activity Center at Ohio State University has a total of 570,000 square feet of space including the pools, while 25,000 square feet is fitness space for weights and treadmills. By contrast, the Campus Recreation Center at the University of Cincinnati has 202,000 square feet including its pools.

The options of what to include in these large, empty spaces are endless, but a truly mixed use development would be better suited for the community than simply offices, apartments, and art studio space. The gyms downtown are old and do not offer enough space, or have odd floor plans. Rock climbing and paintball would draw younger crowds, and the students in the area could benefit from having additional practice facilities.

A neighborhood needs young families as well as young professionals. This would be a good start to try and draw them to the core and keep them there.

Brian Valerio grew up in Cincinnati’s College Hill neighborhood and graduated from St. Xavier High School and Ohio State University where he studied finance and real estate. He currently works at Fifth Third Bank and lives downtown. Those interested in sharing their thoughts can submit guest editorials to UrbanCincy by emailing urbancincy@gmail.com. Please include a short bio with any submissions.

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Up To Speed

Rookwood Pavilion offering upscale outlets an urban destination

Rookwood Pavilion offering upscale outlets an urban destination.

Believe it or not, Rookwood Commons and Kenwood Towne Centre once were in a heated battle over which shopping destination would become the region’s premier stop. Due to a number of factors, including a messy eminent domain case that prohibited Rookwood from expanding, Kenwood has taken firm control of that title. Rookwood hasn’t died, however, and it may be looking to become a destination for unique retailers entering urban markets. More from the Business Courier:

The Nike factory store now under development at Rookwood Pavilion is part of a larger plan to reposition the 20-year-old retail center as something you’ve probably never heard of: an urban infill outlet. The architect of that strategy, Mark Fallon, says outlet retailers pay higher rents, attract fashion-conscious shoppers and are looking to expand into urban areas.

“This opens us up to 200 quality tenants in the future,” said Fallon, vice president at Jeffrey R. Anderson Real Estate Inc., which handles leasing for the 257,000-square-foot Rookwood Pavilion in Norwood. “It offers (outlet tenants) an urban infill location, as opposed to being out in the hinterlands.”