Developer Loses Interest in The Banks
A development team vying to build The Banks project along Cincinnati’s riverfront quietly dropped out of the running last week, prompting at least one Hamilton County Commissioner to worry that the remaining contenders could follow.
The Rockefeller Group/Kimco announced its withdrawal in a July 11 letter to Bob Castellini, the Cincinnati Reds co-owner who heads an advisory panel reviewing developer applications. Copies of the letter also went to several local officials, including Mayor Mark Mallory and County Commission President Phil Heimlich, although neither has discussed the matter publicly.
New York-based Rockefeller/Kimco was among the four developers vetted by county staffers last winter. It ranked third, after a team led by Western-Southern Financial Group of Cincinnati and AIG Global Real Estate Investment Corp. of Atlanta. A team called the Partnership for Lasting Urban Growth, involving a Columbus developer and local labor unions, ranked fourth.
Since the ranking, city and county officials have formed The Banks Working Group, an advisory panel led by Castellini. The panel intends to ask for more information from the developers and draft policies guiding how the project should be built. Castellini recently said it would take six to nine months to make a final selection.
Rockefeller/Kimco’s short, two-paragraph letter doesn’t list a reason for its withdrawal, but the team previously stated to county officials that it didn’t want to start the selection process over from scratch.
Todd Portune, the sole Democrat on the three-member county commission, said “mixed signals” from his Republican colleagues about when and how a developer would be selected are confusing applicants and could cause them to lose interest. That would put the long-delayed Banks project, planned since 1999, even further behind schedule.
“I’m not surprised that someone would pull out in light of all that has happened,” Portune says. “(Rockefeller/Kimco’s) decision by itself doesn’t necessarily denote bad news. They would not be my choice based on what we’ve seen so far. If it portends a trend that developers are no longer interested, that would be a problem that someone needs to address.”
— Kevin Osborne
A development team vying to build The Banks project along Cincinnati’s riverfront quietly dropped out of the running last week, prompting at least one Hamilton County Commissioner to worry that the remaining contenders could follow.
The Rockefeller Group/Kimco announced its withdrawal in a July 11 letter to Bob Castellini, the Cincinnati Reds co-owner who heads an advisory panel reviewing developer applications. Copies of the letter also went to several local officials, including Mayor Mark Mallory and County Commission President Phil Heimlich, although neither has discussed the matter publicly.
New York-based Rockefeller/Kimco was among the four developers vetted by county staffers last winter. It ranked third, after a team led by Western-Southern Financial Group of Cincinnati and AIG Global Real Estate Investment Corp. of Atlanta. A team called the Partnership for Lasting Urban Growth, involving a Columbus developer and local labor unions, ranked fourth.
Since the ranking, city and county officials have formed The Banks Working Group, an advisory panel led by Castellini. The panel intends to ask for more information from the developers and draft policies guiding how the project should be built. Castellini recently said it would take six to nine months to make a final selection.
Rockefeller/Kimco’s short, two-paragraph letter doesn’t list a reason for its withdrawal, but the team previously stated to county officials that it didn’t want to start the selection process over from scratch.
Todd Portune, the sole Democrat on the three-member county commission, said “mixed signals” from his Republican colleagues about when and how a developer would be selected are confusing applicants and could cause them to lose interest. That would put the long-delayed Banks project, planned since 1999, even further behind schedule.
“I’m not surprised that someone would pull out in light of all that has happened,” Portune says. “(Rockefeller/Kimco’s) decision by itself doesn’t necessarily denote bad news. They would not be my choice based on what we’ve seen so far. If it portends a trend that developers are no longer interested, that would be a problem that someone needs to address.”
— Kevin Osborne
posted by Greg Flannery at
8:55 PM
1 Comments:
The developers losing interest?
Man, the people of this community have already lost it!
By
Peter Deane, at 10:33 AM
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