different for the council’s Republicans. Eugene Ruehlmann recalled, “the restaurant and hotel people were interested in the convention center, the big supporters of riverfront were the Cincinnatus Association [a local civic organization]; by putting them together we could get diverse groups together on both projects.”49
For the city’s business leaders, the central goal was revitalization of the downtown core, not the riverfront or even a new convention center. Those leaders, organized as the Citizens Development Committee, were thoroughly unwilling to see their central focus—the core area urban renewal effort—run the risk of possible defeat by the voters. Discussing the politics of the package in March 1962, the business group’s conclusion was direct: “It was unanimously agreed that CDC favors the issuance of councilmanic [nonvoted] bonds for financing the City’s share of the Core Area project due to the prospect that a referendum would be unsuccessful. Such a failure would naturally inhibit Council from issuing councilmanic bonds following an opposing expression from the voters.”50
The CDC was willing to embrace the riverfront and convention hall proposals, as long as the city’s focus was kept on the central business district. And while the business group was willing to back and finance an expansive bond campaign, it did so with the dual provisos that the downtown renewal be the first priority and that downtown funding not be subject to a public vote.
The decision to put the convention hall and the riverfront renewal together as a single $16.6 million proposal was almost unheard of. It reflected a clear political calculus that the convention center would be a tough “sell” to the public. According to John Gilligan, the center “in most people’s eyes was not that great a thing, just of benefit to a few downtown interests.”51 Packaging it together with the riverfront, for former planning director Herbert Stevens, recognized that “you have to link them together … the convention center had interest with the business community, the riverfront was pizzazz.”52
The political wisdom of packaging the riverfront renewal and convention hall plans together on the November 1962 ballot was validated by the vote results. The convention center bonds won a 56.58 percent “yes” vote—just slightly over the required 55 percent majority. And much of the voting support had come not from the city’s better-off neighborhoods, but rather from lower-income, largely African American areas.
Perhaps the most salient result of the thin electoral margin for the convention center bonds was the fragility of public support for large-scale downtown public investment. The city would systematically avoid placing these kinds of proposals on the ballot in subsequent years and decades.
The new Cincinnati Convention Center officially opened in August 1967, with 95,000 square feet of exhibit space. Even by the standards of the time, it was a relatively small facility. But any potential expansion effort would have to await a suitable political and fiscal environment. Finally in early 1981, the city commissioned the Laventhol & Horwath consulting firm to examine the feasibility of an expansion and the means to pay for it. The Laventhol report argued that the center was in need of both refurbishment and expansion, at a cost of between $40 and $50 million. And the Laventhol consultants recommended a combination of a variety of financing mechanisms, including a new city bond issue, “excess” income tax revenues, and $10 million in “philanthropic contributions.” The Laventhol analysis did not suggest asking the city’s voters.53
With growing local discord over the issue of downtown versus neighborhood public investment, the city council sought to avoid a public vote: “Because there was a chance voters wouldn’t approve it,” according to city council member Guy Guckenberger. The council member went on, “We felt the city couldn’t afford to take that chance.” City director of development Nell Surber echoed Guckenberger: “But you never know what the public will do and we just plain had our backs to the wall.”54
The final financing scheme for the expansion had the city paying $27 million, the Hamilton County government adding $16 million, $5 million from the Greater Cincinnati Convention and Visitors Bureau, and additional funds from the state and federal governments. The expanded center, renamed in honor of Cincinnatian Dr. Albert Sabin, was dedicated in June 1986 and fully opened in 1987. The expansion boosted the Sabin Center to a total of 162,000 square feet of exhibit space. A host of cost overruns brought the final to $61.9 million, with serious conflict between the city and county governments over bearing the increased cost. But by joining with Hamilton County and adding state and federal dollars, the city succeeded in getting a larger center without recourse to the voters.
It had taken more than a dozen years from the original opening of Cincinnati’s convention center before there was serious consideration of an expansion. The pace proved more rapid in the wake of the 1986 unveiling of the Sabin Center. As the committee charged with reviewing the city’s downtown development plans finalized its report in late 1990, a headline in the Cincinnati Enquirer on November 15 brought the news that “Bigger Convention Hall Urged But City Skeptical of Adding More Debt.” Yet financing a major expansion, particularly while avoiding a public vote, was not a simple or easy process.55
When the city’s chosen consultants, PriceWaterhouse, delivered their report in June 1995, it predictably called on the city to expand the center, arguing that Cincinnati would see “continuing decline in center city retail and restaurant sales if it does not expand its convention center.” Their recommendation was to double the center exhibit hall space, to some 600,000 square feet, at a cost of $290 million. But the city did not have the resources to support some $300 million in new debt itself.56
By late 1998, with no real progress on the expansion effort, city officials brought the PriceWaterhouseCoopers consultants, led by David Petersen, back. Their February 1999 report again endorsed more space, albeit not as much as the earlier analysis. But the proposed expansion now carried a price tag estimated at $315 million. Despite an effort by city manager John Shirey to craft a package of new revenue streams from an increased city hotel tax, a boost in the county hotel tax, a restaurant tax, and a new sales tax increment scheme, it was simply impossible to finance an expansion of that scale and price. Finally, in late 2001, a special mayoral task force embraced a far smaller expansion, one that could be realized at a cost estimated at $171 million.57
Even a dramatically reduced expansion plan would cost far more than the city itself could afford, and that demanded an exercise in imaginative intergovernmental finance. Cincinnati Mayor Charlie Luken and Hamilton County commissioner Todd Portune were able to craft a financing deal “breakthrough” in January 2002 that joined together city and county hotel tax revenues, a $10 million contribution from the Greater Cincinnati Convention and Visitors Bureau, a annual contribution from the city, and some $15 million in naming rights, for an expansion that carried a $198 million cost. The deal continued to evolve through the year, with a significant change in May that boosted the revenue from naming rights and promised a portion of the county hotel tax revenue to suburban communities, while putting the financing of the expansion in the hands of a new public authority, the Hamilton County Convention Facilities Authority.58
The final deal for Cincinnati’s $160 million renamed Duke Energy Convention Center neatly combined funds from the city and county hotel tax revenues with contributions from the local convention bureau, the business community’s Equity Fund, and Duke Energy’s naming rights. With the expanded center’s grand opening in June 2006, the Cincinnati Enquirer touted “Convention Center Upgrade Breeds Confidence,” with the observation that “Business and tourism officials hope an improved and expanded convention center will boost the local economy downtown and beyond.”59
The story of the expansion of Cincinnati’s convention center has all of the elements of a “Perils of Pauline” saga that extended over more than 15 years. The effort would regularly appear to be stalled or dead, with financing impossible to secure, only to rise again, perhaps in a different form, with yet another increasingly intricate financial arrangement.
