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Moerlein, Paulaner bringing massive festival tent to Cincinnati’s central riverfront for Oktoberfest

Cincinnati has long been home of the world’s largest Oktoberfest celebration outside of Munich, and it will soon be getting larger. At the 2012 Oktoberfest Zinzinnati festival, the Moerlein Lager House will partner with Germany’s Paulaner Brewery to create the ÜberDrome.

The ÜberDrome will be a massive Oktoberfest tent covering the entire event lawn at Smale Riverfront Park. It will connect with the biergarten at the Moerlein Lager House and will create a space for approximately 3,000 festival goers.

“This ‘über’ fest tent, filled with Munich-style tables and benches, will span the entire length and width of the Schmidlapp Event Lawn, adjacent to the Lager House in Smale Riverfront Park,” said Greg Hardman, Managing Partner of the Moerlein Lager House and CEO of the Christian Moerlein Brewing Company. “The Oktoberfest beer will be flowing, there’ll be endless platters of delicious German dishes and the celebration will go on and on!”

The Moerlein Lager House will add a new element to Cincinnati’s annual Oktoberfest celebration when it introduces the ÜberDrome in 2012. Photograph by Randy A. Simes for UrbanCincy.

Paulaner is a famed German brewery that is well known for its enormous festival tent in the Theresienwiese during Munich’s Oktoberfest. Hardman says that the brewery was looking for a perfect location to present their Munich-style Oktoberfest celebration in Cincinnati, and determined that the central riverfront was just that.

The ÜberDrome will feature German-style pretzels, specially made Hudepohl Beer Wurst and other sausages, wiener schnitzel and strudel plus a wide selection of Paulaner and Moerlein beers including the Paulaner Oktoberfest Weisn, which was the original beer sold at Munich’s Oktoberfest.

The festival tent will also include a performance stage in the center of the space that will feature a variety skits, comedy, games, and music by Bavarian-style bands like Alpen Echos, Pros’t, and Heuboden Musikanten who will fly in from Germany for the event.

“This has been a life’s dream of mine to bring something like this to Cincinnati and, like the Moerlein Lager House itself, we are shooting for the ‘WOW’ factor,” explained Hardman.

Cincinnati’s 2012 Oktoberfest celebrations will take place from Friday, September 21 through Sunday, September 23. The ÜberDrome (map) will be open on these days from 4pm to midnight on Friday and Saturday, and 12pm to 9pm on Sunday.

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Up To Speed

Bunbury Music Festival impresses in year one

Bunbury Festival: 2012 Wrap Up | Each Note Secure.

Cincinnati has been left without a noteworthy summer rock festival since Desdemona ended and never returned in 2006. That was until Bunbury entered the scene July 13-15. The music festival went up against an impressive array of local events and two well-established rock festivals nearby in Louisville and Chicago. More from Each Note Secure:

Regardless of Bunbury’s minor hiccups, I was blown away by the size, organization, and turnout of the festival. The festival pulled in 55,000 people in its first year, which is mighty impressive considering it shared dates with two other musical festivals that have been around since 2002 and 2005 respectively…Bunbury haters will continue to balk over the lineup (there’s always Midpoint!), but I was impressed that the festival was able to draw a wide range of folks, from older fans of GBV and Jane’s Addiction to the younger fans who came out for Neon Trees.

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Up To Speed

With World Choir Games finished, Cincinnati eyes next major event

With World Choir Games finished, Cincinnati eyes next major event.

The 2012 World Choir Games exceeded all expectations, and city officials are being praised for their ability to execute the international event flawlessly. With the two-week event now over, Cincinnati leaders are eyeing what might be the next major event for the Queen City. More from the Cincinnati Enquirer:

As the Games’ concerts and contests unfolded, as medals were won and lost, as choirs from around the world roamed the streets of Cincinnati giving this old river city a vibrant international feel thanks to midday traffic jams, conversations flavored with a multitude of accents and scenes sweetened by sidewalks teaming with smiling faces, the city’s party planners made a wish list. The events discussed included: Cincinnati’s 225th birthday, a World Choir Games-sanctioned Games of the Americas – starring choirs from the tip of North America to the toes of South America – and a new Tall Stacks Music, Arts & Heritage Festival, all in 2013; Baseball’s 2015 All-Star Game, and the University of Cincinnati’s bicentennial in 2019.

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Arts & Entertainment News

2012 Ohio River Way Paddlefest [VIDEO]

The 11th annual Ohio River Way Paddlefest took place June 21 through 23 at Coney Island, and culminated with more than 2,200 paddlers took to the Ohio River. The paddling event has become the largest of its kind in the Midwest, and according to event organizers, has positioned Cincinnati as “the paddling capital of the United States.”

Paddlefest celebrates the region’s picturesque Ohio River and surrounding hills, and puts a critical mass of recreational users out on what is typically a commercial waterway through the heart of North America.

A new video highlights the 8.2-mile journey from the perspective of a kayaker participating in the 2012 Paddlefest. The one-minute video was produced by Vimeo user Brent B. and features scenes of the Ohio River’s natural scenery, the I-471 Daniel Carter Beard Bridge, Serpentine Wall, and Cincinnati’s central riverfront.

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Business News

Walnut Hills tries new approach to keep its neighborhood grocery store afloat

One-by-one, Cincinnati’s urban neighborhoods are revitalizing themselves with new residents and businesses. Some of these neighborhoods, however, continue to struggle with sustaining or attracting urban grocery stores that can bring much-needed healthy food choices to their community. Walnut Hills is no different.

Walnut Hills is one of just seven, out of 52, neighborhoods in the City of Cincinnati that boast a full-scale grocery store. The Walnut Hills Kroger, located at 954 E. McMillan Street, has been in discussions with city leaders over recent years about whether it will continue operating that location. But with revitalization work sweeping through the Walnut Hills, neighborhood leaders think this serves as an opportunity.

“We understand that as a business they need to make money, and once we have done our part, and they are a profitable store, then we hope they will begin to make some of the improvements that the neighborhood would like to see,” said Kevin Wright, director of the Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation (WHRF) and graduate of the University of Cincinnati’s Masters of Community Planning program.


Organizers say the first Buy 25 Tuesdays event generated $2,700 in new revenue and communicated over 100 food suggestions to store management. Walnut Hills Kroger photograph provided.

Wright says that after speaking with neighborhood residents and stakeholders he found that most had a negative perception of the store. He said that the perceptions are that store has a bad food selection, and that it is unsafe to visit. The goal, he says, is to solve both of those issues through a new bi-weekly event called Buy 25.

The first Buy 25 took place on June 26, and the second was scheduled to take place on July 10, but due to the power outage organizers have postponed the next event until July 24. Those who join the Buy 25 group are encouraged to spend $25 at the store at least the two times a month that the event takes place.

Wright says that through discussions with Kroger, a neighborhood committee found out that $10,000 in additional revenue per month can put the urban grocer into the black. That breaks down to approximately 200 new customers spending $50 a month at the Walnut Hills store.

Neighborhood leaders are hoping to create a social atmosphere outside of the Kroger on Buy 25 Tuesdays by providing music, food samples, coupons, and a chance to give feedback to store management.

“This is about improving the Kroger, but it’s also about coming together as a community for a common cause,” explained Wright. “Walnut Hills is on the verge of some major redevelopment and if our residents feel like they have an ownership in that, the overall redevelopment efforts will be more sustainable.”

According to the WHRF, the first Buy 25 event brought in an additional $2,700 in revenue for the Walnut Hills Kroger. Neighborhood leaders feel like the new event is off to a good start, but are aware of the potential risks should they not be able to meet the $10,000 target over the course of each month.

“Becoming a food desert would have a profound effect on our senior and low-income population,” Wright answered in response to the possibility of the store closing. “It would also have a negative effect on our redevelopment momentum as the Kroger sits almost directly in the center of the neighborhood and its business district.”

Wright says that he fears that while the neighborhood can support grocery store, that if the Kroger were to close it would take at least three to five years to attract a new urban grocer. And having a large vacant structure at the heart of the Walnut Hills neighborhood business district for several years would create additional hurdles to ongoing redevelopment efforts taking place there.

Neighborhood leaders have not yet been told, or warned, that the Kroger may shut down, but Wright emphasized that they are trying to support the store and give it every reason to stay in the community.

Buy 25 Tuesdays take place on the second and fourth Tuesday of every month from 4pm to 8pm. Those who come are encouraged to bring a shopping list so that they can inform store management of items they were not able to purchase there.