Cincinnati residents will go to the polls on November 4 to elect the next Mayor, City Council members, Cincinnati Public School Board members, and Municipal Judges as well as to decide two tax levies and a charter amendment. The ballot features 26 candidates for the nine council seats and two finalists for Mayor: incumbent Aftab Pureval and challenger Cory Bowman.
Realm interviewed Pureval to discuss the highlights of his first term and explore his priorities for a second term in terms of economic growth, neighborhood business districts, transit-oriented development, railroad sale proceeds, and issues surrounding sustainability, crime, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. We separately interviewed Bowman about his campaign issues and his reasons for entering the race (follows Pureval’s Q&A). All answers are edited for brevity and clarity.
[Illustration by Rafa Alvarez]
ECONOMIC GROWTH IS TIED CLOSELY TO POPULATION GROWTH AND TALENT ATTRACTION AND RETENTION. HOW CAN WE MAINTAIN AND IMPROVE CINCINNATI’S GROWTH MOMENTUM?
For the first time in a while, the city actually started gaining population over the last 10 years. It’s because of really two main factors when you look at the data. The first is immigration, and a lot of that is driven by our large corporations and large institutions like Procter & Gamble, Kroger, GE Aerospace, and Cincinnati Children’s, which recruit and retain talent. The second is that, once you move employees or even patients and their families, in the case of Children’s, to Cincinnati, what keeps those people here? Young professionals, in particular, are looking for dense, diverse, walkable communities with good public transportation and good access to the arts. And that’s exactly the kind of neighborhoods this City Council and I are trying to incentivize and build.
When you look at the population growth data, you see that in the past Cincinnati grew because people from smaller communities were moving to big cities. Now people from larger cities are moving to Cincinnati because of our affordability paired with our opportunity. Communities like Northside, Walnut Hills, College Hill, and Over-the-Rhine have been intentional about investing in their neighborhood business districts and investing in housing for all income levels. This activity is both a positive and a challenge. It’s a positive because cities our size are either growing or, frankly, slowly dying, and we’re growing; it’s a challenge because, given the macro economic conditions in the U.S. and in the world right now, it’s difficult and expensive to build new housing today.
CITY COUNCIL PASSED “CONNECTED COMMUNITIES” REFORMS IN 2024 TO REWRITE THE CITY’S ZONING AND LAND-USE RULES. WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS FOR INCREASING HOUSING UNITS IN THE NEXT FOUR YEARS?
In the past 10 years as our population has grown, Cincinnati has actually lost housing on a net basis, so there are more people living here and fewer places for them to live. When I took office in January 2022, there was so much uncertainty resulting from the pandemic, and remote work had threatened to hollow out our downtown. This council and I got to work on our top priorities, public safety and housing, and I think the proof is in the pudding.
Part of the population growth is tied to our success at creating new housing, particularly in our urban core. We got to work taking underutilized office space and turning it into housing, particularly downtown. So you look at the Macy’s office building, which sat vacant for years before we took office and now has more than 300 units of new housing. The Mercantile Building is a similar story. We just passed tax abatements for Carew Tower, which will offer rehabbed commercial space on the first floor and convert all of those floors that used to be offices into housing. And so, today, Cincinnati is actually second in the nation for taking underutilized office space and turning into housing and third in the nation for lowest vacancy rates downtown. If you look at our parking data, there are more people parking in the urban core today versus pre-pandemic times.
With Connected Communities, we were the first city in Ohio to enact comprehensive zoning reform. It’s a conservative approach to deregulation that allows the market to flourish by legalizing duplexes, triplexes, quads, townhomes, and row homes in our neighborhoods. Those often are starter homes for folks. We were intentional about this program, particularly in neighborhood business districts where we want more housing and more customers for the small businesses and want development along transit lines. We’ve got to continue to be a modern, innovative city, and I think people are looking for a city that invests in public transit and housing and makes hard decisions about zoning in order to accommodate growth.
YOUR PLANS SEEM TO ALIGN WITH MANY OF THE CITY’S TOP CORPORATE LEADERS, THE CINCINNATI CHAMBER, TOURISM LEADERS, TRANSPORTATION LEADERS, AND EDUCATION LEADERS. HOW CAN WE IMPROVE ON THIS COLLABORATION?
That collaboration is special and unique in Cincinnati, and it’s why we have been so successful not just in my term but in the previous years as well. We’re just not a large enough city to have all the resources necessary to do all the big things we want to do. The ideas that actually push the city forward in a transformational way are usually public-private partnerships.
We can just start geographically at The Banks, where my predecessors were able to get everyone together to convert surface parking lots and dirt patches into such a high-performing area. Then they formed 3CDC as a public-private partnership and reimagined the Fountain Square district and Over-the-Rhine. Universal preschool programs were introduced through a public-private partnership. We can do Bus Rapid Transit only because we passed a county sales tax increase. The sale of the railroad to create a $1.6-billion infrastructure fund was a public-private partnership.
And that collaboration, I think, is a key strength of Cincinnati. I took it on personally to restore and strengthen the relationship between the city and the county in order to continue to take big swings. Before I took office, the downtown convention center was languishing. There was no plan for renovating or expanding it and no strong partnership between the city and the county. The city owns the convention center, and the county owns the old Millennium Hotel after spending a lot of money, rightfully so, to get control over it. Because our relationship has been strengthened and restored, we were able to invest $600 million into rehabbing the convention center to make sure Cincinnati is a destination city.
We’ve also cooperated to restart a Regional Sports Commission to help us bring more live events to town. When Taylor Swift came here a couple of summers ago, it was like a $75-million impact over one weekend that really opened my eyes to the potential of those investments but also the dollars we’re losing because we don’t have an organization recruiting the NFL Draft and other large events.
Our lunch is being eaten by Indianapolis, Columbus, Louisville, and Nashville because we aren’t out there competing. We competed very hard for the 2026 World Cup, and while we fell short we did host several Club World Cup matches and we’re in the running to be a home base for one of the large international teams. We took a huge swing on the Sundance Film Festival, and while we fell short there as well we continue to put Cincinnati on the map and continue to step up to the plate and take big swings. In order to do that, though, these-public private partnerships are critically important.
YOU PERSONALLY WENT TO SUNDANCE, UTAH, TO LOBBY FESTIVAL ORGANIZERS TO SELECT CINCINNATI AS THEIR NEW HOME. WHAT WAS YOUR TAKEAWAY FROM THAT EXPERIENCE?
As part of the selection process, a large number of film industry people visited Cincinnati to check out the city firsthand. Some came during BLINK last fall, which was amazing, and others came at random times over the winter. Overall, they seemed impressed at how well everyone works together here, and not just in the arts but across all of the various political entities. I think they were surprised to see Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, and me, a Democrat, on the same stage having not only a strong professional partnership but also a personal relationship.
That really personifies the relationships I take seriously and am intentional about, because I can’t be the very best Mayor for Cincinnati and the city can’t be as strong as it should be unless the Mayor has good working relationships with all of the important stakeholders at the state, regional, and neighborhood levels. That takes work, but it’s important.
A NUMBER OF CITIES ARE DOING TRANSIT-ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT AROUND LIGHT RAIL AND BUS RAPID TRANSIT. CINCINNATI’S FIRST TWO BRT LINES (HAMILTON AVENUE AND READING ROAD) ARE SCHEDULED TO DEBUT IN 2028. WHAT WILL THE CITY BE DOING TO PREPARE TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THOSE ROUTES IN TERMS OF BUSINESS AND POPULATION GROWTH?
When I think about how I can influence positive change as Mayor, we invest in programs and organizations and events, but the actual opportunity to make huge and lasting change is when you reform systems. And so we were intentional to push for Bus Rapid Transit through our advocacy to the SORTA board and then through how we were changing zoning regulations. One of the routes goes through Roselawn, Bond Hill, and Avondale, and those three neighborhood business districts have been underinvested in for too long.
Our approach is kind of similar to when the streetcar started laying tracks, which became an economic development tool because developers purposefully built or rehabbed along the line. Bus Rapid Transit features fixed routes with real bus stops, not a bench or a sign, and if we can put those bus stops in underinvested neighborhood business districts and then loosen zoning restrictions to make development easier in those areas, we will have organically incentivized investment.
In this past budget, we allocated $6.5 million just for Bond Hill neighborhood businesses with no specific project we’re investing in. We’re telling the community that we take Bond Hill seriously. There has’t been enough investment in Bond Hill, so community developers, The Port, and the state should come to the table. We have $6.5 million in a pot to get you started. Let’s come up with a plan and do it.
In a similar way, we changed our budget process so now there are awards for community councils applying to the city to get direct capital funds. Now it’s going to take some time, but when you have community councils, neighborhood redevelopment corporations, and City Hall on the same page, you see the results in places like Walnut Hills, College Hill, and Northside. It takes time, inten tionality, and dollars, but our track record over these past several budgets shows you that we take those relationships seriously.
ONE NEIGHBORHOOD WHERE THESE GOOD FEELINGS AND COOPERATION ARE STRAINED RIGHT NOW IS HYDE PARK, WITH THE CONTROVERSIAL HOUSING DEVELOPMENT ON HYDE PARK SQUARE BEING PULLED AFTER COUNCIL APPROVED IT. WHAT LESSONS DO YOU TAKE FROM THAT SITUATION?
We tried to support a housing project there, but the controversy wasn’t the fault of Hyde Park. It wasn’t the fault of the developer, either. It’s all of our fault. We are in a crisis for housing. The city of Cincinnati needs to build 40,000 units over the next 10 years, or 4,000 units per year. Even with all of the effort this council and I have put forth through the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, with over $100 million in it, through rezoning, through investments in the American Dream downpayment initiative, and through subsidies and incentives toward housing, I think we’re on track to build 1,500 units this year. That isn’t enough.
I’m not making excuses for the city, but consider the interest rates, the tariffs, the cost of construction, and everything is harder now because of macroeconomic factors, and we’ve still been able to build 1,500 units of housing. What we’re lacking at this point is the community will that we need housing. We need to be pro-growth-oriented if we’re going to grow our population.
Back to the Sundance conversation, more and more people are realizing that Cincinnati is no longer a best-kept secret. We’re growing our brand. I believe we’re on the precipice of a real golden age in Cincinnati. The only thing that may hold it back is our collective commitment. If Cincinnati becomes known as a city that’s no longer affordable, not just for our legacy residents but for new residents, then we will stop growing and will start going backwards.
You can kind of work almost anywhere now, so young professionals in particular are more mobile than ever. Why not live in a place where you can buy a house for half the price you could buy it for somewhere else?
THE SALE OF THE CITY’S RAILROAD LINE CREATED A TRUST FUND TO PAY THE CITY MORE MONEY PER YEAR THAN THE OLD LEASE ARRANGEMENT. THE FIRST MONEY FROM THAT FUND IS FLOWING INTO THE CITY AS WE SPEAK. WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR THIS NEW NON-TAX REVENUE?
Investments from the $1.6 billion railroad trust fund generated $56 million for the city this year without touching the principal, and we expect this year’s amount to be similar. (After this interview, it was announced that the 2026 payment would be $58 million.) When I took office in 2022, the railroad wasn’t on my radar. I don’t think it was on anyone’s radar. But the timing was perfect, because the 20-year lease expired the year I took office, and it became my issue to solve. I give the city’s railroad board a lot of credit, because they negotiated hard with Norfolk Southern and came to a fair market value that both parties could accept. Creating a new fund that will be there in perpetuity for the sole purpose of maintaining our existing infrastructure is a game-changer. In the last year of the Norfolk Southern lease, the city got $25 million; we got $56 million in the fund’s first dispursement, more than double. For anyone concerned about the fund’s long-term viability, it’s directly tied to the long-term health of the U.S. economy. I mean, if the fund is impacted negatively by the U.S. economy, we have bigger problems, right?
We’ve doubled the amount of dollars we put into road-paving, because potholes are important to people, and when you pave a road it’s impervious to potholes for five years. So we’ll catch up on our backlog over time. When I took office the city had a $400 million deferred capital maintenance bill. We couldn’t afford to maintain the infrastructure we had, and so outside of raising taxes we were potentially in a position where, if that deficit continued to grow, the deficit could be greater than the infrastructure’s actual value. So something significant had to change.
We presented a six-year plan in our last budget showing that we’ll spend the money on roads, bridges, fire stations, parks, and rec centers. I understand that the sale was controversial, because any time you sell an asset there’s risk. But we did the hard work in collaboration with the state legislature to say this money would be narrowly targeted only on existing infrastructure in order to prevent any political chicanery from happening.
IF YOU WIN RE-ELECTION, YOUR NEXT TERM WILL END RIGHT BEFORE 2030 AND THE CITY’S DEADLINE FOR MEETING GOALS PUT FORTH IN THE 2030 GREEN CINCINNATI PLAN. WHERE DO YOU THINK WE ARE IN TERMS OF HITTING THOSE SUSTAINABILITY GOALS?
We’re right on target. Our carbon emissions continue to go down. I think over the last year we’ve purchased 19 electric vehicles. Mayor John Cranley deserves credit for building the largest municipal-led solar farm in the country, and we’d like to expand that effort to the former Center Hill dump in Winton Hills. It’s basically unusable land because of brownfield remediation, but we can turn it into another solar farm to increase power-generating capacity.
We continue to have our foot on the pedal with respect to climate change and mitigation, but on the other hand climate change will have an impact on our city. The reason Intel chose central Ohio for its huge investment, just two hours north of here, was because this region is climate resilient and has access to fresh water. Large businesses are going to continue to make capital investments and employee investments based on those two factors. That’s such a long-term play, obviously, to think about where we might be 20 or 30 years from now, but part of why I love my job is because no other person in our government is thinking on a 25-year horizon. Given all of the uncertainty and chaos in the world, the cities that are innovative and risk-tolerant and take big swings are the cities that are going to really succeed over the next 25 years.
YOU OPENLY ENDORSE DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION, WHICH HAS BECOME A POLITICAL FOOTBALL. WHERE DO YOU STAND ON CELEBRATING AND ENCOURAGING THESE CONCEPTS IN CINCINNATI?
I want to be very clear that my diversity, equity, and inclusion beliefs are central to my role as Mayor. We want to celebrate it, of course, but more than anything we want to invest in it for the simple fact that there’s huge wealth inequality in Cincinnati having a profound impact on everything from home ownership to health outcomes. Where you were born in the city, just your neighborhood, has a huge impact on the kind of educational opportunities you’ll have, the kind of career opportunities you’ll have, and even how long you will live. So our equity and inclusion strategies are meant specifically to even the playing field—not as it relates to results, but as it relates to opportunity.
As long as I am Mayor, Cincinnati will continue to lead with those values. From the very beginning of our city, diversity and inclusion have been part of our DNA. It’s deep in our bone marrow. Cincinnati was the destination for the Underground Railroad, home to Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Mapplethorpe exhibit, the collaborative agreement on policing. Even when gay marriage was decided by the Supreme Court, it began with Jim Obergefell’s lawsuit in a downtown courthouse here in Cincinnati.
THERE’S BEEN A LOT OF CONVERSATION ABOUT CRIME ACROSS THE CITY, ESPECIALLY IN THE URBAN CORE. PERCEPTION OFTEN SUPPLANTS REALITY. WHAT IS THE REALITY?
Cincinnati is one of the safest major cities in the country, but it can and needs to be safer. Frankly, the data doesn’t matter as part of the conversation any more. What matters is how people feel, and too many people feel that Cincinnati is unsafe. I will caution that that isn’t true for everybody, because thousands of people have continued to come downtown and explore and really enjoy our city. But too many people don’t feel safe, and so we’ve been incredibly ambitious and aggressive to increase our visibility investments in the urban core, beginning at The Banks and going north through the night every single weekend. We now have bike patrols in the Fountain Square district area and walking patrols for the first time in a long time on Main Street, Vine Street, and Court Street. On the enforcement side, we’ve also empowered our police officers to enforce the law as it’s written.
We also deepened our partnership with the governor to have greater bandwidth to send highway patrol officers to Cincinnati and support the men and women in our police department. So we take perception very seriously. Public safety is something you have to consistently stay on top of. The work that Cincinnati Police do is extraordinary, and we’ve asked them to do so much above and beyond what we usually ask them to do. And every single time they’ve answered the call.
At some point soon we’ll have to transition into a winter strategy, but certainly as long as it’s warm we will have police officers visible in the downtown area. In winter we may not have walking patrols just based on the weather, but we’ll likely maintain some kind of visibility strategy in the urban core.
Again, it’s all about collaboration. The most successful Mayors in the country are far more pragmatic than they are partisan. If I treated P&G the way Florida Governor DeSantis treated Disney, I’d get recalled the very next day. There’s just no patience for that in local government, specifically from the Mayor. And so whether it’s partnering with Governor DeWine on public safety or partnering with corporate leaders on economic development, what’s most important to me are the relationships and the collaboration.
Cory Bowman on His Outsider Campaign
YOU’VE NOT HELD OFFICE BEFORE. WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO RUN FOR MAYOR?
My initial thought was just, How can I play a role in helping people in our city? I’m a pastor and a coffee shop owner, so I thought I’d just be more vocal about things and help support candidates or other people who were helping. But when I saw the need for a candidate for Mayor, I stepped in. If you’re running a nonprofit or running a business, you have to have some kind of knowledge of administration.
When I look at city politics, a lot of people are trying to jump on board national politics and national issues, but people want low crime rates, their potholes and streets fixed, and funds to be spent properly. Even though it seems like an oversimplification of the job, that’s what’s needed. I can make sure the city runs to the best of its ability.
DO YOU FEEL LIKE WORKING SO CLOSELY WITH THE COMMUNITY AT YOUR KINGS ARMS COFFEE IN THE WEST END GIVES YOU A GOOD READ ON THE PULSE OF THE CITY?
Absolutely, because I find that many people jump into these races and expect votes from people they don’t have a relationship with. We’ve been pastoring in the West End for five years and have had a front-row seat to city policies that are failing the communities. We’ve experienced things that are hindering growth and prosperity in our communities, and a lot of it has to do with policies from the top down.
WHAT ARE YOUR TOP CAMPAIGN ISSUES?
Budget, crime, and infrastructure. Potholes are everywhere, and snow removal basically was nonexistent during the winter months. We’re not seeing a properly run city when it comes to combating crime in our city. And then budget funds are not going where they need to go. A lot of funds go toward nonprofits, NGOs, or community initiatives that do not affect the communities like they say they do. And so there needs to be a complete audit and complete transparency on how these funds are being spent.
WHAT IS YOUR PLAN FOR ECONOMIC AND HOUSING GROWTH IN CINCINNATI?
To help the people that need to be helped, but to also help to get them out of bad situations. Current programs keep people in poverty, and there’s no pathway forward. In the West End, you have affordable housing units and then you have an $800,000 townhome. There are no policies that are bringing jobs to Cincinnati. There are no jobs.
I believe we need to incentivize revamping our historic buildings. There are so many vacant properties, but a lot of them are held on the books by nonprofits and NGOs funded by the city. And whenever developers reach out to these organizations saying, Hey, we want to make this into a local business. We want to have a grocery store here. We want to have studio apartments. A lot of times it takes years of red tape to even get to a point where they can consider it, and then by the end they realize the model isn’t incentivized for them to be profitable. There’s so much historic value in our empty buildings, and if we incentivize reconstruction and revamping of them and provide adequate housing for people trying to have that pathway out of poverty, that’s the smartest approach.
WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE AT CITY HALL IN ORDER TO REDUCE CRIME?
You have a city manager’s office that’s proven time and time again they’re incompetent in managing our city, and then that city manager appoints the police chief, and the police chief and the administration behind the chief have shown they’re not ready for the task of protecting our city. I would put pressure on judges and prosecutors not to release arrested criminals back onto the streets, and if they fail to do so I’ll have a weekly live stream or a press conference where I publicly state what judges released what criminals every week until the criminals are receiving sentences that they deserve.
The police officers that come in my coffee shop almost on a daily basis overwhelmingly disapprove of how things are being run. They don’t believe City Hall has their back. The cops say, If we arrest somebody, that person is going to be on the street next week because of the lax judges or the prosecutor’s office. So, in reality, you’ve demoralized the police force.