The present 49-year-old building is outdated, they leaders claim.
Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio officials want to build an arena somewhere in the Cincinnati area and the backers of building an arena claim that they don’t need a National Basketball Association or a National Hockey League franchise as an anchor tenant. The arena would do well with NCAA Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments and Beyoncé concerts along with ice shows and wrestling matches and political conventions. Cincinnati is not really on the NBA radar for an expansion franchise although the NHL said that there was an expression of interest from Cincinnati arena backers about placing a team in the western Ohio city. The initial cost of building a Cincinnati arena seems rather low, somewhere between $550 million to $650 million. Taxpayers could be on the hook for about 70 percent of that money with the rest coming from private funding. The public money could come from tax increment financing, a new Hamilton County sales tax, or a sin tax on alcohol, tobacco, and legalized marijuana. A fee on ride share operations, naming rights, and sponsorships.
Arena backers have no interest in renovating the city’s 49-year-old arena or putting up a new building on the arena site as only five acres of land is available. In 2023, Jeff Berding, the chairman of the Visit Cincy and the chairman of the Cincinnati Regional Business Committee Board, was of the opinion that Cincinnati was losing ground in attracting big name entertainment because Cincinnati has an old arena. ” We lose out to our peer cities because our arena was obsolete 20 years ago.” A recently released report agreed with Berding saying that “doing nothing will not preserve the status quo,” and that “high quality programming will likely diminish” because the present arena is antiquated. The arena game is about ready to start in Cincinnati.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
Cincinnati’s arena is outdated.
