Parking: The White Elephant In The Room

Construction on the casino is set to begin later this year.

The current site of the casino is a large surface parking lot, consisting of 20 some odd acres of parking which currently holds parking for Hamilton County employees, law offices and other business in the Downtown Cincinnati areas.

Needless to say that once construction on the casino begins, those parking options will be gone, leading those who currently use Broadway Commons as a parking lot to either switch to using public transportation for their daily commute or use free, on-street parking in the surrounding neighborhoods.

Though I would love to see a massive migration to public transportation; my guess is that most people will vie for the latter solution rather than the former.

Since the announcement that the casino was set to take over the surface parking area of Broadway Commons, neighborhoods like Pendleton have been trying to bring this urgent state of affairs to the attention of the City of Cincinnati, with no real solution offered.

Already there are many patrons and employees of downtown business that use residential, on-street parking, causing Pendleton residents to fight for parking spots whenever they need to leave their resident during the week day.

The casino operator, Rock Ventures, has assured the area that once the casino is built there will be ample parking for their employees and patrons; but it is still up in the air if they will work out a deal with the City of Cincinnati to provide some sort of parking for the aforementioned displacement of parking for county and city employees.

What are your thoughts? How do you think the City should approach this parking issue?