City parks off-limits to developers

Cincinnati City Council has approved unanimously a new zoning designation (PR) meant to protect the City's public parks and recreation areas.

Representatives from several community councils had worried that park and recreation land -- which was zoned residential and commercial -- could be sold off to developers with no public hearing.

The City's current zoning code, which went into effect in early 2004, zones park and recreation land relative to surrounding land uses. Many of the largest parks, such as Eden Park, are zoned SF-20, the largest-lot single-family residential designation on the books.

Since they would be code-compliant, developers would be able to construct homes in Eden Park (or any other park) if the City sold them the land.

Instead of completely rewriting the code to address these concerns, City Council voted to adopt the zoning code as submitted and to prepare a zoning study to be performed by the Department of Community Development and Planning and the City Planning Commission.


The study recommendations led to the establishment of a committee composed of members from the City Planning Commission, the Cincinnati Park Board, the Cincinnati Recreation Commission (CRC), and the City's Law Department.

A draft of the new zoning district was produced in early 2007. Soon after, the CRC and the Cincinnati Park Board both voted to support the new district.

The PR district will initially include only land owned and/or maintained by the Park Board or the CRC. This applies to 3,537 parcels.

The designation protects park spaces, but has no effect on the uses of individual parks.*

Any land obtained by the City for a future park would have to go through the zoning change process to acquire the new PR designation.

The zoning designation has no effect on parks created within PD (Planned Development) districts.

To see a full listing of the rezoned properties on Scribd, click here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/133761/Cincinnati-PD-zoning-district

* Incidentally, many park uses were technically not allowed under their former residential and commercial zoning.