A city-commissioned community survey found 60% of West End residents want a transformative, large-scale development on the site of a decrepit public garage on Central Parkway.
Does that mean they want an arena?
Not exactly.
The survey, conducted by Cincinnati market research firm The Voice of Your Customer between late 2024 and early 2025, asked 244 West End residents and 1,919 non-West End residents a series of questions related to the redevelopment of the aging Town Center Garage, a city-owned asset recently identified as one of three possible sites to build a new arena for Cincinnati. The Enquirer obtained the results of the survey through a public records request because the city had not released it publicly since it the report was completed last May.
Located south of TQL Stadium and across from Music Hall, the 147,000-square-foot lot with 750 parking spaces is considered prime real estate in the urban core, but there aren’t any current plans to redevelop it.
The site was the focus of a 2023 city request for proposals seeking project ideas: Visit Cincy, the region’s tourism and convention bureau, submitted a plan for a modern arena replacement to the Heritage Bank Center, while Hines Development and CIG Communities with Model Group separately proposed mixed-use office and retail with hundreds of multifamily units.
In January 2024, it was revealed that the city wouldn’t move forward with selling the garage or backing any the residential proposals, but the administration would eventually contract The Voice of Your Customer to begin engagement around the garage’s future.
How West End vs. Cincinnati responded
An arena remains polarizing: According to the survey report completed last May, 31% of West End respondents said it would be among the most valuable uses for the site, compared with 16% of all citywide respondents.
The report also noted 36% of West End residents want retail on the site, while 32% want a cultural arts center built there.
Citywide survey participants cited a cultural arts center as the top choice at 43%, followed by green space or a park at 39%. They also noted parking was key, with 64% calling it extremely or very important to keep at least 500 affordable spaces there. (The Town Center Garage is most frequently used by WCET, owner of the building and the air rights, as well as Grandin Properties’ tenants and FC Cincinnati supporters.) Most West End residents, however, at 70% rarely or never use the garage and didn’t list is as a top concern.
In a part of the survey where people could leave comments, the words “arena” and “entertainment venue” came up nearly 600 times. Supporters cited job creation and investment in the West End while critics worried about construction noise, infrastructure challenges, displacing residents, and conflicts with nearby venues like Music Hall.
Outside of the survey, The Voice of Your Customer also conducted focus groups with 45 West End residents who shared similar comments, as well as stakeholder interviews with groups FC Cincinnati, WCET, the West End Community Council and the Over-the-Rhine Community Council, among many others.
One of the loudest citywide messages reported in the resulting engagement study involved WCET: nearly 700 comments urged leaving the PBS station in place or helping relocate it with full upgrades and no service disruption.
What’s next for the Town Center Garage
Per the city’s 2023 request for proposals submissions reviewed by The Enquirer, some of the development ideas that came out of it could have been well underway by now. The Hines proposal and the Parkway West concept both included over 300 multifamily units as well as between 850 and 1,000 parking spaces in a time where there’s a citywide housing shortage and affordability crisis, on top of a fight over parking in nearby Over-the-Rhine.
Using feedback from the engagement process, the Voice of Your Customer recommended 10 things the city administration should keep in mind based on West End residents’ priorities and concerns. Those recommendations included:
According to City Manager Sheryl Long’s office, there still aren’t any plans for the site. “The City’s focus at the Town Center Garage site is continued maintenance of existing infrastructure,” said spokesperson Ben Breuninger in an email statement.
The City did not respond to a question about how or when the public survey might be used to determine the garage’s future.
A note on the survey demographics
The Town Center Garage survey by The Voice of Your Customer was distributed to the public in various ways: through community council meetings; through emails, social media and text distribution lists from other West End-based neighborhood groups; through City West and Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority communications, and through in-person survey assistance at or near West End public housing.
A press release with the survey invitation to Greater Cincinnati residents was also sent to local media outlets to publish. Because this survey was largely distributed to a sample of willing participants that the research team helped select, there was no reported margin of error.
Here’s what the participants’ demographics looked like:
The largest share of West End residents who responded were between the ages of 31 and 40. Lastly, 66% of the citywide respondents identified as White, while 26% identified as Black. In the West End, 54% identified as Black while 36% identified as White.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Enquirer-obtained arena survey found what West End residents want
Reporting by Sydney Franklin, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
