Guest column by Bill Joiner.

I spent Friday afternoon doing exactly what corporate Cincinnati, as represented by their agent, 3CDC, wants. I parked in Fountain Square, shopped, went to the Contemporary Art Center, and had dinner. A possibly pleasant agenda, but every time that agenda impinged on Fountain Square, I couldn’t believe how incompetent 3CDC was, and how much they were working against their sponsors’ desires.

First, the square is one gosh-awful mess. Wasn’t it to be completed last September? No one was working, but it is fenced off so that you can’t walk through the square, at least in the north-south direction. Therefore as we went from one destination to the next, we had to take a detour, and exit the square. Although that is an annoyance, it might have been not so bad, but it was very cold and windy, and the detours made it downright unpleasant. At one point, before we were aware of where the fencing ended, we tried to walk through the center of the square, but the fountain, which is now located there, was spewing water all over because of the wind. And throughout it all we were subjected to the loud blaring from the TV overhead.

Then the garage. We parked at the South end, and exited through the Weston. We noted our parking location. As we proceeded to the elevator we noticed the new paint already peeling from the wall and floor. We read the sign telling us to take our ticket and pay at the pay location, but there were no signs or other directions as to where the pay location was. We eventually learned that there was only one location, and it involved crossing Fifth Street once more. We then took the adjacent elevator to return to our car, but there was nothing in the elevator to locate the floor or the “E” location where our car was parked. When we exited the elevator at our best guess of the level, there were still few clues. We tried another floor, and saw other locations, but not “E”. We subsequently discovered that the lettering apparently changed in the middle of the floor. We wasted much too much of our time in the whole process of paying and locating our car. All this is so 3CDC can make greater profit by not having ticket takers at the exit to expedite the exit process for users. When we exited, we wanted to go North, but the Vine Street exit was closed, and so we had to detour around the block.

Admittedly these are small things, and if you park there frequently, you might navigate the whole process more efficiently. But we do not, and if the objective is to attract visitors like us to downtown, what 3CDC is doing is just the opposite. My wife and I were absolutely astounded by the incompetence in the design, in the execution of the renovation, and the arrogance and disregard for the users. And after millions were spent with these results, what benefits have users of the Square received?

The ill conceived idea of doing away with the City Planning Department, and turning over development to incompetent private interests is clearly not in the public interest. There is also a great deal of accumulating evidence that 3CDC’s role in OTR is ill conceived, lacks humanity, and may yet end in a much worse fiasco, with real harm to vulnerable individuals which makes any of my complaints about Fountain Square pale by comparison.

Isn’t it time for the City to take back its responsibility for planning and development, and end the special interest, incompetent adventures of 3CDC?

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