Queen City Square Welcomes 3 New Retail Tenants

By Adrian Maties, Associate Editor:

The Great American Tower at Queen City Square will soon welcome three new tenants:PNC Bank, Coffee Emporium and Simply Grand have signed long-term leases. They are scheduled to open during the first quarter of 2012.

Although the tower’s office space is more than 90 percent leased, the recent deals mark its first retail tenants. PNC Bank will occupy a prime retail space in the tower’s promenade, inside the entry rotunda at the corner of Fourth and Sycamore streets. Coffee Emporium, which already operates a shop in the lobby of 303 Broadway at Queen City Square, will lease space next door.

Owned by Shaheen Kazemi, the operator of the successful Burrito Joe’s on Fourth Street, the Simply Grand will open an 80-seat sandwich, salad and soup restaurant by spring 2012. It will be located at the corner of Third and Sycamore, with entrances from both Third Street and the Queen City Square lobby. Simply Grand will offer breakfast and lunch menus as well as carry-out meals.

Another 14,000 square feet of retail space remains available. Eagle Realty Group, a member of Cincinnati-based Fortune 500 company Western & Southern Financial Group and the tower’s developer, is negotiating with other tenants for the remaining retail space: 7,500 square feet of space overlooking Third Street and 4,400 square feet of space located on Fourth Street at the front of the new tower.

Queen City Square is a $400 million development of Eagle Realty Group. Co-sponsored by the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority and the city of Cincinnati, the Great American Tower is a 41-story state-of-the-art office tower, Cincinnati’s largest.  It is the second phase of an office, parking and retail complex and the first “green” building in Cincinnati’s central business district. The project has three major components: a 1,600-car parking garage on 11 levels; an 800,000-square-foot, 33-level office tower above a portion of the garage; and a public pedestrian/walking area with retail space. Tenants include Great American Insurance Co., Great American Financial Resources, Frost Brown Todd, JPMorgan, Key Bank, Fort Washington Investment Advisors Inc. and Analytic Partners.