They say history is written by the victors, but sometimes it’s also written by the lazy. Or at least those who prefer simple, uncomplicated narratives.
The story of Over-the-Rhine often is reduced to a three-act play: German immigrants settled the neighborhood bordered on two sides by the Miami and Erie Canal (i.e., the Rhine River), the old brick buildings were frozen in time for more than 100 years, and then 3CDC came along to return OTR to glory. There’s enough truthiness in that script to enable most of us to gloss over the hundreds of thousands of interconnected lives that gave OTR its soul and its true character, including those who live, work, and play there today. (Read more about OTR’s history later online this month, or in our print issue now, with our feature on the upcoming Over-the-Rhine Museum.)
We invited a broad group of people who have a stake in Over-the-Rhine—residents, property owners, city officials, business owners, nonprofit leaders—to gather in person to discuss the neighborhood’s past, present, and future. For scheduling flexibility, we held two roundtable meetings at Cincinnati Magazine’s offices near Findlay Market. These folks participated in one of those discussions. Their remarks have been edited for clarity and brevity.
Richard Barlion owns Luken’s Fish, Seafood & Poultry at Findlay Market. Before purchasing the business last year, he worked as a chef at both Jean-Robert’s Table and French Crust.
Markiea Carter is the city’s director of community and economic development. The department employs about 100 staff covering housing development, economic development, and neighborhood development as well as on- and off-street parking.
Jeff Cramerding is a member of Cincinnati City Council and chair of the Equitable Growth and Housing Committee.
Dorothy Darden has lived in Over-the-Rhine for more than 50 years. She was born in the West End and displaced into Over-the-Rhine for the urban renewal project that created Interstate 75. She is the lead parent at the Parent Center at Rothenberg Elementary in OTR.
Valarie Dowell has been an OTR resident for 35 years. She works as a community health navigator at the Cincinnati Health Network, helping homeless people get health, dental, and behavioral health services.
Joe Girandola is president of the Art Academy of Cincinnati, the private art college that relocated to Over-the-Rhine in 2005.
Rico Grant is an entrepreneur and owner of two businesses in Over-the-Rhine: the art gallery/barbershop Gallery at Gumbo on Main Street and the Cinema bar on Vine Street.
Donna Harris is director of the Over-the-Rhine Museum and a resident of Over-the-Rhine since 2020. She formerly worked at the Cincinnati Art Museum.
Barbara Hauser first moved to Pendleton in 2006 and then owned a condo at 13th and Republic for 11 years. Now she’s back in Pendleton. Hauser has worked for Procter & Gamble for 15 years, with previous positions at Cincinnati YMCA and Cincinnati Ballet.
Michael Maloney is convenor of the Urban Appalachian Community Coalition.
Jeremy Neff moved to the West End in 2004 and then to Over-the-Rhine seven years ago. He works as a lawyer in North College Hill.
Kevin Pape, president of the Over-the-Rhine Foundation, recently retired from the company he helped found, Gray & Pape, located on Main Street since 1989. Pape is a professional cultural heritage consultant who lived in Over-the-Rhine from 1978 to 1982.
Jose Salazar owns two restaurants in Over-the-Rhine (Salazar and Goose & Elder) and one downtown (Mita’s).
Chris Seelbach has lived on Main Street in OTR since 2004. He served on Cincinnati City Council from 2011 to 2022.
Anne Delano Steinert is assistant history professor at UC and founding board chair of the Over-the-Rhine Museum. She lived in Over-the-Rhine in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Abbey Tissot rented in Pendleton before buying a building there 14 years ago. She just completed two terms as Pendleton Neighborhood Council president.
Declan Tom is an aide in City Councilmember Mark Jeffreys’s office. He lives in Mt. Auburn.
Matt Reckman is president of property management at Model Group, a real estate development firm based in OTR. He lived in the neighborhood from 2009 to 2015.
Jae Washington began living in Over-the-Rhine in 1986, moved away for seven years, and returned to OTR in 2022. She is senior manager of global community at Headspace as well as founder of Birdie in the Hand LLC management consulting firm.
David Vissmann is an Over-the-Rhine resident who oversees cleaning and events operations in 3CDC’s improvement districts in OTR and the Central Business District and manages its Outreach Program, contracted through Greater Cincinnati Behavioral Health Services, which deploys five outreach workers in the districts.
Kate Zaidan is owner of Dean’s Mediterranean Imports in Findlay Market. Her father started the business 40 years ago.
If you met someone who’s never been to Over-the-Rhine, how would you describe it?
Seelbach: It’s this cultural, historic, architectural, eccentric neighborhood that for decades and decades was thriving and then wasn’t and became almost abandoned. But in the last 20 years it’s been brought back to life with people, restaurants, housing, and parks. This an incredibly exciting time to be part of a neighborhood with so much history.
Steinert: It’s one of the most intact examples of 19th-century architecture in the U.S., built on a walkable street grid. A lot of the mixed-use buildings were closed, but we’re starting to rediscover them. There is a lot of vibrant and active street life, but this is contested space. New people are coming into contact with the other significant population of longtime residents who have called Over-the-Rhine home for 30, 40, 50, 60 years.
Tissot: People say it’s a destination for visitors, but it’s really a multigenerational, diverse neighborhood. It’s a community of people who talk to one another and are invested in their blocks, their neighborhood, and their neighbors.
Zaidan: I always describe it as a gentrifying neighborhood, but there’s a real effort on the part of all the various stakeholders to stay inclusive even if they miss the mark sometimes.
Pape: I would describe this as the vibrant heart of the city. Cincinnati is a city of 52 neighborhoods, and they all have their own personality and character and add a lot to the city, but this is kind of its heart.
Salazar: I’d say it’s like Brooklyn or Lower Manhattan before the chains moved in. When there was still art and culture and an independent vibe.
Hauser: It’s very welcoming. It’s a neighborhood where you can get to know business owners, make friends, and have neighbors you can count on when you need them. You can start to feel part of this community very quickly.
Salazar: That’s different from Brooklyn.
Maloney: I’ve seen this neighborhood primarily as a home to successive waves of immigrants, including the new immigrants from suburbia.
Darden: I think it depends on whose lens you’re looking through. It would be nice to bring the neighbors to the table and be partners. This is urban renaissance; I went through urban renewal. My old neighbors were part of a quilt—you bring your piece and attach yourself and we make it work—but that doesn’t happen as much these days.
Neff: I think it’s very unusual, in my life experience at least, where the buildings and the people and the art just come together in a way that’s hard to capture without coming down here and seeing it. Ideally, seeing it with someone who has a really deep experience here, because otherwise it could be a very superficial thing. It could be a kind of Disney-fied experience, which is fine, but OTR is so much more than that.
What do you like about the neighborhood or what do you think is going well?
Hauser: We do arts and culture well. With the renovations of Music Hall and Memorial Hall and the addition of Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, expansion of Ensemble Theater, and a world-class Ballet, Opera, and Symphony, we have it all right here in OTR.
Neff: There’s lots of art, and it’s not just exclusive art. I subscribe to the Cincinnati Symphony and love it, it’s one of my favorite places in the world, but there are also the ArtWorks murals and BLINK, and this week there’s a pop-up art event at Ziegler Park. My kids are growing up in this neighborhood, and it doesn’t cross their mind that art doesn’t belong to everyone.
Seelbach: It’s one of the few places in the region where you don’t have to have a car.
Grant: The neighborhood’s walkability is absolutely incredible. You can park a car or ride a bike and just sort of move around freely, go from meeting to meeting—do whatever you need to do socially or workwise.
Dowell: I’ve been here so long, and there are good changes and bad changes. The neighborhood feels safer to me. I have 10 grandkids, and six of them are always at my house, especially on the weekends. They’re able to go out and walk to Findlay Market and feel safe—that’s important to me.
Washington: The food scene is incredible. It’s diverse and eclectic, but cohesive and very Cincinnati-centric. It rivals many places in the country and dare I say the world.
Steinert: What we’re doing well is using historic architecture as a driver for development. Sure, we don’t always take care of it that well and we often take it for granted, but Over-the-Rhine is a great example of how historic preservation and historic tax credits can really drive development and break down the idea that preservation and progress are adversarial.
Grant: I love that Over-the-Rhine just feels like family. Whether you live there or work there, you can’t walk down the street or go into a coffeeshop without running into someone you know. In a way, connectivity is always just one stretch to the left or one stretch to the right. I like that a lot.
Salazar: We can revisit that one on what’s bad about OTR: You can’t hide. But, really, this is about commitment. There have just been a lot of people who dug in their heels and have been here through the struggles and persevered and stuck with it.
Tissot: The small group of residents who are deeply committed to each other have broken down barriers that in other situations would otherwise have kept them apart from one another. I think that’s very much on purpose.
Zaidan: One example of the connectivity is the OTR Recreation Center process of building a new community center at Findlay Park. I would say that there is a real effort to get people involved because I’ve gotten lots of e-mail notices to be part of Zoom meetings or in-person meetings. It’ll be interesting to see how the planning process plays out and how they’re able to balance the community needs and different development needs. I’ve been enjoying kind of watching on the sidelines.
What troubles you about the neighborhood or what is not going so well?
Washington: I feel like we’re a neighborhood at a crossroads. Let’s be honest, as beautiful, neighborly, kind, and creative as this neighborhood is, there is the perpetual struggle of equity in common spaces. We need to be more aware of the contribution of the often-marginalized majority who have held space here when no one else wanted to come down here and support businesses because everyone was afraid. I think there’s an interesting precedent that could be set right here, right now.
Dowell: I know development has to happen to bring about change in the community, and I understand the stability piece. What I don’t like is when you do it on the backs of people who have been here a long time. You’re making everything unaffordable. If it wasn’t for Over-the-Rhine Community Housing, I couldn’t afford to be here.
Girandola: My biggest concern is continued access to improved safety. Work/life balance in OTR is a challenge when the lights go out and the restaurants close. Art Academy students live here 24 hours a day.
Salazar: Parking is an issue for people who live and work here. Business owners can’t get parking permits. My employees are always struggling to find affordable parking.
Maloney: Over-the-Rhine pays the price for our hesitance to really do social planning. One result is that in one of the two U.S. Census tracts above Liberty Street, average household income levels were down to $5,000. Nobody can live on that level of income.
Tom: I think it comes down to a struggle between making or maintaining OTR as a kind of common ground for everyone in the city and reflective of the other 51 neighborhoods, while at the same time staying true to the families that have been in this neighborhood for years and generations.
Reckman: The city could be more proactive than reactionary on keeping up with the evolving neighborhood. As neighborhoods change, you have an influx of residents and customers to an area that hasn’t seen change in many years. This means city functions like transportation, public right of way lighting, trash receptacles, crime and safety, and zoning uses need be looked at comprehensively, with adjustments made quickly to capture positive momentum.
Carter: When thinking about the future of OTR, it can be helpful to look back at parts of the neighborhood where we’ve already seen significant development and learn from those stories. The examples of transformational development that went well are almost always because of a mix of substantial leveraged investments, partnerships, and collaboration with engaged residents. By comparison, we can look two blocks over and see what it looks like when we didn’t have such a collaborative approach. Our job at the city is to ensure that as we make critical decisions about future development in OTR we’re continuously asking, How do we mimic the good transformational work we’ve done over the past 20 years to address outstanding issues we see today?
Harris: I’m concerned about that, too. I’m here because this is a fun, funky, beautiful community with a rich history. I just hope we don’t lose the stories and sense of community as new residents move here.
Neff: Humility can be a challenge. What are the interests where there might be some overlap? It’s a vibrant and exciting neighborhood, but I don’t think we should assume it will always be such, unless we’re really thoughtful about it.
Cramerding: A lot of residents tend to conflate Over-the-Rhine with the city as a whole and tell City Hall that problems happening in OTR are a huge concern. At one point four of nine City Council members lived in Over-the-Rhine, and we’d hear from the administration that they heard about OTR issues all the time. Actually, much of what we’re talking about today is unique to Over-the-Rhine.
Darden: I use wheelchairs and a crutch, and I have five steps outside my place in Pendleton. Me being me, I carefully got down the steps when I was waiting for my ride but lost control and fell. I laid there about 20 minutes, and I heard cars drive by, but no one thought I was important enough to assist. That’s when I really knew the neighborhood had truly changed.
How can the neighborhood improve?
Pape: One thing the Over-the-Rhine Foundation did years ago was put together an owner-occupied initiative. The whole idea was recognizing that, yes, 3CDC has made a major investment and there are a lot of big developers in the neighborhood, but one of the things that’s really key to making a beautiful, inclusive, and organic community is ensuring that small developers and families have the resources and the knowledge to be able to have a path forward to owning a building as well. I think contemplating something of that approach now in Over-the-Rhine is worthwhile. It didn’t cost a lot to run the workshops to teach people how to buy and renovate buildings. It’s not intensive, but it is intentional.
Tissot: In my experience with city leaders, they really aren’t focused on home ownership for people who have been in the neighborhood for decades or even retaining the homeowners we do have.
Carter: With regard to infill development, we’ve learned the entire process takes time to get right. So we try to engage with potential developers earlier—often before we even put out an Request for Proposal (RFP)—to hold time and space for key community engagement. We’ve had conversations where we look at an empty lot and think, from our perspective, it would be perfect for infill development. But various community stakeholders and residents may have a different vision for that space that better serves the neighborhood. With more time on the front end, we can ensure open dialogue about density, infill, urban gardening, green spaces, and more, hopefully determining a collective vision for the piece of land.
Pape: My office is at the corner of Main and Woodward, where there’s been a strong perception of disruption. Being in the neighborhood, talking to the folks on the street, talking to the guys hanging out there, I recognize that one of the things we’re not doing a good job of is listening to these community people. Before Ziegler Park was renovated—and it’s phenomenal, so much good has come out of that—the park was a communal space where these guys would come and socialize. There’s a common complaint that they come from all over the city. It turns out that many of them do, but they all grew up here in this neighborhood. So they come back to hang with their friends and to socialize, but they don’t really have anywhere to go. And so that leads to “disruption.”
Darden: Ownership of the building where I live changed a couple of years ago, and they don’t want anybody outside. I used to be able to sit outside and talk to my neighbors and connect with people and have conversations. I truly miss that. Sometimes you meet new people and you strike up a conversation—that’s what life is supposed to be about.
Steinert: Listening has to be purposeful. The Over-the-Rhine Museum convened a neighborhood advisory committee make up of longtime Black and Appalachian residents. We met with them for five weeks. I thought I knew a lot about Over-the-Rhine, and I do, but I learned so much from them—specifics and details, but mainly the way you feel in the neighborhood you grew up in. That’s their experience of Over-the-Rhine, and many of them woke up one morning and felt suddenly, like, Oh my God, there’s a hot yoga place over here and a juice bar over there. Where’s my laundromat or whatever I need? It’s traumatic and sad.
Tom: This is philosophical, but good community takes individual sacrifice. A great community isn’t where everyone gets everything they want but that everyone is able to give a little bit of themselves so we all can do well. In OTR, that starts with the folks who are newer, not the long-term residents, because they’ve already sacrificed so much.
Tissot: By and large, the new higher-income renters here aren’t investing their time the way a home owner or longtime resident does. They don’t get to know their neighbors, pick up litter, or go to community council meetings. Those engagements are necessary for our community to be successful and it’s why we need city leaders to focus on home ownership, not just more high-end rental units.
Barlion: New residents don’t always respect the businesses and people down here. I’ve had the cops called on me for parking in my own loading area at Findlay Market. The residents will just say, Well, we live here now.
Harris: People who come here from other places need to recognize and learn about the culture. Maybe you don’t need a three-car garage.
Pape: Literally half of Over-the-Rhine is still vacant parcels that can be built upon. And a lot of that is happening, which is a good thing. Fill in the gaps, but do it in a way that’s informed and contributes to the neighborhood. A lot of what I’m seeing are developers coming in from the suburbs and bringing that suburban design aesthetic, like putting a garage right in front of the house. No, this is a historic district, there are plenty of other places in the city where you can build like that.
Seelbach: The truth is, 20 years ago most of OTR’s buildings were abandoned. The development by and large hasn’t pushed people out of buildings. But as we grow and more people come into this neighborhood, it should reflect the broader community, not just the people who can afford $500,000 condos. Those people are welcome, but we want people of all income levels. And we need businesses that support all levels of income as well.
Vissmann: The neighborhood could use more housing for people of all income levels, which is why 3CDC has been so focused on mixed-income housing projects over the past several years. Creating multi-bedroom units can be challenging in the historic buildings that make OTR such a unique neighborhood, but it would be great to see more of those whenever possible.
Grant: The inclusive work has to continue. It’s becoming a beautiful thing to watch. As the business community continues to thrive, it has to get blacker, it has to get browner. There was a time when I would walk a block and a half from one of my two Over-the-Rhine locations before I passed another Black-owned business. That’s not the case anymore. I look across the street and my neighbors are African American, and that really matters.
Dowell: We need to think of senior citizens, because it just breaks my heart when people are 60 and 70 and living in a shelter who have lost their housing. I understand we have to make way for younger people to get into the community, but we’ve got to figure out a good balance.
Girandola: I would love to see more access to public transportation to the neighborhoods outside of OTR and big-picture things like extending the streetcar.
Seelbach: What’s not being done is protected bike lanes, which would make things safer for scooters and bikes.
When you imagine the Over-the-Rhine of the future, what do you think or hope it will look like?
Steinert: I would love to see every single building that exists in Over-the-Rhine today exist in 100 years. We should never tear down another historic building and instead figure out how to become more creative and innovative to work with them rather than against them.
Maloney: Could this neighborhood be a rare example of successful mixed-income development? I’d like to hope this is a possibility that the city would adopt as a goal.
Darden: I would hope that City Council would actually step up and be the leaders they need to be. There used to be a time when you could go in and be heard, and then they limited you to two minutes. Now it’s almost impossible to talk to them. We vote for them, and then we lose contact.
Dowell: I was a little kid when they took the West End [to create Queensgate]. During those times, Black people weren’t allowed to cross Central Parkway. Today there are small pockets of the Black community in Over-the-Rhine, but they are reducing a lot of them. I think it’s going to be, I can’t even say middle class, but more wealthy people controlling Over-the-Rhine. I hope not, but it’s moving fast.
Darden: We want to be seen as equals to those with financial wealth. I was raised differently. If you have people who love you and care about you and you can link with, you have wealth.
Neff: Diversity of users and owners, but also diversity of uses. I’m a member of First Lutheran Church, one of those precious places in the neighborhood that is truly open to everyone. My hope would be in 50 years we’ve preserved these places—not just the bricks, but the uses. That’s really essential to this being the thriving, interesting neighborhood that it is.
Steinert: The buildings and the uses are the key. There’s enough housing for low-income people and wealthy people. There’s enough room for this kind of art and that kind of art. There’s enough room for recreation and whatever. Over-the-Rhine has the capacity to do all the things, but unfortunately we keep thinking about the future as a dichotomy of It’s only good for this or that.
Pape: These buildings have a patina and are tangible evidence of generations of people who have lived, worshipped, worked, and invested here to make it what it is. So we come back and reinvest in those buildings and carry on that tradition. When you’re out walking or driving or experiencing Over-the-Rhine, you’re experiencing this 19th-century neighborhood—but as we begin to fill in all these vacant places, it will take on a very different character. We have to be conscious and conscientious about how we do that.
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