Each year as the Vernal Equinox inevitably passes us by, the annual thaw and concomitant hope for Spring's renewal is met head-on with a rather ignominious side effect of Ole Man Winter's icy grasp: the bountiful bumper crop of garbage and unsightly debris that emerges beneath snowmelt, in vacant lots and parks, and along roadsides. Assorted auto parts, orange juice jugs, ice tea tall boys and tires are the bounty of trash sown by last winter's planting season.
Fortunately, however, we're lucky to have organizations such as
Keep Cincinnati Beautiful ("KCB"), the award-winning affiliate of Keep America Beautiful that participates in yearly training, involves the community in heading up the Great American Cleanup, and promotes other KAB programs.
And that is relevant exactly how? Well, for starters, it's time for the annual
Great American Cleanup, this Saturday, April 24, and KCB is always on the lookout for more volunteers. All told, there are over 100 community and neighborhood groups committed to the cause, representing hundreds of different projects across the city. According to KCB's David Askam, this is "probably the largest single-day volunteer event staged in the tri-state." Estimates for volunteers this year range upwards of 10,000.
But it's not just the one annual do-gooder/feel-good-about-yourself/pat-on-the-back-and-go-home event that typifies KCB's mission. Along with their myriad projects, they have also been focused on the urban core, and the ramifications of abandonment and the negative repercussions that inevitably follow.
While Cincinnati is a city of 332,200, pretty much everyone knows that in the salad days of 1950, it was once a city of 504,000. Recent census estimates indicate that the city grew .6% from 2002 to 2008 - that is actually a net positive compared to many of its Midwest brethren. That said, a six year stabilization does little to erase the evacuation over so many years. As a result, there is more than an ample supply of weed-choked, garbage-strewn vacant lots and boarded up abandoned buildings. And abandonment, as
anyone who's been to Detroit can tell you, is a revenue-depleting/crime-enhancing/streetscape-decimating cancer that can oftentimes be terminal for cities on the brink.
According to Executive Director Linda Holterhoff, KCB is "trying to manage the land that has been left behind" by that 50+ year exodus, stabilizing it in order to facilitate the future re-entry and re-use. To this end, KCB has been involved in numerous mural and garden projects (see, e.g. the Findlay Market South lot and butterfly garden), however murals, to put it bluntly, don't come cheap.
Which gets us to the neighborhood enhancement project known as Future Blooms. I happened upon the
Future Blooms Main Street Studio during a recent Final Friday walkabout in Over-the-Rhine. What drew me inside the studio at 1334 Main was the enormous Empowerment Zone map affixed to the wall, studded with a plethora of tiny colored push pins. Once inside, I chatted with Catherine Richards, the Art Director and Program Manager of the Future Blooms program, who received her Masters and Bachelor of Science degrees in architecture from the University of Cincinnati. She explained that the map detailed the many different sites which were the focus of Future Blooms, each pin representing a vacant lot or abandoned building which will be or has been the beneficiary of the organization's efforts. Once I saw the "artwork" on the wall, it became abundantly clear. Walking in Over-the-Rhine, particularly on Race south of Liberty, as well as Elm, I noticed some colorful paintings affixed to the facades boarded-up buildings, somewhat bright and primitivist renditions of actual doors and windows. This artwork was the handiwork of Future Blooms.
According to Executive Director Holterhoff, they were looking for a low cost/high impact strategy that would allow them to cover more territory in a more efficient manner than murals, which, although important, are expensive and labor intensive. Although she characterized it as an "economic development tool," perhaps a more apt phrase would be an "economic stabilization tool" - call it "Broken Windows 2.0," in reference to the theory that broken windows, if left unchecked, cause many community residents to lose hope and move out (that's shorthand, but you get the drift).
Aided by funding from the Empowerment Corporation, the Jacob G. Schmidlapp Trusts and Fifth Third Bank Trustees, architects, an artist and an installer have worked towards a goal of roughly
130 projects before the grant ends in June. In addition, approximately 25 students from DAAP have been immersed in a five week workshop, under the auspices of Future Blooms, to redo an entire block of Wade Street between Elm and Central Parkway.
But it doesn't stop with just buildings. KCB has also hooked up with the City of Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, studying the 25 year old "
Philadelphia Green" program which currently has over 4,000 lots under their care. This program focuses on vacant lots meeting certain criteria, e.g. close to the center city, with access to mass transit, "anchor" institutions such as hospitals and universities, strong community based organizations and leveraged public and private investments. Selected vacant lots are then cleared, greened with grass and trees and stabilized. According to studies, although proximity to a neglected lot can subtract 20% from the value of the adjacent home, a stabilized lot, i.e. one that has been improved through cleaning and greening, increases a home's value by as much as 30%.
KCB estimates that the lots will cost on average $1,300 to stabilize, plus $200 to $500 annually for maintenance. The lots that will be "greened" are those estimated to be vacant for at least two to five years. A trademark signature fence will surround the lot, grass and (not particularly long-lived) trees will be planted. The aesthetic boost will be incalculable.
Although the Future Blooms' grant runs out in June, they are looking at future funding through Community Development Block Grants and other sources. KCB is currently compiling baseline statistics on the effects of the project, although anecdotal reports from police and residents have been uniformly positive. Expanding the program into vacant lots is the obvious next step, provided the appropriate funding can be lined up, and a model site, perhaps near the DAAP block, should be coming online soon.
While decades of abandonment and blight cannot be erased in less than a year, programs like this demonstrate that there are low cost, high impact means to address the dilemma. Abandoned buildings and lots are the decaying and missing teeth in the urban fabric of a city, however they also present a tabula rasa on which KCB and others can effect positive change.
Yeah, sure, I drink the Cincinnati rah-rah kool-aid on a regular basis, but let's be honest - 1,000 vacant lots and 1,000 barricaded buildings are not going to transform into a boomtown overnight. In the interim, an appropriate stabilization tool such as this can help preserve the city's stock for the future (blooms).
Photography by Scott Beseler