Monday, June 14, 1999

Investment flows into recreation

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BY PATRICK CROWLEY and HANG NGUYEN
The Cincinnati Enquirer

A BB Riverboat crusing the Ohio gives passengers a view of downtown Cincinnati and the Northern Kentucky riverfront. (Ernest Coleman photo) | ZOOM |

        For more than 200 years, the Ohio River has been a hub of transportation and commerce for Greater Cincinnati — from its steamboat days of the 19th century to the hundreds of towboats that meander past today's riverfront pushing barges loaded with coal, chemicals, gravel and other commodities.

        But as the new millennium nears, business on the Ohio is evolving. Entrepreneurs are investing millions in recreational ventures aimed at bringing more Tristate residents to the river's banks.

        The newest twist: BB Riverboats' plan to convert a former casino boat into the Belle of Cincinnati, a 200-foot-long excursion vessel that will arrive downtown July 30 and carry as many as 1,000 passengers.

        “We just have a very solid belief that the river is and will continue to be the Main Street of this region,” said Alan Bernstein, whose family also owns the BB fleet and two riverfront restaurants, Mike Fink's in Covington and Sloppy Joe's in Newport.

        “The river is the main road through the center of our town, and our town is Greater Cincinnati, both Ohio and Kentucky,” he said. “The river doesn't separate us. It brings us together.”

        It's also big business.

        As the new Bengals stadium prepares for its opening next year, plans are unfolding for the Reds ballpark and National Underground Railroad Freedom Center along the Cincinnati shoreline. Across the river, the Oceanic Adventures Newport Aquarium has opened, as has the Northern Kentucky Convention Center and new hotels. Entrepreneurs are preparing for the thousands of tourists and visitors who will be drawn to the river.

        Starting next spring, for instance, a water taxi is to begin service between the downtown and Northern Kentucky's river cities. It will be operated by Southbank Partners, a Northern Kentucky organiza tion formed to promote business and transportation on the river.

        “People will be able to go to dinner along Riverboat Row in Bellevue in Newport, go to the aquarium in Newport, head over to Covington Landing and then over to one of the stadiums in Cincinnati, all by water taxi,” said Bellevue Mayor Tom Weithorn, who has pushed and promoted riverfront development in the city.

        “When I was growing up, the river was a liability. It was dirty, it flooded, and the riverfronts had warehouses and vacant buildings, not new restaurants, office towers, flood walls and attractions like the Newport aquarium.”

        Changes to the river also are being credited with increasing the number of pleasure boats navigating the Ohio.

Angel Watkins, 17, and DeAngelo White, 16, on a BB Riverboat at Covington Landing. The two joined classmates from Taft High School on a river tour. (Ernest Coleman photo) | ZOOM |

        “The river has really picked up in terms of people buying boats and spending time on the water,” said Fort Mitchell lawyer Lanny Holbrook, the owner of two Ohio River marinas — Watertown Yacht Club in Dayton, Ky., and Rivertown Marina on Kellogg Avenue Cincinnati.

        Mr. Holbrook said business is up not just at the marinas, which combined have room for almost 1,000 boats, but also for the boats he sells and at the marinas' restaurants.

        “There's a magnetism that just attracts people to the river,” he said. “It's been going on for centuries, and it's going on today. You combine (a strong) economy when people have disposable income, and business is good on the river.”

        The Ohio River has always been an economic catalyst for Greater Cincinnati, particularly during the heyday of the steamboats.

        Between 1820 and 1880, more than 11,000 such boats navigated the nation's inland waterways, according to Rick Greiwe, executive director of Tall Stacks. The celebration of that era returns to the Ohio River in October with 19 paddle-wheelers in town for four days.

        Held every four years, Tall Stacks is not only a tourist attraction but a chance to hark back to Cincinnati's riverboat history, Mr. Greiwe said.

        “Before the railroads, the river was the railroad, it was the airport,” he said. “Cincinnati was a major transportation and port of commerce, with riverboats taking goods into the south and west. The river was the engine that made the region grow.”

        Today, other reasons bring people to the river.

        For Katie Mulcahey, 25, of Green Township, it's a wedding.

        “We really didn't have a church in mind, so we're having the wedding and the reception on the (BB) riverboat,” she said. “It's different and we like it out here on the river.”

        For the past decade or so, BB Riverboats has had at least one wedding a week, said Nancy Willhoite, director of sales.

        Cincinnati resident Elaine Gis, 63, said the sightseeing cruises have become a fun ritual when friends visit.

        “We take our guests down when they come,” she said. “It's a pretty riverfront. “It lets us show them the beautiful sights.”

        Ms. Willhoite says she expects an increase in travel on BB Riverboats because of development in Northern Kentucky. That's a major reason the company made a “multimillion-dollar investment” to bring the Belle of Cincinnati to the Tristate, Mr. Bernstein and company officials said.

        “We anticipate the leisure travel to increase with the opening of the (Newport) aquarium and for business travel to increase with the opening of the new Marriott Hotel and the (Northern Kentucky) convention center,” Ms. Willhoite said.

        More businesspeople are using the cruises as a place to have their corporate meetings, she said. And they also use the cruises for social functions such as entertaining their clients.

        This year, BB Riverboats' clientele is 60 percent business-related and 40 percent social. That's increased from 50 percent business-related last year.

        “If it wasn't for the corporate outings on our boats that companies like P&G, GE, Chiquita and others take,” Mr. Bernstein said, “we wouldn't have a business.”

        The river is an economic develop ment tool for the region, said Danny Fore, president of the Tri-County Economic Development Corp., the agency that recruits jobs and businesses to Northern Kentucky.

        “The river is a selling point because we have activity along there, especially the convention business and the office towers,” Mr. Fore said. “The riverfront is a growing corridor of commerce, development and activity, and that just feeds off itself.”

        The river also gives the region “curb appeal,” Mr. Fore said.

        “It's an attractiveness issue,” he said. “Companies like to have an office they can look out on the river and look out over to the Cincinnati skyline.”

        Hotel construction is also thriving along the Kentucky side of the river — largely because of that “curb appeal.”

        Covington-based Commonwealth Hotels has three hotels on the city's riverfront - Embassy Suites, the Cincinnati Marriott and the Hampton Inn.

        “It's kind of simple,” Commonwealth President Day Fay said. “People like to be around the water. They like to stay and vacation by the water, eat at restaurants that are on or near the water, and just look out on it. It's an amenity that helps an area grow and develop.”

        More development is coming to the river:

        • Several restaurants are planned for the Bellevue Harbor development on Newport's Riverboat Row.

        • Developers want to turn the L&N Bridge between Newport and Cincinnati into a pedestrian-only walkway.

        • There's also talk of building a dock in Newport for the river taxi and expanding an existing riverwalk from Newport into Bellevue.

        Cinergy/ULH&P Manager Gary Bricking, who is coordinating efforts to land more Kentucky state dollars for local projects, predicted the Ohio River will grow only stronger as a magnet for tourists and businesses in the next century.

        “The riverfronts on both sides of the river have come a long way in the last decade or so,” Mr. Bricking said. “But now we're seeing so much development, the real natural beauty and the economic vitality of the river is being fully appreciated and utilized.”

       

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