Mayor Mallory cautiously enters West End debate

On the last day of the mayoral campaign, West End resident Chris McCarty confronted then-candidate Mark Mallory at a West End gas station about the proposed City Link social services mall.

Mallory referred McCarty to the president of the West End Community Council -- brother Dale Mallory -- who, as it happened, was just pulling into the gas station himself. As Mark greeted voters and chatted up reporters, Dale had his hands full fending off a growing number of vocal West End residents bending his ear by the gas pump.

As Mayor, Mark Mallory has continued to demur on the debate, calling it "a neighborhood issue." In an interview last week, the mayor declined to take a position on the specific City Link proposal -- but called for tolerance and compassion in dealing with the city's most needy citizens.

"Are we going to have a cast-off society?" Mallory said.

"I talked in my inaugural address about the beginnings of the Society of the Cincinnati. That group's whole mission was to care for each other's families -- this brotherhood among comrades. We have to get back to that responsibility to create a brotherhood, where we look out and care for each other as a community. I want people to think of these concepts when we're dealing with issues like this one. ... We need to have a real open and honest discussion about people who need the services City Link is providing, and how we can provide them."

The stir over City Link is the latest chapter in a decades-old debate. The late social activists Buddy Gray and Maurice McCrackin long argued that Over-the-Rhine and the West End should be a haven of affordable housing, where the poor can have easy access to the services they need.

But others -- including Mallory's own vice mayor -- have argued that social services should be moved to a "non-neighborhood" like Queensgate. Chaterite Councilman Jim Tarbell, a long-time proponent of Over-the-Rhine redevelopment, said moving the over-concentration of social services out of neighborhoods where people live would help property values, encourage development, and ultimately lead to the jobs that can support those needy residents.

Mallory said he's not yet sure how to resolve those conflicts.

"That's a good question. I don't know that I have an answer to that," he said, suddenly becoming contemplative. "Wow. I don't know what kind of mayor I'm going to be. I really want us to be different in the way we approach those issues."

"There's something to be said for having City Link in an area where there's no one else," he said. "Does it make sense to put a City Link project in no-man's land, where people don't have the chance to make contact with people who can help them, who can mentor them, who can provide role models for young people?"

"The question is, finding that balance," he said.

An anti-City Link sign appears in the window of the Rev. Gerald Bates's home in the Dayton Street Historic District. (Photo by Meggan Booker/The Cincinnati Enquirer)