Tag: Liberty Center

Re-Elect Todd Minniear for Liberty Township Trustee: The untold story of Ford’s Garage

Many people are unaware of the story, but it’s one of those great examples of how some politicians in the world do good things in the background that nobody knows about, but that greatly enhance people’s lives.  And we’re talking about Todd Minniear, the highly regarded Liberty Township Trustee, who is about to complete his first term and is up for re-election this year, 2025.  When he was first elected, I considered it one of the most fantastic Christmas presents I could have hoped for.  We needed a constitutional conservative in Liberty Township in a position like that because Liberty Township had a significant problem.  It’s always been a great place to live.  I’ve lived in Liberty Township most of my life.  I’ve traveled extensively around the world, and when my wife and I were first married, we tried to live in various places.  But we moved back to Liberty Township many years ago because it simply was the best place to live.  We had been living in Mason, and the school system was so bad back then that we had to homeschool our kids.  Lakota, as a public school, wasn’t much better, but everything else about the community was just so good.  But like all good communities, it’s hard to provide good political leadership because all these special interest groups start making suggestions that are often beyond the wheelhouse of most people’s professions, and they get hoodwinked into making bad decisions.  And that’s what happened with zoning in Liberty Township.  Word got out that it was a great place to live, and everyone wanted to move to the land north of Cincinnati, with its abundant farmland and white picket fences.  So, a lot of property was bought up, and many homes were built, but along the way, very few commercial areas were created to help alleviate the taxation problem. 

So Liberty Township needed a trustee who could say know to the right things, and that is all the Agenda 21 goofy stuff that came from the United Nations sustainability plans that were flowed down through university training and into the minds of the college kids who were being trained to be the next generation land use planners.  And they have been a disaster, because along with all the ridiculous roundabouts, which are an entirely European design that we mindlessly inherited, like a bunch of little brothers appeasing an older brother who picks on us, we adopted all those methods into our community planning, and it has degraded the living experience predictably.  And to stay great, Liberty Township needed to develop a mind of its own, and Todd Minniear has been that kind of trustee.  When you are the best place to live in the world, quite literally, you don’t let yourself get picked on by anybody, especially a bunch of socialist trained community development planners.  The private sector knows a lot more about these things, and competition should sort out the good from the bad, and be allowed to do that.  Recently, under Todd’s leadership, the Trustees in Liberty Township removed the high-density housing requirements from future building projects, which is a significant development.  The news reporting took that move as building fences to the outside world to keep out the poor and disadvantaged.  However, logic suggests that to protect value, you must keep away people who have less of it.  Otherwise, they bring their problems to your doorstep, and that requires value judgments that might hurt the feelings of people who have not made very good decisions in their lives.  To maintain a good community, you need to reward people who make good decisions and keep the bar high, so that those who didn’t aren’t living in the same space.

As I met Todd Minniear at Liberty Center to discuss some of these high-density housing issues, my daughter was with me, and we were talking about Japan and how people we know who have traveled there and have tattoos were ridiculed in some places for having them.  In some cases, businesses will refuse to serve people who have tattoos, because they see it as a detrimental element to social interaction, and they ridicule it in their society.  I had just recently returned from Japan, which is what I wanted to discuss with Todd about Liberty Center.  Japan’s cities are very clean, and their work ethic is excellent.  Even in their downtown areas, they have nice, convenient stores that are open 24/7.  There is a nice one near a hotel I often stay at in Kobe, and I thought something like that would be perfect for the current location at Liberty Center, across the street from Cooper’s Hawk and the new Flats that have been built, where many people are currently living.  To maintain a good community, you must have high standards and hold others accountable for living up to them.  And that is the challenge, because Liberty Township is such a great place to live, but the housing costs are very high, the temptation to bring in more affordable housing, as the land use sustainability plans all address in the same European socialist way, more high density living which allows people who have made bad decisions in their lives and do not have the financial means to move into Liberty Township, to move into an apartment or an attached single family unit. 

One of my favorite places to eat in Liberty Township is the new Ford’s Garage at Liberty Center, where Todd Minniear has a signature hamburger named after him, which I order every time I visit.  In the location where the restaurant was built, Todd was the trustee who said no to an apartment complex design intended for that area when the mall could not find commercial businesses to fill that very valuable square.  There was a lot of complaining at the time, but eventually, Ford’s Garage restaurant moved in, and that solved many of the problems. It was great that the apartments did not get built there, as the restaurant is far more valuable as a land use option.  It does a lot more for the mall than just bringing in more people who don’t pay enough in taxes to accommodate their presence, whereas a business does.  And Liberty Township needs more businesses that bring in more people from a 25-mile radius who spend money in Liberty Township, then go home.  So that the taxpayers in Liberty Township aren’t on the hook for all the infrastructure.  And it’s decisions like those that Todd Minniear has made that have greatly improved Liberty Township and preserved its value, rather than letting mindless land use plans destroy it. These decisions don’t represent what’s good and original about the community—sometimes saying no leads to a better yes eventually.  And that is certainly the case with Ford’s Garage.  There was considerable pressure to approve high-density housing projects and accommodate the influx of investment dollars into the area.  However, by saying no, Todd Minniear was able to inspire a much better ‘yes’ in the future, which is precisely why we want Todd to serve for many more years as a trustee.  He’s been great, and there is room to do a whole lot more with the Millikin interchange project.  But to set a high bar, you have to live up to it, and often, that means saying no to disreputable social elements, to socialist land use plans, and political sentiments that come from other places, and people bring that garbage with them wherever they go.  We need good political leadership to sort it all out, and Todd Minniear has been just the right touch, and we could use a lot more of him in the years to come.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Sheriff Jones is Right about Security at Liberty Center: The Mall needs to hire big, tough guys to bust scum bags and criminal losers

Before we get too far along on this one, just remember the management of the Liberty Center complex in Butler County, Ohio—you had to be told to reopen the playground after COVID.  You didn’t do it alone; you had to be talked to.  There were a lot of moms who wanted to take their kids out to the mall, and there were lots of moms who wanted to talk to other moms and enjoy the benefits of the excellent food court there.  But for almost a year too long, after the rest of the world came back on after all the dumb Covid lockdowns, Liberty Center still had the lights out at the playground and marked it off as closed because of fear of the local health agencies getting angry over it.  So, the management of the Liberty Center Mall complex is not the brightest in the world; they are following the same destructive woke policies as everyone else.  What makes Liberty Center great is its location, and the people who have fled all the blue-run areas in Cincinnati settled in the region around Liberty Center because they don’t want to be impacted by a bloated, intrusive government.  I love Liberty Center; we always go there as a family.  I think it’s a wonderful thing to have in our community.  But it could be vastly improved if management was better.  Just think of how much lost money occurred because they were too slow to open the playground.  I didn’t say anything about it at the time or my role in it because I didn’t want to embarrass them.  However, regarding this recent Sheriff Jones story, there is some history of woke management practices from corporate firms getting their marching orders outside of our community, and that is a problem we need to discuss. 

You might have heard, and I agree with him absolutely on this one, Sheriff Jones is charging Liberty Center for the reward money that ended up capturing a couple of shoplifters who were caught by some excellent police work done at Dick’s Sporting Goods.  Based on the evidence presented, a couple of women look to have taken several thousands of dollars in theft.  And this is a national trend everywhere these days, especially in communities particularly impacted by the rhetoric of Marxism that believes private property should be abolished, and one of their methods of social destruction is to find suckers who will then turn to the streets and rob property owners of their goods and services.  Sheriff Jones has to send a message that Butler County is not open for crime because it isn’t.  I have noticed that there are a lot of gang bangers and criminal thugs who have been flocking from regions around to the glory and sentiment of Butler and Warren Counties due to this same Marxist trend.  These criminal-minded types believe that if affluent people have something, then they have a right to take it.  So, if we don’t crack down on even the most minor infraction, word will get out that Butler County is an excellent place to go and commit crime.  And we can’t have that.  So these women had to be arrested for being caught doing what they did at Dick’s Sporting Goods.  Sheriff Jones needed to make an example of them.  And he knows it because I’ve told him.  It’s not because we don’t have enough police to cover the job.  We do, and then some.  But if he needs help, I have my hand way up.  There was a gun store near my home that was recently hit with a break-in, and I would like to see that kind of behavior discouraged intensely.  Civilian oversight is the ultimate backstop on these kinds of things.  So it’s not just this recent theft at Liberty Center; there is a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that indicates a larger crime spree brewing by the actions of Democrat policies from everywhere.  And we have to meet it with aggression; otherwise, it will just get worse.

Sheriff Jones is sending the bill for his police work to Liberty Center to pay, and I think that is a good idea, given the situation.  I would advise the Liberty Center management to drop all the woke garbage and get on to the Make America Great Again plan.  That’s where the rest of the world is heading after this next election, and it will be very costly to cling to any form of wokeness very shortly.  I would get rid of the skinny pants mall cops who are allowing too much riff-raff to form there.  The Mall is private property, so they can tell people to leave.  Failure to do that will result in the same fate as Tri-County Mall to the south and Forest Fair Mall to the west along I-275.  People stopped going to those malls because of the thugs and crime that occurred.  Mall management was slow and reluctant to draw the line because they didn’t want to end up in court over profiling issues, which is not something that will hold up to legal scrutiny.  If the security at Liberty Center intends to break up a group of three or more dangerous-looking teenage kids from just looking stupid, they can.  And they should.  If Liberty Center security does not protect the moms who like to go to the mall with their children, then what happened to other malls in the country will occur to Liberty Center, too. 

I would suggest hiring the kind of security guards at the GOP Lincoln Day Dinner a year or so ago when Ron DeSantis came to speak.  To get into the event, they had huge, muscle-bound tough guys between 6’2” to 6’5”.  They were huge and menacing, which I thought was too much for that kind of event.  But they were trying to make a point for a person running for president.  Anthony Munoz from the Cincinnati Bengals was right behind me, and he looked like a baby being patted down by these guys to go through security.  They were too much for that event, but I would hire them to do the same security at Liberty Center.  They may cost more for wages, but they will more than make up their worth in added lease space and dollars generated.  If people don’t feel safe, they won’t go to the mall, and moms set the family schedule.  To avoid criminal scum bags and those looking like they want to be those types, moms will stay home with their kids and order from Amazon.  So mall security must protect those who go on a limb to invest in a brick-and-mortar store.  That is their first and most important function, not in being fair to everyone and not profiling losers and bums but creating an atmosphere that makes moms feel safe.  I would hire serious, tough guys who project confidence and will back it up with action.  And if Liberty Center Mall security punts to the local police departments, then they should pay for the cost of good police work.  I would encourage Sheriff Jones to get rich by doing so because it is worth the money to crack down on crime.  Otherwise, and this is the Marxist political plan by encouraging all these dumb people to commit crimes in the first place, there won’t be any money left to steal.  Petty crimes and significant crimes need to be prosecuted aggressively.  Otherwise, society will fall apart quickly, especially at Liberty Center in Butler County, Ohio.  It’s OK to be mean to scum bags and criminals.  And I’d suggest that Liberty Center listen to Sheriff Jones and do their jobs as required.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Liberty Township Trustees Pass Resolution NO 2022-062: Taking leadership to preserve constitutional guidance based on what we learned from Covid

It’s good to talk about positive stories and the excellent work by the Liberty Township Trustees, Tom Ferrell, Steve Schramm, and Todd Minniear, to pass Resolution NO. 2022-062 (the Reaffirming Our Commitment to Constitutional Principles) on June 7th, 2022. It was something unique and memorable. It was good to see government on the local level taking proactive action that was meaningful. And as I pointed out in speaking in favor of it, after Covid and the many government failures in reaction to it, the investment world needed something to reassure everyone that should something as disastrous as Covid ever happen again, there was a plan to deal with it. We, at this point, have to plan for some form of that eventuality in the political world we live in, that at the very least, local government will work on behalf of the people of their community to at least ask constitutionally based questions on the merits and legality. It was a horrible circumstance that all our laws and regulations were turned away from our systems of elections and were turned entirely over to health officials in Ohio and Butler County, which were unconstitutional in many tragic ways. So it took a considerable amount of leadership from the Liberty Township Trustees to take a proactive measure to reassure the public that local government was still in charge and would be in the future.

https://gettr.com/vision/p1dcmfd6b99

At first, when this idea of talking about making Liberty Township something of a Constitutional Zone it sounded to me like a redundant message. After all, all public officials take an oath to the Constitution, both federal and state, so by saying that they were a Constitutional Township was like saying the sun was out on a sunny day at the beach. That is until I went to Liberty Center to have lunch and noticed that the playground there was still shut down after two years of Covid protocols. Many of those protocols look ridiculous in hindsight. Still, when the playground was shut down, there had been movies about pandemics and various zombie apocalypses that had satisfactorily terrified the public, which health officials exploited for global gains of political power, which is a subject that we could write books on. Those books are emerging to tell those stories of deceit and corruption. But as to kids and the playground at Liberty Center, it’s a nice place in what I consider one of the best shopping destinations in America. Parents have enjoyed taking their kids there to let them play indoors and in air conditioning. The food court is right there, so it is a nice place for the community to come and interact with each other. But after two years of Covid, it was still shut down, even as most of the rest of society had gone back to normal. As I ate my food, the lights were mostly out, many of the upstairs portions of the mall were vacant of store activity, and it looked like a pretty sad situation. 

So I called up Todd Minniear, who is one of the newest Liberty Township Trustees, and asked him what was going on with the mall. Were Covid protocols still keeping these guys from opening up their play area? As it turned out, mall management wasn’t sure how to proceed. They were waiting on someone from the government to come and tell them that it was alright to reopen. But of course, nobody was ever going to come from the government to do so, so the poor playground was left in limbo, leaving that whole upstairs portion of the mall to have very little social activity.   I couldn’t help but add up in my head how many potential investors who might want to open a store in the mall saw this sad sight and moved on. If they had seen kids playing and parents enjoying talking and eating from the food court, they might have made a few million dollars of investment into a new store at Liberty Center, which it needs. Brick and mortar stores are a challenge under great economic conditions. So under a Biden economy, that only gets trickier. After some telephone tag that went on for a few weeks, Liberty Center found it was able to reopen its play area to the public, so it’s open now. Shortly before attending the Constitutional Resolution for the next Liberty Township meeting, I had lunch there again. This time it looked like I remembered it: kids playing, parents enjoying watching them, and having a nice place to sit and have some food. The lights were on, and things looked alive again. There was some exciting new construction on the second floor, somebody had made some investments, so it was a good story. One that should have never been bad in the first place, but it would be good to see something good happening that people could now enjoy. 

For many, it is a terrifying prospect to have to go through something like Covid again. I have several copies of the state and federal constitutions that I refer to often, and by reading them, there is no reason to be concerned. I felt that way during the entire Covid shutdowns in Ohio and across the nation; every case that was put before the courts challenging the health directives was losing. We should never have done half the things that were done in reaction to Covid. The real science shows that there were medicines available at the time that could have easily contained it as a public menace. The problem was in the new way that we allowed health experts to gain control through an emergency, the management of our country. We had never seen something like that happen before, and it certainly wasn’t the fault of Liberty Center in following the orders that flowed down to them from the state.   But in the aftermath, no leadership from those same experts came out in public and said, “it’s safe again.” Or, “sorry, there was never really a danger; we overreacted. Sorry if we destroyed lives and cost everyone billions of dollars, trillions of dollars nationally. We’re sorry.” No, they just stayed in their offices and left everything to the rest of the world to figure out. So Liberty Center was in limbo until Todd Minniear started making phone calls and asking questions. From the mall management side of things, they would expect someone from leadership in the community to ask those questions and get the answers, which is how the playground reopened. And the story ended up being a good one. 

Resolution No. 2022-062 passed with a surprisingly large crowd clapping, and all the Trustees seemed to enjoy a positive thing for a change. After the meeting, I was able to talk to Steve Schramm and Tom Farrell, who were eager to tell me about all the things that go on behind the scenes where they fight for the Constitution and the protection of Liberty Township all the time. The trouble is that the public doesn’t see all those phone calls and questions. All they know is that Covid shut down the world once, and they needed to know that someone who represented them would be able to ask questions and challenge health directives in the future should something like that happen again. Because without that guidance, those investment dollars might just stay someplace safe and not flow into some new project. As we saw with Covid, the uncertainty of medical tyranny might just return. Only this time, the Trustees had proclaimed that they were there to help and would ensure that the rules of the Constitution would prevail in Liberty Township. Which, for many people, was a reassurance they desperately sought from somebody offering leadership after two years of scary indecision and protocols that were abruptly un-American.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Case for Voting Todd Minniear to Liberty Township Trustee: Where real leadership has been needed as opposed to rubber stamping comprehensive plans

Todd Minniear for Liberty Township Trustee

The trustee race in Liberty Township, Ohio, is interesting because it allows for an advanced discussion of politics that hasn’t been available to us.  On the one hand, there is an incumbent who is a decent Republican, Tom Farrell. He’s offering the status quo rubber stamp on the comprehensive plan so that investors won’t have to worry about unnecessary changes in government to ruin their forecasts.  I understand those problems and can see why stability there would be much desired by many people.  Then there is Buck Rumpke, a hard-working guy from zoning who wants to work with Farrell to continue implementing the Liberty Township comprehensive plan essentially.  I would argue that such a goal is filled with peril because those comprehensive plans are usually written by liberals hired to write them. They essentially reflect the exact phrasing of what the United Nations 2030 plans sound like and are filled with many green energy code words, which, if you peel that back, lead to global communism.  Tom and Buck certainly aren’t communists, but they aren’t exactly the kind of people who are intellectually curious about significant, international matters either.  They know what they know and stay in their lane, which is excellent if you want followers.  But in providing leadership, not so much. 

Where many communities can’t afford to debate about levels of conservative policymaking, I see in Liberty a unique situation.  I like Tom, I like Buck, but in listening to them talk, I’m always looking for more from a leadership standpoint, especially after what we know now after the 2020 election year.  Priorities certainly shifted, which is a point I will make for what I think is the best consideration for trustee in Liberty Township in Todd Minniear.  I remember well the challenges that Senator George Lang had back when he was a trustee in West Chester when he worked to challenge the comprehensive plan there and the debates about the library that were a big deal then.  George handled things well, there were times when deviating from the plan made sense, and the debates were healthy.  In Liberty Township, the attitude has pretty much been, follow the plan, and that has made the politics of Liberty Township much less attractive. The problems that we are now facing are even more predictable. 

For instance, Todd Minniear talks about it all the time, to encourage more growth in Liberty Township, which is landlocked for the most part, the comprehensive plan advocates for more high-density dwellings, such as apartments like the ones that were approved by zoning to go along with the new Costco development.  Now for the record, I love the idea of the Costco development, and I love Liberty Center.  There is a lot of good that comes from those developments.  Much better than bad.  But Todd is not wrong when he says that apartment dwellings are bad for Liberty Township because it cheapens everything.  They don’t pay for themselves in value and what you end up with is a bunch of voters who have no real ownership in their properties making decisions for the rest of us.  Apartments are a super bad idea in that context.  But, apartments are part of that United Nations comprehensive plan that I mentioned, and that is the problem with following those plans without questioning the reasoning.  The goal of the greenie crowd is to stack people on top of each other and make the world need less cars.  So sidewalks and integrated developments are the wave of the future from the United Nations’ standpoint.  Ownership of private property is something they intend to phase out.  When Todd speaks out against apartment construction, it’s not because he’s anti-development.  But he gets the eventual depletion in value that they create. 

Also, what comes up often in such debates is what to do with the great shopping and living development of Liberty Center. It’s a struggling development that started with high hopes. I’m a huge fan of the development, and yes, they are in need of a tax bailout.  I am usually a person who is against bailouts of any kind. However, much of the cause of Liberty Center’s troubles came from the government, specifically Governor Mike DeWine.  When Liberty Center was built, it was already a challenge for brick and mortar stores to make investments there, given Amazon’s impact and other online stores have provided to the market.  But given the wealth of Liberty Township, the risk was worth it, and it turned out to be a significant development.  It still is in every respect.  However, when Mike DeWine shut down the state’s economy over Covid, it directly hit every kind of brick and mortar store, and Liberty Center was struck at a critical time in its business cycle.  Now, to their credit and the credit of Liberty Township shoppers, many businesses at Liberty Center have managed to stick around.  The movie theater is still open.  The restaurants have survived mainly.  There is a lot of good to talk about.  But to give an example, my wife wanted to take one of our grandchildren to the playground there the other day, and it was still closed due to liability concerns over Covid.  So things have not resumed to normal even after the pandemic, which directly impacts the flow of shoppers to the complex.  When you can’t just go and have fun but still must deal with Covid rules, shoppers are more inclined to stay home and shop online.  Now, was that part of the United Nations comprehensive plan?  Of course not.  The developers of Liberty Township followed all the sustainability rules.  But, the government changed the rules. 

This is where a person like Todd Minniear would shine as a trustee because he is an advocate of the great book The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates, which professes that leadership has an obligation to question the authority of any higher authority.  An example would be the Biden executive order on vaccine mandates or Biden’s orders to shut down businesses to Covid rules.  Todd, in fact, during Covid challenged the DeWine administration and won in court, so he is the only candidate who has been successful in challenging higher authorities based on Constitutional law.  And when it came to helping places like Liberty Center during Covid, they sure could have used Todd Miinniear as a trustee during the Covid shutdowns because it might have helped them not take such a hit for which they now need a bailout.  Looking back on how things should have been handled with Governor Mike DeWine, before the legislature eventually took away his authoritarian mandates under emergency protocols, there needed to be many more politicians like Todd Minniear in place to protect businesses and residents from unnecessary pain.   Liberty Center is an obvious example, but the actual costs to Ohio are still incalculable.  To get an opportunity to get a talented person like Todd onto a board of trustees is unique.  It would be a shame to pass it up. 

After a recent debate among the Liberty and West Chester Trustees, I listened to Ann Becker debate The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates with Todd.  Ann Becker is a trustee in West Chester, and I’ve known her for a long time and respect her.  She isn’t a fan of the book, so it was a great talk between her and Todd over the philosophy of a trustee’s role under such conditions.  We may not have had that discussion before Covid because nobody would have ever thought a governor like DeWine would ever try to shut down an economy.  But now that we’ve seen the teeth of government, especially at the state and federal level, such debates have a lot more validity.  I decided Todd Minniear was the absolute best candidate for Liberty Township Trustee after listening to this friendly debate.  Ann is a smart cookie, and Todd could answer all her questions quickly and effectively with the actual state revised code he had on hand. He’s such a great mind; it would be a shame not to use it fully since he’s offering it as a public servant.  And I am very, very excited to vote for him for all these reasons and more.   We live in a time where we need politicians to do more than just rubber stamp pre-written comprehensive plans.  Sometimes we need politicians to challenge those plans, but most of all, we need leadership, even when abuses of authority come from higher offices like presidents and governors.  Todd Minniear is the only candidate I know who has a proven track record of success in doing this, and for the future of Liberty Township, we will need a lot more of that than what we’ve had in the past.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Liberty Center and Disney Springs: It wouldn’t take much

I always love a visit to the Liberty Center for a good movie, dinner or just shopping. I consider it one of the best destinations of its kind and I love that its in my neighborhood, and that takes into account that my very favorite spot is Disney Springs in Orlando. While on vacation recently in Orlando I had a fresh take on all the wonderful new additions they have added to Disney Springs which made it a hopping place of excitement and adventure. Everything is so nice and clean, as well as competent. My wife and I spent a lot of time, and a small fortune at Disney Springs and loved every moment of it. But as soon as we returned we went to our hometown Liberty Center to see Star Wars one of the many times that we would see it since its release on December 20th and I have to say that Liberty Center is really nice to have, and I appreciate it immensely.

One of the conditions of our vacation, which really took place most of the month of December, with a week in Orlando, was that we would visit at least five different amusement parks. With Disney being the best of the best in that category, I was impressed with Kings Island’s Winterfest and had been thinking that Cedar Fair Amusements had done a great job since buying it, and putting it into a another level of category as a national destination. Considering that the day we were at Kings Island on a Friday we had the day before been at Disney’s Animal Kingdom and the experiences were both on the upside of quality. Then over that weekend and all through the following week we spent a lot of time at Liberty Center and I just have to say I am happy to have it in my town. Its really nice to have something like that in a region where tourism isn’t the primary hook, but business is. I use Liberty Center for those very important dinners all the time, but over the holidays I had to remind myself that I wasn’t still in the euphoria of Disney World, but was in Liberty Township, Ohio.

Now after several years of operating I can say with full confidence that going to a movie at Cinebistro is still the best way to go to the theater in the city of Cincinnati, or the surrounding area for hundreds of miles. It always has an uptown feel without the problems of going to such places, like New York, or Chicago. The parking is free, and easy. The streets are clean and well lit. The food is the top of the charts, but that movie theater is the best. Clearly the best in the city. I really like going there and being spoiled by the staff. I have become used to that treatment and really appreciate it. While watching the latest Star Wars film there, and the latest Clint Eastwood film ‘Richard Jewell’ it had the same feel of being on vacation at Disney Springs, only it was only less than a ten minute drive from my home and that is a treasure I do not take for granted.
There was a lot of news in November of 2019 where Liberty Center put a third party commercial real estate firm to handle the leasing, property management and marketing called Bayer Properties out of Birmingham, Alabama. This is the third chance since the Steiner group turned over their control to JLL. Hey, it’s a tough gig in a recovering economy where brick and mortars are struggling to find their voice. I spent some time walking around and looking at everything at Liberty Center and I consider it a great success story, but without question they are eager to fill up some of their empty lots with vigorous new business and for many of those businesses it’s a tough investment. But after several years of working it out, Liberty Center still has the feel of a destination market, a place that would be worthy to fly into town just to visit and stay at the Marriott that is on property.

However, there are things that could be done to improve the lure for new businesses to invest in the area, and to fill their office and condominium spacing that is available. I don’t think enough people still understand that there is a full mall on site that is part of the shopping and dining experience. Those problems could be overcome with just a few simple steps. Disney Springs looks like they are turning away leases, there are no empty spots for them anywhere. But then again, the big amusement parks are just a few blocks away. But that should not restrict Liberty Center from providing an equal value and create so much commercial value that they are turning away potential business plans instead of taking all comers. That is a problem that Cincinnati Mills choked on in Forest Park, and that same fate for Liberty Center can easily be avoided. The trick is that there should be more things to do at Liberty Center than just shop and eat, such as the big hot air balloon that they have at Disney Springs that is free advertising for many miles in every direction that something interesting is going on at that shopping complex. Liberty Center could use a bit more fun. It’s a shame they don’t have their own version of Main Event or Top Golf on the property to make a night out something that really is an all-encompassing experience. Disney Springs has a lot to do besides eating, drinking and shopping, and it should be doing it more than it is. That would help fill up some of those empty lots with vibrant businesses.

But more than anything everything needs to work that was put in, like the little pond in front of the wellness center on the top floor of the center of the complex. Loose bricks and poor landscaping should not be surrendered to because its hard to hire a staff motivated enough to keep up with everything. Disney management keeps their empire motivated with policy that their workers adhere to and it matters. I was very impressed with the workers at Cinebistro at Liberty Center because they had managed over time to retain that high level of quality and customer service. I always stay for the end of the credits and one of the attendants brought me a mint just for a touch of class. If the whole complex down to the custodians felt that way about the entire complex, that would go a long way to improving the charisma of the place. It’s a subtle thing, but one of the most important and is often the difference between a vacation like Disney and every place else, especially Vegas and New York. Those places its easy to see the dirt if you look a little closely. At any Disney complex, the dirt is well hidden from view and the workers are in on the illusion, which is what people are willing to pay for. Yet, Liberty Center is already mostly there, it wouldn’t take much. And for this new management group, I am firmly rooting in their corner for great success!

Rich Hoffman

Great New Businesses in the Liberty Center Area: The wonders of capitalism in Butler County, Ohio

I continue to enjoy the Liberty Center shopping complex a year after it opened intensely.  It has been great for business, and wonderful for personal recreation.  Recently my wife and I saw Hacksaw Ridge at Cinebistro at Liberty Center which was fabulous.  The movie was great and it was wonderful to see Mel Gibson directing movies again.  Hollywood is a lot better off with Mel Gibson in it—unquestionably.  But the experience at Cinebistro is just fabulous and continues to be something I always look forward to.  If you are going to see a movie in the Cincinnati area—there isn’t anywhere better than at Cinebistro at Liberty Center.  Just a marvelous experience.  I enjoy it so much that I’d recommend coming from out-of-town to engage in the experience.

However, after a year and in speaking with a variety of vendors around the complex it appears that the public hasn’t quite figured out just how cool the Liberty Center experience is.  Most obvious is a few new places that opened recently, Go! Calenders, Games and Toys which is located near the food court on the second story of the internal mall area and Degs Flame Grilled Chicken which is adjacent to the food court near Dillards.  I think both places add needed diversity but the drawback is that people haven’t figured out that there is whole interior portion of the shopping complex.  A similar development up the highway in Dayton, The Greene Town Center is entirely an outside shopping experience, which most of Liberty Center is.  But unlike The Greene, the interior portion of the development offers a typical mall experience to accentuate the outdoor offerings.  So for a destination entertainment complex with dining and shopping as the primary drivers of interest—Liberty Center really offers diversity from one end to the other.

Just yesterday my daughter and I had dinner at BD’s Mongolian Grille across from the Rave Movie Theaters at The Greene Town Center and it was all very nice.  But Liberty Center is much better because the movie theater of Cinebistro is clearly superior to any other cinema chain.  Around that theater are four really good dining experiences, the Kona Grill, Cantina Laredo, The Rusty Bucket and Cooper’s Hawk—which is very classy and right next to the Cinebistro.   And honestly, I love the food at Cinebistro as a dining experience by itself so if you like dinner and a movie like I do, Liberty Center is just a dream.  But the indoor part of the complex at the other end combines a traditional mall experience to all the other dynamism.

So when visiting Liberty Center remember that there is an inside portion to the complex, and you should visit it.  The more foot traffic that moves into that part of the development the more businesses like Go! Toys will move in.  And that is a good thing which makes a great place ever better.   My personal aim for Liberty Center is for a bookstore to move in, which is a tall order given that Amazon makes brick and mortar stores difficult to operate.  But the one at The Green was doing very well on a Saturday afternoon giving needed intellectual presence which is missing at Liberty Center.  That could change if we support the little businesses with big dreams in a wonderful place called Liberty Center.

In addition, across the street from Liberty Center are several new restaurants that are quite good.  One is Freddey’s which is like a supped up Steak and Shake.  They have great food!  Great burgers and shakes.  They are in the parking lot of Cabela’s and at the entrance to the Wetherington residential area—which lucky for the kids living there have access to such a wonderful place.   It is just another development addition to an area that is booming with wonderful capitalist endeavor.  And that is always a good thing.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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Cinebistro at Liberty Center: How it works and why you should go

imageThere isn’t even a close second in my opinion; my first movie experience at Liberty Center’s Cinebistro was the best I’ve ever had in my long movie going history. It was fabulous on all fronts. Couple that experience with the opening of one of the most wonderful James Bond intros—a several minute tracking shot from what had to be a really sophisticated drone camera system involving thousands of extras in and out-of-doors in one take and I have to thank the filmmakers and Cinebistro for the most memorable theater experience that I’ve ever had 47 years. I’ve written on these pages before of my love of the Newport on the Levee theaters by AMC. I’ve went on about the Regal in Mason. I’ve described the IMAX screen at Springdale as the best in the city of Cincinnati.   I enjoy little things from all those places, so I was eager to see just how good the Cobb group was in putting together a theater experience in my hometown, and I can only say it was a stunning example of everything I’ve ever dreamed of regarding a journey out to the movies—which is a favorite pastime of mine. So that you dear reader can experience it for yourself let me describe how it works coupled with a bit of background for context.

I have lived in the area of Liberty Township most of my life. I’ve traveled and lived in other places, but I stayed in Liberty Township because I consider it one of the best locations in the United States. I get involved in the politics of the area to some extent to protect my investment both fiscally, and philosophically. Forty years ago when I was a kid in the area the best place to see a movie was the Showcase Cinemas in Springdale. I considered it a luxury experience to go to the Dayton Mall which had a movie theater inside the mall. I also years later thought it was a luxury to see a movie inside the Kenwood Mall. Going to the movies was always and continues to be an exciting thing to do in my life. I enjoy it most of the time. Around the country there is a really nice movie theater I like at Cocoa Beach inside the mall there. One of the neatest that I’ve seen was at the Americana complex in Glendale, California which caters to the wealthy in and around the television industry which shoots a lot of footage nearby on a daily basis. It is not uncommon to see movie stars and television stars seeking downtime at the Americana, it’s where they go to get away from the public and the movie theater is naturally nice. Another great movie theater is the one at Universal Studios in Florida at the City Walk. So it is within the context of those exotic destinations that I can say that Liberty Center and the Cinebistro within it are among the best that I have ever seen—anywhere. I could go so far to say that Cinebistro is the best movie theater currently in the state of Ohio—and yes that includes theaters in Columbus and Cleveland. It was the best—here’s why, and how it works.image

Cinebistro is actually a separate theater experience from the Cobb Luxury theaters. It has its own little section off to the left of the main entrance at the top of the escalator. Tickets for both theaters are bought in the downstairs, street level ticket booth. Simply take the escalator up into the main auditorium and the Luxury theaters are off to the right with the Cinebistro off to the left. Ahead is Cobbster’s kitchen which services the Luxury theaters. Behind, to the right is the bar and restaurant which by itself is a great experience. It has a fantastic view up the street into the heart of Liberty Center from a nice balcony that protrudes off the building. It’s all very dramatic and wonderful. But things really get cool when you step into the doors to the Cinebistro. The tickets themselves look like they are for a high-class affair; they are not your normal movie ticket. When they are purchased downstairs you pick your seats for the presentation. So when you step into the doors of Cinebistro you are good to go. You should arrive about 45 minutes before your feature, but 30 minutes are recommended. At 30 minutes until the feature they call your showing and you proceed inside just as you would a normal theater, only an usher will take you to your seat the way a hostess would at a restaurant complete with a full menu of their offerings.

The reason you should arrive an additional 15 minutes to the recommended 30 minutes early is so that you can relax in their lounge which is very nice and has also its own balcony overlooking the square outside. At the bar a striking young woman was very knowledgeable about drinks and provided an assortment of exotic beers, wines and just about every other drink on the market. I brought along some of my family so we had a group of four and relaxed for a moment with some drinks. I listened to the bartender take additional orders from other customers and her manner was what you would expect at the bar of a very nice hotel. She was very professional and competent speaking without any slang—fully prepared to deal with people who are used to speaking with proper grammar and complete sentences. She and I spoke a bit about a suggestion she had on that cold November night in Ohio for a fire pit outside on the balcony for her guests to warm up next to, similar to what the Kona Grill had across the square in full few of the bar. The view was quite nice outside the windows and I couldn’t help but think of some prime location in a downtown area anywhere in the country. I actually forgot that I was in my hometown—because it felt like being on vacation someplace very expensive.

The prices however weren’t that expensive. The ticket prices for a primetime film were around $14.50 and the beers and martinis weren’t all that expensive, reasonably priced in fact. The balcony was very inviting so we spent some time there sipping drinks and looking down the street toward the other end of Liberty Center where they were assembling a Christmas Tree for their Holiday exhibit. It was very comfortable and premier. The entire staff obviously received the memo that guests were to be treated with great attention because it wasn’t just that bartender who behaved with a level of competency. When our movie was called the people working the information desk, the ticket taker, our usher, our server, and the runners were all very respectful, which was refreshing for a change. You have to be over 21 to even go to the Cinebistro so you can forget about kids of any kind. They aren’t even admitted. That might be rough if you have a family with young kids, but for them, the other theater is the best option. Cinebistro is off limits—its adults only. The biggest downside to other regional movie theaters is the kids and teenagers. Nobody wants to around a bunch of teenage kids in a movie theater, especially on a Friday and Saturday night. They are loud, they are always on their cell phones, and they are entitled. At Cinebistro, you don’t have to worry about them in any way. That was wonderful.image

When you step into the theater it’s like stepping into another world. The theaters really look like the screen rooms of a Hollywood studio. They are extremely well done and the seats are known for their comfort. I’ve personally only sat in a seat that comfortable at Brookstone or in a private home theater done with extreme luxury in mind. The Cinebistro theaters are a bit smaller than average not built to pack as many people in a theater as possible, but to make those people as comfortable as they can, even down to tiny details like pairing them up couple specific. For instance my daughter and her husband couldn’t see my face, only my wife could because the seats were arranged in a way to provide a zone of privacy for couples. That really impressed me.image

Just like in a restaurant a server comes to your seat to take your order after you’ve had a few minutes to look over the menu. That’s when you notice how much space there is between rows. The seats are arranged in a way that allow for the waitress to walk down the aisle even if the seat’s footrest is fully extended into the reclined position. If you wanted you could recline the seats back enough to sleep in. But the distance between rows of seats is more than enough for servers to attend you without having difficulty. It was a surprising distance that I’ve never seen in any movie theater, even private ones. Your server takes your order during that 30 minute seating period. The objective for them is to get all the orders into the kitchen so that the food can be delivered to a table which folds out over your seat by the time the previews start. Preview times are set at 18 minutes. The runners bring your food from the kitchen to your seat during this time. They do not want to be standing in your way when the movie starts, that is why they need to get your order as soon as possible once you sit down. It takes just a bit of planning on your part, but it is well worth it.

Gone from the Cinebistro are those stupid ads that show on the screen before a movie’s previews begin—while people are sitting. Cinebistro is like watching on the screen a fine novel as opposed to the classifieds in a newspaper. Both actions fall under the heading of “reading” but one is certainly better than the other. At Cinebistro during our film they were showing IMAX images of nature films that are available on DVD. But there was no narration, only nice sound effects of nature elements and some mild music that played continuously during the entire 30 minutes of seating, ordering, and awaiting for its arrival. When the previews began, the food started to come out. I was in the mood for a hamburger so I tried their Bistro Burger, which was very fresh and along the lines of something from the Rusty Bucket or Red Robin.     imageThey advertise that everything is made fresh each day, and from my perspective it was. My wife had the veggie burger. My daughter had a more refined taste as she had the Shrimp Mac and Cheese which was really a nice looking dish for $17. My son-in-law had the Smoked Pork Chop at $20.50. It looked like it came from Jags—which in Cincinnati is one of the premier steak houses in the Tri State. That impressed me. He ordered another martini, and my wife a beer. I had a Coke so we had a nice sampling of all their various food options at degrees of etiquette and all were quite immaculate. If I was impressed with everything up to that point, which I was, the food really put it over the top. It actually far exceeded my expectations. I assumed it would be a bit gimmicky, but it was genuinely extremely good.

Thank goodness the movie itself was really good as well, because it just put a period at the end of that sentence for the night. The sound system was fabulous. The visual quality of the picture was what you’d expect from a high-end place—everything was top shelf—which I’m finding is a theme at Liberty Center. I’m sure there are issues somewhere with all the new establishments coming on-line with all the new hires, but so far my experiences have been wonderful. I have been very happy with the Rodizio at the other end of Liberty Center—they are an extremely good dining option. Of course I had high hopes for the Cinebistro so it is not often when reality actually exceeds high hopes, but they did in this case. By the time the James Bond movie was over and we all looked at each other after the movie, we realized that it was the best film going experience we had ever had—which is saying a lot. We’ve had some good times at movies, but never anything like what we had at the Cinebistro.image

On the way out the staff was as friendly as they were on the way in. All in all, we spent $207 on four people for a prime time first run movie and a really good meal.  The tip is set at 17% and is added to your bill automatically. So you don’t have to worry about leaving one at the end of the film.  We could have spent a lot more, and we could have spent less, especially if we hadn’t had any alcohol. You don’t have to get food, but it’s almost impossible not to because the atmosphere begs for it. So I thought of it as a bargain. The couple next to my wife and I ordered a bottle of wine halfway through the film. If you want something refreshed once the movie starts there is a concession area right outside the theater that you can go to for additional items. They do that so servers don’t bother you while watching the movie. The serving team every 30 minutes travels from theater to theater which is why they have their movies timed the way they do. It’s a very slick operation. But if you want more, they have those options too. Next to us the couple sipped on wine after their dinner and were enjoying themselves quite a lot. It was a bizarre experience to me. I had to remind myself that in my wildest dreams when I was a kid that something as nice as the Cinebistro would be built on ground I used to play on. Back then all the nice, fancy stuff was downtown in Cincinnati or Dayton. Most of the time it was out-of-state. Now Liberty Township was an instant tourist destination which was fine with me. It still has many of the things I have always loved about it. But now it has some things that I used to only get while traveling to far away places. After the Cinebistro experience it became clear to me that now people would be coming from thousands of miles away to come here—and that gave me a bit of pride in my hometown that is always under the surface, but was easier for me to access.

On the way out I spoke to the bartender again and we talked about her idea for the fire pits. She was right, that was the only thing that could really improve Cinebistro. From down below on the street it would look like a temple of exotic paradise. Above it would provide warmth to romantic couples waiting for their movie while having a nice drink and enjoying the weather no matter how cold it was. It’s really the only thing that could be done to improve the place. Because otherwise, it was exquisite, extremely memorable, and much more affordable than you’d think. I’m already looking for a good excuse to see another movie just to experience the whole thing again. My only hesitation was that Spectre was so good that another movie might take away from my memory too soon.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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