Talk about depressing. A stench lingers in the moist summer air. Trash sticks to the wet pavement. A group of neighborhood men linger around an empty gazebo. It's clear they have no place to go.
It is a sweltering weekday morning, and the benchside view from Over-the-Rhine's Washington Park is thoroughly depressing. It's more urban eyesore than public park. Here is the backdrop for the latest round of debate regarding Cincinnati Pops Conductor Erich Kunzel's plans for a Greater Cincinnati Arts & Education Center. Kunzel proposes to build a new School for Creative and Performing Arts (SCPA) adjacent to Washington Park and Music Hall. Any change has got to be better. The problem is that Kunzel's plan has set its sights on the Drop-Inn Center's 12th Street location. A showdown on 12th Street was inevitable. It's just the players who are surprising.
Initial conflict between Kunzel's supporters and the Drop-Inn Center has taken on an ironic dimension. Local artists Dale Hodges, Shawn Womack and Barbara Wolf are refusing to allow the arts community to be folded into the pro-Kunzel camp. A recent May 21 meeting was at the Drop-Inn Center sought supporters eager to convince Over-the-Rhine residents that the arts community wasn't united against the Drop-Inn Center.
"If the Drop-Inn Center residents perceive the arts against the homeless, then by extension that's the artists against the homeless," says Wolf, an East Walnut Hills-based videographer. "I was alarmed that was the language out there. I didn't want artists to be perceived in that manner."
SCPA supporters say it's necessary that the Drop-Inn Center be relocated. There is talk of neighborhood development and the long-term vitality of Music Hall. The gentrification of Over-the-Rhine has been a long-simmering controversy.
Still, questions regarding SCPA's relocation to Washington Park are sizable. What should happen to the neighborhood around Music Hall? More importantly, does the Greater Cincinnati Arts & Education Center need to occupy land as far south as 12th Street? The answers are fast becoming a cliché: Why can't we all just get along?
Initial punditry would have placed the arts community with Kunzel. After all, artists were the first urban pioneers along Main Street. Who would have guessed that local artists would eventually unite to oppose Kunzel's project?
"The Drop-Inn Center is not just a flop house," says Wolf. "It really is an integral part of the community."
The debate is beginning to overwhelm the plans themselves. A new SCPA could house grades K-12 with an estimated student body between 1,100 and 1,800 students. A bus terminal would be built across Central Parkway adjacent to a special purpose art and music public library. The estimated cost is $92 million, likely to be met by a combination of private and public funds.
Leaving Music Hall one night after a recent Cincinnati Opera performance, one wonders: What does the city want for Washington Square? An arts campus for local schoolchildren is just one possibility. Maybe additional market-rate housing is the answer. The area surrounding Music Hall shouldn't be so bleak.
As the rhetoric increases, the chances for a win-win situation fade fast. This current arts obstacle is a valuable PR lesson for Kunzel. Really, he must have originally thought any opposition would melt against his public popularity. So what's going through the maestro's head as he watched a line being drawn in the Washington Park sand? It doesn't matter how much money is given to the Drop-Inn Center for relocation costs (although $6 million is being tossed around). "Our job is to say, 'Not in our name,' " says Wolf. "We want the Drop-Inn Center to stay right here."
A lot can happen between now and 2003 (the projected year to open the new SCPA). Fund raising might turn up short. Now, the arts community might be the crippling obstacle. That's one I would never have imagined.
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