Naming a street after Pete Rose was a bit of a thorny issue in 1985. Why? Because Cincinnati honored the baseball great before honoring one of the city’s most revered figures.
The result was one of many name changes for Cincinnati’s Downtown convention center.
Originally called the Convention-Exposition Center when it opened in 1967, it got a new name again on Feb. 9. The former Duke Energy Center became First Financial Center following a $264 million renovation. First Financial Bank will pay $10.1 million over the next 15 years for the name.
It’s common for venues to change names when corporations pay huge sums for naming rights.
Paul Brown Stadium became Paycor Stadium. Riverfront Stadium was Cinergy Field for a while. Heritage Bank Center has been Riverfront Coliseum, U.S. Bank Arena and about a dozen other names.
Naming a city building or street after a person, though, is a different matter. That’s where Pete Rose comes in.
Pete Rose vs. Albert Sabin
Back in 1985, in celebration of Rose becoming baseball’s Hit King, the city renamed a portion of Second Street as Pete Rose Way.
That was a change from the criteria the city’s Committee on Names usually followed, which didn’t allow streets or city-owned buildings to be named for living people.
That requirement is what hindered requests from local doctors to name a street after then-living Dr. Albert Sabin, who developed the oral polio vaccine at Children’s Hospital in Cincinnati.
City council was working to get Pete Rose Way approved even before Rose notched his record-setting hit on Sept. 11, 1985. They changed the “living person” requirement that summer to give Rose the OK.
Sabin supporters appealed again to city council.
Columnist: Sabin 'is still waiting'
Enquirer columnist Camilla Warrick wrote: “Pete Rose won a spot on a Cincinnati street sign with 4,192 hits in 23 seasons of dirt-spitting baseball.
“Dr. Albert Sabin spent at least as many seasons in a local research lab at Children’s Hospital, perfecting the vaccine that has prevented five million cases of polio and tens of thousands of deaths. But he’s still waiting.”
Due to the ensuing controversy, the city officially named the newly renovated convention center the Albert B. Sabin Cincinnati Convention Center in November 1985.
After an expansion in 2006, the convention center was briefly known as Cinergy Convention Center for a few months before becoming the Duke Energy Center.
Sources: Enquirer, Cincinnati Post and New York Times archives.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Pete Rose, Albert Sabin, and how the convention center got its name