Great American Ball Park: The Ballpark and the Cincinnati Riverfront

The streetcar is called the Connector. It was the Cincinnati Bell Connector until a 2022 rebrand, when Cincinnati Bell became Altafiber, and it runs a 3.6-mile loop from The Banks, Great American Ball Park, Paycor Stadium and Smale Riverfront Park through Downtown Cincinnati and north to Findlay Market.

The Banks, at 2nd & Main, is the loop's southern terminus and connects to the Riverfront Transit Center; it serves Great American Ball Park, Paycor Stadium, the Freedom Center and the Brady Music Center, and the Connector's own route also lists Heritage Bank Center among the venues it reaches. The 4th & Main station connects to the Government Square transit hub. The streetcar has operated free of charge since November 1, 2020, after Cincinnati city council overrode a mayoral veto to suspend fares permanently.

Great American Ball Park is also served by Metro, Cincinnati's SORTA bus system, by TANK, the Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky, and by the Red Bike bike-share.

On foot from Kentucky, the crossing is the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge, which pedestrians use to reach hotels, bars and restaurants in Northern Kentucky.

On parking, the record gives a count and not a price. The ballpark has 850 parking spaces. MLB.com's own ballpark and transportation subpages returned HTTP 406 to automated fetch and could not be read for a cost, so no rate is published here and no lot is described as an official one.

The Banks is the riverfront development the ballpark sits in, and most of what is around the ballpark is either in it or beside it.

Two museums anchor the immediate blocks. The Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame and Museum opened on September 25, 2004 and sits on Main Street next to the ballpark, with more than 15,000 square feet of exhibit space on two floors: the World Series trophies of 1975, 1976 and 1990, the scorebook from the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, and MVP trophies belonging to Johnny Bench and Joe Morgan. Its exact street number could not be established by this research, so this guide gives the street and stops there. The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, at 50 E. Freedom Way, opened to the public on August 3, 2004, with official ceremonies later that month; it is sited at The Banks in reference to the Ohio River's role as an Underground Railroad crossing point, and its exhibits include the "Suite for Freedom" theater, the "ESCAPE! Freedom Seekers" display, the film "Brothers of the Borderland", the John Parker Library and a quilt titled "Crossing to Freedom".

Smale Riverfront Park runs along the Ohio River between Broadway and Central Avenue: over 40 acres of bike trails, boat docks, a carousel, gardens, grand stairs, a great lawn, playgrounds, a river's edge promenade with oversized porch swings, tree groves, walkways and water features. It connects Bicentennial Commons and Sawyer Point into an almost 3-mile corridor of public park, and it holds a historical marker showing where home plate of the former Riverfront Stadium stood.

Three tenants of The Banks serve food and drink. The Cincinnati Lager House, at 115 Joe Nuxhall Way, is a working microbrewery producing a full line of Moerlein craft beers; it opened in February 2012 as the Christian Moerlein Lager House, a 15,000-square-foot, two-story building with beer gardens seating about 500 indoors and 600 outdoors. The brewing company behind the name was founded in 1853 in Over-the-Rhine by the Bavarian immigrant Christian Moerlein, grew into one of the country's ten largest breweries, closed in 1919 under Prohibition, was revived as a brand in 1981 and relaunched under new ownership in 2004. Holy Grail, at 161 Joe Nuxhall Way, is a sports bar with 31 hi-def TVs, pub fare and outdoor patios. Taste of Belgium, at 16 W. Freedom Way, is a scratch kitchen known for its Liege waffle and chicken, specializing in Belgian food with American influences and craft beer; The Banks' tenant page reports a Food Network Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives feature and a "Best Brunch 2016" award from CityBeat Magazine, neither of which this research could confirm at its primary source.

Two landmarks complete the riverfront. Heritage Bank Center, at 100 Broadway Street, is an indoor arena that opened on September 9, 1975 and has since carried five names — Riverfront Coliseum, The Crown, Firstar Center, U.S. Bank Arena and Heritage Bank Center. It seats 17,556 across 346,100 square feet, is the largest indoor arena in the Greater Cincinnati region, and is home to the Cincinnati Cyclones of the ECHL, alongside college basketball, concerts, wrestling, MMA and figure skating. The John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge crosses the Ohio River to Covington, Kentucky; it opened to traffic on January 1, 1867 and was then the longest suspension bridge in the world, at a 1,057-foot main span.

Further from the river, Findlay Market stands at 1801 Race Street in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood north of downtown, at the far end of the Connector's loop. It is Ohio's oldest continuously operated public market, built in 1852 in early iron framework, listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 5, 1972, and the last remaining of the nine public markets that once served Cincinnati. Its own site publishes hours of Tuesday to Friday 9am to 6pm, Saturday 8am to 6pm and Sunday 10am to 4pm, closed Monday, with a weekend farmers market; those hours come from the market itself and were not independently confirmed for 2026.

Great American Ball Park opened on March 31, 2003, replacing Riverfront Stadium — later Cinergy Field — which the Reds and the Bengals had shared before the two clubs sought separate venues. HOK Sport, now Populous, and GBBN built it at a cost of approximately $290 million. Current seating capacity is 43,500, as of 2021, and the ballpark has 850 parking spaces.

Crosley Terrace, the plaza at the ballpark, carries bronze statues of four Crosley Field-era players: Joe Nuxhall, Ernie Lombardi, Ted Kluszewski and Frank Robinson. The predecessor stadium is marked too, in Smale Riverfront Park, where a historical marker shows the position of Riverfront Stadium's home plate.

The Cincinnati Reds franchise was established in 1881 and was a charter member of the American Association in 1882 before joining the National League in 1890. It competes today in the National League Central Division and has won five World Series titles: 1919, 1940, 1975, 1976 and 1990. Three of those trophies are on display at the Reds Hall of Fame and Museum on Main Street, along with the scorebook from the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings.