Preservation Politics in Over the Rhine

Recently Cincinnati City Council established a Historic Building Loss Task Force. Rhe task force was charged with reviewing city policies and procedures that have led to the demolition of roughly half of Over-the-Rhine’s historic building stock. The changes it recommends are aimed at making the city’s process far simpler and more transparent, however nothing in these changes increases the power or requirements of historic preservation in Cincinnati. The director of this task force claims that this is a radical step forward for historic preservation, as well as blight remediation by simply making the city more efficient, more proactive, making it follow its own laws, making those laws reflect reality, and letting the general public in on the secret of what is expected of them and available to them.”

This story comes from the recent demolition of an apartment building at 142 E. McMicken. Cincinnati Public Schools bought the building and two others as part of the district’s renovation plan for Rothenberg Elementary School. District officials originally planned to demolish the buildings but said they would work to save them after neighborhood activists objected and the city’s Historic Conservation Board denied the request. The district renewed its request for emergency demolition after getting a new engineering report saying the building posed “a significant risk to public safety.”

Architects who have toured the building say it didn't appear unsafe to them. But the report prompted an on-site inspection by Amit Ghosh, deputy director of the city’s department of buildings and inspections. Ghosh approved emergency demolition orders and a demolition permit was granted shortly after.


These loopholes and lack of authority in Cincinnati's preservation laws and politics are really irritating to preservationists and historic neighborhoods. Cincinnati City Council might as well just get rid of their new Historic Building Loss Task Force right now, why waste the resources, time and energy? They have absolutely NO legal authority, and their historic district laws are so full of holes, anybody with power (Cincy Public Schools) can simply throw their weight around and convince somebody who is NOT a professional historic building consultant to simply issue a report claiming the building was "unsafe" and then issue a demolition permit.


Why is this the duty of this individual building inspector, and how can he himself have more authority than an advisory commission that was created to be experts in this area? Cincinnati needs to do away with this new commission since apparently they have no power to do anything but make suggestions that have no weight. They should privatize this aspect of historic building evaluations and hire it out to private unbiased consulting firms that can give an honest opinion of the true condition of the building and then a specialized Landmarks Commission should take the evaluation as primary evidence for ruling on demolition permit requests. Political power can be dangerous when it comes to historic buildings especially when powers (CPS) have other objectives that do not include preserving historic properties in historic districts. Especially when the laws are soft, have many loopholes, and when one individual (with no specialized historic building training more than likely) can be persuaded so easily.