From media recognition to park updates, new businesses and more, Bellevue Mayor Charlie Cleves touted the city’s accomplishments during his “State of the City” report at the Jan. 8 council meeting.
Cleves started with a list of accolades for the city over the past year. In 2024 Bellevue was named “Best Place for First-time Homebuyers” (Cincinnati Business Courier), Best Farmers Market (Northern Kentucky Magazine) and “Best Place in Kentucky to Live on 100K Salary” (Go Banking Rates). A Courier Journal article also named Bellevue among the “Seven Places to Visit in Kentucky,” and the city had 24 finalists in the Best of Cincy (City Beat) categories.
City parks were a major focus in 2024, said Cleves.
“One of our goals last year was to improve our parks. That effort will continue. Brun Park was renovated, including expanding the usable area,” said Cleves. “We added a large covered patio with two new picnic tables to make it more usable for families. New equipment with shade also brought life to the park. The final piece was a nice fence around the whole park.”
A renovation at Swope Park has also started and is well underway, he noted. South Bank Partners is helping with improvements starting on Beach Park, the city’s largest park. Work is expected to proceed in 2025 and beyond.
Cleves said the city also recently welcomed three new businesses, all in the city’s Fairfield Avenue business district. In November, a Mexican restaurant called Tulum opened in the space formerly occupied by Nomad. A new urgent care facility for pets, AcutePet Urgent Care, also opened in November in the long-empty former PNC Bank building. A bakery with one location in Cincinnati opened its second location as Breadsmith of Bellevue in December.
It was also a good year for the city’s street resurfacing program, the mayor reported. The city resurfaced several streets in one-block sections. These included LaFayette, Prospect, Division, Cleveland, Berry, Mesh Court, Geiger, Harrison and Poplar.
“We are still jumping through the hoops on federal grants we have been awarded and continue to work on,” Cleves added.
The city’s grant-funded projects include the Donnermeyer Streetscape, Riverfront Commons, and the Van Voast Pedestrian Walking Bridge, as well as the Grandview Safe Routes to School program. Grants also fund the Kentucky Route 8 sidewalk replacement project, sidewalk and street work on Covert Run Pike and Frank Benke Way. Work on a walking path at Riverfront Commons is also underway.
The mayor closed by noting successful events held by the city throughout the year. He added the city’s Facebook pages (the main Bellevue city page and the Bellevue events page) garnered a total of 1.3 million views in the last 90 days.
“And that’s a lot of people looking at Bellevue. That is way more than any other city could ever dream of having. We had a great 2024, and I’m looking for us to do more things together with this new group [of council members] in 2025,” Cleves said.