New Hotels in Downtown Cincinnati

Cincinnati, the thriving business center on the Ohio River, is luring visitors with an improved convention center, a couple of new hotels and an upcoming casino—but it suffers from an Incredible Shrinking Airport. The Duke Energy Convention Center in the heart of downtown had a $135 million expansion that gave it 200,000 contiguous square feet of exhibition space, a 40,000-square-foot grand ballroom and 31 breakout rooms, plus a full-service banquet kitchen that can serve 5,000 at once. Marriott recently opened its first hotel in downtown Cincinnati, the 134-unit Residence Inn at the Phelps, at 506 East 4th St. Due this year is the 160-room 21c Museum Hotel, next to the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art and across from the Aronoff Center for the Arts. Meanwhile, a 2013 debut is expected for the Horseshoe Casino Cincinnati, a 354,000-square-foot gaming center. At Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, all five airlines that fly out of Terminal 2 will move into Concourse A of Terminal 3 by mid-2012, sharing that terminal with Delta. Terminal 1 houses only administrative offices, and the airport is studying the prospect of tearing down Terminals 1 and 2 due to a drastic shrinkage of air service: CVG has lost more than two-thirds of its flights since 2003, thanks mainly to a huge downsizing there by Delta.