Urban Sites Doubles Down on Covington With Planned Office Building

Urban Sites doubles down on Covington with planned office building: SLIDESHOW bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2022/03/30/urban-sites-plans-office-building.html

By Tom Demeropolis – Senior staff reporter, Cincinnati Business Courier 6 hours ago Urban Sites, which is already investing in Covington with the more than $31 million transformation of the former Kenton County Administration Building at 303 Court St. into apartments, is looking to boost its activity in the neighborhood with a potential office building.

Urban Sites is working on plans to bring an office building with ground-floor retail space to the parking lot at the northwest corner of Greenup and East Fourth streets. The development, known as Greenup Street offices at this time, could provide just under 50,000 square feet of office space, as well as a 5,000-square-foot retail space and some on-site parking, as it is designed today.

Danny Lipson, chief development officer with Over-the-Rhine-based Urban Sites, said this site provides an opportunity for a credit-worthy build-to-suit office tenant to move its headquarters to the Roebling Point neighborhood in Covington.

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“It is always our goal to grow neighborhoods, with the help of our partners,” Lipson told me.

Depending on the size and type of office space built there, this project could be an investment of $15 million to $20 million.

Depending on what an end user would want to build on the site, Urban Sites and its partners would have to go through the typical development process working with the city of Covington. Urban Sites is working with Travis Likes, first vice president with CBRE, to market the project to end users. At this point, Urban Sites is not planning to build a speculative office building, meaning an office with no tenants signed before construction begins.

Lipson said Kenton County moving its operations to the former Bavarian Brewing Co. building at 1200 Jillian’s Way in Covington helped start redevelopment in this portion of Covington.

“It would not have been possible if not for the county’s decision to move their headquarters, and the city and county’s help in moving the development of the Hayden forward,” he said.

The Hayden, the name of the 133-unit apartment building Urban Sites and its partner Al Neyer are building in the former Kenton County Administration Building, is progressing well.

The building’s new windows are starting this week.

The Greenup Street Office development would be located catty-corner to the Hayden and across the street from Molly Malone’s Irish Pub & Restaurant. An office building there would have views of downtown Cincinnati and be walkable in and around Covington.

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