Cincinnati Ends Parking Requirements in the City’s West End

West End, Cincinnati suffers from a lack of neighborhood-serving restaurants. Community members believe parking is part of the problem.

The Cincinnati Planning Commission recently approved a new Urban Parking Overlay District along Linn Street in West End that would end parking requirements for non-residential uses along the corridor, reports Chris Wetterich in a paywalled article for the Cincinnati Business Courier. With strong support from the commission and planning staff, the new overlay will still require City Council approval to become law.

The idea for the zoning changes originated from organizations in the community as a response to a lack of amenities in the community during the pandemic, according to Wetterich.

Noah O’Brien, the vice president of the West End Community Council, said the neighborhood began looking at the amenities it lacked during the pandemic and asked itself, “What needs to happen to change this?”

The new parking overlay district is just one momentous change coming to the corridor. The Biden administration earlier this moth awarded the city of Cincinnati with a RAISE grant worth $20 million for the “State to Central: Building Better Neighborhoods” project [paywall], which will improve pedestrian and bike infrastructure along Linn Street between West End and the neighborhoods of Queensgate and Lower Price Hill.