I enjoy reading the weekly alternative media outlet in Cincinnati – Soapbox Media. It is a great weekly news source dedicated to providing positive coverage of development and business related news.
With that being said, I have to disagree with their headline from today’s issue – “First urban mountain bike trails coming to Devou – March 28th“. Has no one outside of Fort Thomas and devoted mountain bikers ever heard of Tower Park and the great world class trails that exist there? I am not sure what the definition of urban is but I believe Fort Thomas would qualify and is about the same distance from downtown as Devou.
Now this would seem like a petty argument to have but this article comes on the heels of another article from Soapbox last week regarding the Riverfront Commons development. For those of you not familiar with the vision of Riverfront Commons – it is a multi-use trail linking Northern Kentucky’s river cities and offering connections to Cincinnati via the Purple People Bridge, to the proposed Licking River Greenway, and to the Boone County park system. This article focuses on Southbank’s efforts to secure stimulus funding to complete the vision.
What I found astounding is that despite the fact that Fort Thomas is represented on the Southbank board (both with Mary Brown’s representation as well as Roger Peterman’s participation as head of the Riverfront Common’s subcommittee) it is not represented in the plan. Fort Thomas is definitely a river city and outside of Devou has one of the crown jewel parks of any of the cities represented in the group. Yet somehow there is no plan to link Tower Park or Fort Thomas to the larger vision. Can anyone shed some light on how this is possible?