Jason Williams

jwilliams@enquirer.com

The state is spending nearly $1 million for a mediator to try to determine the fate of a major portion of the controversial Eastern Corridor transportation project.

The Ohio Department of Transportation has hired Massachusetts-based Consensus Building Institute for $886,000 to interview residents and leaders of Mariemont and Newtown and others in eastern Hamilton County opposed to the proposed relocation of Ohio 32.

The project is a component of a $1.4 billion, multiphase project that envisions a new highway, rail transit, bike lanes and expanded bus routes to make travel safer and less congested between Downtown and eastern Hamilton and western Clermont counties.

The Eastern Corridor has been on the drawing boards since 2000, but has received almost no funding. Planners have sporadically discussed an east-west highway connection across Hamilton County since the 1960s.

Community leaders say it's ridiculous to spend money on a mediator to get the same answer they've given the state and project proponents for years.

"We don't want it," said Curt Cosby, Newtown's mayor. "We don't need it. The state keeps saying, 'Well, we hear you and we're taking that into account.' But they continue to move forward and spend money. They don't really hear us."

The mediator is scheduled to conclude an initial assessment July 30, and confidential interviews are expected to begin in October. The process is supposed to be done by the end of the year, state officials said.

"We need to have this fully vetted out and all the issues on the table," said Andy Fluegemann, an ODOT planning engineer.

Hamilton County Commissioner and Eastern Corridor backer Todd Portune said the mediation most likely will determine whether to stop or move forward with the relocation of Ohio 32. But the mediator's final assessment will have no impact on other components of the Eastern Corridor.

Portune said discussions between ODOT and the communities over the highway relocation have become "unhinged."

"The public's confidence in ODOT to manage the process around that segment has eroded," Portune said.

Newtown opposes the highway relocation because it could disrupt businesses and houses, potentially eliminating a large chunk of the village's tax base and harming its historical integrity. Mariemont, Newtown's neighbor to the north, has fought the highway proposal because of its potential impact on a park that overlooks the Little Miami River valley.

Last summer, Mariemont landed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's annual list of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places – but ODOT has pushed forward with planning the highway relocation.

A state spokesman said money for the mediation would come out of the project's planning budget.

ODOT has been heavily involved in the project since 2010. The Enquirer has requested an account of how much money the state has spent on the planning of the Eastern Corridor, but that figure was not immediately available.