The owners of 2020 and 2024 Elm Street Cincinnati, Ohio 45202, have pulled a permit on January 29th, 2025  to rehab a vacant building into a liquor and packaged beer and wine store. Do you have any idea what a liquor/package beer and wine store can do to a poor neighborhood? 1. Throughout our city when stores of this kind are present in poor neighborhoods they fuel alcohol sales for the neighborhood and lead to open container consumption, loitering, drug transactions, litter, and disturbances, These stores can be devastating to the quality of life for residents, businesses and visitors.

2. This part of OTR is still blighted and frequented by chronic homeless individuals who are dealing with alcohol and substance addictions and mental health illnesses. Less than 25 yards away in the very same parking lot to the east, is the Volunteer of America, a halfway house where roughly 130 inmates are housed. Many of these inmates are also dealing with drug and alcohol addiction and would pass this proposed liquor/package store on work related releases. 

3.  Seventy-five yards to the west at 2000 Dunlap Street is the proposed site for Gloria's House. Construction for this project has broken ground and it is designed to house 44 chronically homeless individuals who are suffering from mental health issues and addiction to alcohol and drugs.  Placing a liquor store in this environment will cause serious damage to the fabric of this transitional neighborhood and is unacceptable and poses a serious threat to the safety and wellness of the poverty-stricken neighbors and those who are housed in nearby institutions. Are we powerless to allow this type of predatory business in a neighborhood populated by poor people? We urge City Council, City Manager, and Mayor Aftab Pureval to use all of their legal authority to stop the opening of this store.