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Could be maybe possibly will we see him in action against the Patriots of New England on Sunday. So you're saying there's a chance before that. The city wants to move forward on a plan to finish the banks, but the county says we're broke, it's not a priority, and we've got more disagreement between the county and the city. The plan calls for up to eight hundred million dollars in redevelopment over the next fifteen years to complete the five remaining lots at the now twenty year old banks.
And we have a new twist Council unanimously approving four million to buy the former free store food bank location on Central Parkway that's next to TQL that's causing speculation as a possible site for a new arena. All this and more. He is the development guy on City Council. That would be council Member Seth Walsh on the Scotslane show.
Soeth, good morning.
How are you moring, Scott see how Man?
Yeah, doing well.
Lots to unpack here, and this is so in your wheelhouse, obviously, let's start with this new information about buying the four million dollars a lot. I'm looking at the aerial on Google Earth of this thing. I'm looking at it, going okay, well, uh, it's next to public television, public radio. Across the street is Queen City Radio, so it's in the shadows of TQL Stadium. But I'm trying to see how you fit an arena in there? Can you do it? If CET goes away? Although I know they just spent a ton
of money on their their remodel. The other side of this is a Duke Energy substation that's not movable. You've got houses behind it. The neighbors don't want this going across Central Avenue and keep it on Central Parkway. Is this the site for a future arena?
I mean it could be very well, could be.
Yeah, it's one of the sites, and you know, Scott to take a look at it. You know, it's identified in the arena study that was done last year in twenty twenty four as one of the four cential sites for where we could be putting an arena, including the existing location. And that's why this acquisition is so important,
even if it ultimately doesn't become an arena. Let's get control of the land so we can have that conversation and we can drive this conversation and make sure that we are evaluating all the options and we don't ultimately get strung out with somebody having control of a valuable parcel that we want if we want to put an area there.
So yeah, it absolutely could be an.
Arena possibility there.
So moving some stuff right of course, you know, we know what's going on with the public public media. CET owns the building in the air rights, the city owns the land itself. Cost about fifty million dollars to move this thing, and you know you got to come up with fifty million.
Dollars to do that.
If that's a possibility, then certainly you could put that right next to TQL Sadam and almost like what you know, putting the arena next to pay Corp, which I think would be great, But we're not going to do that obviously.
Because now you can share facilities, you can share infrastructure that that's good, But doesn't that then take away what we're talking about from the Banks, Because I'm sure that the entities at the Banks, and now you're negotiating with the county on this, want to keep the arena in its present location. A new arena if they're to build it, why spend all the money in the Banks. If you're going to build an arena in the West.
End, well, the Banks, regardless of whether there's an arena there or not. They already have two stadiums, so it's not like we would be taking all the supporting opportunities away from there if it did move, which again is not even close to being decided. And I think there's a very real conversation you have about the arena staying at the Banks, and there's some interesting r renderings put out about that recently.
But if it.
Moved off the Banks, I think that's part of the larger conversation we need to have about the Banks.
This is the front bord to our city and it's.
The last great frontier of how we can really rebuild the downtown right on the river, how people are coming into the city of Cincinnati, and the opportunities there. I think we need to be envisioning in a way that is more than just expecting sports teams spill to keep it alive and active.
Frankly, which is what gets me excited about the plan.
Is this also maybe leverage because you know, the county stand we're broke, it's not a priority. The ferris wheel will screw up the Freedom Center on all these other things, and you guys so far to the man and women on city Council. You want to move forward like yesterday on this bank thing, and the County's not going to go anywhere. You need both entities to go. Is this possible? This four million dollar land by at the free Store in Central Avens that a way for you to go.
Hey, listen, we've got some leverage here.
I don't see this as a leverage play.
I see this as having a vision for what we want Cincinnati to become and I think for the future of Cincinnati for the next ten to fifteen years. To really put us on the national stage, we need to have an arena and we need to have a thriving banks.
I don't think it's an.
Either or, and I think either location, any of the locations for the arena helped solve that problem. But we can't just build an arena and not be solving the banks situation. Yeah, and likewise, we can't solve the bank situation and not hav an arena for the city. So my opinion on this is this is called vision and this is called leadership, and it's not trying to leverage or play anybody off each other. It's trying to move our city and our region forward. And I'm really excited
about that because that's what we need. We need that type energy right now.
Seth.
You can't control what you take your contemporaries over at the county are doing by they stretch of the imagination. You don't control them. But can you do an arena? Can the City of Cincinnati do an arena without county involvement?
You know a lot of people say no. My answer would be, you know, Scott, you and I have talked of development a lot. Every development project you begin on is hard and it's complicated, and it takes a lot of creativity to figure out how you get there. It's a lot easier for the counties at the table, But if it's not at the table, then that means we have to get more creative on how we solve the problem. And I think it's something we have to commit to as a city in the region and then figure out
the answers to it regardless. Look at what we did with the convention center. Three hundred million dollars. That wasn't found overnight, and it wasn't found from one source, And that's what I think is going to take to do the arena. I would like the county to come to the table. I would like the county to be part of this conversation. I would like them to be driving
the conversation. But I also think that the city should be prepared to figure out ways to fund it even if the county doesn't come there.
What does that look like relative to financing? Is there significant private money involved? As there worth a TQL that you can be confident in saying we got enough private money to pull that on.
Well, you're asking a question much further down the line than is the reality right now. Again, we're at the very beginning stages of the arena conversation. But in the Arena.
Study it does specifically.
Call out that modern day arenas are being built with about one third of it coming from private money. Yes, I mean that is in the tunes of hundreds of millions of dollars. So no, this would not be a pure public funded project, and it would be a project that would require private epsteins to get involved. It require figuring out how we keep it occupied throughout the entire year, so it's not just sitting there vacant. There's some really good questions to it, but again it's something we have
to commit to. Once you commit to it, it's like anything in development. You say we're going to do it, and you figure out how you're going to do it from there, what.
Is the timeline in your mind?
So it's up to me.
As Jerry said, it would have been two weeks ago, you know, we had been doing this. I think I think this needs to be the priority of the next term for city Council, for the mayor. So I think by twenty twenty nine we need to have answers and I'd love to see shovels in the ground by then.
All Right, I'm talking to council Member Seth Walsh of Cincinnati City Council on the show. With the news that the city's purchased land at near TQL Stadium, speculation is that maybe in arena could go there, Seth Walsh not rulling that out. Money is the question because typically as
a county and city enterprise. But we can move forward without the county involvement here, which is interesting because Commissioner Alsha Reese said on the show, you know, we're kind of broke right now, We're gonna have the money, worried about tax payers and property taxes going up on all this other stuff, and other members said it's not even on our radar right now. Denise Dreehouse, the President said no, probably not. And that's just the best banks let alone arena.
The banks have come before in arena if they have money. Do the banks they certainly don't have money to do an arena. Let's focus on the banks thing. How do you move this forward if they're reluctant or just say simply we don't have the cash.
That's a million dollar question, isn't it. The banks has never been done exclusively by the county. It has always been done through a partnership. I think the conversation that needs to be had and is happening now. There's a steering committee that brought this plan together. If there's a steering committee that suggests these ideas. It is a lot of stakeholders, ranging from members of the Bangles and the
Reds to those who are on the banks. Already two members of the city in the county, so it's not like that this is not a conversation actively happening between the city and the county. What we have to do is keep pushing and from a city perspective, continue to provide support. You challenge the leaders who are in the room, who are doing the planning and making these things reality, to go out and find us these projects and these developments and then come back to us and tell us
what it takes to get the to happen. The resources exist for development, we see it all the time. You don't have to talk about a number of times right to do that, we need the projects being brought to us. And so there are people including Phil Becker, came presented about this who this is their job to go make the plan of reality now and that's how this happens.
And when they come to us and they say, hey, we've got a building, this is what it takes, then we start answering the question how we get there, whether that's through subsidies, whether that's through cras, whether that's through whatever, we start answering at that stage, says Walsh.
Denise Treehouse, the commissioned president, said this thing would be twenty four up to twenty four stories, and she was reluctant to agree with that because she worries about blocking daylight. This sounds like I don't know Hyde Park on the River, doesn't it.
And that's my comment that I made during council. Obviously we had different meetings to discuss the same topic. But downtown is designed to be built big. It is designed for these towns ours. It is you know when you walk around the banks, as walk around it this morning, you know, these eleven twelve story buildings feel small because they're dwarfed by the towers that we already have downtown,
and so I don't agree with that assessment. I think that the reality is we need to build height and we you know, the bigger we build it, the more people are going to live there, the more bustling it's going to be, the more successful our downtown is going to be. And I think that we need to keep that perspective of what is built already feels small and it's not.
If you took what was built there.
You drop it in say Hi Park, as you were just alluded to, it'd be you know, twice the three times as tall as what we're talking about building in High Park already.
So it's not small, but it feels small. We need to do better on the banks. We need to do better.
Okay, the specific plans for this thing, it's going to be up to a twelve hundred new housing units, obviously high rise and condos and stuff like that. There's gonna be hotel there, plus retail and entertainment as we mentioned, up to twenty four stories tall. The new lease with the Bengals allows for the taller buildings. Couldn't do that before because they had rights to the airspace or so ungodly reason. But you're talking about over these five lots
doing a lot of different things in that regard. People are hearing this and go away in a minute now. Unlike what you were talking about with maybe new arena in the West End. This is taxpayer money. And how would taxpayers feel about subsidizing luxury housing?
Is it?
Will they be pushed back in the city on that?
There certainly could be.
And again you're we're going down a pathway of assuming what is going to be there. What needs to be there is housing, and what that type of housing looks like is a question the developer needs to tell us. I'm a big proponent of just adding density to it and what that looks like. Let's figure it out, you know as well as I do. The more density you have, the less usually end up meeting per minute because it
can support it. That's why one of the big questions I asked was, let's not captus the twenty four stories. We keep saying up to twenty four stories. It may need to be bigger than that. And I think we should be okay with that, and I think we should be open to that conversation because we want these projects to work, and if money is tight and being we want to be protective of the public money. We make sure that these can cash flow and make it make
sense and the developer wants to take it on. I mean, ultimately that's the goal here. And if we make it difficult for the development to happen, then yeah, we're gonna have to come up with a lot of subsidies and so there's a balancing act here.
Yeah. I think it's really cool, is my daughter. Last month was in Minneapolis visiting a friend in her place. Is like looking literally looking over the stadium and the ballpark, and I was like, man, that's really really cool to be able to look down and you know, and a lot of people, a lot of young people especially love that.
And that's kind of what you're proposing here. I know a lot of cities, major League cities have that, and I tend to agree with disass Stars watched on that as like it's twenty four to two short, it may and not be tall enough in that regard.
Yeah, I mean, when I walked around downtown, one of the things I think about it.
Maybe it's just because you know, this is what I think about. I guess it's like, man, it would be so cool to them there.
When we were designing the downtown, when we were building the towers for the first time, and we were creating the skyline. That's the opportunity that's in front of us. And we're talking about five plots of big acreage writing the heart of downtown literally two blocks south of you.
Know, the core of downtown. We can do that.
We can build the next one hundred hundred and fifty years of what Cincinnati is going to look like and feel like and what young people are going.
To want to be part of. You're right overlooking these stadiums. You're you know, going out on Tuesday.
Night because they're living right there, like really making it something cool that people are traveling around the country to see. That's an amazing opportunity. Like what's not recited that it's not just five parcels. It's like a huge opportunity for the next hundred years of Cincinnati.
Okay, A legitimate question here about the timeline is the banks is already twenty years old. The stadiums are over twenty years old. At this point, we know everything has a certain longevity unless you're talking maybe I don't know, the Horseshoe, Fenway Park, Wrigley Field. These are not those kind of facilities Great American and pay Corps, respectively. So we're already twenty years into this thing. Another fifteen years
makes it thirty five. At some point, are we building something for the future when the future with those stadiums may have to change.
Well, And that's that's the point that I made earlier.
You know, what we need to be designing the banks for as longevity and It needs to not be just exclusively is there an arena, Are there stadiums there? What's the sport team doing for this day? It needs to be designed around a place that people are going to want to live and stay and be part of. You think about four Street or we're seeing a lot of development and activity happening, people moving to it. You know,
they're there because the buildings are beautiful. They're there because they're walkable to everything that you want to do in the downtown area. And that's always going to be the case with downtown. That's the same question we have to be answering with the Banks. It's not just about pay Court Stadium. It is about the future of who's going to stay and want to live there. Again, that's a really cool, exciting opportunity for me.
It is at the same time, you know, in circling back to the question about the arena, with the purchase of the property Seth Walsh at near TQL Stadium, then a new arena could go there and you could do it without county participation, which I think is causing a lot of people to maybe give the radio their speaker's side eye this morning, their heads on the little side eye right now and go, WHOA, that was a bomb. How much weight do the Reds, the Bengals and the
Banks Working Group have in this whole equation? Now we know that the contract was needed negotiated to allow twenty four stories or more to go up because the Bengals would control that. But there's a lot of stuff these lots, it looks like, you know, talgating lots and things like
that that the Bengals have a say in. The Reds obviously carry a lot of weight in this equation too, as well as those who invested with the Bank's Working Group and what's already down there regarding that, whether it's expansion of what we're talking about here or the arena, how much do they have a saying where or else it's going to go and how it's gonna work out.
I mean, when you say how much do they have to say? Are you talking about the arena? Are you talking about.
Well, well, development of the banks, but also let's factor the arena. Let's start with that seth. I mean, can they just say, hey, we're you're not gonna put this in the West End, You're gonna put it at the Banks and you're gonna we're going to tear down the tired Heritage Bank Center and maybe it's two years, but we're going to put a new one here. And that's what we've decided because we're the power brokers. I think a lot of people think that's the case inside the inside city Hall.
Is that true?
Well, when you talk about the arena, and as we talked about the arena study earlier, you know a third of that, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars that's probably gonna have to come from private entities to make that a reality.
And that's gonna be a big part of the conversation. If if the.
Private money that's coming to the table says we're not building it at this location, X, Y, and Z wherever that is, guess what, It's not gonna be built there because you're not gonna get private money.
If if they're saying that's not where it can go.
So if the power brokers quote unquote whoever that is in this conversation.
H the illuminati said that's the Illuminati. We'll call it what it is.
Whatever we want to call it.
If they want to go a certain location, they're gonna have to come to the table too. I mean that's the thing for the arena, for the banks were we're not adversaries here. We all trying to run the same direction. And if you have a vision where you want to go, you're gonna have to step up to the table with the money and the resources and help make that happen.
None of these are gonna be cheap, but you.
Know, the future in the vision of Cincinnati is going to come at a cost. And I think that's a good investment for us because this is something we're going to be talking about, you know, for an arena. We've been talking about arena for fifty years from the banks. Hopefully that's the next one hundred years of success. People are proud that we did not saying, man, these guys really messed up.
Yeah, yeah, all right, And then I think the same is probably true when it comes to the redevelopment down there as well. They have a say, but they don't get veto power correct.
Yeah, that's exactly it.
You know, we're all a team, but ultimately we got to be looking long term about what's being what's happening here. They have a seat at the table. They've been very involved in that. MI understandings they're very supportive of what the plan is. That's that's exactly what this needs to be. All right, team, let's make it happen together.
Got it?
Council Member Seth Wall, It's always a pleasure, love the Insight. Thanks again for coming on the show and Ed and I'm sure we will want to talk. But have a wonderful thanksgiving you two. Scott, all right, take care, appreciate your time as always. Let me get a time out in some reaction maybe here too as well. And that sounds like a you know what, a big middle finger to the county Commission.
Don't you like you know what? You guys won't move up.
We got this, we got this interesting more to follow, Sloany, Here's new seven hundred W Dowd, Cincinnati,