“The front porch of the south” is the motto for the proposed 20-mile multi-use path running from Devou Park to Pendery Park along the south bank of the Ohio River.
The Riverfront Commons riverwalk hopes to “create an unbridled destination for every season of life,” CEO of Southbank Partners Will Weber told LINK nky. Southbank Partners is the lead organization behind the walk.
Once complete, Riverfront Commons will stretch 20 miles through eight cities. It will include 14 trailheads and seven overlooks, five kayak launches and four plus amphitheaters.
At the moment, five miles of that have been completed; three miles have been designed/engineered, thanks to a federal Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity grant and 12 miles have been planned.
On top of building the path, the project will also be helping enhance parks the riverwalk connects to, building out trailheads and developing overlooks.
“We’re really just helping enhance this world-class active destination on our riverfront,” said Weber.
The riverwalk offers several attractions, including the popular Love the Cov sign on the Covington riverfront.
Looking forward, another art piece coming to the riverwalk is a life-sized replica of the old John Hastings ferry boat, designed by local artist Cam Miller, which will eventually appear at the intersection of Manhattan Boulevard and Berry Street in Dayton. The real ferry boat was the first business in the city of Dayton and shuttled laborers from Dayton to Cincinnati to work at the Fulton Steamboat Company.
As far as the current progress is concerned, “we’re anticipating several groundbreakings this year, and if the construction cycle goes well, maybe even a ribbon cutting towards the fall of this year,” said Weber.
This spring, Weber said they are anticipating a groundbreaking event, which will add a quarter mile to the river walk in Ludlow.
Click through for renderings of upcoming phases of the project provided by Southbank Partners:
Another purpose of the riverwalk is to get people out and supporting businesses along it; the walk runs through the urban river cities, and Weber said that the map “shows that a riverfront park in an urban area is blocks away from a downtown business district.”
The riverwalk has what Weber called “nodes,” which he described as “direct connections to the business district” of the cities the walk runs through.
A fully connected riverwalk may have a few more roadblocks over the next few years.
The Brent Spence Bridge Corridor project is proposing to close a 0.8-mile portion of the Riverfront Commons project in Covington for approximately five years, beginning in the summer of 2025.
The closure starts just west of the Brent Spence Bridge and continues to roughly 150 feet before the riverwalk hits the Covington Plaza.
A public notice was released on Jan. 24 announcing the need for a temporary work bridge to support construction efforts. This bridge will be positioned adjacent to and extending over the riverwalk.
The notice also indicates that temporary vehicular access will be required for hauling, storing, and transporting construction materials, which will impact portions of the riverwalk during the project.
To accommodate this, a detour has been proposed, extending approximately 1 mile—about 0.2 miles longer than the current 0.8-mile route. Various traffic-calming measures will be implemented based on location.
Potential safety features along the pathway include orange barrels, concrete barriers, bike lanes and shared-use paths.
Nate Weyand-Geise, a cyclist and a resident of Covington’s Botany Hills neighborhood, told LINK’s media partner WCPO that he’ll be encouraging state leaders to pick one.
“Let’s have one consistent, safe alternative to the Riverfront Commons,” he said.
Weyand-Geise also told WCPO that he’s considering moving from the area as construction gets underway: “It’s been a great place to live, but with the bridge construction, it’s not going to be as desirable to live there.”
While he’d like to see an alternative to the project altogether, when it comes to the Covington Riverfront Commons project, he wants to ensure that the detour is the best accommodation possible.
“Southbank Partners, in collaboration with the City of Covington and regional partners, is actively developing a comprehensive response to the public notice,” Southbank President and CEO Will Weber said in a statement. “Our goal is to minimize disruptions associated with this major Riverfront Commons project while ensuring its successful implementation.”