The Cincinnati Beacon
Show me the money! The cost to the City for 3CDC’s Square
Friday, June 06, 2008
Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
Why is it so difficult to determine the actual amount of money the City of Cincinnati spent on 3CDC’s “revitalized” Fountain Square? A few years ago, when the original plan got presented, the City boasted that it would only need to pay $4 million to get a totally renovated Square. At the time, we wondered why no one counted the lost garage revenues for the next four decades in that cost. But now we are getting a bigger picture about the actual costs to the City—and by extension to the taxpayers—than originally promised.
It’s starting to look like the City of Cincinnati paid to construct the building for the Via Vite restaurant. So that takes the total, if we believe the original rhetoric, from $4 million to $6.5 million. But if the City paid for the Via Vite building, should we wonder at other structures on the Square?
Who paid for the public bathrooms, for example? Who paid for the glass entranceway where the elevators hit the Square?
Not to mention the lost garage revenue for 40 years, as well as the lost money on prime real estate due to giving 3CDC a sweetheart deal on the lease for the property housing Via Vite.
Why is it so difficult to get an actual number here? How much did we really spend on the new Square?
|