The bar and comedy venue is shutting its doors after seven years due to the changing neighborhood

By Clare McKinley, Staff Writer

The Hub OTR, a bar and comedy venue located in Over-the-Rhine (OTR), is closing its doors after seven years, but not for a lack of business.

Lindsey Swadner, The Hub OTR’s owner, announced on social media that the bar would be closing because she thinks her time in OTR has run its course.

“I know this will come as a shock for some- but we’re not moving next door,” Swadner posted on her Instagram page, @thehubotr. “I have signed off to sell the space with the intention of it being placed in the hands of someone who plans to use it to its fullest extent, who will inhabit the space with the same dreams and energy I had when I first opened years ago.”

As Cincinnati has evolved, OTR has changed drastically. Over the past 20 years, OTR has experienced gentrification as businesses along the neighborhood’s Main Street have changed.

After plans to move the bar to a location previously occupied by St. John 3:16 Baptist Church fell through, Swadner decided to leave OTR for good.

“At some point, I came to terms that I am genuinely unhappy here. When cities evolve, it sometimes leaves us navigating the change in community and we lose the root cause of why we are here in the first place…I just have to be realistic that there’s other places out there in the world that I’m happier in and serve my interests and passions at this point,” she wrote.

Since its opening in 2017, The Hub OTR has booked more than 200 shows and hosted more than seven years of open mic comedy and live music. Swadner and her restaurant have engaged with the OTR community through mud wrestling and by hosting benefits for causes she cares about, such as providing mental health services for OTR’s service industry employees after a mass shooting that injured nine people near her bar.

“Thank you, for the best years of my life so far on a street I’ve called home for over a decade, and I hope to see y’all around in the time we have left,” Swadner said in her farewell post. 

Swadner said she will be putting the space on the market soon and will select a buyer who believes in the community and surrounding businesses.

In order to travel light on her journey out of Cincinnati, Swadner will be hosting a yard sale from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Sunday, April 28, where everything must go. Items up for grabs are her wares, haunted objects, taxidermy and other collectibles.

The bar’s final day of business will be April 30, 2024.