Investment in minority-owned business fails to pay off In March 2012, Cincinnati’s city council voted to give $684,000 in grants to help restore space at the Banks (a mixed-use development project on Cincinnati’s riverfront) for a restaurant project called Mahogany’s and to loan an additional $300,000 to the restaurant to buy necessities and begin operations. The stated intention of these actions was to draw an African American-owned business to the city’s rapidly developing Banks project. In August 2013, however, owner Liz Rogers began falling behind on payments to the city, and in March 2014 she began to fall behind on … Continue reading City Council has good intentions, bad judgment