A legal fight over how much Cincinnati's vacant Terrace Plaza Hotel is actually worth has landed in the Hamilton County Appellate Court, and the outcome could determine whether the downtown landmark gets a long-promised second life or stays frozen in limbo. Developer Tony Birkla argues the tower is essentially worthless, while county officials have assessed it in the millions, a gap that now threatens to upend financing for a proposed redevelopment that could run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Cincinnati Development III LLC, the entity managing the project for Carmel, Indiana-based Birkla Investment Group, appealed after Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Melba Marsh adopted a magistrate's decision valuing the property at $7.7 million, according to the Cincinnati Business Courier. That figure is actually a reduction from the $8.2 million originally set by the county board of revision, but Birkla's legal team says it is still wildly out of step with the building's real condition.
In court filings, Birkla and his attorneys contend the Terrace Plaza is worth just $1, pointing to severe mold, asbestos, and structural degradation that they say will require more than $13 million in environmental remediation. The same Business Courier report notes the developer's valuation is disputed by Cincinnati Public Schools and county officials. The valuation lawsuit has become a key issue for the proposed redevelopment.
A $101 Million Vision for a Historic Shell
Birkla Investment Group's proposal would transform the building into 180 apartment units, 15,000 square feet of retail space, and 30,000 square feet of restaurant space, along with a 500-space indoor parking garage tucked into the lower floors, per earlier reporting from the Business Courier. The building's lower floors would house the proposed parking garage. The project has been pegged at $101 million, according to the Business Courier's October 2026 report.
Completed in 1948, the Terrace Plaza Hotel was designed by a young Natalie de Blois at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, according to Cincinnati CityBeat.
A Landmark Facing Mounting Decay
The Terrace Plaza was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2017 and landed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's list of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in 2020, CityBeat reported.
Years of Legal Gridlock Before Current Ownership
An affiliate of Birkla Investment Group bought the downtown tower for $10 million in September 2022, following years of foreclosure proceedings, receivership management, and bankruptcy disputes between former out-of-state owners, according to CityBeat. Those disputes left the building deteriorating.
Those years of neglect carried real public safety consequences. In March 2019, the City of Cincinnati filed a public nuisance lawsuit against the hotel's previous owners after code violations piled up and a piece of exterior masonry fell onto West Sixth Street, striking a moving vehicle in late 2018, the Business Courier reported. City officials had levied more than 175 civil citations against the property before it was eventually sold.
Funding Setbacks and a Landmark Decision
Money troubles have dogged the project even outside the courtroom. Birkla Investment Group applied for $8 million from Ohio's Transformational Mixed-Use Development tax credit program in late 2024 to help cover project costs, but the Business Courier reported the application was not selected for funding in that round, leaving the developer to look elsewhere for financing even before the tax valuation dispute escalated.
Cincinnati City Council also denied the Terrace Plaza local historic landmark status in May 2022, following a rejection from the City Planning Commission, according to WVXU. Birkla had warned that local landmark restrictions, which would have limited facade and structural alterations, would force him to abandon the project altogether — a warning city leaders ultimately heeded in clearing the way for his redevelopment plans.
With the tax appeal now before the Hamilton County Appellate Court, the fate of the city's only International Style hotel hinges on a question that has dogged it for years: what is a historic, decaying, architecturally significant building actually worth, and who gets to decide.
