Blog 4: Over-the-Rhine’s Food Environment
Over-the-Rhine (or OTR) is a neighborhood and historic landmark in Cincinnati, Ohio. It has a legacy of being a working-class neighborhood all the way back to its German roots. At the beginning of the twentieth century, new and improved accessibility to automobiles and public transportation meant that “people who could afford to leave OTR’s densely packed, small apartment buildings moved away….OTR’s tenements increasingly became home to the working poor” (4). In the mid-1900s, construction of two major interstates on either side of the neighborhood forced predominantly African American families to relocate to OTR and fill its vacancies. Poverty rose. Crime rates increased. For several years, Over-the-Rhine was considered one of the “most dangerous neighborhoods in America,” even being named the most dangerous in the nation in a 2009 report (5).
In 1992, the Over-the-Rhine Foundation was formed by locals and its restoration efforts quickly became popular in the city. The neighborhood has seen years of gentrification in order to repair its reputation.
A Map of OTR by Wholtone – openstreetmap.org, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Over-the-Rhine’s food environment
A small, 11,000-square-foot Kroger operated at Vine Street in Over-the-Rhine since 1961. For some fifty years (after another supermarket was closed Downtown), Vine Street’s Kroger has been the company’s only presence in the urban core of Cincinnati. In mid-2019, however, Cincinnati’s Historic Conservation Board approved the supermarket’s demolition. It was converted into a parking lot. (3)
Five blocks south of the late supermarket, a “replacement” Kroger was quickly built in Cincinnati’s Downtown district. The 50,000-square-foot location is deemed “Kroger-on-the-Rhine,” despite being just outside of OTR’s district lines.
Access to healthy foods
In 2017, all OTR residents had access to a grocery within a 15-minute walk.
The former Vine Street Kroger was located at the center of OTR, meaning the entire neighborhood was within a fifteen-minute walk of a grocery store (1). Now, the predominantly low- to moderate-income OTR residents have to find an alternative. One OTR resident, Nicole Holloway, discussed the significance of the store’s relocation: formerly a five-minute walk from her home, the Downtown location has forced residents like Holloway to make 30-minute trips each way on foot in order to access fresh groceries (2). She and many OTR residents do not own cars and have to rely on public transportation.
In 2018, the city of Cincinnati implemented a streetcar that runs north and south through Over-the-Rhine to link Uptown and Downtown, with several bus stops being scattered around the neighborhood. Many residents argue its development was not due to a need to be connected to downtown Cincinnati; instead, the investment of a streetcar in OTR is an effect of long-term gentrification. The African American proportion of the population of OTR fell from 77% in 2000 to 46% in 2016 (6); many low-income residents are being forced to the northern parts of OTR, or sometimes even out of the now-growing town entirely.
Food insecurity
Fortunately, OTR is not considered a food desert in Cincinnati, but there are numerous neighborhoods in the city that are. With the Vine Street Kroger’s demolition being so recent, the effects are yet to be wholly seen—but locals and notable public figures have “decried the food deserts that would inevitably spread through marginalized communities” such as theirs (2).
Over-the-Rhine actually boasts a large amount of food outlets within its boundaries—260 total food outlets, where more than three quarters are restaurants; there are 81 full-service restaurants and 31 fast food restaurants (6).
What can be done?
It is always easy to suggest attention be directed toward aiding Cincinnati’s impoverished neighborhoods, but the reality is much more difficult and complicated than simply building grocery stores in those communities. Kroger-on-the-Rhine, for instance, would likely not have been developed had it not been for OTR’s gentrification–it was not a matter of the community needing food, but it’s a matter of tending to the promising regions of the city. Nonetheless, it is fortunate to see the revitalization of a Cincinnati neighborhood and constant efforts to preserve its architectural beauty and historical significance; despite its problems, Over-the-Rhine is becoming a better place to call home.
OTR is currently the focus of many restorative urban planning efforts. Unfortunately, what will likely happen as the neighborhood sees more gentrification is minorities and low-income families will again be displaced to a worse area. There are multiple communities considered food deserts in Cincinnati, and with focus being directed primarily on OTR, these food deserts will grow even more impoverished. While the city should absolutely maintain attention on the betterment of OTR, it needs to divide its attention among its food deserts, too. The map below shows the poverty levels in Cincinnati; some of the most impoverished are in turn considered food deserts: Avondale, Bond Hill, Camp Washington, Evanston, South Fairmount, West End, and Winton Hills (1). To improve access to fresh foods and to improve the city of Cincinnati, there should be long-term efforts made to establish groceries and food markets among areas of moderate to high poverty. Their placement may be most successful if placed at the outskirts of low-income neighborhoods; that way, stores can attract people from inside and outside of food deserts, hopefully quelling the financial worries of grocers. Though it would benefit the community better, building a supermarket at the center of a poor neighborhood would likely be financially unsuccessful for the store owners, which is often their main concern and reason for demolishing groceries in the first place.
Map of Cincinnati. The blue points show the locations of groceries in March 2017. The gray regions show moderate poverty rate while the black regions show high poverty rate.
(1) https://greenumbrella.org/resources/GU%20Initiatives/Food%20Policy%20Council/Grocery%20Access%20in%20Cincinnati.pdf
(2) https://www.wcpo.com/news/transportation-development/move-up-cincinnati/how-to-fix-food-deserts-according-to-those-who-must-commute-for-fresh-food
(3) https://www.cincinnati.com/story/money/2019/06/06/otr-kroger-get-wrecking-ball/1366096001/
(4) http://www.otrfoundation.org/OTR_History.htm#:~:text=The%20Germans%20transformed%20it%20into,reference%20to%20Germany’s%20Rhine%20River.
(5) https://www.fox19.com/story/13267849/over-the-rhine-no-longer-most-dangerous-neighborhood-in-us/
(6) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324363746_Food_Access_in_Cincinnati_Ohio