CINCINNATI — Smale Riverfront Park is known as the gateway to Cincinnati’s downtown with an indoor carousel, splash pads and porch swings along 45 acres between Great American Ball Park and Paycor Stadium.
The $100 million park originally opened in 2012, but a decade later portions of the shoreline are now falling into the Ohio River.
“In the last year we’ve lost four feet of shoreline,” said Cincinnati Parks Director Jason Barron. “This is real. The land is going away.”
Barron said it will cost $3 million for giant boulders, brought in via barge and lifted by crane, to armor the slipping shoreline on the western edge of the park. That portion of the park opened in 2015 and is in the shadow of porch swings with views of Paycor Stadium in the distance.
In the past few years, bigger and more aggressive storms have caused river flooding that has deeply eroded the shoreline, Barron said.
“If we do nothing this is going to continue to erode, further and further out,” Barron said, as he stood below a six-foot cliff of crumbling soil roughly 15 feet away from a park sidewalk. “We have 11,000 linear feet of shoreline here that is unprotected.”
So far city administrators have recommended funding for a fraction of the Smale boulder project at $1 million.
As Cincinnati City Council decides in the coming weeks how to spend $85 million of its carryover budget, and more importantly the $7.3 million that is currently unallocated, there will be competing voices of need. So far, council members seem to favor using the extra money to fix aging infrastructure, fund volunteer community councils, and add traffic calming measures to improve pedestrian safety.
“I will be advocating for more money for parks, deferred maintenance and failing infrastructure across the city,” said councilman Jeff Cramerding. “There is $7 million that is unallocated, and I would like to see the majority of that — the great majority of that — go toward infrastructure like what we’re talking about with our city parks.”
So far city administrators have recommended spending $3.5 million on deferred maintenance projects at three parks — split almost evenly between Smale, Inwood Park and California Woods.
The city parks department identified its most pressing deferred maintenance projects at eight parks with a combined repair cost of $14 million. They are Smale, Fairview, California Woods, Bellevue, McEvoy, Mt. Echo, Glenway and Ault parks.
Perhaps the most visible repair needs exist at Smale.
“This is a $100 million investment … and it’s our responsibility now to do what’s needed to protect this asset and protect this park forever,” Barron said.
If the parks department gets the full $3 million in city funding to add boulders on the shoreline, it will become part of a much larger restoration project. Barron is working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on matching federal funds to share the cost of what will become a $15 million project with terraces and plazas sloping down to the Ohio River much like the Serpentine Wall at Bicentennial Commons in Sawyer’s Point.
“The long-term project is to finish this off right, and to make this another beautiful element of Smale Park,” Barron said. “You’d be able to go all the way down to the river depending on high it was and interact with it, whether with your kids or just dipping your toes in it.”
City Council’s Budget and Finance Committee met on Monday to discuss budget priorities and are scheduled to meet again on Oct. 17 before the full council votes later in the week.
The $85 million surplus comes largely from federal stimulus funding. Mayor Aftab Pureval and City Manager Sheryl Long presented their recommended spending plan for most of the funding last week, but council will have the final say.
“This is the front door of Cincinnati and it is in many ways our showplace,” Cramerding said. “It’s a gorgeous park, but it’s also falling into the river very quickly.”
