The renovation of the much-admired but long-neglected Crown Building on the edge of Findlay Market is more than a story of timely real estate development. It's the tale of a creative and determined couple with a dedication to historic preservation and a deep belief in the value of living and working in the heart of Cincinnati.
Mainstrasse Village in Covington has seen a handful of new businesses open in the past few months, including Main Bite, which opened May 28. Main Bite’s menu features seasonally-inspired small plates made from the freshest ingredients owner Margie Potts can get her hands on. Potts, a cooking instructor and media personality, sources her ingredients from the restaurant’s on-site garden and a plot she has in a community garden. Her vendors are all local, even her bank and payroll. “When you establish yourself in a community, you do as much as you can for the community, and they’ll support you too,” says Potts. Potts owned a restaurant a few years ago—MJ’s on Main—but it was more of a bar and was hard to change, she says. It wasn’t exactly what she wanted, so she sold it, and started looking for another space in Covington to open her new restaurant. She chose was a white building that needed a lot of TLC. It’s now painted different colors and boasts an outdoor courtyard with window boxes and flowers everywhere. Potts plans to string lights in the courtyard for a glowing effect at night. “My goal with Main Bite is to present healthy food options in a way that makes them beautiful and delicious, and creates a fun dining experience,” she says. Main Bite is now open for lunch during the week from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m; dinner is served Tuesday-Friday from 4 to 11:30 p.m.; expanded weekend hours are Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. By Caitlin Koenig Follow Caitlin on Twitter
Zooted Delivery brings food to your front door from restaurants around the city that don’t typically deliver.
Independent media agency Empower MediaMarketing recently created a new Disruptive Media Fellowship at The Brandery, Cincinnati's consumer brand business accelerator. The $10,000 fellowship will go to a Brandery startup whose idea is most disruptive to the media landscape. The fellowship recipient will be announced later this month, as The Brandery's incoming 2013 class begins, says Empower MediaMarketing's Director of Content Strategy Kevin Dugan. "It seems that disruptions are taking place almost every day as consumer habits change," Dugan says. "We feel that for companies reacting to that is really more of an opportunity than anything else. If you are helping create the disruptions, it can become a competitive advantage." Empower MediaMarketing is an independent media agency that plans, buys, creates and proves media impact for its clients. Dugan and CEO Jim Price are also Brandery mentors. The Brandery launched in 2010 to offer funding, mentoring and partnerships for consumer marketing businesses. Brandery companies receive $20,000 in startup funding, and pitch their companies to potential investors at a Demo Day at the end of the four-month program. The Brandery is a member of the Global Accelerator Network, and companies from across the country apply to the emerging accelerator. It is annually recognized as one of the elite startup accelerators in the country. More than 60 mentors work with the companies, which each receive $20,000 in seed money. Leading Cincinnati-based agencies offer free marketing and media guidance to each of the startups. "As a company, we have been mentoring startups since 2010," Dugan says. "We really enjoy the process and wanted to increase our support (of The Brandery). This allows us to increase commitment and help startups." By Feoshia H. Davis
When James Fayal and Ricky Ishida moved to Cincinnati last summer to focus on start-ups, they had given little thought to launching their own. But, before a year has passed, the Milton Street housemates have embarked on one of eight national Venture for America initiatives (two from Cincinnati) that demonstrate just how much they have come to embody the entrepreneurial spirit. As members of the inaugural Venture for America class of fellows, the Zest Tea founders exemplify the essence of the national, startup-generating project designed to attract top collegiate talent to and retain them in “flyover” cities like Cincinnati. Both moved to Cincinnati to work for start-ups that intrigued them. Fayal, a University of Maryland grad, chose to work with CincyTech, while Ishida of Cornell landed at ZipScene. Given the intense work schedules of start-ups, it’s no surprise that their idea for their own start-up grew out of a blend of personal experiences and frustration. Both preferred tea to coffee—Ishida based on experience dating to his childhood in Japan and Fayal from his high school days. Still, neither could locate traditional teas with enough caffeinated punch to help them get through the extended days of the start-up world. Instead of complaining, they started on a search for a coffee-caffeine alternative. They found no tasty tea product on the market that provided coffee caffeine levels. That's when Fayal and Ishida knew they were on to something. They just didn’t know what. “We started developing our own [tea] blends,” Fayal says. There was Cinnamon Apple Black Tea and Pomegranate Mojito Green Tea; Blue Lady Black Tea and Moroccan Mint Green Tea. “We started playing around with some tea extracts, with additional antioxidants, and caffeine,” Fayal says. By blending tea extracts with high quality teas, they focused on good (read: not bitter) taste while boosting caffeine levels. What began as a beverage born of personal interest became a business plan very quickly over the last month thanks to another VFA innovation. The non-profit launched a national awareness campaign through RocketHub aimed at nurturing their young Fellows’ community involvement and start-up aspirations. Members of the first class of VFA fellows were encouraged to enter a start-up competition of their own, with cash prizes awarded to the top three already crowd-funded ideas. They created a RocketHub site for “Zest Tea - Bold Teas With An Energizing Kick,” and started raising money. To sweeten the pot, they turned the very funding process into a bit of a game—folks who donate get to help decide which teas will make it to market first. "We figured we’d let the funders make the final decision on the first four," says Fayal, who enjoys all eight of the blends on the ballot, but admits to a particular fondness for Pomegranate Mojito and Cinnamon Apple blends as well as the more traditional Earl Grey. By Elissa Yancey Follow Elissa on Twitter.
For children at the Clovernook Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Discovery Youth Summer Day Camps allow them to further their own skills and knowledge while also bettering the community. From technology and art activities to life skills and neighborhood involvement, campers can engage their senses while tapping into areas that they might not have otherwise had the opportunity to explore. Participants at art camp, which ended this past week, have no vision, limited vision or are losing their vision. They created pieces that sparked dialogue about what it means to be part of a larger community. One project involved the campers creating wind chimes made of cat and dog clay cutouts. The kids then donated them to the SPCA of Cincinnati to sell. “They enjoyed it, but it was very sad,” Art Instructor Scott Wallace says of the children’s visit to the SPCA. “It gave me an opportunity to go into this whole thing about art in terms of how some of the greatest art is not the world’s prettiest, and some art talks about issues and things that are going on and some things that are not great, so it gave us the chance to talk about what’s important.” Campers also worked together to create a colorful heart made from recycled bottle caps—which can be dangerous if left as trash—as a statement about healthy communities. “What’s happening is—wild birds are eating them—and they can’t digest them,” Wallace says. “So it’s killing them. It’s so much about recycling. You can take the most insignificant material and make great art.” Two of the children who worked to create the bottle piece project are totally blind, but by working together with other campers, they were able to create a beautiful display. It's what Wallace enjoys the most because he’s not so much an instructor as he is a facilitator. “For people who have never had vision—their approach is totally different—because they have a certain way of working and a certain level of expectation for their work, and they’re completely cool with it,” Wallace says. “The blind community and the people who’ve never had vision are fine. I think they get tired of us trying to instill our beliefs, but what I like to do is make the best of the vision they have left. And I just sit back and let them do their thing, but it really shows what community can do.” Do Good: • Like the Clovernook Center on Facebook, and keep an eye out for photos of campers' art work. • Support the Clovernook Center by donating. • Get invovled by volunteering. By Brittany York Brittany York is a professor of English composition at the University of Cincinnati and a teacher at the Regional Institute of Torah and Secular Studies. She also edits the For Good section of SoapboxMedia.
Back in 2011, Cincinnati drinking buddies Caitlin Behle and John Sebastian decided to make use of their opinions by critiquing musicians with both words and illustrations.
Clarence Elkins has now spent the past seven and a half years in his home and around those he loves, which is as much time as he spent behind bars for crimes he did not commit. About 15 years ago, Elkins was arrested and taken to county jail, and was later convicted and sentenced to life in prison for murder and rape. On Dec. 15, 2005, almost eight years later, Elkins was exonerated by DNA testing, thanks in large part to the countless hours of work invested by the University of Cincinnati’s Ohio Innocence Project—a team of students that fights for the wrongfully imprisoned. When Elkins first heard the guilty verdict read, he says it took some time to sink in because he kept trying to convince himself that he was trapped in a nightmare or a horrible dream. “I just thought that it would be over soon, but that wasn’t the case,” Elkins says. “After I was sent to prison, it dawned on me that it was for real, and it wasn’t a nightmare and how tragic the injustice was—not only on me but on my entire family.” In hopes of helping to alleviate that burden on other innocent individuals and their families, Elkins and his wife, Molly, donate $5,000 per year to the OIP. In the past 10 years, OIP has helped 16 individuals like Elkins remember what it’s like to be free. The gift, which helps top-performing OIP students further their educations, is more than just a scholarship. For Elkins, it’s a token of his appreciation. “The students were always—they’d give me hope, and they were so kind—they do great things for people, and not only the people that have the injustices upon them, but their families as well,” Elkins says. “They cared enough about me to look into the injustice that happened to me. I was raised in believing you get what you give—and I always believe that, and that’s what I want to do. I just want to give back to those that give to me—that help me.” Do Good: • Like the Ohio Innocence Project on Facebook. • Keep up with OIP's work through their newsletter. • Support organizations like the OIP by giving. By Brittany York Brittany York is a professor of English composition at the University of Cincinnati and a teacher at the Regional Institute of Torah and Secular Studies. She also edits the For Good section of SoapboxMedia.
Every summer, ArtWorks Cincinnati unleases a fleet of young art apprentices into the city—they build murals, create theater scenery and spread public art across the region. This year's projects include Random Snacks of Kindness, a new kind of entrepreneurial training program that quite literally feeds the work of non-profits. Video courtesy Golden Hour Moving Pictures.
The Children’s Home of Cincinnati is taking the steps needed to become a national leader in health care integration. “There are more examples of policies that say we need to do health care integration than there are of actual examples of organizations that have done this and done this well, which tells you The Children’s Home is pretty cutting-edge,” says Barbara Terry, vice president of health care integration at The Children’s Home. Terry, who says she is passionate about health from a holistic standpoint, has 35 years of experience and recently joined The Children’s Home to help the organization introduce physical health care to its already existing mental health care programs. But she says she is not the only one responsible for the idea of health care integration. “They’ve certainly been reading the tea leaves and saying, ‘We should think about systems—plural—in this community,’” Terry says. “So you think about mental health, education and human services as systems. We really need to figure out how we integrate systems so that vulnerable children get the care they need—the right care at the right place at the right time—and that becomes huge.” For Terry, education and prevention are key. “We know that individuals who face challenges in the mental health arena—typically as they get older—they have tremendous chronic health problems,” says Terry, who attributes the issue to a difficulty in navigating an array of disconnected systems. To address that issue, Terry envisions a system that recognizes that the mind and body cannot be separated. And while the idea might begin with The Children’s Home, she says the effort needs to span across the community. “This isn’t just The Children’s Home—it’s about children and adolescents in our larger community,” Terry says. “They’ve been willing to invest in me and invest in this approach, but my vision would be that we need to work with the community. We need to help share successes with the community so that we can say, ‘How can this spread?’ I don’t want the work to be insular. We have to appreciate community here.” Do Good: • Get involved by contributing items on The Children's Home's wishlist. • Volunteer with The Children's Home. • Assist The Children's Home by donating or supporting a classroom. By Brittany York Brittany York is a professor of English composition at the University of Cincinnati and a teacher at the Regional Institute of Torah and Secular Studies. She also edits the For Good section of SoapboxMedia.
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