A giant ferris wheel on the Newport riverfront is moving forward and a massive mixed-use development may soon be on the way to the parking lot near the World Peace Bell.

New details emerged during Wednesday's "state of the city" presentation by City Manager Tom Fromme to the Newport Business Association. Over lunch at the Syndicate, Fromme said that he hopes the Peace Bell lot has a specific project in place within six months.

"I can't wait for Wayne Carlisle to get back into town because we're going to sit down with him," Fromme said of the property's owner, a prominent Northern Kentucky developer. The ideal project would include Class A office space, retail, and "moderately-priced" condos, Fromme said.

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The city manager told The River City News after Wednesday's luncheon that there have been meetings with potential developers for Carlisle's property. "We are collecting all the information and doing a cost analysis to see where we're at," Fromme said.

One certainty is that the site would include underground parking, something that Carlisle is committed to, according to Fromme. 200 parking spaces were lost when the new Monmouth Row apartment community was built downtown, and another 90 will be taken when the 4th Street school site is developed in the coming months.

Wednesday's presentation offered highlights of the many positive developments taking place in the city, from large-scale projects like Aqua on the Levee - which will add more apartments and a new hotel to the city's riverfront - and the soon-to-open Hampton Inn that took the place of the troubled Travelodge, to smaller projects like new pavers on Monmouth Street.

But what would better connect the energy of Newport's riverfront to its historic business district down Monmouth and neighboring streets, is a signature gateway project like what is proposed at the Peace Bell lot.

Six months, though, would be an ambitious timeline, said Jack Moreland, president of Southbank Partners, the organization that advocates on behalf of Northern Kentucky's River Cities, and which operates in the building connected to the Peace Bell. "We've talked with six different developers and have had several conversations. We're in the give and take stage now," Moreland said. "There is a lot of interest in it. It is as premier a lot as there is in the Newport area."

Many bus routes and vehicles pass the site daily, and it would be a stone's throw from Newport on the Levee and the historic core - where new retail, restaurant, and entertainment activity is emerging, and where the City of Newport just paid off its own mortgage on the city building. "It's the gateway to Monmouth from the Levee," Moreland said. "There's a gap there of about a block that if we could that filled up, it would send people up the street."

Southbank also hopes to keep people coming back to the Levee, and the organization has been heavily involved in the development of the Skywheel, a massive leisure ferris wheel that would offer unmatched views of the Cincinnati skyline and Northern Kentucky. A barrage of reports from Cincinnati-based media outlets recently indicated that the project was in danger because of the Army Corps of Engineers said the current plan poses a risk.

That's not unusual, Moreland said. "This is a critical piece of development in Newport," Moreland said. The Army Corps is evaluating questions, and proponents of the projects are addressing concerns. Fromme said new plans for the project were just submitted on August 19, about ten days after the initial media reports questioning it. "Keep your fingers crossed that this is going to happen," Fromme told the business association. "They are estimating 400,000 riders a year and I think they're being conservative. Hopefully the ripple effect will affect a lot of you in this room."

"It fits perfectly. It's an icon for the city," Moreland said. "We have talked to the (Skywheel) developers in St. Louis and they are as intent as ever in doing the project quickly."

Skywheel could be operational by the spring, Moreland said.

Written by Michael Monks, editor & publisher