Showdown in Over-the-Rhine

Tonight's meeting on plans for Washington Park could prove confrontational. A group of Over-the-Rhine residents opposed to plans to revamp the park could walk out en masse if their alternative proposal is ignored.

The Cincinnati Center City Development Corp. (3CDC) — which is either the young professional savior for Over-the-Rhine or the gentrification devil, depending on your point of view — will hold its final meeting on the park at 6 p.m. tonight at Memorial Hall. A group of residents, aided by students with the Miami University Center for Civic Engagement in Over-the-Rhine, has collected more than 400 signatures on petitions demanding the city keep a deep-water pool and a basketball court in Washington Park, according to Tom Dutton, director of the center. The final plan presented by 3CDC includes neither, Dutton says.

"This is a showdown," Dutton says.

— Gregory Flannery
(Photo: Jimmyheath.org)

Comments

[CincyCapell]

Miami University? Great, more snotty suburbanites trying to tell us how to run our City. If you don't live here kindly STFU.

[CincyCapell]

BTW, ReStock is the biggest slumlord in this City. It's well past time to take them to housing court, take their neglected buildings away and let 3CDC redevelop them. Taxpayers have as much a right to OTR as non-taxpayers. Send the bums packing to the 'burbs.

[Dick Brockelman]

3CDC screwed up our Fountain Square and took 40 years worth of garage revenue.

Gateway I is still empty and the city should get rid of 3CDC and fully fund a real planning department. Gentrification and corportization of our historic district and public spaces is wrong.

Most of these CEO's don't live in our city and they shouldn't be making the decisions. People who live and work in the community should be.

Send those bums back to their own neighborhood in Indian Hill. Leave our city's development to its residents.

[People against Atupidity]

Dick,

Go smoke more of the crack you're buying in Over the Rhine.

PAS

[98ºboyband™ Jeffre]

Fountain Square looks fantastic, and it hardly cost the City anything. Plus they got $7 million up front for the garage, which 3CDC has to pay to operate and maintain henceforth.

[Not the Mamma Cass!]

"A group of Over-the-Rhine residents opposed to plans to revamp the park could walk out en masse if their alternative proposal is ignored."

Oh, God forbid they should walk out. And then what?

Fountain Square DOES look great! That 1970s Beyond The Planet of the Apes concrete look was tiresome.

Gentrification and Corporatization? Give me a break. It's called "investment."

Babies. Grow up!

[Balance]

OTR has another pool across from the current SCPA. Why should one neighborhood get more than one pool, when so many pools have been shut down? Why should one neighborhood get special treatment? Because Miami University and Cliftonite Dan La Botz says that we should?

[Not the Mamma Cass!]

Balance beat me to it! Pool on Sycamore, basketball courts on Linn at the new Rec Center. YMCA up the street from that. Armleder Aquatic Center on Bank.

When I grew up the municipal pools were in one place on the east side of town. If we wanted to go without our parents taking us we'd ride our bikes or walk.

I also agree that Dan La Botz (Socialist-Clifton) needs to stop trying to impose his egalitarian (read: wealth transfer) world view upon others.

But I'm guessing this is about more than convenience and the symbolic denial (again) of Blacks from the public swimming pool is motivating a lot of the opposition.

In that regard I can see how some folks would want a pool to remain in Wash Park. Still, with ours being one of the most overweight cities in America, walking to the pool or basketball court might not be such a bad thing. (That goes for suburbanites who should park far from the Wal*Mart doors and gymbots who likewise circle the lot waiting for a parking space close to the door.)

[Josh Spring LSW]

Many of you commenting here know very little about Over-the-Rhine and the people that live here. At least you must, or many of the comments here would not have been written unless you simply are against the people here. So...

I issue an open invitation to all of you:

I am the social worker at Over-the-Rhine Community Housing, or ReStoc (correct spelling) as one of you mistakenly called it (OTR Housing Network and ReStoc combined 1.5 years ago). Come and visit, have a conversation with us and express your opinions and here ours, take a tour with us of the neighborhood, meet the people that live here and then check yourselves. We are at 114 West 14th Street at the corner of 14th and Pleasant across from WP School that was just torn down. Our phone number is 513-381-1171 and my extension is 105.

If you feel the way you do, have the courage to come see and hear the truth. Otherwise you are an ignorant coward.

[Brian Griffin]

Josh,

That would be your "Truth." I use "truth" in contrast to "facts," things that have at least some sense of objective sense about them.

It doesn't matter if people live in OTR or not if they wish to have an opinion or wish to improve OTR. I say that as a resident of OTR, BTW.

[CincyCramerding]

There's more impersonators in this thread than actual responders. Grow up losers.