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Developer breaks ground on $37M residential development on Fourth Street in downtown Newport


Ground has been broken for the Academy on 4th, a 202-unit market rate apartment building featuring first floor commercial space that is now under construction on Fourth Street in downtown Newport.

The $37 million project, which is slated to be completed in about a year, is being developed by CRG Residential of Carmel, Indiana, along Fourth Street between Monmouth and Saratoga streets on a site that has housed education facilities for more than 200 years.

“This site has always been used for education, and that’s what inspired our name,” said David Geoge of CRG Residential. “The name ‘Academy on 4th’ is a nod to the community and for what the site has been used for.

According to Newport Mayor Jerry Peluso, The Newport Academy opened on the site in 1799 and was one of the earliest schools west of Pittsburgh. The school, also known as the Newport Seminary, operated until 1850 when a new public school was built on the site. In the 1930s, Fourth Street Elementary was built as part of the Works Progress Administration, or WPA.

Before demolishing the building, CRG donated many of the materials that were inside the school to local charities and worked with the city to preserve portions of an historic stone wall that was part of Fourth Street Elementary. CRG is also making improvements to the nearby historic Southgate Street School, which until the mid-1950s served African American students and is now a Newport history museum.

Newport city officials have a special connection to the site.

Newport City Manager Tom Fromme attended Fourth Street Elementary and Mayor Peluso said that as a child, he played “strikeout” baseball in the school’s playground.

“The Academy on 4th will bring more residents downtown and continues the city’s vision of encouraging downtown living,” Mayor Peluso said.

City Manager Fromme said that the Academy on 4th will join a growing residential boom that includes the development of more than 700 existing and planned apartments in the city’s downtown.

“A vibrant downtown neighborhood depends on people living in the urban core,” Fromme said. “The spectacular Academy on 4th will bring new resident, investment, attention and excitement to Newport and continue the amazing transformation of our city into one of the best places in Greater Cincinnati, Kentucky and the entire midwest to live, work, visit and call home.”

George thanked several organizations and individuals for helping making the project happen including the City of Newport and Board of Commissioners; the Newport Independent Schools Board of Education; Southbank Partners; The Catalytic Fund of Northern Kentucky; and The Campbell County Fiscal Court.

City of Newport


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