Even in today's corporatized-sports era of millionaire players, billionaire owners and billion-dollar stadiums, sports is deeply embedded in a city's identity. Planners and city boosters inevitably want to harness that emotional connection as an engine of urban development. They have found it is not all that easy to do.
In Cincinnati, a kind of urban glue has begun to develop in the 18 acres of parking lots that divide the city's two venues—the $455-million Paul Brown Stadium for the Bengals and the $337-million Great American Ballpark for the Cincinnati Reds. After about a decade, the first two residential buildings of The Banks, which includes street-level restaurants, extend west from the ballpark. The development will someday include 300 apartments, 300,000 sq ft of office space and a 200-room hotel. The first phase of what will be the 45-acre Phyllis W. Smale Waterfront park nearby on the Ohio River opened last spring.