I had a conversation with a political mover in the Butler County area who did not share my excitement over the upcoming Liberty Center development in Butler County, Ohio which is shaping up to be one of the most dynamic shopping/entertainment destinations in the country. My enthusiasm was due to the recent announcement that the Cobb Theater chain of CinaBistro had just signed on to bring their 8th movie theater complex to the Liberty Center development which is unique in its concept. CinaBistro offers fine dining and other upscale options while watching movies. That includes serving bottles of wine and mixed drinks to the seat of movie goers and full course gourmet meals. CinaBistro is a fashionable experience that will prove very successful in the Liberty Township complex if for no other reason than I might be there with my wife every single day. I love movies and since CinaBistro will offer all the other entertainment options within the movie theater experience that I enjoy I will be a constant fan. What’s even better is the theater has restrictions on children under the age of 21, which means that unpleasant, pubescent, smelly, greasy adolescents won’t be able to attend without being present with adults. The way it appears to work at CinaBistro is that I can take my grandson to see the new Star Wars films there and we can eat a couple of New York Strip Steaks together in luxury. But my grandson won’t be able to go by himself to the theater with a bunch of his friends unsupervised even as a teenager. That is a GOOD thing!
The reason the political mover didn’t share my excitement is that Tri County Mall is being foreclosed upon in a sheriffs auction in July and the Cincinnati Mall down the road in Forest Park continues to struggle to find lease commitments, leaving one of the largest shopping malls in the world mostly empty. Tri County Mall has found itself in the hole by about $272 million, and is losing lease commitments rapidly. Even the long-standing Spencer Gifts finally pulled out along with Chick-fil-A recently. That is the sign of a dying mall. The city of Springdale hopes that the new owners of the mall will have the opportunity and money to restore Tri-County Mall to greatness—and personally I hope so too. I love the Tri-County Mall. I grew up with it, and it has always been an important part of my life. But when my own mother told me that she didn’t like to shop there any more, I knew it was doomed to failure because she isn’t alone.
When Tri County Mall allowed public busing to bring despots and welfare recipients from the inner city to the shopping experience of West Chester, they doomed themselves. And to no fault of Tri County Mall social policies in the surrounding area from Sharonville to Fairfield of higher property taxes and commitments to public housing have destroyed their communities in many areas. Those with money and value have consistently moved north over the years to run away from these destructive social policies which fail to understand that there are differences in human behavior, and some of those behaviors are not conductive to economic growth. Tri County is the latest victim of this progressive ignorance in failing to fathom that the working poor, the down-and-out, and the members of society on government assistance are that way for a reason.
I have known people who have lost everything in life, and have rebounded back on their feet within a few years. Businesses fail, tragedies happen, and life circumstances change. But good people find a way to bounce back and become prosperous once again. Then of course there are people who run across hard times and they never get back up. These people tend to surrender the responsibility of their lives to public assistance, whether it is public transportation, housing, food or whatever program that the government supplies to help them. The problem is that the two types of people do not mix well. People who fight every day of their lives to improve themselves and do good things for themselves and others do not have anything in common with the person on public assistance. If the government forces two men—one on public assistance and a “rich” man from the suburbs to sit down together and talk while in line at Tri County Mall, the later will not speak to the former and vice versa—because the two men have nothing in common beyond possibly support behind the local sports team. Their lives and philosophies are radically different, and they are not compatible as two human beings.
When Tri Country Mall allowed the Orange bus line to come to the shopping complex, it allowed a slow influence of people from neighborhoods where drugs, crime, and public welfare are common to interact with well-to-do, upper middle-class shoppers who are uncomfortable associating with people who act as though they might try to rob them at any moment. Teenage boys walking about with their pants down around their knees are not appealing. No woman wants to shop at a high-class venue only to see packs of teenagers hooting and hollering unsupervised and looking dangerous. Progressives have called these suburbanite women “snobs” for not wanting to share their shopping experience with such people. They have also been called “racists” for participating in some mythical class warfare. Instead of being called names the shoppers of Tri County Mall and Cincinnati Mills have stayed home or went else ware—such as to Kenwood Mall. The two types of people are simply not compatible in the same setting. Their quality of life is just too radically different, and quality is something that progressives always ignore in their social projects, which is why all their projects fail.
The feeling is that when Liberty Center opens that Tri County will sink, and that the Liberty Township development should be stopped because in addition to the amount of retail space it will suck away from complexes like Tri-County Mall, the movie theater isn’t needed. The political mover speaking to me used the AMC Theater down the road in West Chester and the Springdale Showcase Cinema near Tri-County Mall as evidence that the area is over-saturated with movie theaters. I pointed out that the AMC theater at The Streets of West Chester are havens for kids under the age of 21 and nobody wants to go there because of all the stupid kids. The new Cobb Theater at Liberty Center will solve that problem, allowing me to take my wife to a movie without having to interact with pubescent majorities who are only five minutes out of their mother’s wombs.
The real issue is one of value, and failing to understand that value. Value is determined by quality, and without some measure of quality, you get failure in any endeavor. If the assumption is that all human beings are equal—well they are if only arms, legs and heads define a human being. But if the kind of thoughts a person has is considered, and what they do with those thoughts, then quality becomes more than basic human function, and evolves into something much more complex. That complexity is why Tri-County is failing and why new developments like Liberty Center are being pursued.
I personally am willing to go to the worst areas of any city at any time and do whatever I need to do. In the past when I’ve needed a tire for a car I was selling, instead of getting one from the local tire store and paying $40 to $60, I would go down to Liberty Street in Over-the-Rhine and get a tire from the guys who operate a used tire refurbishing business for $5. They change the tires right in the street mounted, balanced and everything in about 15 minutes. I’ve walked the length of Vine Street from the University of Cincinnati to the river at 3 AM and managed just fine, so it doesn’t bother me to see a gang of thugs in the hallways of Tri-County Mall. But I do find I can’t relax as I am always on the look-out for some little pick-pocket or despot to cat-call in my wife’s direction. If I want to shop, I want to enjoy the experience. If I want to fight, I’ll go where fights are common. But it is unreasonable to expect suburban moms and dads to desire shopping in a hostile environment with people who are barely hanging on to life by their bad choices and a solid commitment to ignorance.
The Liberty Center project is a result of capitalism. There is a market desire and the economic viability is present for such a thing to offer upscale options to a shopping public. The Steiner Group has picked the location for demographic reasons. It has nothing to do with race, but everything to do with the quality of the people in that demographic region. There is no way on earth that such a project like Liberty Center would be proposed in Over-the-Rhine because the type of demographic group that could financially support such a project is not present. The type who are, no longer wish to go to Tri-County Mall not because the mall is a bad one, but because the social interaction has changed the economic viability forever leaving Tri-County to rot in the same way that progressives destroy everything they put their hands and minds to. The decisions one makes in their life has a major impact on the level of quality they offer the world.
The situation is so bad now in the Tri-County area that I no longer enjoy seeing movies at the Showcase Cinema which I have went to for nearly 40 years. It is impossible to go there any more without seeing gangs of kids making out, walking around with disheveled appearances, and worrying about my car in the parking lot. It is hard to relax and watch a movie because the type of people Springdale has allowed to take over their community does not respect private property, ownership, or personal value. The result is that I tend to now see movies at the Regal in Mason, where I don’t have to worry about those kinds of things. There are kids at that theater, but they are much better behaved as most of them come from complete families who live in the Deerfield Township area, where there is a mom and a dad living under the same roof. But when the CineBistro comes to Liberty Center I will be there often and with much delight. I will also thank capitalism for providing such options freeing my time and money from the social failures of progressive governments who wish to mix types of people together like a cook mixing ingredients that just don’t mix. People of value do not enjoy spending time with people who value very little. Those are the facts of life and the real meaning behind success and failure in business endeavors. Tri-County Mall is not failing because it’s a bad mall; it’s the same mall that it always was. But the people have changed, and that is a truly sad story for everyone involved.
Preventing Liberty Center from being constructed will not force the residents of Liberty Township and West Chester which number over 100,000 people to continue shopping at Tri-County, and going to see movies at the AMC Theater taken over by teen-aged kids, or Showcase surrounded by declining communities and broken family units. It will simply halt economic activity. Government manipulation of restrictive zoning will not force people like herds of cattle to destinations of desire by statist governments. The independent nature of people with value will simply cause them to rebel in some other way and spend their money elsewhere. The Orange bus line as a result will be dropping off despots to an empty mall at Tri-County because the social experiment of mixing “rich” and “poor” has failed—because the cause of wealth and lack of value was never identified. And the heart of that difference is why CineBistro will be an astonishing success at Liberty Center even though they do not allow unsupervised children under the age of 21 to attend and will serve Moët Imperial for $79 a bottle to each seat while Die Hard 10 starring a 75-year-old Bruce Willis kicks the crap out of bad guys on the silver screen……………….
………………………do you smell that………………………ahhhhhhh…………………………….CAPITALISM!
I can’t wait for the CineBistro at Liberty Center!
Rich Hoffman
“If they attack first………..blast em’!”
The Overmanwarrior 
This sounds like it was made for you!!!!! You’ll love it!
While we grew up in West Chester for the most part, it became foreign before we ever left. I used to rent the old school house for two years with friends way before I married, that was on the corner of Cox and Tylersville. The shower didn’t work and we used to lower ourselves down into the working well to bathe. No shit. When they tore that down for a Walgreens I was furious. It became so unrecognizable so quick. We were married at Sharon Woods and thought we would call Pisgee home forever. Then I had to time my jaunt to the grocery because of traffic.
That was the straw.
The memories of living in that school house and partying down on Sharon Rd. @Easy street, that place across from Sneakers that burned to the ground to watch “Cincinnati Slim” (can’t remember), Red Dog Saloon, TJ’s, Bombay Bicycle Club, Christies and Corvettes though…will last forever.
Fast times. Really fast. Keep up or get ON the porch!!
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I know I’ve told you stories about Easy Street. : )
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Yep. I just know we’ve crossed paths before politics. Way before. No way did you do what you did and never meet me. No way.
The life has slowed down, I have some things sagging, which pisses me off, and I don’t drive a van with a velvet picture of a unicorn inside…but the hair is still BIG. Big, Big, Big!!!! LOL!
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Even Kenwood is slipping because of the bus line. I’m told that many of the stores are losing money because of the theft. I saw the police chasing 10 or 12 youths around Dillards on a bright sunny day. It really makes a woman think twice before going to any mall alone. When Pogues left Tri County Mall it was the signal that the middle class had left that mall. I loved that store, but stopped going there when one of my friends was robbed at gunpoint and her quick thinking got her out of her car, which was driven off along with her purse by the perp. We also used to frequent many of the really nice restaurants on Chester Road, but they all left one by one. The Emperors Wok was one of our favorites. We all know what happens when the poor are placed in neighborhoods where the people have spent their lives working for a better life. The experiment that was started by Hillary Clinton of putting the poor in better neighborhoods only leads to crime. There used to be a wonderful commentator on the radio that explained the beliefs of the “poor” that they were entitled to “your stuff.” If you are used to leaving your garage door open – don’t do it, he said that your “stuff” would disappear. A friend lived in Pleasant Run Farms and saw that mentality in action. They had to move because of that system in action. Forest – Fair closed because of the theft and vandalism. My son was there with his girlfriend a few years ago waiting in line to see a movie. A gang of youths started cutting in line, threatening patrons and starting fights. They decided to leave and in the garage a mob had gathered and were damaging cars and threatening people trying to leave. Over twenty police cars showed up with sirens and lights blazing. Not one word of this in the news. The word spread and most of the original shops left. No one want to speak the truth about the problems of putting people in areas where they just don’t fit in. Not because of race, but because of bad habits.
Ask the police where the most crime occurs in the West Chester area. I bet they will tell you where the section 8 housing has been built. If people can afford to pay the rent or house payments by the sweat of their own brow – they will be good citizens and respect the rights of others. It doesn’t matter what their color, race or creed. What does matter is that they respect themselves, the rights of others and take care of their own property.
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For that matter we had a shooting here in Liberty Twp recently. Where do you think it was? It was in a trailer park, two white guys fighting over a tatoo design or something like that. Stupid. A neighborhood filled with welfare recipients and bottom feeders who would rather steal from someone else than earn the dollars it takes for them to live.
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Thanks for sharing this article and the great information.
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Well, as a fellow middle class white guy who enjoys luxury movie theaters, reading this post filled me with shame. Your idiotic belief that you’re somehow superior to poor people due to the fortunate opportunities you’ve had in life oozes from every venom-filled syllable you typed out. I work hard, I went to college, I studied and earned a lot of what I have–but I also know full well that I had some lucky breaks in life, not least of which was being born into an upper middle class family that could afford investing in my upper education and sending me to a superior school system.
This post pretty much demonstrates exactly why this area of the country is considered so backwards. Your hatred for “welfare recipients” is disgusting, and criticizing people who use public transportation to go to work and purchase goods would be laughable if it wasn’t so painfully knuckle-headed. Are you even aware that there are people who didn’t have a daddy rich enough to buy them a car for their 16th birthday? You want the poor to work, yet don’t want them having any method of getting there, apparently… Unless it’s been so long since you stepped out of your middle class bubble that you haven’t yet realized that the days of getting a job at a corner store two blocks away ended around the time Andy Griffith went off the air.
Sorry to hear that teenagers with baggy jeans scare you so much. I bet you’d shit yourself if you walked into, say, Sycamore High School… except probably not, since *white* kids with baggy jeans likely aren’t what you were talking about. Isn’t that right, gramps?
I’m not sure why you waste your time posting this bull shit. Perhaps it’s your dream in life to become the next Bill Cunningham so you can profit off of further denigrating the reputation of SW Ohio. But having read only this post (searched for reviews on CineBistro), I doubt you’re even talented enough for the easy breezy career of insulting the needy for a living.
This will be only correspondence on here; I refuse to give your mindlessness further traffic than I’ve already given it. Enjoy your deluded, narcissistic life
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All kids dickweed. And Bill Cunningham is a liberal. And drop the progressive talking points about the middle class you little bastard. They don’t apply. Being poor is a decision. You obviously think wrong about everything. It’s like trying explain the color blue to a blind person. There is no frame of reference to start with.
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