CINCINNATI — A boat dock on Cincinnati’s downtown riverfront has been an unfulfilled dream for city leaders for more than a decade. Now they’re hoping to restart the project, with the help of a new $1.5 million state grant.
The city ended its partnership with H. Hafner & Sons Inc., after years of delays on a proposed “Reef Marina” project that included a bar, restaurant, rooftop deck and room for 42 docked boats on the eastern edge of the city’s public landing. The marina never got built.
WATCH: Will downtown Cincinnati ever get a boat dock?
“We have switched gears from the previous developer because we were not happy with the progress, or frankly lack of progress,” Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval said in a Sept. 14 interview about the future of The Banks. “But my intention is that we still have a boat dock, from my perspective we’ve got to activate the river.”
Now the parks department wants to relaunch the project. It submitted plans for a much simpler dock to be built at a new location, Smale Park, to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in May, to reinitiate the permitting process.
The city won a $1.5 million grant from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources in June for a boat dock. It was awarded an identical grant in 2015 but returned the money after the project didn’t move forward.
“Cincinnati really needs a marina,” said BB Riverboats owner Alan Bernstein. “It’s for people to come enjoy a festival, a ballgame, to come to a restaurant and then they can go where they want to go on their boat.”
Bernstein was excited to learn the city plans to restart the boat dock project at Smale Park, instead of the public landing.
“The public landing is just a terrible place to put a marina, especially a transient marina,” Bernstein said, because that location was in the path of barge traffic, and would have taken up space used by visiting and local riverboats.
Events such as Riverfest, Paddlefest, America’s River Roots festival and Red Bull Flutag have drawn thousands of visitors to the Ohio River downtown. But that only happens a few days a year. Pureval and Hamilton County Commissioner Denise Driehaus want the riverfront to become a destination.
“We’re doing some of it, just not enough of it; it has to be more intentional than the one-offs that are happening now,” Driehaus said. “We just did Paddlefest where we broke the world record on the river, and then we had the river swim after that. So, there are things going on, and they’re fun; they bring in a different group of people, really, when you think about folks that kayak and swim, the recreational economy, to bring them into the larger economy, is really important.”
Smaller cities along the Ohio River such as Gallipolis, Ironton and Portsmouth are transforming their waterfronts with the help of Ohio’s Appalachian Community Grant Program, with plans for upgraded boat docks and parks, a riverfront restaurant, walking trails, playgrounds and an amphitheater, in an effort to attract tourists.
“All these cities are spending lots of money, and here Cincinnati is, the big city, and we have two great stadiums to come to, and we’ve got nothing,” Bernstein said. “They’re building docks so that we can come and pick up passengers and have a good time.”
A riverfront boat dock has been a dream in Cincinnati since 2015, when the city won its first $1.5 million ODNR grant. That led to a $3.6 million boat dock design that was scrapped when estimated costs rose to $5 million.
By 2019, the grant was in danger of expiring. So, the city’s park board launched a new effort to revive the project. That led to an unsolicited offer by Queen City Riverboats to build and operate the dock in exchange for city funds set aside for the project.
When critics complained about Queen City’s financial terms and other aspects of the deal, the park board launched another bidding competition, which led to Hafner’s selection in December 2021.
Hafner encountered its first delay when the Army Corps informed the city in 2022 that it would have to request a new permit for the project. The permit application was filed on Feb. 28, 2023.
In March 2023, Cincinnati Parks Director Jason Barron told the park board that “cost increases” would have to be addressed before a final contract would be negotiated with Hafner.
In May 2023, Hafner released a new design that included a rooftop deck on its floating restaurant. CEO Justin Cooper told the I-Team then that he expected the Army Corps to issue a permit in June and added the dock was “highly likely” to be built.
But the Army Corps wasn’t done asking questions about the project’s impact on the navigable waterways of the Ohio River, a process that can require separate evaluations of a project’s impact on the environment and endangered species like Ohio River mussels.
The Army Corps suspended its permit review, pending the receipt of additional details from Hafner. Then the agency withdrew the application in September 2024 because it never got final engineer-stamped construction plans and important details and specifications.
But nearly two years later, the parks department asked the Army Corps how to restart the permitting process.
Cincinnati Parks Division of Planning and Design Manager Travis Miller sent emails in late May. He attached the 2019 boat dock design, planned for Smale Park, and wrote, “We will be making some refinements as we finalize the design; however, at this point we expect the location and general size of the dock system in this plan set will remain constant.”
Cody Thayer with the Army Corps, who had worked on prior versions of the boat dock plans, replied on May 27, “This looks like it would most likely need to go through the full application/review process including a public notice. Let me know what dates you are available, and we can get something scheduled.”
The Army Corps received no further communications or documents from the parks department, spokesperson Abby Korfhage wrote in a Sept. 22 email to the I-Team.
Barron declined an interview, but parks spokesperson Rocky Merz provided answers to the I-Team’s written questions.
“Cincinnati Parks remains committed to bringing a boat dock to the downtown riverfront, but it has to be the right fit, the right location, and have the support of city leadership,” Merz wrote. “Parks is examining and vetting all options to develop a plan to make a downtown boat dock a reality, and we will share the details when we have them.”
The parks department never signed a contract with Hafner to build the boat dock, Merz wrote: “We didn't even get that far. These are very complex projects, and a lot has changed over the last 5 years. We weren’t making enough progress quickly enough on developing the concept.”
Now any plans to revive the boat dock appear to be in the idea stage.
No location decision has been made, and boat dock details, dimensions and cost are still being determined, Merz wrote.
“The original 2015 project was to be located at Smale near the Main Street steps. The location was moved to the public landing in 2021. Parks is now exploring moving back to the original location at Smale,” Merz wrote.
“These are very complex projects, which is likely why we haven’t seen any new ones open in years,” Merz wrote. “Rather, we have seen them disappearing on the waterfront recently.”
