By J.D. Cutter

Parts of Eastern Avenue are now to be known as Riverside Drive. Longtime residents say the change by city council ignores their wishes and caters to wealthier people who have moved to the area.

Some working class families who've lived along Eastern Avenue for decades say an upcoming name change of a large section of the street to the swankier sounding Riverside Drive is being pushed by the developers and owners of new upscale condominiums without regard for longtime residents or the neighborhood's history.

Supporters of the name change say the new moniker is more accurate and better describes the East End neighborhood. A survey was conducted to gauge the attitudes of residents, and most either approved of the switch or didn't have an opinion, they add.

Cincinnati City Council voted Jan. 31 to approve the name change, and new signs along the street marking the switch will be installed by April.

The clash has renewed perennial complaints that money buys government access and city officials are more receptive to listening to requests made by affluent residents at the expense of their poorer counterparts.

The name change affects a 2.3-mile section from the 1700 block of Eastern Avenue east to Kellogg Avenue. A portion of Eastern Avenue from the 1700 block west to downtown, which includes the multimillion-dollar Adams Landing high-rise condo project, was changed to Riverside Drive last year.

People who live in the pricey condos and townhouses, many of which feature scenic views of the Ohio River, requested the change. The homes were built along Eastern Avenue in the past few years and generally sell from $300,000 to $500,000.

Entitled to vote twice
Because the area lies in the river's flood plain, before the redevelopment it mostly was filled with older, wooden houses along with factories, lumberyards and a few parks. In recent years, as many empty nesters and others became interested in living closer to downtown and construction styles got more adept at building in flood-prone areas, the previously ignored land along Eastern Avenue suddenly became prime real estate.

The process used to survey attitudes about the name change was deliberately deceptive and incomplete, according to Jackie Bolden, a longtime East End resident.

"The majority of people who live up here and lived here all their lives do not want this name change, nor were they informed of the name change legally," she says.

Bolden has lived in the neighborhood off and on for about 60 years.

City officials and the East End Area Council insist proper procedures were followed. They noted that 72 percent of people who responded to the survey favored the change.

"We decided whatever the survey results were would determine whether we moved forward with the name change," says Connie Greene, the East End Area Council's president. "The results were overwhelmingly in favor of it."

Greene notes Eastern Avenue has had at least three other names in its long history: Wooster Pike, Main Street and Front Street.

A closer look at a report by the city's Community Development and Planning Department about the survey, however, tells a more nuanced account. A Nov. 7 report signed by Margaret Wuerstle, the city's chief planner, states that 325 ballot surveys were sent to residents and business owners in the affected area. Of that number, 203 were either undeliverable or unreturned, equivalent to 62 percent. The remainder, 122 ballots or 38 percent, were returned.

The 72 percent figure cited by name-change supporters comes from that lower number, the 122 ballots that actually were returned, not the overall 325 ballots sent out.

Moreover, opponents note that property owners got one vote for each parcel owned, meaning some land developers got to vote multiple times. When city staffers reconfigured the survey by limiting individual voters with multiple votes to just one vote each, the survey had 88 ballots in favor of the name change, or only 27 percent of the total sent out. The East End has about 1,700 residents, according to the 2000 U.S. Census.

"It's just been a series of things to force this through and not talk about it," Bolden says. "It would be different if this were done fairly, but it wasn't."

The report was given to the city's planning commission and later to city council.

Greene calls the city's report inaccurate. Only about 50 of the surveys were returned by the U.S. Post Office as undeliverable, with the remainder not mailed back by the property owners, she says. The East End Area Council assumed that meant those property owners either supported the change or had no opinion.

"Based on what city officials told us, we still had a very high return rate," Greene says.

Forced out
The Riverside Drive name is a better fit for the neighborhood, supporters say.

"It's absolutely a good idea," says resident Brian Breneman. "It's really a matter of identifying this area as the city's fastest-growing neighborhood with its greatest asset, the river. The name, Eastern Avenue, is just a directional name and doesn't tell you anything about the neighborhood."

Greene adds, "Many people who live here think it's a vibrant and up-and-coming community. ... It's an attractive name. It's a descriptive name. Any city that has a river needs a Riverside Drive."

Some disagree.

"You don't have to change the name to change the image," says East End resident Andrea Sunday.

Vice Mayor Jim Tarbell, a Cincinnati historian, initially was against the name change and proposed a switch to East Riverside Drive as a compromise. When that didn't catch on with city council, he relented and voted for the change.

"I wouldn't have thought it was necessary to change the name for Eastern Avenue to achieve a certain stature," he says. "It could've been done with the existing name. There is a Riverside Drive right across the river, on the other side, which I thought might be confusing. In any event, I don't think the change was critical."

In fact, there is another Riverside Drive in Covington and a small Cincinnati neighborhood called Riverside, on the city’s western side near Sayler Park. A few years ago, when a 911 caller reported a fire, crews were unsure which Riverside had the blaze, causing a slight delay.

The street's name change is just the latest salvo in a decade-long battle over the East End's gentrification, Bolden says. City officials eager to see redevelopment and expand Cincinnati's tax base have used pressure and deceptive methods to force lower income residents out of the neighborhood, she adds.

When redevelopment first began in earnest on Eastern Avenue about a decade ago, some were reluctant to sell to developers, Bolden says. Those developers then had city building inspectors visit the properties and issue citations, pressuring the owners to sell because they couldn't afford the costly repairs.

"The developers are getting the land for little or nothing, and the displaced people can't even afford to stay in this community," she says. "They are people who have been here for five or six generations that are being forced out." ©