John Zinsser - Save Hyde Park Square

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Happy Wednesday. Please welcome back to the Think Out Caressey
Morning show. And I'm guessing it's a moment of celebration
this morning with John Zinzer, who's behind the Save Hyde
Park Square movement. He and a lot of other people
got the signature drive, going eighteen thousand signatures to get
a vote on the ballot this November to repeal the
variance that the city Council and the mayor allowed the

(00:22):
well connected developer to enter into which got rid of
connected communities in Hyde Park Square. Was going to allow
this monstrous development which offended many of the residents. They
wanted to say in the direction of their own neighborhood.
They were going to get it, but apparently no. I
guess they saw the riding on the wall. Yesterday, all
nine council members in the Budget and Finance Committee voted
to repeal the waiver, meaning we're back to square one.

(00:45):
John Zinzer, welcome back, man. Are you pretty happy about yesterday.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
It's good to talk with you, as Alwis Brian, thank you.
There's pluses and minuses. For sure. We have a sense
that you know, something that never happened before. This is
the first time Cincinnati City council has ever rescinded one
of its own votes. That's pretty important.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
They saw their elections in jeopardy, didn't they. John, Uh,
that could be.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Part of it, for sure. I have to say. One
of the reasons we're not just all really celebrating is
we should have been here months ago. This would have
been really easy if somebody within the Planning Department or
another city council member had said, you know, just shouldn't
go forward like this. So that's one reason not to
be quite as happy as you might think we could be.
And then the second piece is it's really very unclear

(01:36):
how this all came to pass. Here is the release
from the developer. Here's a release very minimal from the
Mayor's office, and the statement there is that the developer
asked for this. Well, it's really intriguing to me that
if we're going to do something for the first time ever,
why didn't you do it when the citizens asked? Why

(01:59):
do you only do it when the developer asks? And
the second piece is I had a very direct conversation
with the project manager and he said, this is some
months ago now. He said, we have been told we
can't ask to rescind by people you don't want to
cross downtown. So here I am stuck with Wait he

(02:20):
changed his mind, and they did ask or who came
to who first. On the one hand, it doesn't really matter,
but on the other hand, it does leave us all
scratching our head. And as you and I have discussed before,
it just goes forward. Now it looks like the developer
is going to turn around fairly quickly and put in
a new application, not for another plans development, not for

(02:42):
another PD, but to go through quote unquote the normal
zoning process, which if they had done that at the beginning,
this could have been a completely different approach. But it
seems that they're going to tee it off at seventy
five feet, which is fifty percent beyond the zone right now.
And the committee that they've got to go to now,

(03:03):
the process we have to go into now is called zoning.
And when the council votes on this tomorrow, and we
believe all nine people will continue to vote. And there
was a boy, there was a lot of backpadding and
a little bit of yeah, we didn't quite get it right,
but boy, you all did really nicely. All of a sudden,
we're everybody's best friends down there. But when they vote

(03:26):
on it, the pd will just go away and the
zoning is the zoning. It will be what the law
has always been, and that's where we should start. Which
on again, as you and I, yeah, no.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
I was just going to say, doesn't well, yesterday's action
which leads to tomorrow's full council vote, although it's redundant
because everybody on council is part of the Budget Finance
Committee aparently, so we expect unanimous votes for our same thing.
Doesn't that revert back then to the former zoning change
they foist it on all the neighborhoods which is connected communities, right,

(03:59):
That would.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Right, this would include the Urban Design Overlay District which
is part of Hyde Park Square. This would be that
zoning law which was in effect as of June of
twenty four, which they just set aside via the PDS,
will now be the law of the land as it
always has been. And I think starting at the zoning

(04:20):
is a better place to start the discussion than starting
at a number that the developer just says that's what
they want, and so why don't we start at fifty,
which is what the law said which is what it
should have been all along. And we have said before, sure,
we see some room here for something beyond that. The
law actually says something like marginal or reasonable consideration. We

(04:47):
offered sixty three something like that, which was a twenty
five percent premium. But here they are again saying, well,
let's start at a fifty percent premium and we'll go
on from there. I have to say the discussions have
been you know, there was a lot of back and forth.
There was the one effort with council Member Walsh and
concert under Johnson, and it really felt like there was

(05:10):
some possibility there. They put a proposal on the table
for five stories made out of wood. Our team was like, yeah,
let's do that, and then all of a sudden that
proposal goes away. It seems very hard for us to
ever going to have a chance to celebrate when this
gets done. I hope we'll have a beautiful building that

(05:31):
fits in the neighborhood, makes a positive contribution to the
business community, and will be something that can last. But
right now it just feels like it's coming out of
difficult place after difficult place, and false promise after false promise.
It's hard to feel positive about that.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
Yeah, and I suppose an unlikely possibility though, But since
if they vote to repeal it tomorrow, which they will,
it's not going to be on the ballot because the
issues moved, but that they if they could, I think
we'll be politically suicide. But you got a couple of
years buffer, they could go back and allow the variance again,
put back the original PD in place. So okay, well

(06:09):
we unrang that bell, but now we're going to ring
it again. We're going to give the developers what they
want Square one.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
I think that's, as you say, political suicide. I think
that would be really daunting to try to pull off
at this point. But I think the developer is looking at, well,
how much can we get via the other mechanism since
we didn't get everything we wanted via the first mechanism.

(06:35):
You know, I hope this would say we always said
before there was a position we tried to get clear before.
If city Council had taken the PD off the table,
negotiation could have started much earlier. But by going through
everything that they did, getting all the way to the
end of April before we could even start the petition collection,

(06:55):
which we did and turned into eighteen thousand, and that's
the only moment at which developers sort of turned and said, Okay,
let's have a real conversation. So as it is so
typical and lots of political things. It was left way
too late, yes, and way too pressurized. And it didn't
have to be like this City Council could have the

(07:16):
city and lots of different forms, the Planning Planning Commission,
the City Council, lots of different places. It could have
stopped taking the PD off the table and said, go
have a reasonable conversation and come back when you've got
something that never happened.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
John, I'm laughing because you know, I appreciate Scott Wharton
from the inquiry. You know, reporting on this got some
information from him thanks to his reporting, so props. But
here's a sentence from the reporting on this article. Several
council members called for the city and developers in the
future two more clearly engage the community for future projects.
Somebody wrote Lol after that, I thought that was pretty good, Like,

(07:52):
no kidding.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
Us, think for it. Yeah, is what we've been asking
the city to do. That is what we have been
saying all along. Citizens should have a say in their neighborhood.
And honestly, that's why they didn't want it to go
on the ballot, because that's a yes, a bole question. Yes,
there's nobody who's going to say, are you going to
pick something else? Then you can either have a say

(08:16):
in your neighborhood or you can turn it over to
other people so that they can do what they want.
That's just not a winnable question.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
Well, and it's still an issue for the November elections
because of connected communities which were shoved down all of
the neighborhood's throat, whether they wanted it or not. Bond
Hill still in play because of that.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
So, you know, and this was one of the things
that was said yesterday. You know, we got to look
for a minor course correction. And a couple of different
people said, oh, you wonderful people from Hyde Park. You've
shown other neighborhoods. I don't want to let people know
we haven't shown other neighborhoods. Other neighborhoods joined with us,
and we're going to stay joined with them. The next

(08:54):
thing that comes up, I hope whoever it is, wherever
it is, bond Hill, Cuff, wherever the city, somebody else
starts pushing a PD for no particular good reason without
much neighborhood call us and we're going to show up
and we're going to be there with you, the same
way that those other fourteen communities were here with us,
the same way that the civic organizations who joined with us.

(09:15):
This isn't over because they're not building a ninety three
foot building. This is not over because they build any building.
This is a change in the city. This is a
once that's never happened before. This is the rescinding of
this vote helps us as neighborhoods know working together, working

(09:37):
as a team, we can change the conversation. And we're
going to keep doing that.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
The power of grassroots activism by regular everyday folks like
you Johnson's or God bless you. It's an excellent lesson
for the council members and the mayor, and hopefully they
take it to heart and not try to pull these
shenanigans again. Keep my fingers crossed for Hyde Park and
the other neighborhoods along those lines. John, excellent work, and
I appreciate you keeping us all up to speed here
in the morning show, and we'll all have our popcorn

(10:05):
out as you will, waiting to find out how this
thing shakes out. John Zenzer, You're always welcome here to
give us updates.

Speaker 2 (10:11):
Thanks, Brian, really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
My pleasure. Coming up an eight fifty six Big Picture
with Jack Allan this morning the NFL and Network News.
Interesting conversation that one Senator John Houston on a variety
of topics. U Jodge, Josh Berkowitz one of the good
judges we've gotten. Hamilton Candy have been around since twenty fifteen.
We need to reelect him in November, please, Judge Eddenapolton.
Of course, John Zen's are all on the podcast page.

(10:33):
Fifty five KRC dot com. Yay for Thursday Slash Friday
eve iHeart Media Aviation expert Jay rattlif every Thursday at
eight thirty along with the other guests Joe Strecker Executroduser
will line up. Thank you Joe for all that you do.
God bless you, sir. Folks. Have a wonderful day, and
don't go away because Glenn Beck's coming right up Today's
top stories at the top of the hour.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
It's information that matters to me.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
Fifty five krs the talk station

Speaker 2 (11:00):
This or