Non-Profit : Development News

Tucked amid concrete streets within the Westside neighborhood of Covington, KY just east of Interstate 71-75 lies an oasis of tranquility, and arguably the only viable green space in the city’s urban core.

The historic Linden Grove Cemetery and Arboretum was consecrated in 1843 and is the final resting place for more than 22,000 burials across a span of 22 acres.

Linden Grove Cemetery and Arboretum is at once environmentally and civically significant. The cemetery provides important green space, and comes with a built-in history lesson as the burial site of many important civic and community leaders, congressmen and important historical figures.

Soldiers from as far back as the war of 1812 and the Civil War are buried there, along with soldiers from every other American war since. Dr. Louise Southgate, early female physician and women’s rights activist in Covington, Thomas Kennedy, one of Covington’s original founders and land owners, William Wright Southgate and Brigadier General John W. Finnell, Kentucky’s Adjutant General during the Civil War are among the important historical figures interred at Linden Grove.

Over the cemetery’s 169-year history, the site has fallen into various stages of disrepair and neglect only to be brought back to life with the help of caring citizens and the local courts.

Although the site is now more like a 22-acre park, Pete Nerone, Chairman of the Board for Linden Grove, says that the grounds lost its pond in the early 1960s when it was filled in during the construction of Interstate 71-75.

The pond once supplied a local brewery and provided a self-sustaining water source to the grounds. Thanks to the work of people like Nerone and former board member John Dietz, the pond is about to make a comeback.

As a former Peace Corps volunteer serving in West Africa, Nerone was instrumental in securing a $30,000 environmental stewardship grant from the Greater Cincinnati Foundation for the reconstruction and development of the pond.

Why does the pond matter so much? Nerone says that according to studies, the City of Covington is actually 20 percent deficient in green space, permeable surfaces and adequate tree canopy.

A healthy tree canopy provides a filter for noise and air pollution resulting from the neighboring interstate highway. It also provides homes for various birds, wildlife and aquatic species. Water from the pond can be used to improve the tree canopy as well as provide much needed hydration for landscaping and ornamental gardens.

“Linden Grove is very important real estate from an ecological point of view,” says Nerone. “It sits in an old neighborhood in the urban core of Covington. The existence of a pond on the grounds is key to the site’s longevity.”

The new pond will be controlled with a safety shelf and controlled overflow. With the grant award and the restoration of Linden Grove’s pond, Nerone says, “We can enhance and protect our beautiful green space, making it more available as a place of recreation for the community.”

By Deidra Wiley Necco

Managing Editor’s Note:

If you’ve noticed dust settling around The Brandery building in Over the Rhine, that’s because new General Manager Mike Bott is overseeing a massive remodeling project. The building's first-floor space is being renovated for a new class of startups (applications being accepted now) while graduates Choremonster, Road Trippers and Venue Agent will maintain workspaces on the third floor.

Soapbox Media, also a web-focused startup, can be found in the space as well.

In addition to dedicated space at The Brandery on Vine Street, we will also maintain office space in Northside as part of a collaborative office suite we will share with startup local nonprofits.

While the Brandery caters to and nurtures high-tech startups, the collaborative space in Northside serves as a new home for disparate, community-focused nonprofits.

In Northside, at the corner of Hamilton Avenue and Blue Rock, the space currently occupied by Shop Therapy will soon serve as the home for The Urban Legend Institute, the retail store element of the literacy and creative-writing focused nonprofit WordPlay. With creative and marketing support from Possible Worldwide, WordPlay plans to offer preview tours by July.

The second floor of the building houses the offices of the educational nonprofit as well as two other nonprofits: parProjects, which is focused on building a community arts center and providing arts programming in Northside, and 350.org, the local arm of the national environmental nonprofit. (Full disclosure: Soapbox's managing editor sits on the Board of the nonprofit WordPlay.)

One thing that has not changed is the best way to reach Soapbox with your story ideas, questions and comments. Connect with us via email. But if you want to send us a letter, old-school postal-style, you can find us:

Soapbox Media via The Brandery
1411 Vine Street
Cincinnati, OH 45202

Soapbox Media via WordPlay
4041 Hamilton Avenue
Cincinnati, OH 45223

As they prepared for Bike Month, Casey Coston, an OTR resident and avid bike rider, paired up with Mike Uhlenhake, to plan a group ride in the urban basin of Cincinnati. 

After gauging interest via Facebook and holding one planning meeting at Neon's, the Urban Basin Bicycle Club was formed and launched their first ride from Fountain Square April 17. The ride was planned on Tuesday to not interfere with the Thursday evening Slow and Steady Ride, which starts at Hoffner Park in Northside. The UBBC's main goal was to give downtown residents a group ride with a more accessible starting point. 

The first ride brought more than 20 riders sporting bikes from 1960's Schwinn cruisers to road bikes to mountain bikes. They rode along the river, through Sawyer Point and ended with post-ride libations at The Lackman on Vine Street. Since the first ride, two more rides have happened with the most recent leading more than 30 riders, of all skill and experience levels, on a tour past some of Cincinnati's historic breweries. The second ride crossed the Roebling Suspension Bridge and went through Covington and Newport before making the trek back to OTR and ending at Neon's, but not before stopping for a beer on the patio of Party Source. The upcoming ride on May 15 will take riders past all of the Art Deco landmarks in the urban basin, including Union Terminal and the main post office and as always, will end with a post-ride meet up at a local business. 

"We'll be meeting up at a different local business after each ride," says Coston, a Soapbox columnist. "We want to spread our business around and support as many as we can." 

Members of the UBBC will be led on a themed ride each week as a way to explore the downtown area. All riders are welcome and the group makes a conscious effort to keep all riders in one group. Monthly Saturday destinations rides are being discussed, including a potential early afternoon to Terry's Turf Club for lunch and back. Whatever the ride, riders can expect a leisurely, friendly exploration of Cincinnati.

By Evan Wallis (Follow him on Twitter)

This summer, the little piggies will be back, filled with porcine glee, as ArtWorks once again brings a herd of pig sculptures to downtown and OTR for the Big Pig Gig. With 70 pigs already lined up, the arts nonprofit expects 100 porkers to hit the streets as the season heats up.

With additional schools and nonprofits in search of pig sponsorships, ArtWorks is looking for donors to bring in the bacon for either “Whole Hog” sponsors, who get to keep the pig for $8,000; or “Sow-lo-ist” sponsors for $5,000, with the pig going to auction. For businesses or individuals who want to help a school or nonprofit get their pork on, $4,500 covers a pig and an artist, while $3,500 covers a pig who already has an artist standing by.

Schools and nonprofits that still need support include: Duke Energy Children’s Museum, Moeller High School, Art Beyond Boundaries and JDRF.

But pigs are the only goings-on at ArtWorks. While the Big Pig Gig takes shape, the organization is also gearing up for its summer mural projects in neighborhoods around the region. For the next six weeks, donors can sponsor apprentice artists in their efforts to beautify communities while learning skills and making money.

One downside to traveling by bike is the lack of cargo space, especially if it’s produce to sell at Findlay Market or other farmers’ markets.

Permaganic, the Over-the-Rhine non-profit that sustainably grows produce and teaches teenagers gardening techniques, is pairing with a lead volunteer of Mobo, a volunteer run, bicycle co-op, to build a pedal-powered produce cart. The cart will be another asset for Permaganic’s youth internship program, which pays inner-city teens to work the garden. In turn they learn how to grow, sell and cook with fresh garden produce. Luke Ebner and Angela Stanbery, founders of Permaganic, approached Mobo about building the cart.

The cart will help Permaganic lower their carbon footprint, as well as remove barriers between customers and sellers for a more intimate interaction. The cart will be hand-built by Rob Grossman, a volunteer at Mobo and freelance designer. Once finished, it will serve as both a produce transport and an interactive point-of-sale, complete with a cooler that can hold a couple of hundred pounds of produce, a blackboard, shelves and an awning that is collapsible when not in use.

“We are trying to add to the overall charm of the city,” Grossman says. “We hope people will walk into Findlay Market and see this big, colorful tricycle and want to approach it and find out more.”

Grossman will also create a jig to help in production of more produce carts in the future. For funding, Grossman and Permaganic launched a Kickstarter campaign. The overall goal is $4,000. The cart is a couple years in the making, but Grossman remains optimistic. If the Kickstarter campaign doesn’t raise the funds, Grossman says they will still move forward with the produce cart, but maybe not make it a top priority.

“We’ve drawn out the design and researched all the parts we need,” Grossman says. “It’s going to happen, it’s just a matter of when.”

By Evan Wallis

Instead of sitting vacant and filled with cobwebs and ghosts like many historical buildings in Cincinnati, the old Art Academy is being restored to hold staff offices and a library for its neighbor, the Cincinnati Art Museum.

When the Art Academy moved from Eden Park to its downtown warehouse space in OTR in 2005, the CAM acquired the building. Under the previous CAM director, the building was marked for demolition. Aaron Betsky, current director of the Art Museum, asked Neutelings Riedijk Architects of Rotterdam to update the master plan. The new vision plan included renovation of the vacant section. The environmentally focused AEC Emersion Joint Venture was selected to design the renovation and the building is now on track for LEED Gold certification and a spring 2013 opening. Danis Building Construction is the Construction Contractor.

The first two floors of the old site will be offices to consolidate staff offices and free up more space for public exhibitions. The third floor will be a public museum library; complete with a west-facing terrace overlooking downtown.

Along with preserving the historical integrity of the first two stories of stone walls, Emersion plans to incorporate plywood from previous exhibits to furnish the offices with bookshelves, cutting up and repurposing fake historic wainscoting to create abstract wall patterns and sound absorbing walls. The designers are also reusing old Plexiglass display cases to create new shelving and screens. The Art Museum is also partnering with Building Value to salvage additional items from the old academy and repurpose them for the new offices.

“We are going for a more artful approach to the renovation and sustainability,” says James Cheng, lead designer at Emersion. “We are trying to take things from the execution of their mission and reuse the material that would otherwise be thrown away.”

By Evan Wallis

Before construction begins on a new, expanded City Gospel Mission downtown, a partnership with Building Value shares construction benefits far beyond an updated facility.

Founded in 1924 by James Gamble, the agency has a long history of improving the lives of disadvantaged and struggling Cincinnatians. But the agency outgrew its landlocked, 1940’s building in Over-the-Rhine, which led to plans for an $8 million project to relocate to Dalton Avenue.

To redevelop the site, City Gospel Mission will renovate the former Trane facility on Dalton and build additions that create a campus feel. That requires tearing down the old Beech Acres facility next door on York Street -- and deconstruction is something Building Value does very well.

This subsidiary of Easter Seals Work Resource Center salvages reusable building materials through deconstruction and resells them to the public. Far more than a recycling center, Building Value provides resume-building jobs in construction and retail to those who have been denied past employment through lack of education, experience or luck.  

With his sporadic work experience, Akeem Hill couldn’t break into the construction field. Building Value cracked open that door. After months working on a deconstruction team, taking certification classes and getting help writing a resume, Hill landed an internship with Messer Construction. He'll be working on the City Gospel project. “I’ll have the awesome chance to shadow different people,” Hill says. “I’m interested in heating and cooling and have been told that I’ll have the opportunity for schooling if things go well.”

The goals of both Building Value and City Gospel Mission have dovetailed with this project. "Building Value is employing people who are focused on getting their lives on track.That’s our mission, too,” says Jason Williams, public relations director for City Gospel Mission. “Those people on the front end of this project will be helping those people on the back end -- the folks who share similar pasts with the guys who are working on the site and improving their lives now.”  


By Becky Johnson