CINCINNATI — Business owners in Cincinnati’s CUF neighborhood — Clifton Heights, University Heights and Fairview — say evening street closures put in place following a series of shootings are hurting their bottom lines, especially after the busy Labor Day weekend and the first University of Cincinnati football game of the season.
Cincinnati police have been closing portions of Calhoun and McMillan streets near the University of Cincinnati campus from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. as part of an effort to curb violence in the area.
But for businesses along the affected streets, owners and managers say the closures are making it harder for customers to reach them and for delivery drivers to pick up and drop off orders.
Francisca Maya, a manager at Drunken Bento, said the closures have had a significant effect on business.
“We just don’t get that many people that want to dine in or even try to come in and pick up an order because it gets too difficult for them,” Maya said.
Maya’s restaurant is among dozens of businesses affected by the overnight closures.
The impact is also being felt at Penn Station.
General Manager Mark Greis said the closures are forcing businesses to make difficult decisions about staffing. He estimated the restaurant saw business drop by roughly 40% to 44% last weekend.
“We're in an urban setting. We understand there's going to be issues, you know, so let's not punish the people that you're trying to take care of,” Greis said.
Greis said the expected decline in customers, even with a home football game bringing people to Clifton, could mean cutting labor in the coming weekend.
Business owners say barricades are limiting customer access, disrupting food deliveries and forcing some businesses to reduce their hours and staffing.
Some business owners also questioned whether additional policing, rather than broad street closures, could address the problem.
J.D Dubois, manager of DuBois Bookstore and the President of Clifton Heights Business Association, said, “I would have liked to see some active policing.”
Cincinnati police say the closures are part of a strategy to reduce violence and shootings near the University of Cincinnati campus.
Interim Cincinnati Police Chief Adam Hennie said the department took action after seeing an increase in violence over two consecutive weekends.
“Two weekends of some increased level of violence and I needed to break that, and I think we were very successful in that this previous weekend,” Hennie said.
Business owners met with Cincinnati police officials Wednesday afternoon to discuss the closures and their impact on the Clifton business community.
Hennie said police want more input from businesses and other community stakeholders as the department determines how and where officers are deployed.
“Obviously I want to get the input from everyone involved in this,” Hennie said. “Violence touches everybody. It’s stakeholders, the students, the community.”
For Clifton business owners, the goal is finding a way to keep customers and employees safe without cutting off the businesses that depend on the neighborhood's evening traffic.
The discussions between police and business owners are expected to continue, but there is currently no timeline for when the overnight street closures will end.
