Ziegler Park

Ziegler Park, tucked into Over-the-Rhine just west of the old School for Creative & Performing Arts and just south of the Peaslee Neighborhood Center, was home to a 35’ x 75’ pool, a set of basketball courts, and a children’s playground. Named after Cincinnati’s first mayor, David Ziegler, the 1.41 acre park, owned by the City, was managed by the Cincinnati Recreation Commission. Unfortunately, the park suffered from disinvestment over the years and was in need of a major facelift and new operations plan.
The City of Cincinnati, the Cincinnati Recreation Commission (CRC), the Cincinnati Park Board, and the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) joined forces to bring the underutilized green space and facilities back into use as a neighborhood park. With the help of landscape architects, urban planners, aquatics engineers, and Over-the-Rhine community groups and residents, the vision came together for a new Ziegler Park.
The process entailed several community visioning sessions, a steering committee of community volunteers, and the professional team of Glaserworks, Human Nature, Brandstetter-Carroll, and 3CDC to develop a plan, a capital and programming budget, a construction timeline, and a fundraising plan to bring the project to completion.
The vision became a reality, as the renovated park, which was expanded to 4.5 acres, was completed in August 2017. Owned by the City of Cincinnati, the park is now managed by 3CDC. The pool is managed by SwimSafe – a pool management company that strives to provide the highest standards of safety, cleanliness, and customer service in the industry.
Interested in learning how the project came together? Click here to see all project updates!
 
Ziegler Park Expansion
In 2022, the City of Cincinnati requested that 3CDC take the lead in the expansion of Ziegler Park. The $3 million, eight-month-long expansion project, which involved the extension of the pedestrian-only park space onto Woodward Street and a portion of Yukon Street, was completed in June of 2023. It offers additional gathering spaces, a synthetic turf for outdoor games, and public art via an effort led by Black Art Speaks. TriVersity Construction served as the general contractor on the project and managed Prus Construction, who served as the lead subcontractor. Design of the project was led by Human Nature.

Washington Park

The $48 million 2012 renovation and expansion of Washington Park was a public /private partnership among 3CDC, the City of Cincinnati, the Cincinnati Park Board, and the Cincinnati corporate and philanthropic community. This partnership resulted in the transformation of Washington Park from 6 acres to an 8-acre urban sanctuary. In addition to becoming a stand-alone destination, the restoration and expansion of Washington Park compliments its surrounding amenities, including Music Hall, the new School for Creative & Performing Arts and on-going residential and commercial development around its edges. The Washington Park restoration included a 450-space underground parking garage, a performance stage, civic lawn, event plaza, interactive water feature with lights and sound, children’s playground, dog park, restored historic bandstand, seasonal planting beds, and a half-acre of meandering pathways through beautiful, mature landscaping. The Park will continue to attract more home owners, business owners and visitors to Over-the-Rhine from throughout the city, the region and the nation.

Music Hall

Built in 1878, this classic entertainment venue is considered one of the best and most beautiful concert theaters in the world, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1975. Music Hall originally served the city as its first convention center.
For decades, this historic, iconic home to Cincinnati’s renowned performing arts organizations was surrounded by blight and was itself in need of significant functional upgrades. Cincinnati, the building’s tenants and patrons, and the residents of the surrounding low-income neighborhood long recognized its ability to create jobs and provide cultural enrichment to the community. 3CDC partnered with the City of Cincinnati to complete the necessary renovations to the 256,500-square-foot facility, ultimately expanding Music Hall’s programming capacity and its ability to engage with the surrounding community.
In October 2017, the project was completed and Music Hall was officially reopened to the public.
Interested in learning how the project came together? Click here to see all project updates!

Memorial Hall

Memorial Hall is a 550-seat performance and event space located across from Washington Park and directly south of Cincinnati Music Hall. The structure, built in 1908 as a memorial to war veterans and owned by Hamilton County, is individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The building was officially re-opened on December 2, 2016.
In addition to being an historic building, Memorial Hall is also unique in the size of audience it serves. Among notable performance venues in Cincinnati, Music Hall, Procter & Gamble Hall at the Aronoff Center, and the Taft Theater can all accommodate 2,500 patrons or more and the Aronoff’s Jarson-Kaplan Theater and Fifth Third Bank Theater both have less than 450 seats. That contrast makes Memorial Hall the perfect medium-sized venue, with a capacity of 550.
Together with Hamilton County and the Cincinnati Memorial Hall Society, 3CDC brought much-needed upgrades to the hall, including air conditioning, modern restrooms, a modern catering kitchen, theatrical and audio/visual upgrades, and historic restoration throughout.
The theater is operated on a day-to-day basis by 3CDC, who oversees programming and operations in a fashion similar to the successful public spaces at Fountain Square and Washington Park. For a full schedule of upcoming events, or to rent one of the hall’s unique spaces for your special occasion, visit the new Memorial Hall website.
MEMORIAL HALL PROJECT UPDATES

Imagination Alley

The reimagination of Imagination Alley involves the transformation of a small pocket park into an outdoor oasis in the heart of Over-the-Rhine’s Vine Street Business District. While the space has great potential, given its location within the business district and proximity to so many residents, it has been underutilized in recent years. It has also become an area with public safety issues and challenges.  Recognizing both the current issues and the potential of the space, the City of Cincinnati issued an RFP seeking a property manager of the space, ultimately selecting 3CDC to serve in this role.
After being selected by the City for the project, 3CDC focused on conducting community engagement sessions to gauge what the public wanted to see in a reimagined Imagination Alley. The organization engaged The Storefronts Team of the Miami University Center for Community Engagement, based in OTR, to conduct several community workshops and engagement sessions, followed by a survey of nearby residents, employees, and small business owners.
Design plans were formed based on the community feedback, and construction finished in September, 2021. The mosaics for which the park is known—including the arched entryway—have been preserved, as have all existing trees. Renovations include new plantings, public art, additional lighting, and expanded seating. The changes will allow the park to accommodate more community events like movie nights and block parties.

Fountain Square

The renovation of the Fountain Square North parking garage and the above-grade public plaza was critical to reinvigorating this premier public gathering space in the heart of downtown Cincinnati. The renovation itself and support from generous sponsors has resulted in free, fun, programmed events and activities on the Square nearly every night of the week, all year long. The renovation continues to bring people back to downtown Cincinnati in record numbers and has resulted in the investment of nearly $403 million in additional private dollars in the Fountain Square District and Backstage District. It continues to serve as a catalyst for new residential, retail and restaurant venues.

Findlay Community Hub

The new Findlay Community Hub is focused on transforming a troubled and underutilized civic space into a community amenity that addresses the needs of the entire OTR community, with a specific focus on providing positive activities and programming for underprivileged youth in the neighborhood. Upon completion, the project will feature a 60,000 square foot state-of-the-art community center, an 8,000 square foot childcare and early learning center, robust programming to ensure youth engagement, and equitable access to all amenities, including indoor aquatics, a dedicated roller rink, a gym, fitness areas, meeting rooms and more. The project is being completed in tandem with the redevelopment of the existing Over-the-Rhine (OTR) Recreation Center into a new and expanded home for Crossroad Health Center, a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) that is currently located on the corner of Vine and Liberty streets.
 
PROJECT PLANNING
In late 2020, the City of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Recreation Commission (CRC) requested that 3CDC take the lead in the redevelopment of four CRC-controlled properties in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood: Findlay Playground, Grant Park, Over-the-Rhine Recreation Center, and the Elm Street pocket park. In addition to being in various states of either disrepair or underinvestment, the sites have experienced significant public safety challenges (including recent violent crime activity), and are surrounded by vacant and blighted structures. The Findlay Community Hub project has the potential to address these challenges and have a transformative impact.
The project began with an initial community engagement phase, led by Barker Rinker Seacat, a nationally renowned architecture firm that specializes in recreation facilities, and locally based MBE firm Moody Nolan. During Summer 2021, multiple workshops and small group sessions were held and several surveys were distributed to seek input from neighborhood residents and business owners. Nearly 300 responses were collected from the surveys and more than 200 people attended the workshops or small group sessions.
Review the Engagement Report.
The next phase of the project included site programming and analysis based on information received during the first community engagement phase. Throughout September and October, 3CDC attended multiple community meetings and hosted another in-person input session where the architecture team presented its recommendations for the site based on feedback from the initial phase of community engagement. Additional design team members Human Nature and City Studios also contributed to this work.
Read the Recommendation Report.
Initial proposed recreational amenities at these spaces include but are not limited to a new state-of-the-art recreation center; play fields and courts; facilities for aquatic activities, day care, after school programs, and health and wellness programs; areas for passive recreational activities; other amenities or programming identified in the community engagement process.
Based on community input and feedback received during this community engagement phase, the design team held another community engagement session in May 2022. The design team outlined preliminary concept designs for the new recreation center, to be located at Findlay Playground, and options for physical improvements to Grant Park. The concept design has been further developed based on the feedback from this session.
Review the Presentation.
The community engagement process is ongoing, and additional information will be added to this page as the project progresses. Community members with questions or feedback can submit those to FindlayRec@3cdc.org.
NORTH OTR PROJECT UPDATES

Court Street Plaza

For years, the northern section of Cincinnati’s Central Business District – particularly the area around Court Street – has been dealing with crumbling infrastructure, vacant structures, and underutilized buildings. A handful of core businesses notwithstanding, the area surrounding Court Street has steadily fallen into disrepair. In early 2019, a Pedestrian Task Force was created in a joint effort with the City of Cincinnati. The Task Force’s mission was to pinpoint pedestrian and traffic improvement needs, facilitate community engagement and meetings, and, along with Human Nature and 3CDC, develop design options for an updated plaza. Thanks to its outreach efforts, the task force was able to arrive at a plan the community supported. The result is Court Street Plaza, a streetscape improvement project along Court Street from Vine Street to the east and Walnut street to the west.
The new design has resulted in wider sidewalks, making the area more pedestrian-friendly, and allowing for a better opportunity for outdoor dining areas for restaurants located within the plaza. Reconfigured driving pavement has created a festival-style street design, allowing for vehicular closure of the street and opening the entire street to pedestrians for organized events. One lane of traffic each way has been maintained, and metered parking spaces are also still available.
COURT STREET PLAZA PROJECT UPDATES

Cincinnati Convention Center

Located in the heart of Downtown Cincinnati, at 55-years-old the Cincinnati Convention Center was in need of significant updates to make it more attractive, useful, flexible and environmentally friendly in a way that would last for decades.
At the request of the City of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, 3CDC led the effort to reimagine the space. The upgraded building’s exterior design features an elongated glass façade while the inside houses 12,000 square feet of modernized, extended exhibit hall space, upgraded meeting and ballrooms, as well as major improvements to building systems and technology making it much more energy efficient. The project also includes a two-acre park and outdoor convention space across Elm Street on the former Millennium Hotel site that was adjacent to the convention center. 3CDC hired Messer Construction to serve as construction manager who worked in partnership with Triversity Construction and Jostin Construction. The project broke ground in July 2024 and was completed, in just 18 months, in December 2025.
The revamped convention center will be complemented by a convention headquarters hotel conveniently located directly across the street, just south of the convention center. Portman Holdings, a developer with experience overseeing many similar projects, has been recommended by stakeholder groups in the Cincinnati region to enter into exclusive negotiations with 3CDC to serve as the developer of the hotel. The hotel will include 700 rooms, 62,000 square feet of flexible meeting space, a full-service 3 meal restaurant and outdoor bar overlooking 5th Street, an outdoor event terrace including a lawn and deck, and a skybridge connecting to the convention center. It will join the Marriott Hotels brand portfolio and anchor Cincinnati’s reimagined Convention District, marking a major milestone in the city’s efforts to transform the area into a premier destination for large-scale meetings, events and tourism. Construction is expected to begin in Q4 2025.
CONVENTION DISTRICT PROJECT UPDATES