I've been in Cincy now for a couple of days and I've gone through a range of emotions about it. The Monday morning (after the Oktoberfest admittedly) I was surprised at how quiet the city was - there was almost nothing going on for a Monday morning rush-hour - certainly compared with New York of course but even for a comparable UK city it was eerily still. My earlier post covers some of what I did the rest of the day which certainly give me a different physical and social angle on the city. I could definitely live in the Mt Adams area of the city
For yesterday I decided against my original plan of going to an outlet
mall - I've already brought far too many clothes so decided I didn't
really need any more - and planned on exploring more of the city. I
first went up the Carew Tower
- a hidden gem if ever I saw one! It was hard to find out how to
actually get up the tower and I was somewhat sceptical of the rickety
lift and handmade signs directing me up to the 49th floor. On arrival
and once I had paid the extortionate entrance fee of $2 the views from
the blustery observation deck were fantastic. An attraction that in any
other city would be hugely publicised and probably be five times more
expensive. A couple of sample pictures.
It looks like a prosperous and thriving city which at times it certainly feels like but as you see below at other times it definitely doesn't! There is an exhibition in the lobby of Carew Tower which gives a really interesting context to the building. The design is classic 1930s French Deco - which was trendy in the US for about 18 months. The speed that the building was constructed at meant that it was the height of fashion for a very brief period of time. The building has gone through a series of different uses and fortunes over the years but retains pretty much all of its charm and style - including some excellent glazed porcelain decorative arches from Rookwood Pottery - a company established in the city in the 19th Century and still trading (albeit with a number of different locations and owners over the years).
I then decided to walk up to Findlay's Market in the north of the city. Again a historic organisation (and a good place to get lunch) but I was also interested in seeing how the neighbourhood would change as I moved north of the city centre. I wasn't disappointed. From is a socially and racially mixed and fairly vibrant city centre I quickly moved into an almost exclusively Black neighbourhood and one that obviously is struggling. Some obvious signs of decay and also something of a renaissance but at times it didn't feel like the best of places to be.
This old pool hall has obviously seen better days...
And there are a number of 'missing' houses where there were obviously so decayed that they've had to be knocked down.
The interesting thing is that on the wooden picket fence you can see in the photo there is a sign for the Cincinnati City Centre Development Corporation who are evidently working hard to transform the area.
From a strict economic point-of-view of course, reducing your building and housing stock (especially when they are dilapidated) increases property values and encourages use of the neighbourhood in new ways. The Development Corporation is based directly in this neighbourhood and surrounding their (pretty plush) offices there already seems to be some gentrification going on. Their website here directly talks about land-banking and assembling plots for redevelopment. Ed Glaeser talks very helpfully about this kind of regeneration activity in his book, 'Triumph of the City' and I've covered 'Planned Shrinkage' before along with my thoughts on Nottingham's own areas of urban decay.
The area I walked through (which I think is known as 'Over-The-Rhine' - Cincinnati has a large German population, dontchyaknow) could be great: some historic (and huge) buildings and great access to the city centre. And various bodies are putting a lot of effort into trying to transform it. I hope they're succesful.
The Market itself was a little disappointing - very quiet and not a huge range of food on offer. I even managed to resist the Belgian waffle stall...
The walk back brought me through Washington Park and the frankly incredible Music Hall. Again, a clear influence from the German population in its architecture.
Just so my day wasn't all architecture and urban regeneration I popped into Nicholson's Scottish (!) pub in the afternoon - it claims to be Cincinnati's first gastro-pub: a dubious claim to fame if ever there was one! Some reasonable beers however.
A pretty packed day and I still had the baseball game at the Great American Ball Park to come - a report on that later today I hope.
The Nottinghamians amongst people reading this will know that Nottingham is sometimes called 'The Queen of the Midlands'. I learnt today that Cincinnati (finally cracked how to spell it!) is known as 'The Queen City'. Tenuous nomenclature links aside, the cities are similar in population size (c. 300,000) but not a lot else - it's been a really interesting day or so exploring the city and drawing comparisons.
I arrived late afternoon yesterday and popped out to the Oktoberfest. I was intrigued to see what the American version of the German beerfest would look like. It was a great show - a reasonable variety of beers, lots of food and a real family atmosphere. The ratio of food and entertainment to beer was skewed to food rather than beer - and I'm not sure that Nottingham CAMRA would approve of Bud Light and Miller being included in a beer festival. I sampled a number of the local brews - including some from Samuel Adams, Great Lakes and Magic Hat. As per my post here on beers, it was good to see some of the craft brewers in America getting out there and encouraging people to try their products - but the number of people still sticking to their traditional low-taste volume brews was a bit disappointing.
Monday morning brought a slight hangover and also a meeting at Proctor & Gamble. The buildings the company occupies really dominate the city centre as you can see in the below photo.
I had arranged to meet FD Wilder, P&G's Vice President for Global Market Strategy and Planning. I was a little nervous going in to visit someone so senior in such a huge organisation but FD was highly engaging and very generous with his time. A really interesting discussion about how P&G's 'promote from within' culture both supports and can hinder their push for innovation and creative thinking plus some great details on how P&G engage with their host city.
On the latter point FD was able to talk to me about how the company deliberately invested in downtown Cincinnati as an act of enlightened self-interest: back in the early 2000s the city was not in a great place, including some horrendous sounding riots and a significant level of white-flight to the suburbs. This was causing recruitment problems for P&G as ambitious young graduates were not willing to move to the city. I can confirm that just over 10 years later the city centre feels a million miles away from the events described above - I felt very safe and saw a variety of races and backgrounds mingling together.
FD also gave me some really interesting perspective on both the Boots/Walgreens merger and also the global retail market (P&G see that there are 24m stores worldwide that sell products in categories they participate in; 6m of them they have a presence in but only c. 200,000 are part of a chain - the rest are 'mon-and-pop' independents, often in the developing world). Oh, and that Google have a model of a dinosaur at their Silicon Valley HQ - to remind everyone that works there that even the most innovative company can become obsolete if you don't guard against it.
I came out of the offices to some welcome Midwestern sun (it had been very cold first thing) and decided to walk up from the city-centre to Mount Adams - the suburb of the city that overlooks the main city and hosts a number of artists and other creative types in some very desirable housing. The climb was certainly a stiff one but the view was absolutely worth it, as were the couple of pints of Hop Bomber beer from Rivertown Brewery I had at the City View Tavern in Mt Adams.
Just to be clear that I've not spent the whole time drinking, I also went over to the Cincinnati Reds stadium - the Great American Ballpark to pick up my ticket for the baseball game I'm going to see tomorrow evening. Might have one or two pints at the game of course...
