Vitality Over-the-Rhine to create incentive district

Vitality Over-the-Rhine has launched an initiative targeted at clean and safe issues and long-term development along the Main Street corridor.

The working group, which is composed of professionals with a stake in the neighborhood, is investigating the feasibility of creating a special improvement district (SID).

SIDs (sometimes known as Business Improvement Districts) are public-private partnerships in which property owners agree to a special tax assessment that will be used for anything from development projects to maintenance to additional safety personnel. Any additional services gained from the assessment are in addition to normal public services provided by the city as a whole.

The most visible local SID, the Downtown Cincinnati Improvement District, has been in operation since 1998 and consists of over 300 property owners.

So far, the group has been measuring the assessed value and frontage of property owners within the proposed SID and have drawn up a draft services plan. They have also teamed up with the law firm Coolige Wall, LPA, who wrote the Ohio Revised Code statute providing for special improvement districts.

Vitality Over-the-Rhine now hopes to work with two of its partners, Downtown Cincinnati Inc. and the Over-the-Rhine Chamber of Commerce, to gather input on the proposed services plan.

After gathering input, the group will work to form a final, comprehensive public services plan that they can submit to City Council for consideration of the SID's creation.

The Vitality Over-the-Rhine District Coordinator explains that to effect the greatest amount of change in the shortest amount of time, the geographical scope had to be limited to a highly-visible part of the neighborhood.

He hopes that this will be a sustainable model which can be duplicated in other parts of the neighborhood.


Partners

The Vitality Over-the-Rhine Initiative has provided Building Cincinnati with this list of project partners:

* Over-the-Rhine Chamber of Commerce
* Downtown Cincinnati Inc.
* Major property owners within our geography
* Downtown Dayton Partnership (Best practices and material support)
* Columbus' Capital Crossroads Special Improvement District
* Columbus' Discovery Special Improvement District
* Coolige Wall LPA
* Liz Blume at the Community Building Institute at Xavier University
* Developers both within and surrounding our geography
* The Over-the-Rhine Foundation
* Cincinnati Police Department (District 1)
* Blue Whitespace graphic design and marketing firm