LOVELAND, Ohio — Loveland has been awarded $662,000 in federal transportation grant funding to build the second phase of a sidewalk project along East Loveland Avenue, Mayor Kathy Bailey announced this past week.
The money comes from the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments, known as OKI, the federally designated metropolitan planning organization that coordinates and approves transportation funding across the eight-county Cincinnati region. OKI is made up of 117 member governments, businesses and civic groups and has overseen regional transportation planning since it was formed in 1964.
The East Loveland Avenue Sidewalks Phase 2 project will extend new sidewalk east along the road to The Bluff at Bares Creek subdivision, closing a gap in pedestrian access between the subdivision and downtown Loveland. City officials said the project also moves the city closer to connecting that route to the former Grail property, where Clermont County has been working toward a future public park.
The new stretch builds on a first phase of sidewalk work completed in 2024, when the city used state grant funding to install sidewalks on both sides of East Loveland Avenue between roughly 227 and 356 E. Loveland Ave., replace a bridge over Bares Run and make storm sewer and water main improvements along the corridor. That earlier phase closed the road between Third and Fifth streets for about six months and was carried out in partnership with Clermont County and the Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati.
The former Grail property the sidewalk extension is aimed at reaching has been at the center of a yearslong debate over the future of the roughly 315-acre tract, long maintained by the Grail, an international women’s religious community that has held land in Loveland and Miami Township since the early 1940s. A developer’s 2022 proposal to build more than 200 homes on part of the property was rejected by the city after community opposition, and Cardinal Land Conservancy later secured a $4.9 million state Clean Ohio grant to purchase roughly 89 acres of the site for conservation and a planned county park.
Bailey thanked Choice One Engineering, the Loveland-based firm that prepared and submitted the city’s grant application to OKI.
The information contained in this story was obtained from the City of Loveland.