Eastern exposure (a blast from the past)

Eastern Avenue in Cincinnati was a lengthy street that largely followed the Ohio River east of downtown. The name of the road was solid, respected, and quite descriptive.

But in 2006, part of it was renamed to Riverside Drive - and in 2007, much of the remainder was renamed as well. This change to the city map exposed a problem that goes far deeper than just the name of a street in East End. It unearthed an entire saga of downright vile classism.

CityBeat reported that the name change was demanded by developers and by wealthy residents of new luxury condos along the road. Sounds more upscale, you see. Working-class folks who had lived for decades along this same long avenue opposed the measure.

The change followed a botched survey. City officials mailed surveys to people along the road asking for a vote on whether to change the street's name. However, instead of each person having one vote, people got one vote for each parcel they owned. So developers who had parcels to sell got to cast numerous votes.

A longtime grievance in Cincinnati - America's most conservative large city through much of my lifetime - is that money rules. People don't. If you're poor in Cincinnati, your voice doesn't count. It's like that still today.

While supporters of the name change said a majority of the votes backed their stance, a report by the city planner said only 38% of the surveys that were sent out were returned. Many of the remaining 62% weren't even delivered!

When the city recounted the ballots by limiting them to one vote per person, they found only 88 votes in favor of the name change - even though the neighborhood had about 1,700 residents.

In addition to the humiliation of hard-working longtime residents who are forced to call their street by a different name, after having no input on the name change, it turns out the city did its damnedest to try to make sure working-class residents got forced out of the neighborhood altogether.

Before the posh condos were erected around the early part of the decade, Eastern Avenue featured parks and old, small, sturdy homes that housed working-class Cincinnatians. But the city deliberately set the stage for the unasked-for transformation. When longtime residents refused to sell to developers, the city had building inspectors find issues with their houses - which the residents had to pay to fix. When they couldn't afford to fix them, they had to sell and move out.

Then they couldn't find a home in the same neighborhood, because luxury condos were the only dwellings being built! In other words, countless residents were priced out of their own neighborhood - at the hands of a city government that was eager to appease developers. Some of the folks who had lost their homes had roots in the neighborhood going back 6 generations.

They lost their homes all because of classism and greed.

Eastern Avenue will always be Eastern Avenue to me. If I drew a serious map of the city, I might call it Riverside Drive (which is more than what I would've done when Riverfront Stadium was fuckheadedly renamed to Cinergy Field, in which case I would've ignored the name change). But in conversation, it ain't Riverside Drive.

Is it too late to officially change the name back to Eastern Avenue? Better yet, is it too late to make sure residents who were forced out of East End are able to return?

(Source: http://citybeat.com/2007-02-14/news.shtml)