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Business Development News

VIDEO: Progress Continues at $120M Smale Riverfront Park

The progress at the $120 million Smale Riverfront Park continues on-schedule and on-budget, according to the latest update from project manager Dave Prather.

Once the ongoing work is completed, the 45-acre park will be roughly 50 percent complete by 2015. The progress is critical as local officials are scrambling to finish several large development projects prior to the 2015 Major League Baseball All-Star Game to be held at Great American Ball Park.

The two ongoing major phases of work at Smale Riverfront Park, Prather says, will be completed in time for the national spotlight in July 2015 when the MLB All-Star Game comes to Cincinnati.

Since the last project update the roundabout at the foot of the Roebling Suspension Bridge has been completed, allowing motorists to connect in all directions at the odd intersection. Foundation and sewer work has also progressed on the elements of the park now being built immediately west of the bridge.

“When we last left off we were just starting on the construction of our Vine Street carousel and fountain steps project,” Prather explained in the video. “Where before our project, phase one, related to Walnut Street, now we’re building the portion of the project that will complete the frame of the Roebling Suspension Bridge and connect with Vine Street.”

While Prather touts the continued success of the project, continued success may be difficult to achieve.

In March 2013 Prather told UrbanCincy that the ban on federal earmark spending has put future phases of work at the park in jeopardy. In order to make up for the lack of federal dollars, project officials have been relying heavily on state and local contributions. Private donations have also played an enormous role for the project as those dollar totals now exceed the projected totals for private contributions.

Further complicating the project is that it has proceeded along with development of The Banks. That mixed-use development is also running into schedule issues, due to the ban on federal earmarks, as funding has not yet been identified for garage and infrastructure work for future phases to be built adjacent to Paul Brown Stadium. Should that work be delayed past the intended schedule, it may also impact the construction schedule of the western portions of Smale Riverfront Park.

U.S. Congressman Bob Gibbs (R-OH), who is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, will tour Smale Riverfront Park today at 4:30pm with Cincinnati Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls (D) and park officials.

Local leaders are hopeful that the visit will help position the park to receive water infrastructure support from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers through the next Water Resources Development Act, which is expected to be introduced soon.

If all goes according to plan, however, officials believe that Smale Riverfront Park can be completed by mid-2017.

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Business Development News

Final Designs Revealed for $125M Dunnhumby Centre Tower

5th Street Exterior - Image Provided by ImageFiction.

In March of 2015, 700 employees will move into the long-awaited $125 million headquarters of dunnhumbyUSA at Fifth and Race street in downtown Cincinnati. The building is the culmination of a fifteen-year effort to reinvent the area just one block from Fountain Square.

In 1999 the city purchased and demolished a fourteen-story office building and parking garage at the site in anticipation of locating a Nordstrom’s department store downtown. When plans for the store failed to materialize, the site was paved over as surface parking for over a decade.

Last year, dunnhumbyUSA and the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) partnered with the city to develop the block as the new headquarters for the company. Earlier this year, the project received approval on the interior design of the building, which includes open floor plans, and two light wells that will provide natural light during the day through to the bottom floors of the office structure.

Today dunnhumbyUSA presented its exterior designs to the city’s Urban Design Review Board, which makes advisory decisions on approval for landmark structures.

The designs for the new structure were put together by architecture firm Gensler.

The presentation is the culmination of over nine months worth of work on the exterior presentation of the building.

“We designed the building from the inside out. There was a lot of attention paid to the habits and needs of our employees,” Dave Palm, Senior Vice President of Operations with dunnhumbyUSA, told UrbanCincy.

The exterior façades of the building are meant to accentuate the data driven nature of the company and avoid the repetitiveness of patterns, and are made up of an arrangement of white and charcoal grey panel frames. The entrances on each street façade, meanwhile, are accentuated by a cascade of white paneling up the side of the building. This pattern called, “zippers” help break up the massing of the structure.

Other features of the building exterior include outdoor inset areas located on the building’s eighth floor. Further outdoor opportunities are located on the top floor where a significant portion of the floor will be dedicated to outside events.

Although only nine stories in height the floors of the building will be 14 feet high with 20-foot high ceilings for the street-level retail. The building will be the equivalent height of a more traditional 12-story building. Additionally, the three parking levels above the retail level will be convertible to office when the company needs to add room for expansion.

The first level retail section comes in at just under 30,000 square feet and features an all glass street-oriented façade. 3CDC is charged with attracting retail tenants.

“We would prefer to find a local business,” Adam Gelter, 3CDC’s Executive Vice President of Development told UrbanCincy. Gelter went on to say that the retail space can go to one tenant or be broken up into three or four separate retail spaces.

The building is slated to be completed in January 2015 with move-in set for March of the same year.

This project, along with the construction of a 30-story apartment tower and grocer and the continuing plans to construct up to 225 apartments above Macy’s at Fountain Place, is set to transform the long neglected corridors along Sixth Street and Race Street and could spur additional investments in development opportunities in the western portion of the central business district.

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Business News Transportation

Metro Celebrates 40 Years of Transit Service in Cincinnati

Mass transit in Cincinnati has been around for 124 years, but the service provided by Metro is still 40 years young. The first buses in the Queen City arrived in 1926 and had grown in popularity by the 1960s.

During this time, it was managed by a private company named Cincinnati Street Railway. In 1973, the City of Cincinnati and Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority (SORTA) partnered to establish Metro in order to improve ridership and the quality of the buses. It was then Metro became the city’s first publicly owned and operated transportation system.

Metro 40th Anniversary Vow Renewal
After meeting on Metro’s first day of service 40 years ago, Captain Rex and Anita Settlemoir renewed their wedding vows on Thursday. Photograph by Paige Malott for UrbanCincy.

To celebrate their 40th anniversary, Metro hosted an afternoon of festivities on Fountain Square. Four buses were displayed along Fifth Street, including a vintage Cincinnati Street Railway bus which had been preserved by the Cincinnati Transit Historical Society.

Local vendors Queen City Bike, Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library, Cincinnati Parks, and the Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky (TANK) handed out freebies while Binny and Buddy, mascots for Rumpke and Hoxworth Blood Center, entertained the crowd. Metro’s booth even featured a spin-the-wheel game were participants could win an assortment of products from Metro including hand sanitizer, tote bags, or miniature model Metro buses.

“We’re celebrating 40 years of connecting people and places, supporting economic development and improving the quality of life in Greater Cincinnati,” announced Terry Garcia Crews, CEO of Metro.

In addition to celebrating the organization’s anniversary, a local couple celebrated their 40th anniversary as well. Captain Rex and Anita Settlemoir met while riding Metro in during its first year of service. The Settlemoirs took part in a wedding vow renewal and were escorted to Fountain Square by a Metro*Plus bus; the newest vehicle introduced to the fleet.

“You could just hear the love and see it in their eyes,” smiled Jill Dunne, Public Affairs Manager for Metro.

With 40 being the new 20, the city wonders what’s next for Metro.

“Metro has so many exciting things ahead,” explained Dunne. “Next week, we launch our Metro*Plus rapid bus service in the Montgomery corridor, and we are adding new connections on the west side, as well as more east-west routes.”

“And that is just the start!” Dunne laughed. “I can’t even imagine what our service will look like in 2053. I’m hoping for flying buses.”

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Business Development News

PHOTOS: Mercer Commons Beginning to Reshape Central Over-the-Rhine

Mercer Commons has long been considered a critically important site in Over-the-Rhine due to its size and central location.

In 2005, Cincinnati Public Schools purchased the land and existing buildings on the 2.2-acre site with the plan to rebuild the shuttered Washington Park Elementary School there.

As plans changed over the years, the school district decided to abandon the school plans for the site and instead sell it to the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) to pursue a $63 million mixed-use development.

Consisting of a new 340-space parking garage, 28 condos and 96 market-rate apartments, 17,600 square feet of commercial space, and 30 affordable apartments, Mercer Commons is not only adding new structures along Vine Street and Fourteenth Street, but is also renovating 19 historic structures as part of the overall development.

With work on phase one nearing completion, and ground recently being broken on phase two, Mercer Commons is now transforming a large central portion of Cincinnati’s largest historic district.

UrbanCincy staff writer and photographer Jake Mecklenborg visited the site last week to document its progress. What he found is that the finished development will have the appearance of having been renovated and constructed at various times, instead of all at once as it actually is.

“They are building modern-looking row homes on Mercer right next to all the renovations, and I noticed that it looks like they’ve paid some attention to the back alleys, since this is how residents will reach the parking garage,” Mecklenborg explained.

He went on to say that the development team appears to be reusing bricks in the alley serving the site, and that this will end up being the primary access point for residents living at Mercer Commons.

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Business Development News

PHOTOS: Grandin Properties Completes $1.6M Renovation of 135-Year-Old Hummel Building

The Hummel Building as seen from Washington Park. Photograph by Paige Malott for UrbanCincy.

Ninety years after the founding of the City of Cincinnati, in a day when Over-the-Rhine was home to over 40 breweries and Barney Kroger was still writing his business plan; three men sat in a saloon along Vine Street finalizing the design for Music Hall and a property adjacent: 1401 Elm Street.

The triage of architect Samuel Hannaford, Cincinnati political boss George Cox, and construction contractor George Hummel built 1401 as mixed-use development. In addition to multi-family homes, the property included the Hummel Family Market and the ever-popular Hummel Saloon.

Erected in 1878, the structure has withstood the test of time allowing for modern-day developers, Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC), Hudepohl Construction, and Grandin Properties to rehabilitate it 135 years later.

The $1.6 million project was celebrated with a ribbon cutting ceremony attended by Chad Munitz, Executive Vice President of 3CDC, Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls (C), Cincinnati City Manager Milton Dohoney, Councilmember Laure Quinlivan (D), and Peg Wyant of Grandin Properties.

The Hummel Building, which is now home to a 1,900 square-foot restaurant space and four condominiums priced from $270,000 to $375,000, is also the first Over-the-Rhine project for Grandin Properties.

A company best known for their work in upscale suburban neighborhoods such as Hyde Park, Grandin invested in 1401 Elm for both its historic significance and recent resurgence of the urban lifestyle.

“Cincinnati is reinventing itself as a hub of influence and innovation,” stated Grandin CEO, Peg Wyant at the ribbon cutting ceremony last week. “Grandin Properties is very pleased to be a part of it.”

Just around the corner from the Hummel Building, crews continued roadwork in preparation for the Cincinnati Streetcar.

“It is exciting to see this property link up with the streetcar,” noted City Manager Milton Dohoney. “Great things happen as we continue to invest in the city with the help of 3CDC.”

The Hummel Building is the second of seven projects to be completed during the fifth phase of 3DCDC’s redevelopment work in Over-the-Rhine. Other properties include Republic Street Lofts, Tea Company Townhomes, Westfalen II, B-Side Lofts, Mercer Commons, and Nicolay, as well as the Bakery Lofts which opened earlier this year. Hummel’s first floor restaurant is slated for a public debut on November 26, 2013.

The City of Cincinnati and 3CDC have financed more than $315 million in redeveloping Over-the-Rhine since 2009. The 110-square block neighborhood is home to the largest concentration of historic structures in the United States: 943 buildings. To date, 103 of those buildings have been restored or stabilized through the work of 3CDC.