Cincinnati has landed a $2 million state grant to prepare a long-vacant Bond Hill property for new housing, moving the 17-acre MidPointe Crossing site one step closer to construction after more than a decade of false starts. The site, formerly home to Swifton Commons shopping center, has sat largely undeveloped since it was demolished in 2013.
According to WKRC, the city applied for the funding jointly with The Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority, which owns the MidPointe Crossing property and oversees redevelopment efforts there. The grant comes through Ohio's Residential Economic Development District program, and the money is earmarked for the unglamorous but essential work of getting land ready to build on: site clearing and grading, stormwater infrastructure, and road subbase construction, the station reports.
That infrastructure spending addresses the hurdle that has stalled the property for years. Several private redevelopment plans for the site did not move forward, per the same report, and the new grant funding is meant to cover the preliminary construction needed before any homes can actually rise from the ground.
A State Program Built for Workforce Housing
The REDD grant program that funded the project was established under Ohio Revised Code Section 122.636 to pay for infrastructure supporting workforce housing near major economic development projects, according to state legislative records from the 136th Ohio General Assembly. The Bond Hill award is part of a much larger statewide push: Hoodline previously reported that Governor Mike DeWine's administration distributed $14 million in second-round REDD grants across 10 Ohio counties, funding housing infrastructure in communities including Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Xenia's $140M project.
MidPointe Crossing itself is intended to add workforce housing near major employers, including the relocated Hamilton County administrative offices located in Bond Hill, per WKRC's reporting. Construction costs and a timetable for the project have not yet been announced.
Community Input Steers Toward Homeownership
The Port convened a community advisory group in 2025 to help shape the project, and that process appears to have had a direct hand in the housing mix now planned for the site. As reported by 91.7 WVXU, community input gathered by The Port showed strong local demand for homeownership, which led developers to structure the first phase around detached single-family homes and townhomes rather than rental units.
Multi-family options like duplexes and triplexes have been pushed to future phases, contingent on how the market performs, WVXU notes. Bond Hill and Roselawn are residential neighborhoods where median family incomes remain below city and county medians.
Not everyone in the immediate pipeline is building toward ownership, however. An application narrative submitted to the Ohio Housing Finance Agency in 2025 outlined plans for Seymour Station, a proposed 150-unit affordable multi-family development on a 4.33-acre lot directly adjacent to MidPointe Crossing, underscoring that demand for rental housing along the corridor hasn't disappeared even as Phase 1 leans toward single-family homes.
From Mid-Century Mall to Public Park to Housing Site
The property's history stretches back seven decades. According to the Cincinnati Preservation Association, the site originally opened on October 24, 1956, as Swifton Center, making it Greater Cincinnati's first modern open-air shopping mall. The mall was demolished in 2013.
The Port finalized its purchase of the 25-acre former mall site from the Allen Temple Real Estate Foundation before launching city-requested demolition to address urban blight, 91.7 WVXU reported back in March 2013. After clearing the land, The Port used a separate $500,000 state capital improvement grant awarded in 2014 to build Swift Park on part of the property.
Market research has long pointed to unmet demand in the immediate area.
