Four buildings near the Interstate 71 and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive interchange in Uptown Cincinnati are set to come down under a $3.1 million demolition plan from the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority, including a building at 3030 Vernon Place in Avondale. The work targets the southwest quadrant of MLK Drive and Reading Road, an area officials have been quietly assembling for years in hopes of landing major research and biotech tenants.
According to the Cincinnati Business Courier, the Port plans to demolish four buildings along Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, with the Vernon Place property among the structures slated for removal. Melissa Johnson, the Port's senior vice president for real estate strategy, said the project needs pad-ready sites to attract companies, talent and investment, per the same report.
The demolition funding comes from two state sources: JobsOhio's Site Inventory Program and the Ohio Department of Development's Building Demolition and Site Revitalization Program, the outlet's report notes. JobsOhio created its Site Inventory Program, known as OSIP, in 2020 specifically to offer grants and low-interest loans for speculative site preparation and demolition projects that don't require a pre-committed end user, according to REDI Cincinnati. The state's separate demolition program provides grants to help local lead entities raze blighted commercial and residential structures, per the Ohio Department of Development.
Building on Years of Site Assembly
The Business Courier's report frames the new demolitions as building on the Port's existing work in Uptown, part of a broader effort creating new opportunities for business, research and development in the area. That framing tracks with the site's history: the nonprofit Uptown Consortium already cleared a former Marathon gas station and the Dual Manor Health Care Center in the same southwest quadrant between October and December 2022, according to Uptown Consortium.
That earlier clearance was handled by minority-owned demolition contractor Battle Axe Construction, per Uptown Consortium's account. The quadrant became a viable target for this kind of high-density redevelopment only after the $80 million I-71 and MLK Drive interchange fully opened in August 2017, improving connectivity in the area, according to Uptown Consortium's 2018 project update.
A Biotech Vision Still Waiting on Land
The clearest indication of what this pad-ready land could become is a proposal from minority-owned development team Queen City Hills, which pitched a $250 million life science research park dubbed “Biotech Cincinnati” in 2023 for 5.85 acres in the southwest quadrant. The plan, detailed by the Digital Futures Complex, targets 350,000 square feet of lab space and up to 400 residential units, designed to anchor biomedical gene therapy research in Uptown.
That vision would sit just south of an anchor already up and running. The $200 million Digital Futures Complex, whose centerpiece University of Cincinnati research facility officially opened in September 2022, is planned as a two-million-square-foot mixed-use development where more than 7,500 people could work, visit and live, per Uptown Consortium.
Transit and Trail Investments Converge on the Corridor
The demolition zone is also being woven into regional transit and trail plans. The Port Authority's parcels along Reading Road sit directly on one of Metro's two planned Bus Rapid Transit corridors, which is planned to provide frequent service, according to Metro.
Cincinnati also secured a $4.1 million federal grant in 2026 to complete Phase 7 of the Wasson Way trail, which will connect multi-use bike and pedestrian paths directly to the MLK Drive and Reading Road intersection by 2027, according to a Business Courier report. The extension will add to Wasson Way's multi-use bike and pedestrian paths.
Part of a Broader Port Strategy
The Uptown demolitions are intended to convert underused real estate into development-ready pads. Other local redevelopment efforts provide context for the project.
Not every Port-backed site has landed a tenant. Hoodline reported in May that Givaudan walked away from a $215 million Reading factory deal despite years of Port site preparation and brownfield remediation along that same corridor, leaving jobs in limbo. Whether the newly cleared Uptown parcels attract a similar anchor tenant, or another life-science proposal like Queen City Hills' Biotech Cincinnati plan, remains to be seen as demolition moves forward.
