Hamilton County Commissioner Wants UC To Play At Renovated US Bank Arena

In a rather coincidental and actually completely not coincidental move by the Nederland Group and the City of Cincinnati, they have decided to finally get serious about renovating US Bank Arena. This after several months of UC revealing renderings of a renovated Fifth Third Arena that they have full intentions of bringing to fruition. Yep, not just interesting timing at all.

Anyways, the Courier Journal dropped a nugget today that Hamilton County commissioner Greg Hartmann is pushing for UC to move their program to US Bank Arena.

"Cincinnati, Hamilton County and the University of Cincinnati should explore a plan to renovate U.S. Bank Arena but moving UC basketball games to the downtown arena will be a key part of any plan coming together, said Hamilton County Commissioner Greg Hartmann.“Some people in the UC family would never support taking basketball off campus,” Hartmann said. “But they have a lot of capital needs. If you don’t have to spend $70 million, it’s something I’m sure they would consider.”"

Hartmann’s last comment is a far too oversimplified view of the situation. For the sake of all of you taxpayers who fund his salary, I hope he doesn’t believe that Cincinnati being asked to spend less than the cost of Fifth Third Arena renovations will make them move downtown.

Will UC be able to keep 100% of the revenue at US Bank like they would at Fifth Third? Probably not.

Will students be able to easily access US Bank like they will the arena next to their engineering classes? Nope.

Will UC have full control over the events and management of US Bank like they would Fifth Third? As of right now, no.

At this point I see the Bearcats scrapping the Fifth Third strategy and moving to US Bank Arena permanently under the following conditions.

• UC isn’t forced to pay for a penny of the costs, which are estimated at $200 million on the low end and probably North of $300 million when it’s all said and done.
• UC is allowed majority ownership of the US Bank Arena, much like Louisville’s deal with the Yum! Center, in that they have authority over decisions and revenue.

Pretty steep conditions, I understand, but the ball is fully in UC’s court* and they should leverage that to get the deal that works out best for them, even if it means turning Hartmann down.

*I am very proud of this play on words.

The Bearcats have flirted with the idea of US Bank Arena for the last couple of years. It’s safe to say they’ve been negotiating with Nederlander and the city of Cincinnati during that time but talks never progressed enough to convince the school to give up on an on-campus arena. Thus they invested resources and money into renderings to bring Fifth Third Arena into the 21st century.

If UC intends to move forward with those renderings it will depend on the Board of Trustee’s vote in August. Again, don’t believe for a second that this US Bank Arena announcement is just a funny coincidence. And don’t believe that UC would be better off moving downtown. Overall, there are too many factors in Fifth Third Arena’s favor to abandon the renovations at this point. Maybe if Nederlander took US Bank Arena seriously a year ago, sure, but not now.

I truly believe it’ll take an act of God (i.e. the two conditions above) to move Bearcats basketball off-campus permanently.