City's tallest tower to be built
Queen City Square to get started in spring
BY KEITH T. REED |
KREED@ENQUIRER.COM
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Western & Southern Financial Group met with city officials Tuesday to propose a timeline for building its long-planned Queen City Square office tower, a project that would become the tallest building in downtown Cincinnati. The building would open in 2011.
Executives from the company and its project manager, Turner Construction, met with city officials Tuesday at City Hall to lay out details.
The project is slated to stand 40 stories, bringing a massive 800,000 square feet of office space, 21,000 square feet of ground-level retail and 1,300 parking spaces on nine levels, city officials said. Because of its distinctive arching roof, Queen City Square would be taller than the 574-foot Carew Tower even though it would have fewer floors.
Western & Southern executives declined to comment, but company chairman John F. Barrett has sent invitations to local developers and dignitaries for “a major announcement” Thursday afternoon.
Left unanswered are how much Queen City Square will cost and key details about its financing.
Demolition on an existing 1,500-space parking garage at the site – roughly bordered by Third Street to the south, Fourth to the north, Broadway to the east and Sycamore to the west – is planned to start in mid-2008.
With about 33 months from start to finish, demolition to completion, construction of the building would likely overlap the building of at least the initial phases of The Banks, the planned mixed-use project slated for the riverfront between Great American Ball Park and Paul Brown Stadium.
“We are excited that Western & Southern is taking this opportunity to invest in the city,” Holly Childs, the city’s economic development director, said. “Their commitment to Queen City Square is a catalytic development for the Banks project and the future of the central business district.”
The developers of that project are actively looking for an architect for its first residential and retail phase, and groundbreaking for infrastructure improvements at that site is slated fo the first quarter of 2008.
The Banks also is scheduled to include two office towers holding a total of 200,000 to 1 million square feet of space.
Western & Southern was among the Fourth Street property owners that raised concerns this fall about an increase in the size of The Banks project and a 30-story height limit. They worried that The Banks would compete with downtown by siphoning off tenants and parking spaces. In response, the Banks Working Group – the city-county group that drafted an agreement with that project’s developers – lowered the maximum recommended building height to 24 stories.
Left unanswered are how much Queen City Square will cost and key details about its financing. Childs said Western & Southern has not asked the city for any financial assistance with the project, but the city has not ruled out that possibility.
Another key piece of the financing puzzle might lie in whether the developer has a primary tenant lined up. Real estate lenders and investors view tenants in office projects as collateral and often require signed leases or letters of intent before approving funding for major projects.
Earlier this year, Barrett said Western & Southern was “out there aggressively trying to pre-lease that tower,” referring to the project.
The company initially floated the idea of Queen City Square roughly 20 years ago, then revived it in 2002.
The new building would be adjacent to the 303 Broadway building, at the northwest corner of Third and Broadway. The building – the first new office tower built in downtown in 14 years – opened in 2005 and is almost full
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