This month, Uptown Consortium, Inc. (UCI) and its planning and design firm, Sasaki, have been virtually meeting with community members and stakeholders to share the latest design renderings for a large green space within the developments at Martin Luther King Drive and Reading Road in Avondale. The multi-acre greenspace—called the Innovation Greenway—will offer new benefits and amenities to the surrounding community, building tenants, and anyone who lives in, works in, or visits Uptown.
Editor’s Note: The Cincinnati Business Courier and WVXU recently covered stories.
The Innovation Greenway is designed to increase connectivity between developments and the surrounding neighborhoods and to provide recreation and gathering space for community members and tenants. The Greenway will include multi-use trails for walking and biking, pocket parks, seating decks, public art, and sustainable greenspace accessible to the community. Initial plans also connect the Innovation Greenway with other projects in the community, including the Wasson Way trail.
“We have been actively working to create an ecosystem that is regionally connected, innovative and rooted in the assets of local residents and businesses,” said Beth Robinson, President & CEO of UCI. “The Innovation Greenway will deliver amenities in high demand among both residents and talent, providing opportunities for people to interact by chance and by choice.”
UCI’s overarching goal is to provide greater mobility and access to economic opportunities for the Avondale community and surrounding Uptown neighborhoods. UCI hopes that the Innovation Greenway will improve community health and wellness while creating an accessible built environment. This fits with UCI’s ongoing economic inclusion and community engagement initiatives with WEB Ventures LLC to ensure that existing residents benefit from new development in their neighborhood.
UCI prioritizes community engagement throughout the planning and development of all projects, including the Greenway. UCI has engaged Avondale residents and stakeholders to provide input on design plans before moving forward with additional planning efforts. This process is critical to all of UCI’s development projects to ensure that community members have a voice in determining the future of their neighborhood.
In recent weeks, UCI and Sasaki virtually presented on the Greenway to both the Avondale Community Council and the Avondale Development Corporation. UCI also shared the plans with Cincinnati Parks, Wasson Way/ Crown bike enthusiasts, and City of Cincinnati Council members. Early and ongoing engagement has provided overwhelmingly positive feedback. (Here’s a link to a recording of an engagement session).
The sessions included the most detailed plans and design renderings to-date. Fred Merrill, a principal at Sasaki, walked through a presentation highlighting the five different design phases of the Greenway, noting that the project is in the first phase: schematic design. According to Merrill, the Greenway itself would be taken to the schematic design phase where the work would be broken out by phase. Each phase would move into full design development and then construction.
In addition to sharing the phasing and preliminary timing for the Greenway, Merrill and UCI presented high-level concepts of the Greenway and how it will be incorporated into the new developments and existing neighborhood infrastructure.
Following are some of the concepts from the session that focused on programmable spaces for end-users, bikeway connectivity, water features, and a glimpse into the lighting that will be used.
Bike Network
Planning for the Uptown Innovation Corridor includes an integrated bicycle network that efficiently and safely links existing institutional anchors, area businesses, and neighborhoods with the emerging innovation cluster at the quadrants. This network includes on-street cycle tracks and bicycle lanes, as well as off-street trails.
MLK Drive, Reading Road, and Whittier Street, which frame the northeast quadrant, all have existing or planned bicycle infrastructure in the form of cycle tracks or bicycle lanes. These three streets are critical to realizing a comprehensive bicycle network within the corridor.
The planned Wasson Way Trail can connect across Whittier Street to the Innovation Greenway's multi-use promenade. The design of the promenade will provide cyclists with the choice to linger at the greenway, pause at an area cafe or other food/beverage destinations, access one of the office/lab/mixed use buildings, or continue to other Corridor destinations.
Event plaza
The event plaza includes places to activate the Greenway and will create diverse and dynamic activities for employees, residents, and tourists. This includes a flexible lawn space for gathering/ picnic/ outdoor exercises and a multiuse path, and features like grass volleyball courts.
Renderings also show how the Greenway can be used for festivals and a farmer’s market.
Water Features
The public spaces also include many water features throughout and renderings show what the water features can look like, including terraced seating and places for communal seating and gathering.
Pocket Room
A rendering of a “pocket room” framed by landscaping will become a place for visitors to gather and features art stones for seating.
Lighting
The Greenway will include an innovative lighting system that uses the systems lighting photo-controls and various sensors to collect data, then uses insights gained from this data to manage assets, resources and services efficiencies.
According to Robinson, the team is hopeful that designs will be finalized in early 2022. “Our goal is to begin the first phase of the Greenway late 2022 in conjunction with the planned first phase of MLK Investor’s Node mixed use development,” she shared. “We are also beginning work to determine an ownership and management structure as well as identifying funding sources.”
UCI and Sasaki are continuing to gather input and recommendations and will analyze those and adjust the plans as needed. As new designs are created, UCI and Sasaki will share them with community partners again to ensure that the community is aligned with the vision for the space.