Politico Magazine presents an exhaustive, well-researched overview of how the City of Cincinnati and 3CDC "salvaged" Over-the-Rhine, tracing the neighborhood's political battles since the 1930s and putting today's renaissance into historical context.
"It's a transformation that's happened in a blink of an eye, turning a neighborhood that in 2009 topped Compton in Los Angeles for the 'most dangerous' title into something that looks and feels like Greenwich Village," writes
Politico Contributing Editor Colin Woodward. "And it didn't happen by accident. Virtually everything that’s occurred in Over-the-Rhine — from the placement of the trees in the park to the curation of ground floor businesses — has been meticulously planned and engineered by a single, corporate-funded and decidedly non-governmental entity."
That would be 3CDC, and Woodward retraces how then-Mayor Charlie Luken and then-Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley cooked up the idea for such an organization in the wake of the 2001 civil unrest. He also does a good job explaining how 3CDC went about accumulating OTR buildings, how it's developing Vine Street block by block and why so many neighborhood residents feel left out of the comeback.
It's a well-written story with excellent photography and meticulous detail on German immigrants, the "OTR naming" story, population shifts, Buddy Gray, Jim Tarbell, The Brandery, the Brewery District and much more.
Read the full
Politico story
here.
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