Five lots at the Banks are still undeveloped. Cincinnati and Hamilton County leaders have a new report on what should be done to restart the project. The proposal calls for mixed use developments in two 24-story towers, two 11-story buildings, including a hotel, and one eight-story structure.
City, county, and business leaders put development on hold in May to commission the study.
Much of the report resembles previous plans for the Banks. That's according to one of the consultants. Andrew Broderick with Perkins & Will says buildings should be accessible from the street, and the underground parking garage should be finished. He says there should also be some above ground parking garages, within apartment towers.
“Probably 80% of this land use, 70% of this land use is residential,” he told Hamilton County Commissioners, Tuesday morning. “You’ll see the idea of a hotel at Elm Street and 2nd Street that has a nice kind of pivot location between the convention center just a few blocks to the north, and then the stadium and then turning toward Freedom Way there, an anchoring plaza in front of Paycor Stadium.”
Broderick says the buildings would get taller, the further away from the football stadium they are. The Bengals have resisted the idea of anything at the Banks taller than the stadium.
He says there needs to be public investment.
“This project envisions the build-out and completion of Central Riverfront Garage,” he says. “Two levels of parking below the remaining four blocks. Lot 24 has some already. It also might mean some of the public placemaking components; around plazas, streetscapes, those type of components.”
Mark Kubaczyk with HR&A Advisors agrees there would likely need to be public investment needed along with private capital.
“We estimate this — with the parcels and any sort of additional supportive parking — to be roughly $750 to $800 million.”
Kubaczyk says he spoke with developers of a similar project in Washington D.C.
“To realize what ultimately became over $14 billion in private investment, there was an overall public investment of $2 billion.”
He says their estimate for the Banks investment does not include infrastructure costs, including building out the rest of the Central Riverfront Garage.
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