This week's blogger, Aaron Renn, is on a mission to help America's cities thrive in the 21st century. Renn is a leading urban affairs analyst who spent some time in Cincinnati last week participating in a panel discussion about the casino at Broadway Commons. He'll share his observations on the Casino with us in this week's Soapblogs as well as offer praise for Cincinnati's old architecture and unique neighborhoods and his thoughts on making the most of these treasured assets.
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The Cincinnati Casino
Posted By: Aaron M. Renn
5/12/2010
I'll put my cards on the table: I don't like casinos. I'd rather not have a casino in my city. They suck up entertainment dollars that could go to other uses. It seems likely that the Ohio casinos will prove to be yet another way to take money from urban centers and spread it around the state.
But unfortunately the argument was not about whether or not to have casinos in Cincinnati. Cincinnati already had casinos - they are in Indiana. The only question is whether Indiana gets the money from them or Ohio does. In that light, a downtown Cincinnati casino makes sense.
The Broadway Commons site is probably the ideal location for a casino. It's a wasteland on the fringe of downtown, sandwiched between the jail and the freeway - hardly an attractive site. If Over the Rhine still has large numbers of empty buildings, it doesn't seem likely Broadway Commons would be developed soon. The casino project will put taxable development on that spot, and bring activity to a current dead zone.
Casinos are normally hermetically sealed environments. The company wants to get you in and keep you there. This makes them anti-urban, as casinos in places like Detroit and New Orleans will attest. The developers of the Cincinnati casino have talked about creating a more urban casino, with actual street activity, and doing things to integrate the casino into the neighborhood. If they do this, it would set a new bar for what downtown casinos could be.
It is early days yet. Rock Ventures has not even hired a casino operator. The renders are very preliminary. So while they are staying the right things now, Cincinnati should "Trust, but verify" and be sure to stay engaged to make the final product as high quality as possible.