The East End Area Council (EEAC) has begun the process of meeting with members of Cincinnati City Council with the goal of having the Collins Avenue Steps reopened.
The steps, which connect , were closed in 2007 as part of a five-year pilot study after residents of Keys Crescent complained that the steps were rarely used, were in a state of disrepair, and brought crime into the community.
The Cincinnati Police Department is expected to present crime statistics for the neighborhood late this year, which will inform Council's decision on the future of the steps.
According to EEAC City Liaison Laurie Keleher, who began a "Save the Steps" campaign in 2006, it was a letter from Police Chief Tom Streicher that was instrumental in the steps' closure. With Streicher's retirement, the issue needs to be moved to the forefront, she says.
And the EEAC wants to insure that the community has access to and input on the crime statistics, not just City Council.
"We don't feel that the process last time was very transparent," Keleher says. "We want to be sure that this time it is. We want to be aware of what the crime stats are."
Stairway to opportunity
The Collins Avenue Steps are an important route for people from the riverside communities to reach Madison Road, Woodburn, and O'Bryonville.
"Geographically, the East End is a barricaded neighborhood," Keleher says. "We are in a steep valley following the river on our south, with Columbia Parkway effectively closing off our north side. There are very few passage ways to get past the Parkway, and one of them is Collins Avenue."
She also says that he community is also advocating for a bicycle facility that could be located near where the steps meet the Ohio River Trail bike-hike path.
"We also see the Steps as an important part of making us a walkable community," Keleher says. "We have an enormous potential as a destination neighborhood for runners, bicyclists and walkers with our available public waterfront parks."
By taking advantage of these opportunities, the East End could become more attractive for investment.
"We have a great deal of undeveloped property in the East End, and as such are a very low-density neighborhood," Keleher says. "The Collins Ave Steps will connect us to our neighbors and help attract infill residential and business district growth as more people come to our neighborhood, instead of just passing through it."
Previous reading on BC:
DOTE recommends keeping Westwood walkway open (2/1/11)
Keys Crescent: City must do more to keep 'undesirables' off Collins Avenue steps (10/3/08)
Thursday, March 10, 2011
East End mobilizing on Collins Avenue Steps issue
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7 comments:
I watched some council meetings on this topic on '07 and the arguments for closing the steps seemed flimsy. I know Tarbell was against it. If criminals want to go up that hill it's not like they're going to turn around when they see the "steps closed" sign. Duh.
It's the old, tired "mobility v. criminal activity" argument. Of course the more options you give people in general to get somewhere, the better the opportunity for criminal people to get there.
However, that's not a good argument for limiting access altogether. What's the logical extension of that? Gated communities for everyone?
Undeveloped land in the East End...perhaps due to flooding issues? If so, that seems a flimsy excuse for reopening the steps.
As to having a walkable community, didn't the stats say that few people were walking those steps?
Maybe now is not the time to reivnest unless with stimulous money NOT local tax dollars when there is a huge budget crisis in most govenment entities.
I live at or near the top of the steps. I have no doubt that the motivation was to keep blacks and a few Appalachians away from the rich guy's property.
Ironically, there are no black people that live at the bottom of the steps (East End) and there is only a hand full of Appalachians. But you can't be too careful.
This is not anything new; a friend of mine whose father was the city attorney fifty or sixty years ago and who recently passed away at the age of 90 and who grew up in East Walnut Hills told me how she was warned not to associate with those people down on Eastern Avenue (oops now it should be called Rue River).
Old prejudices die hard in Cincinnati.
Criminals are criminals regardless. No one wants them. The above writes, "I have no doubt that the motivation was to keep blacks..." and then the same person writes, "ironically there are no blacks..." A victim of your own prejudiced world perhaps?
I used the stairs fairly often when I lived in the Eden Park area and would run through O'Bryonville. It definitely seemed shady when they closed them, so I continued to use them after the signs went up. Now, I live downtown, so I'm rarely on foot in that area. At the very least, the home owner who has taken this land from the city should pay market rate for it.
^^^ There is plenty of undeveloped land in the East End and Columbia Tusculum neighborhoods that do not succumb to flooding. And no one is talking about using huge tax expenditures to do so. Also, there was no study on the steps' usage. These "numbers" were anecdotal and were tossed out there by those who wanted the steps closed.
^ Dan, I like your idea.
TO ALL who are painting this as a race issue, is see it more as a class issue. It's more likely that residents in the $1.5 million homes at the top of the hill aren't using the steps, and the people they see using the steps are socially alien.
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