alanpmarrero Neighborhood Business District Plan in College Hill, Cincinnati,OH

Project Overview
The College Hill Community Urban Redevelopment Corporation (CHCURC) hired myself and a graduate planning student to design conceptual plans for three corners of the intersection of Hamilton Avenue and North Bend Road on the neighborhood business district. The corners currently have a closed down supermarket, pharmacy and restaurant. The forth corner has a successful coffee shop and addtitional retail. The goal was to show the community, the city and developers the potential for a project on the corner.

The Process
We met with people from the community and narrowed down concepts to determine the most favorable design. Then we developed 3D renderings of what the corner could look like. We presented the concept at their 2004 annual dinner in front of over two hundred members of the community, including members of city council and developers. At the 2005 annual dinner, CHCURC announced the architecture office and developers for the project.

The Design
The design for the intersection included office, retail and residential buildings. The two northern corners had small pocket parks and retail on the first floor of the tree-lined street. The southern corner included office space and apartments that reflected the existing buildings across the street. the northern and eastern sites also included two-family condominiums that helped ease the trasition from the single family neighborhood to the dense multi-use development.

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The project was named Linden Park Commons based off of an old hotel that had been located on the site in the early 1900s. This sign is located in one of two fountains located in the pocket parks.

Here is the northeast pocket park with cafes along the edge. This view also shows how the buildings were set back along Hamilton Avenue to place trees along the road to seperate the pedestrian traffic from the busy state road.

The condos were located at the north and east edges to ease the transition from a single family residential neighborhood to the dense multi-use development.

When CHCURC announced the architecture office and developer for the project the following year, they released initial plans. Their design stayed very true to our design, with the biggest change being the removal of the parking garages. However the placement of open spaces, building forms, setbacks and condo designs all were almost identical.

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Click here to go to CHCURCs website

Click here to see the status of the Linden Park project

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