For the third year in a row, FC Cincinnati co-CEO, Jeff Berding, has gone in front of the Cincinnati Regional Chamber and pushed for a new arena to be built, with or without a sports team attached to it. This year, Berding spoke about how the size of Cincinnati and the fact that many other cities of Cincinnati's size have arenas.
We know that FC Cincinnati has plans for an entertainment district, a 150-room hotel tower, 450+ apartments, 85,000 square feet of commercial and retail space and up to 600 parking spaces. Last year, FC Cincinnati asked the city to make major changes to the stadium agreement. The team wanted additional land to be deemed as “planned development” and for the boundary of the development to be increased further north. FC Cincinnati also asked the city to sell and vacate a number of properties around the stadium. Once all of these changes were made, FC Cincinnati would not only “remain…
A full year had not even passed since FC Cincinnati's housing promise, when the Cincinnati Enquirer found out that at least 20 people were, in fact, being displaced by the new stadium. Many more would follow, and the above two examples are ones of many that I could write about. The kicking out of the 99-year-old woman caused so much local anger that FC Cincinnati decided to keep her building in their plans, rather than destroy it. But FC Cincinnati doesn't do good things like that without something in return.
