Amazon Air Hub

In May, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made local headlines when he climbed into a front-end loader just south of the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport to break ground on the e-commerce giant's new Prime Air Hub.

Leading up to the groundbreaking, Boone County officials referred to the new air hub as a "mega project for the region."

"We could have well over 100 other companies locate here in our region to be near the Prime Air Hub," said Boone County Judge Executive Gary Moore.

The Prime Air Hub cemented the region as an epicenter for air cargo, building on DHL's well-established presence in the county. The Germany-based cargo carrier first agreed in 2002 to establish its North American international shipment facility in Hebron, and in 2015 extended that contract to 2045.

"In terms of an area that is really exploding in terms of cargo, CVG is probably the prime example," said Steve Alterman, president of the Cargo Airline Association, a Washington, D.C.-based trade association that works on behalf of cargo airlines and those in the air cargo industry. Alterman visited the Tri-State in August for the 2019 Air Cargo Symposium, hosted by CVG.

The $1.5 billion, 900-acre facility in Hebron, Kentucky is estimated to bring nearly 3,000 new jobs to Northern Kentucky -- adding to the already-existing 10,000 employees at CVG.

FC Cincinnati moves to West End

If the question surrounding FC Cincinnati in 2018 was where to build its new stadium -- a must-have if they were to score a coveted expansion spot in Major League Soccer -- the question in 2019 was what will it mean for West End and neighboring Over-the-Rhine residents?

From a growing taxpayer-funded price tag for stadium-related construction to ongoing concerns over displacement or disturbance of nearby businesses, institutions and residents alike, 2019 was a bumpy year for the club's stadium aspirations. Here are some of the highlights:

• The club acquired multiple residential properties near the stadium site, and set an April 30 deadline for residents to vacate. This prompted neighborhood residents to take their concerns to City Council.
• Some of the city's most prominent arts organizations raised concerns over disruption of existing parking for the Cincinnati Ballet and potential noise pollution from construction and gameday crowds seeping into Music Hall, which will sit across Central Parkway from the stadium site.
• While the team is financing construction of the $250 million stadium, a WCPO I-Team analysis this year found the club stands to benefit from more than $200 million in public subsidies over its first 20 years playing at the West End site.
• The team will get the county-owned and operated parking it was promised, but with two new parking garages instead of one -- one of which will be located in OTR near Findlay Market. The team is donating a pad-ready parcel of land on the stadium site for the second garage, but the county will finance construction of the two facilities, to the tune of $27 million.

Millennium Hotel to get overhaul

While the city's biggest hotel touted itself as a five-star hotel, city and county leaders disagreed with that characterization, and now local leaders have come up with a plan to breathe new life into the property.

Just steps from Downtown's Duke Energy Convention Center, Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters instructed his civil division to begin working on the nuisance lawsuit, saying the hotel "is in such disrepair and has been such a problem," the I-Team learned.

The hotel's problems with cleanliness and disrepair have caused the adjacent convention center's yearly draw to dwindle in recent years, Julie Calvert, President and CEO of the Cincinnati USA Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB), told WCPO. "Because we’ve had challenges with our headquarter hotel, our group sizes have been declining over the past several years," she said, adding that a new hotel would help rejuvenate the convention center's business.

In October, the county agreed to pay the Port of Hamilton County $1.3 million to redevelop the site. The hotel will close its doors Dec. 31.

Dueling concert venues

2019 resulted in plans for not one but two concert event venues along the urban core's riverfront: one at The Banks in Cincinnati and the other almost directly across the river in Newport, Kentucky.

As it turned out, if it hadn't been for some hang-ups on the Cincinnati side of the Ohio River, Newport might not have gotten its own concert venue at all.

Music promoter PromoWest had its sights on The Banks for its next concert venue investment for six years, but both Cincinnati City Council and Hamilton County officials rejected their plan for the site in 2018.

That got them looking across the river to Newport, where they ultimate signed an agreement to develop the Ovation site on Newport's west side, near the mouth of the Licking River.

Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley, who advocated that PromoWest get the Banks deal, said the promoter's move to Newport should be a "wake-up call" to city and county leaders.

After a prolonged back-and-forth between promoting company MEMI, the county administration, and the Bengals over use of certain parcels at The Banks -- including what would happen to locally-owned concrete company Hilltop Basic Resources, which operates at the future venue site -- officials approved a plan late in 2019.

Both venues are slated to be open by fall of 2020.

Uptown Innovation Corridor

What was long a heavily-congested traffic corridor cutting through Avondale will soon serve as the spine of the Uptown Innovation Corridor bringing roughly $1 billion in new development to four of the city's Uptown neighborhoods.

Roughly a quarter of that investment will come with the $250 million Uptown Gateway project, which broke ground in October.

The development did not come without some concerns from the community and residents in the area, especially when it comes to how the redevelopment will impact traffic safety.

UC breaking ground on driverless cars

If there is a ground zero for research on automated vehicles -- that is, cars that in theory can drive themselves -- it might be at the University of Cincinnati.

Earlier this year, UC engineering assistant professor, Dr. Jiaqi Ma and his team with the Greater Cincinnati Advanced Transportation Collaborative acquired a self-driving vehicle to test.

In the months since, Ma's team has spent nearly each day testing software applications to determine best practices for programming automated vehicles, thanks to a four-year federal grant.

'Vision Zero' hits Cincinnati

With 2018 seeing more pedestrian-involved crashes on Cincinnati streets than any other year in recent memory, pedestrian safety became a big topic in 2019.

So big in fact that both the City Council and the Cincinnati Public Schools Board of Education adopted motions and resolutions committing to "Vision Zero."

While the commitments don't carry the weight of law, it expresses both bodies' intent to pursue policies and initiatives that will bring the number of traffic fatalities and serious injuries to zero.

Movement toward new transit tax

For the first time in nearly two decades, Hamilton County voters will get the chance to approve (or reject) a county-wide sales tax that would help fund the region's largest public transit system, Cincinnati Metro.

It's a plan with a lot of moving parts.

Throughout 2019, leaders with the city of Cincinnati, the county, the regional chamber of commerce and transit advocates developed a two-step strategy to implement a transit and infrastructure sales tax levy in 2020.

The first step -- approved by city voters on Nov. 5 -- rolls back the 0.3 percent portion of the city's earnings tax that currently funds Metro's bus operations. That rollback will only go into effect if and when county voters approve in 2020 a 0.8-percent increase to the county sales tax.

A some questions remain, however. Foremost, the ballot language approved by the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority -- the governmental agency that owns and operates Metro and will put the issue on the ballot in March -- specifies 75 percent of the revenue raised would go toward bus capital and operational needs, with the other 25 percent going toward road and infrastructure projects around the county. What those projects might be remains to be seen.

'Diverging diamond interchanges' popping up

2019 saw the start of multiple "diverging diamond interchanges" -- or DDIs, for short -- across southwest Ohio and Northern Kentucky, and the layout of the interstate interchanges might have left some scratching their heads.

Construction reached 60-percent completion on what will be the region's first -- and only the third in Ohio -- at Union Centre Blvd. in West Chester Township.

Despite what looks like a confusing layout, "The concept will be pretty easy for the drivers," said Butler County Engineer's Office deputy Dale Schwieterman. "It will be fairly intuitive when they come up to it."

How it works: Drivers start out traditionally on the right side of the road and transition to the left side of the road. Those making left turns can turn left without oncoming traffic, and those continuing straight will cross back to the right side of the road.

The idea is to reduce congestion along the interstates, as well as on the feeder roadways where vehicles enter and exit.

In addition to the Union Centre DDI, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet is working on two along the Interstate 71/75 corridor in Boone County: one at Mt. Zion Road and another at Richwood Road.