Can A Consultant Help Make L'burg Civic Park Development A Success? Depends Who You Ask

The Lawrenceburg Redevelopment Commission may employ a Cincinnati-based firm to help identify the best businesses to locate around the city's new civic park.

A conceptual rendering of the Lawrenceburg Civic Park currently under construction. File photo.

(Lawrenceburg, Ind.) - Lawrenceburg’s Redevelopment Commission may be bringing in some outside help to find the best businesses to surround the city’s new civic park.

Construction on the new $6 million park began this summer at High and Short streets. When it opens next year, the park will feature a stage, lawn, and splash pad.

On Monday, the Lawrenceburg Redevelopment Commission held some emotional discussion on whether to hire a company called Urban Fast Forward to help identify and lure new restaurants and other businesses to develop the area around the civic park. The commission has bought up many parcels surrounding the park site.

Urban Fast Forward is a Cincinnati-based commercial real estate, planning, and engagement firm. Led by principal and managing director Kathleen Norris, it has helped guide successful development in other tri-state neighborhoods such as Over the Rhine and Blue Ash.

Lawrenceburg Redevelopment Director Bryan Messmore presented a contract to have Urban Fast Forward become the commission’s consultant for the effort to populate the redevelopment-owned properties with businesses. What some LRC members felt would be an easy approval of the contract worked on during previous negotiations turned out to be anything but.

Redevelopment commission member Dennis Hutchins raised concerns that the proposed contract would grant Urban Fast Forward exclusivity in determining which businesses would be invited to set up shop around the civic park.

“I don’t want our podium blocked out to somebody who wants to do something and then they can’t get to the podium because it might interfere with Urban Fast Forward’s ideas or a prospective client she has and it doesn’t fit in. I want our podium to always be open in that spirit,” said Hutchins.

City attorney Del Weldon asserted that the contract does not provide the consultant exclusivity.

Messmore said any businesses wishing to be considered for a location around the civic park will be allowed to submit a proposal to the redevelopment commission.

“So then we go out and do some regional work and we knock on doors and find some folks around town and around the region and say ‘Hey are you interested. Here’s what we have,’” said Messmore. “At the same time that is going on, we can still be getting proposals in from anybody who’s interested and those would go into the stack and would go into those logical location where those park properties are.”

The discussion went on for nearly an hour, becoming fiery at times. City councilman Paul Seymour came forward to share his opposition to hiring Urban Fast Forward, stating that “We don’t need to pay somebody to do what we ought to be doing.”

Republican mayoral candidate and former city council member Mike Lawrence said the consultant is another example of a company which comes to Lawrenceburg and “just sees dollar signs.”

Lawrenceburg Main Street director Pat Krider said the redevelopment commission should hire Urban Fast Forward. She warned that without a process in place for identifying the best proposals, political factions may develop backing and opposing proposals for the civic park locations.

Eventually, the commission voted and passed Hutchins' motion to have the proposed contract renegotiated to employ Urban Fast Forward on a project-by-project, pay-as-you-go basis.

Messmore could present a revised contract to the commission at a future meeting.

City councilman and redevelopment commission president Tony Abbott said not accepting the contract as presented Monday would be “a greatly missed opportunity.”

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