I boycotted BLINK this year.
My one-man protest was not the product of my increasingly grumpy early middle age. Nor was it rooted in a distaste for public art. I have wandered BLINK’s exhibits in the past and have been awed by the creativity on display. Indeed, I think the murals that adorn many of our city’s buildings are a testament to our underrated status as a city friendly to creatives of all types.
I sat this one out because of BLINK’s new organizer: The Cincinnati Regional Chamber − or what we old timers used to call the Chamber of Commerce.
My gripe is not that BLINK has "gone corporate" − although it sort of has. The prevalence of expensive drone shows and sponsored
beer booths is a far cry from the grassroots vibe of the LumenoCity of the past.
BLINK puts on a show. What happens Monday morning?
My real issue is the Chamber’s hypocrisy regarding matters of public safety. Put bluntly, the Chamber makes sure downtown is safe and secure for festival weekends but turns a blind eye when disorder and dysfunction return Monday morning.
This once august body used to be the common-sense voice of Cincinnati’s business community. Now it runs festivals (BLINK and Oktoberfest being the most prominent) and issues position papers about housing and METRO bus lines. The Chamber offices are dominated by former City Hall staffers who obsess over "urbanist" issues while having little to say about police staffing levels, public school performance, or any of the other quality-of-life issues which truly drive economic development.
Worst of all, the Chamber is complicit in the continual reelection of city officials who keep getting the basics wrong. Its "scorecard" for council candidates is a deeply unfunny joke, reverse-engineered to push Democratic incumbents who will in turn push low-end for-profit housing developments and bike lanes for all.
This means the Chamber bears some responsibility for the legion of failures at 801 Plum Street over these past few years.
A perpetually overworked and undermanned police department? Decimated streetscapes? Speed humps substituting (poorly) for basic traffic interdiction? A downtown that feels so dangerous people bring guns to work − only to have nearly 300 of those guns stolen from their cars this year alone?
These are the conditions tolerated − and in some cases perpetuated − by the Chamber’s hand-picked candidates. The irony is these policies are hurting the very businesses whose interests the Chamber is supposed to advance.
Just ask Kroger.
Cincinnati can't afford to take its businesses for granted
Rowdy protestors from a California-based group called Animal Equality spent the summer shouting slogans in front of the grocer’s downtown headquarters. Their apparent goal: Convincing Kroger execs to stock only cage-free eggs produced by yelling at secretaries as they went to work. This silly street theater ended with some particularly committed pro-chicken people chaining themselves to the building.
It took our hand-wringing, Chamber-backed city officials months to finally shut this nonsense down. It should have taken about two seconds.
Anyone who truly cares about urban "food deserts" should be squarely in Kroger’s corner. If life were fair, all chickens would experience free-range lives of comfort and Oprah-levels of self-actualization. But, alas, we live in a world where hard-working humans struggle to put food on the table. A grocery chain that brings affordable protein to cash-strapped consumers is anything but evil. A politically incorrect egg is still, well, an egg.
And we shouldn’t just assume Kroger will just be in Cincinnati forever − especially given the recent revelation that it plans to cut 3,000 corporate jobs (roughly 35 of its office payroll). Kroger is being squeezed by both retail giant Walmart and nimble lower-end grocers like Aldi and Publix. Inflation, higher fuel costs and stagnant wages are changing the grocery game, likely forever.
Kroger is now led by a CEO with no personal connection to Cincinnati. Its recent merger with the Giant Eagle chain further diluted the company’s ties to the Queen City. And let’s also not forget Kroger’s downtown flagship store has been a slow-rolling disaster. Tide pods are kept under lock and key, and the entrance is clogged with panhandlers most days; a woman was shot in the head there two weeks ago.
I’m no retail expert, but it doesn’t seem to be going well.
Can you imagine a Kroger board of directors meeting in which a VP says: "We should keep our downsized corporate HQ in Cincinnati because the Chamber puts on a really nice light show every other year?"
Neither can I.
And we shouldn’t only worry about Kroger.
The multitudinous plot of land P&G is developing in bucolic (and low-crime) Mason should scare the living excrement out of City Hall. And at the risk of having my season tickets cancelled, I note there are two professional sports franchises sitting on the banks of the Ohio River with aging owners which may well be targeted by out-of-town buyers in the not-so-distant future.
The Chamber President and CEO − the erstwhile Brendan Cull − is a smart guy who, irony of ironies, once worked for Kroger. He should leave the arts to the artists and start thinking about the conditions necessary for growing and keeping businesses in this town.
Let’s hope the Chamber spends less time projecting images on downtown buildings and more time making sure they have tenants.
Steve Goodin lives in Clifton and is a local attorney. He is also a former Cincinnati City Council member, assistant Hamilton County prosecutor and member of the Enquirer Board of Contributors.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: The Cincinnati Chamber needs to worry more about Kroger than Blink | Opinion
