Brent Spence Highway Expansion Takes First Bite Out of Cincinnati's Urban Core

Hot off last week's announcement of a spring groundbreaking ceremony (and higher price tag) for the Brent Spence highway expansion and bridge build, ODOT has begun demolition on the historic Longworth Hall in Queensgate.

Bulldozing history

Taking down the eastern 200 feet of the 1,200-foot architectural marvel, national historic landmark and monument to the region's rail history is necessary, ODOT says, to make way for a wider Interstate 75 and new companion bridge planned alongside the existing Brent Spence. It's all part of the larger, eight-mile widening of Interstates 71 and 75 planned through the heart of our region.

"Work has begun on the demolition and subsequent reconstruction of a portion of Longworth Hall to make way for the new companion bridge to be built immediately west of the Brent Spence Bridge," ODOT posted on March 24. "A 200-foot section at the east end of Longworth Hall (near I-71/I-75) will be removed. This section primarily represents the newer portion of the building, added in the 1960s, rather than the original structure."

The state purchased the building outright in 2023, in anticipation of the Brent Spence widening.

For decades prior — before it was home to Bengals tailgating, creative and design offices, a radio station, the Cincinnati Children's Museum... before it became known as "Longworth Hall" — it was the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Freight Terminal, capable of accommodating more than 120 rail cars underneath four stories of warehouse space. Just a couple miles of track from Union Terminal, it also serviced, stored and supported passenger railcars coming in and out of town.

A bad investment

Bringing down historic structures always sucks, especially when it's rail history... and especially when we're doing it to widen a freeway.

But here's as good a time as any to acknowledge that this could be worse. The highway expansion will spare about 90% of the building, and ODOT has promised its demolition contract with Walsh Kokosing will include improvements throughout the rest of the structure. ODOT officials also have stated that "as much as possible" of the demolished scrap will be recovered for preservation, reuse and/or donation to local non-profit organizations, including an estimated 100,000 bricks planned to construct the building's new, truncated east facade.

We'll need to be vigilant to ensure these (and other) promises are kept.

That said, it's hard to see these "improvements" and "preservation efforts" as more than just ribbon-dressing meant to distract from what's ultimately a bad investment for our region: an over-engineered, high-emissions, high-cost urban freeway that — doubling down on past injustices — threatens to harm and further isolate the communities already split apart by I-71 and I-75's construction during so-called "urban renewal" in the mid-20th century.

The first bite

Longworth's partial demolition marks just the first piece of valuable land we stand to lose. Under the most recent plans made available, the new bridge and highway lanes will bulldoze 29 homes and businesses, destroy 90 acres of forest, remove pedestrian access at Fifth Street in Covington—despite promising a multi-use path—and destroy over 1,500 feet of streams and 4 acres of wetlands.

One comment (made publicly) on a Facebook post by ODOT spokesman Matt Bruning put it this way:

"At $4.4B, it’s hard for me to see how this project moves Cincinnati in a positive direction. ODOT presents it as a once in a generation investment but it increasingly looks like it is going to entrench many of our city’s existing challenges. Look at all of the energy and effort Cincinnati is committing to rebuilding its urban tax base that was destroyed in the middle of the last century. And yet this project will only further decentralize our city by draining it out into the suburbs. It just makes no sense."

"Makes no sense" is right.

More than nonsensical, though, it's actually poetic (in its symbolic tragedy): Longworth Hall, a living artifact of our region's extensive history of rail infrastructure — both passenger and freight — is also the first victim of our current obsession with dedicating land, money and resources to (mostly single-occupant) cars and the over-the-road freight trucking industry.

There's a better way forward than this.