"African area" on Elm Street downtown?
Joe Wessels of the Enquirer ran this story yesterday on a plan by Rev. Damon Lynch to turn part of downtown into a distinctly ethnic community.
This looks like an interesting development and I am looking forward to seeing how it progresses.
OVER-THE-RHINE - A proposal is being floated to turn an area near Findlay Market along Elm Street into an African Quarters - a themed shopping and residential area similar to ethnic neighborhoods found in such cities as San Francisco.
The Rev. Damon Lynch III and Peter Block - a Mount Adams author of several best-selling books and an international organizational development consultant to several Fortune 500 companies - have partnered with community leaders to realize the project.
This would be the first African-themed neighborhood project started in the country, Lynch said. Detroit is considering a similar project, but it has not launched, he said.
The six Elm Street buildings that would hold the project are owned by New Prospect Baptist Church, where Lynch is pastor. Lynch hopes to have the first visible signs of the new undertaking by this fall.
Block and Lynch would not discuss the costs associated with the project but said that because the church already owns the buildings, little additional money would be needed.
Lynch says there's a need to bring disparate parts of the black community into one place to support one another.
Block said the area would have a distinctly "African" feel - with retailers focusing on food, clothing and music with an African flare - but the area won't be for black people only.
He calls the project "an alternative to gentrification - it's for the people who live there."
Living spaces above stores would be turned into condos and apartments, with storefronts below.
James Clingman, a Cincinnatian and author of the nationally syndicated "Blackonomics" newspaper column, said he sees the plan as a step in the right direction.
"I think it's important not only for the economic benefit but for the symbolic role-model effect our youth must have in order to select alternative behaviors," he said.
This looks like an interesting development and I am looking forward to seeing how it progresses.
I thought we were trying to improve downtown, not encourage more crime and riff raff
Posted by
Anonymous |
9:37 PM
Typical for a racist comment to come from "anonymous."
Posted by
JN |
2:21 AM
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Posted by
Anonymous |
4:24 AM
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Posted by
Anonymous |
2:10 AM