An invitation to look closely
Before a place can decide where it’s going, it has to remember who it is. This is an invitation to look closely at New Richmond — its river and its history, its people and its values — to reveal what’s already here, and then to ask, together, what it could become.
The Invitation
A new era of builders, leaders, thinkers, doers and creatives to step up.
I’m not from the village. I live just up the river in Moscow — same Ohio, same lost power plants, same question about what comes next. I run a small design studio, and the thing we do is help people see what something can become. I’d like to do that here, with you. Not a plan handed down. An offering.
This isn’t about making New Richmond into something it isn’t. The opposite. It’s about remembering what makes this place itself — the river, the courage in its history, the people who’ve stayed and tended it — and asking, honestly, what it could grow into.
Good towns aren’t built by one big project or one loud voice. They’re built by many small, good decisions that add up — when a community shares a sense of who it is and where it’s going. That shared picture can’t be invented by me. It has to be uncovered by all of us.
So — what would you love New Richmond to be?
You don’t have to imagine this from nothing. Nearby river and village towns have done it — not with chains or sameness, but with rooted, well-made places locals are proud of.
Milford, Ohio
A brewery built right on the river, where the bike trail meets the water. It didn’t invent something new — it gave people a reason to stop, sit, and stay by an asset the town already had.
Point your best room toward the river.
Milford, Ohio
A small local-foods market and café in a reused historic building. It gives downtown a reason to be alive on a Tuesday morning — not just a Friday night.
A daytime anchor keeps a street breathing.
Mariemont, Ohio
A tiny sandwich shop built around one perfect loaf and a seven-item menu. Narrow, made with care, deeply itself — and people drive across the city for it.
Craft beats scale. Be unmistakably yourselves.
Who is New Richmond? · What is it?
Its identity isn’t invented. It’s remembered.
New Richmond · Founded 1814
In 1836, an abolitionist named James Birney printed an antislavery newspaper — The Philanthropist — from a blacksmith shop in New Richmond. He chose this town on purpose: free ground across the water from slavery.
When mobs threatened the press, more than seventy residents stood guard. They called themselves the Chieftains of Liberty.
That is the deep brand of this place — not a slogan, but a fact: independent thought, moral courage, neighbors who show up. The history is not all clean, and it’s worth telling honestly. But it tells us who this town has it in itself to be.
The river is the town’s greatest gift and its hardest fact. It floods — it always has, and it will again. A river town can’t pretend that away. But it can turn its face toward the water, not its back. Liberty Landing is breaking ground now. The question is who helps shape it.
Be Heard
No account, no meeting, no commitment. Tell us what you love about New Richmond and what you’d love to see. Every voice is counted — you don’t have to agree with your neighbor to be heard.
What neighbors are saying
Early responses. The more people speak up, the truer this gets.