Cincinnati committee approves plan to grow city and its neighborhoods

CINCINNATI - A plan to help the entire Tri-State by strengthening Cincinnati passed its first test Monday night.

More than 5,000 people contributed to Plan Cincinnati over the past three years. The plan's supporters promise better jobs, better neighborhoods and better transportation.

"This is the city's first comprehensive plan since 1980. So it's been a long time, it's way overdue," Executive Director of Price Hill Will Ken Smith said. "This will help guide Cincinnati at least for the next couple of decades."

Smith invested hours of time into the Plan Cincinnati project. It's a 20-year comprehensive plan that could bring in business, grow housing and make the city's 52 neighborhoods more pedestrian friendly.

"We're trying to develop community space now across the street from where we are standing," Smith said. "Right now, it's more general than specific, but certainly it mirrors what we're already working on in the neighborhood."

This is a vision Smith and many others who worked on the plan presented to city council's Livable Communities Committee meeting on Monday.  A vision the city's Director of Planning and Building Charles Graves led, and completed with the help of the citizens.

"We got youth involved, seniors involved, we got people who are interested in the city who work here," Graves said. "It's just been incredible in terms of the excitement, energy, enthusiasm that people have for the city."

Graves said it will be made financially possible through the city's capital budget. 

Supporters of the plan were able to convince all seven members of the Livable Communities Committee to vote yes to moving forward on the plan.

"I'm not going to hold up a great piece of work that I think is a great footprint for Cincinnati's future," city councilman and member of the committee Charles Winburn said.

Council votes on the plan on Wednesday.

If you would like to read the 236-page plan, click here.