Over the Rhine Booming

There was an article today on Over the Rhine ,basically stating that there were huge leaps in business growth and new residences. That is all well and good but 12 new business and 100 condos is a drop in the bucket to whats needed. http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080530/BIZ01/805300375/1076

Most of that new development has taken place along Vine, the Gateway QTR. I know 3CDC is concentrating on thsoe areas, but lets face it they own most of Over the Rhine and while Vine looks great Blocks of buildings are falling down. The biggest problem facing OTR is perception. It is hard to convince people that the neighborhood is turning around when there are 400 Boarded buildings on Elm , Pleasant and Race street.

What needs to happen. 3CDC needs to pick one side of one block in each of those streets and do "facade" restorations. By that I mean fix everything you see from the street. Paint them, replace windows, fix the wrought iron. In other words stabilize them. In fact you could do this in cooperation with a Local High school building trades program. We could be training young people about restoration and construction trades.

At that point they need to set up an Urban Pioneer Program and sell those to people willing to buy them and complete the interior restorations. The buildings could be sold with protective covenants and 3CDC could work with Local banks to arrange financing for new owers. These sould be sold at 3CDC cost+10 percent. Now why "give" these away? Well if you have one block that is "restored" then the other blocks 3CDC owns will be more valuable and more marketable.

3CDC by itself cannot restore OTR, the buildings will fall down long before that happens. They need to work with the preservation community to move the neighborhood forward.