It's no secret that the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation — often known as 3CDC — has remade much of Downtown and Over-the-Rhine in the last two decades.
The list of 3CDC projects is long and, for the most part, well-covered.
The private nonprofit development corporation helmed by business leaders and funded by public and corporate money has renovated Washington and Ziegler parks and redeveloped hundreds of vacant historic buildings into housing and commercial space. And that's just in Over-the-Rhine. Downtown, it's taken on a number of huge projects, including remaking Fountain Square, reimaging a swath of Downtown into a convention district, and more.
The money for all of that comes from a variety of sources — traditional loans; tax credits; corporate donations; low-interest, revolving-fund loans; tax increment finance district funding; parking revenue; and more.
All in all, 3CDC says the investments it has made or encouraged amount to more than $1.7 billion over the last two decades.
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As it's done so, it's garnered plenty of praise —and its fair share of criticism around its impact on residents of the neighborhoods where it works and how it goes about including those residents in decision-making.
So, how has 3CDC adjusted its approach over the years? How have organizations in other cities tackled similar work? And is it possible to avoid the pitfalls of redevelopment — displacement, unaffordability — while still bringing in new investment?
'Tension and tradeoff'
Urban Institute Senior Research Associate Joe Schilling says balancing public input and benefit with attracting private investment is a challenge inherent to organizations like 3CDC that work to bring new development to low-income areas.
"There's not as much public money available these days for these types of projects," he says. "So if you're going to get these projects done, you've got to come up with some private investment. And there's a tension and tradeoff as to how much those investments will have direct benefits to the residents in those neighborhoods."
Like many urban neighborhoods, the cost of housing has greatly increased in Over-the-Rhine in recent years. That's led to displacement of minority and low-income residents. A comparison of 2010 and 2020 Census data shows the neighborhood's Black population decreased by 43% in the intervening decades. And between 2002 and 2015, housing affordable to people who are low-income decreased by 73%.
Critics say 3CDC's focus on creating hundreds of higher-end condos in its first 10 years played a role in that. And they don't like that the organization's board is made up of business leaders instead of long-time residents. They've also taken issue with its relocation of some social service nonprofits out of the neighborhood, like the homeless shelter the Drop Inn Center.
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3CDC's Joe Rudemiller says the organization shifted focus as demographic changes started happening in earnest a decade ago. He points out 440 of the 660 units of housing 3CDC has developed have been affordable to middle- or lower-income people. Many of those units have been affordable to people making 50 to 80 percent of the overall region's area median income, which some critics say is higher than Over-the-Rhine's historically very low incomes.
"Our goal is to create housing that is accessible to people no matter what their income level is," Rudemiller says. "But it certainly is a challenge to try to strike that balance."
Rudemiller also says 3CDC has worked hard to incorporate more public feedback in its decisions. He points to the redevelopment of Over-the-Rhine's recreation center, which will include a replacement for the neighborhood's beloved roller rink pursuant to requests from residents.
How Cincinnati's model has performed elsewhere
Other cities also have had to balance public criticism with a mission to attract and implement private investment.
Erie, Pa., is one. Founded in 2017, its Erie Downtown Development Corporation has led more than $115 million in construction in the city's downtown. EDDC says that investment has catalyzed other private development worth as much as $500 million nearby in what was not long ago one of the nation's poorest ZIP codes.
CEO Drew Whiting says 3CDC and its ability to make focused investments via corporate investment and leadership was a huge influence. And like 3CDC, he says EDDC met with some deep opposition when it started. He says to a degree, he understands where it comes from.
"Any effort like this is going to involve some level of displacement," Whiting says. "And there's a fear that where the public sector has no say, no role, that the private sector actors that are engaged in the work aren't going to do things in the best interest of the community, but they're going to do things in the best interest of themselves."
Whiting says his organization has held numerous listening sessions since he took the CEO role a year and a half ago to understand constructive criticism. It's developed affordable housing and established a community engagement council that weighs in on its decisions.
"That community engagement group, it's bringing people in who might not be in the normal discussions amongst primary big funders and stakeholders," he says. "But they're also people whose voices need to be heard for us to make good decisions."
Other models at work
Schilling of the Urban Institute says it is possible to avoid or limit negative impacts like displacement with measures like mixed-income housing, land trust models, and other ways of ensuring some level of housing affordability even as neighborhoods redevelop.
He points to Center State CEO, a nonprofit development organization in Syracuse, N.Y. Schilling calls the organization a kind of hybrid — it does many of the same things 3CDC does, including working to attract businesses and other private investment. But it also focuses on encouraging neighborhood ownership and control.
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"Their mission is public purpose, it's socially driven," he says. "Even when they're looking at redeveloping an abandoned downtown office tower, they're looking at mixed-income housing, they're looking at the potential for community ownership."
Schilling says initiatives to help safeguard affordability and resident decision-making are best put in place as redevelopment begins.
"You've got to put them in place at the earliest stages of your revitalization," Schilling says. "If you try to do that now, after 20 years of reinvestment, it's going to be more expensive and the impact is not going to be as great."
'You have to live here in order to govern'
Other organizations have adopted more resident-centered models from the outset.
Adriana Abizadeh is executive director of the Kensington Corridor Trust in Philadelphia, which started in 2019.
She says the Kensington neighborhood is a lot like Over-the-Rhine in some ways — a tight-knit community that has seen significant disinvestment and struggles with safety in the past.
"Inner-city neighborhood, currently one of the city of Philadelphia's lowest income," she says. "Predominantly Black and brown. A lot of white flight during deindustrialization."
The Kensington Corridor Trust receives much of its financing through revolving low-interest loans from foundations. It has 30 mostly commercial properties. It's currently building a grocery store to be open this year and runs 30 units of affordable housing, with another 30 coming this year and next.
All of its properties are held in a perpetual trust overseen by a board.
Unlike 3CDC, that board and the nonprofit's governing body are overseen by people who live in Kensington.
"We are fully governed by the neighborhood," she says. "You have to live here in order to govern. What that means is that the majority of the governing bodies are Black and brown, low- and moderate-income folks. They're deeply representative of their neighbors."
Abizadeh says some decisions — property acquisition, for example — are made by the board, while others, like the trust's boundaries and which businesses will locate there, are made with input from the entire community.
She admits the grassroots decision-making process can be slower, and the initiative is currently at a much smaller scale than 3CDC. But she says that's changing as the organization grows. And it's OK if it means their work benefits residents and avoids displacement.
Schilling says scale is important. While much of 3CDC's strategy has hinged on large projects and developing big clusters of properties to create a kind of critical mass of development, smaller efforts are important too.
"When you look at these different models, it's important to look at the scale of the intervention," Schilling says. "Sometimes the smaller scale ends up with more direct benefits to the community because they're involved in the project from the beginning. You're looking at a small or mid-scale developer who does infill development or a small retail, mixed-use development."
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Not every development in Over-the-Rhine has been a massive effort. Developers like Model Group have worked on smaller mixed-use and residential projects, while nonprofit Over-the-Rhine Community has been developing affordable housing in the neighborhood for decades.
'A complex ecosystem'
For Abizadeh, the work in Philadelphia goes beyond just acquiring properties, fixing them up, and getting people living and working in them.
"We're rooted in systems change," she says. "This is a model that acknowledges that systems are broken. Structural racism, environmental racism, have created the Kensington that we have today. Since we got here through policy decisions that were intentional, we can we design our way out of it through intentional policy."
Schilling says balancing the public and private spheres in neighborhoods like Over-the-Rhine is a multi-faceted, constantly changing issue.
"It's a complex ecosystem when you're talking about downtown redevelopment, neighborhood revitalization," he says. "We've been at this for 50-plus years, urban planning and urban redevelopment. It's still a work in progress."
An earlier version of this story misstated the progress of the grocery store project in Kensington. Its status has been clarified.