Expansion projects destroying the fabric of neighborhoods
Mark Painter(Photo: (c)Pamela Ebel)
Mark Painter served as a judge for 30 years. He is the author of six books and a member of the Enquirer’s Board of Contributors.
In 1965, I lived in a basement apartment in Corryville. It was a vibrant neighborhood – a doctor’s office, two delis, an actual mom-and-pop dry cleaner, and perhaps the best bar and restaurant ever – the original Lakewood Tavern at Jefferson and Lakewood.
What’s there now? The entire tax-paying environment was destroyed to build the Environment Protection Agency. Not that it couldn’t have been built on empty land nearby – UC and the Feds just wanted it as close to the university as possible. It’s sterile and ugly to boot.
The small businesses were gone. The homeowners gone. Tax-paying property replaced by non-taxpaying property. Population lost. When you destroy a neighborhood, you tear the fabric of the community. Connections lost. Roots lost. And so it goes.
Buy PhotoSeveral dozen houses in Avondale -- abandoned or occupied -- near Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center bear this uniform sign. This house is 338 Hearne Ave. (Photo: The Enquirer/Mark Curnutte)
The expansion of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center into Avondale will feature an eight-story patient tower and 1,100 more parking spaces. (Photo: Provided/Children's Hospital)
UC demolished most of Corryville and much of Avondale. When I couldn’t live in Corryville anymore, I moved next door to Clifton Heights (South of Calhoun). After 41 years for me and 26 years for my wife, Sue Ann, we gave up on the neighborhood. UC had finally destroyed most of it, even after one UC president personally assured me demolition would never cross Calhoun. (Plans were underway at the time.) We moved Downtown.
Having plenty of land, UC could have expanded up, not out. There was plenty of room to build. But they chose to destroy private, tax-paying property instead. More permanent population and taxes lost. Of course, UC gives much back – but count the cost.
And everyone loves Children’s Hospital. Does that mean everything they do is right? Expansion is great, but at what cost? Cincinnati has many large nonprofit institutions that contribute to our community in many ways. But we forget there should be a balance. Over the decades, Cincinnati has lost acres and acres of tax-paying property to tax-exempt institutions.
The pictures online at Cincinnati.com showed houses boarded up – where families once lived. We should cherish homeowners and taxpayers in the inner city. Instead, short-sighted planners expect employees or visitors will drive from the suburbs, park in the new garage, and drive back home. (Yes, I know Children’s is spending some money to encourage housing, but it’s minimal compared to the harm.)
Having more taxpayers with good jobs is great for Cincinnati. But taxpayers who actually live in Cincinnati are much better because they spend their paychecks where they are earned, promoting local investment, which leads to even more jobs
The community council adamantly opposed the project; they don’t oppose progress – they endorsed a new hotel and office building at Reading and MLK.
It’s hard to believe that Children’s couldn’t have worked an accommodation, but the plans were already so far along. Children’s was gonna do what they were gonna do. As usual in these projects, the “community involvement” was just eyewash. Councilman Wendell Young gave one of the best speeches ever; I can’t say it any better, so I’ll quote just a bit.
“Think of what this expansion is doing to a neighborhood that is constantly losing the things that hold a neighborhood together," Young said. “We have a chance to work together. To make your expansion plan be a plan that not only benefits the hospital but benefits the people around you.
“Your employees don’t want to walk the streets of Avondale. You put them in shuttle buses and move them back and forth. You’re rerouting a street, not for the benefit of the people in Avondale, but so that you can get in and out of the neighborhood in a hurry and you don’t have to look at where you are," he said.
“But I urge you to go outside and look at where you are . . . look at your neighbors . . . look at what’s going on around you. . . And ask yourself truly whether the expansion you plan will really benefit the neighborhood around you.
“How will you attract a grocery store; how can you bring back a neighborhood business district when you keep taking people out of the neighborhood? It’s people who make those things happen.
“They are people, not acreage in the way of what you want to do.
“I’m willing to bet that those of you who sat down and made this plan did not at the very inception involve your neighbors in that planning. And I am willing to bet that those of you who sat down and made this plan did not have many, and perhaps not any, people who look like me in that process.
“You find yourself in this position because you don’t really avail yourselves of the opportunity to truly partner with the neighborhood. That’s why people in the neighborhood feel you are not their partner. You’re the people who come to tell them what’s best for them and no matter what they have to say, you know better.”
It could have been UC taking more, or a private developer – the harm is much the same. How much private property must be destroyed before we learn the cost of losing historic neighborhoods and the community fabric they create.
Sometime, somewhere, someone needs to draw a line in the sand. No more projects that lose the city population, even if they do generate payroll taxes from suburbanites. No more kicking homeowners and residents out of our neighborhoods.
Councilmembers Young, Simpson, Seelbach, and Winburn tried to draw that line.
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