Sometimes The Bad Guys Win, Too

Cincinnati is a mostly a good city and I've come to learn to like it, if not love the city and the people who live in and around it.  But don't forget for a second that the Queen City is home to a number of huge corporations who don't give a damn about the people other than lip service:  Proctor & Gamble, Great American Insurance, Fifth Third Bank, Kroger, and in the latest example of stunning greed, Western and Southern Insurance Group.

The Anna Louise has been housing women since 1909 in the same charming, dormitory-style building that looks like a plantation home. Although it began by helping young, ambitious types who were pouring into then-booming Cincinnati, it later became geared toward women who needed a fresh start; some have left abusive husbands, others are transitioning from foster care to adulthood while others are recovering prostitutes and drug addicts.

The historic downtown Cincinnati neighborhood where the women live, known as Lytle Park, became an important part of their recovery, since most were coming from dangerous parts of the city where it'd be easier to slip back into their former ways of life.

Western & Southern executives, whose headquarters sit across a park from the Anna Louise, offered to buy the Anna Louise for $1.8 million several years ago, less than half its value. The Anna Louise declined and won $12.6 million in federal and state tax credits to renovate the home, where some rooms are smaller than 100 square feet and all the women have to share bathrooms and one kitchen.

Days before the renovation was to begin, Western & Southern sued over a zoning issue and a judge ordered an immediate construction halt until the legal fight was resolved. The Anna Louise and its supporters didn't back down, vowing to fight Western & Southern with everything they had — until last week when they inked a deal with the company to sell the home for $4 million.

Leaders at Cincinnati Union Bethel, the nonprofit that runs the Anna Louise, said they sold reluctantly because they couldn't afford to fight any longer.

So a women's shelter standing for over a century will be obliterated because they were lowering the property value, so W&S threw their considerable weight around in the city until they could force a sale.  They'll make they money back on yet another overpriced gentrified hotel downtown that they'll own.  No doubt the employees there won't have a union, won't be paid very well, and will "be lucky to even have" the jobs this will create.

Company CEO John Barrett has long said it was time for the women at the Anna Louise to leave the neighborhood to make way for economic development. He plans to turn the building into a boutique hotel and envisions transforming the neighborhood into a hub of activity with restaurants and bars.

"This truly is a win for everyone and will make Lytle Park a destination like no other," Barrett said in a Monday news release announcing the Anna Louise sale.

Barrett, who has repeatedly declined requests for an interview, has become a loathed figure at the Anna Louise, not only for his tireless efforts to acquire the property but also for the way he has talked about the women living there, repeatedly referring to them as recovering prostitutes and saying they just don't belong in the neighborhood.

As far as where the women will go?  Well, who cares?  It's not W&S's problem anymore.   Maybe Cincinnati will do something about it after some national shaming...but I doubt it.