TURNAROUNDS TAKE TIME

GREAT CITIES DO NOT HAPPEN OVERNIGHT

CREATING PLACE AND PROSPERITY REQUIRES PATIENCE

Over-the-Rhine is a downtown area settled and built by German Immigrants.

It features the largest collection of 19th century Italianate architecture in the country.

But the area experienced neglect from absentee landlords, an exodus of neighborhood retail and other issues in the last decades of the 20th century.

“Over-the-Rhine had incredible housing stock, but it was vacant and dilapidated. 

We spent $33 million buying crumbling, but beautiful buildings,” Joe Rudemiller, vice president of Marketing & Communications at Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation, said of the classic buildings that had restaurants or shops on the first floor and residential above.

“First, we spent to stabilize them — we knew over time we would redevelop the buildings.”