CINCINNATI — Cincinnati City Council voted Wednesday to pass an ordinance that would close Elm Street between Fifth and Sixth Streets.
It’s the block directly in front of the Duke Energy Convention Center, which is about to undergo major renovations beginning July 1.
The closure would make way for a pedestrian plaza, seen as an outdoor extension of the convention center at times. While the space is part of a separate council item that must be approved, designs submitted to the Planning Commission earlier this month indicated greenery, a pavilion, bathrooms and a dog park.
It’s not certain when the road would close. 3CDC Development Director Katie Westbrook told the city planning commission that the plaza construction won’t begin until a few months after the convention center project begins.
Frank Russell, an urban design professor emeritus at the University of Cincinnati, opposes the closure. While he said he’s for pedestrian spaces and parks (Russell spent 12 years as a parks board commissioner), he thinks the city didn’t “appreciate the long term consequences of a [street] vacation.”
“We've taken away the redundancy that exists in a street grid,” Russell said.
Russell said cities need to facilitate as much movement as possible.
“We don't necessarily want to favor the automobile. Pedestrianization is a fantastic approach to solving some of the challenges of pedestrian-automobile conflict, but we do want to still accommodate the car,” he said.
Assistant City Manager Billy Weber told the planning commission May 3 that closing the street entirely was “something that we went back-and-forth internally on.”
After opposing the closure due to a lack of data last year, the Department of Transportation and Engineering wrote in an April 2024 memo that it did not object to the closure.
Weber said while there are “no concrete extension plans … at some point in the future, this could be a site for extension to the convention center itself.”
The administration acknowledged concerns about potentially creating a "superblock," which is where a car or person could not be able to get through a large space.
3CDC is likely to be the third party that manages the programming in the space when it’s not being used by the convention center. It’s an arrangement similar to Fountain Square.
Russell said activating that spot to its full potential is going to be a challenge “especially when there isn't any activity in the convention center.”
“That's a dark hole in downtown,” Russell said, pointing out that unlike Fountain Square, the plaza location currently lacks residential or retail immediately surrounding the space.
“[I’m] not saying they couldn’t do it, but it is going to be a challenge for them,” Russell said. “3CDC did an amazing job, not only rebuilding Fountain Square but also reprogramming it.”
At the May 3 meeting, Vice Mayor Jan-Michele Lemon Kearney said she’d like to see more public engagement on what types of programming should be hosted in the space.
“We do represent 309,000 people,” she said. “We really need to hear a lot about this because it is for all of them.”
