Two new projects bringing apartments & retail space to Walnut Hills and downtown

Cincinnati is booming with redevelopment projects that increase new businesses and residential properties in the urban core. Two were recently announced at historic buildings: a new apartment complex coming to downtown and two floors of retail space to the Paramount Building in Walnut Hills.
 
309 Vine St., Downtown
Over the past year, Village Green Management has been making plans to purchase and renovate 309 Vine St. into 294 apartments and 45,000 square feet of retail and office space. Other planned features include a rooftop restaurant, a pool, a club room and an 11,000-square-foot, street-level grocery store at the corner of Vine and Ogden Place. There’s also the possibility of a coffee shop and wine bar on the building’s first floor.
 
Earlier this year, the 87-year-old building was added to the West Fourth Street Historic District, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. This designation allows the project to seek federal historic preservation tax credits as well as state historic preservation tax credits.
 
Once renovations get underway, the apartments could be ready to occupy in 2017.
 
Paramount Building, Walnut Hills
The Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation recently purchased the Paramount Building at Gilbert Avenue and McMillan Street for $750,000 from Morris Investment Group. WHRF has been working to redevelop the McMillan business corridor, with more than $10 million invested in the area.
 
WHRF is working with the Cincinnati Development Foundation and LISC to raise funds for its renovation efforts, which could cost about $3 million. Federal and state historic preservation tax credits and new market tax credits would fund the project.
 
Renovations to the three-story Paramount Building would include repairing ceilings and flooring as well as upgrading the rooms and fixtures. When finished, the building will have two floors of commercial space and will house a number of local small businesses. 
 
The 80-year-old building was developed and owned by the Wurlitzer family. It housed a grocery store and then was operated as the Paramount Theater for three decades before closing in the 1960s, when it was replaced by a pharmacy, which is now a CVS.