Stadium redesign well-received
City negotiators like way proposal conserves space
BY LUCY MAY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
City and county leaders are working from a consultant's design to resolve the city's concerns about the size and shape of the new Cincinnati Bengals stadium.
Drawing shows Bengals stadium along a rebuilt Fort Washington Way, between Central Avenue and Elm Street.
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While the football team, the city and the county still must sign off on the solution, local leaders said Thursday that the latest one proposed by Urban Design Associates (UDA) goes a long way toward satisfying everyone.
The proposal shrinks the stadium's pedestrian plaza, allows Elm Street to curve along the stadium's edge and connect with Mehring Way, and provides for development on top of parking garages that will be built to serve the stadium.
''It's a lot more promising than what we were seeing four weeks ago,'' Cincinnati Mayor Roxanne Qualls said Thursday after a meeting of the joint city-county steering committee on riverfront development issues. ''I'm very encouraged by this.''
The city's concerns about some of the previous designs were that the football stadium ate up more of the riverfront than city leaders anticipated, and didn't leave enough room for other kinds of development between Elm and Race streets.
The stadium will sit between Third Street and Mehring Way, roughly between Central Avenue and Elm Street.
The next step toward resolving the city's concerns comes next week, when officials from NBBJ Sports and Entertainment, the firm designing the stadium, present their analysis of the UDA proposal.
In the several weeks that officials from UDA, NBBJ, the city and the county have been meeting, dozens of different proposals were presented, said Ron Miller, executive director of the Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission.
''Not that anybody has blessed it,'' he said of the UDA proposal, ''but everybody is talking about it.''
The stadium design is just one of many issues the county and team are working through before they sign a lease, said Hamilton County Administrator David Krings.
For example, the county and team are talking about what it would take to make the new stadium functional for World Cup Soccer, county commission President Bob Bedinghaus said.
Negotiations even include the price of the finish to be used in the locker rooms in an effort to nail down a firm price for the football stadium, Mr. Krings said.
The county must have a lease signed with either the Reds or Bengals by June 1 or the half-penny sales tax passed to fund the project gets rolled back.
The county will meet that deadline with the Bengals, Mr. Bedinghaus assured city officials.
Although the pace of negotiations has picked up on the baseball stadium, Mr. Bedinghaus said he does not expect a lease agreement with the Reds by June 1.
Also during the meeting, Cincinnati City Manager John Shirey said the target completion date for the $162.5 million reconstruction of Fort Washington Way is still August of 2000, which coincides with the planned opening of the new football stadium.
But, he said, ''to be able to make August of 2000 is going to require just about everything to go right. And in big projects, that very rarely happens.''
To pay for the project, the city wants: $80 million from the state, $50 million from the federal government and the rest from local sources, such as the city and county, Mr. Shirey said.
The plan is to start the road reconstruction at both ends, Mr. Shirey said.
That way, the work most likely to affect the Bengals stadium - and a new Reds stadium, if it is located on the river - will be finished first.
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