Once Evicted from Pizza Parlor Ministry, Nuns Set Up at New Site Thanks to UC Students

Two groups of Cincinnati nuns seeking to open a pizza place as a site to provide both food and workplace skills will open a pizza parlor called Venice on Vine in Over-the-Rhine on Sunday, June 4. 

The nuns – the Dominican Sisters of Hope and the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur – have been working with University of Cincinnati architecture and interior design faculty and students for

two years

now to ready the site at 1301 Vine St. At the site, the sisters will re-establish a ministry – a pizza parlor, catering center and computer training space – that seeks to provide jobs and job skills to hard-to-place workers. Also working to ready the site for its new use have been students from Miami University.

According to Sister Barbara Wheeler, the Venice on Vine pizza parlor project once operated in a Camp Washington location but was forced out when the rent went up in 2003. That’s when the nuns picked a new storefront location at 1301 Vine St.

The new site had to be dramatically refurbished in order to serve their Venice on Vine outreach program; however, the sisters didn’t have a lot of dough. So, they turned to architecture and interior design students in UC’s top-ranked College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning – specifically students working in UC’s Niehoff Studio which is based in Over-the-Rhine.

The students – led by the team of project architect

Frank Russell

, director of UC’s Community Design Center;

Terry Boling

, assistant professor of architecture; and Carrie Beidleman, adjunct professor of interior design – drew up and executed

design plans

for the interior of the 19th-century structure. The UC students focused on renovating the site for use as a pizza kitchen and restaurant – putting up drywall, lighting, signage, laying a tile floor, creating a wood mosaic wall, decorative copper screens, a serving counter and an eating counter. The Miami students focused on renovating the site’s training area – laying a new wood floor, cabinetry and furniture. Throughout the project, the students have worked with donated or found materials – mismatched pieces that had to be made into a cohesive whole.

“We laid the tile floor as a mosaic not only because it was unique, a very rich design, but also because our supplies were all sorts of mismatched pieces of tiles that were headed for the garbage heap. The same with the wood mosaic wall we created. We didn’t have large enough or sufficient quantities of matching wood to do a conventional job. It forced us to be far more creative than we might have otherwise been,” explained Travis Wollet, a UC graduate student in architecture who has worked on the project since 2004.

Wollet first participated in the project as part of a class, then for independent-study credit and finally, simply as a volunteer. “I stuck with it because I wanted to see it through. We’d shown a lot of care in creating the detailed floors and walls, and I couldn’t be sure someone else would care as much about that original work and see it through. So, I just continued to stick with it,” he explained.

Wollet’s personal contributions to the project consisted of building the frame for the pizza parlor’s interior light box, installing the ornate wood panels and metal trim that comprise one wall, laying the backer board for the tile floor, and building the frame for a wall counter as well as painting and cleaning. He’s yet to complete his work of installing aluminum edging to a concrete serving counter.

The end result is worth all the work, according to UC architecture student Emily Wray, who not only helped with design projects but helped secure donations of tile and wood as well as other materials and services. She explained, “The best part is seeing it all get built. So many projects we might do in school don’t get built. That’s the best part of this project and seeing it realized. It’s real, and it all shows real hand work and individual care.”

Of the new Venice on Vine, Sister Barbara simply said, “It’s a work of art.”

The UC students completed all construction drawings and bid packages thanks to funding from UC’s Institute for Community Partnerships, supervision by UC’s Community Design Center and technical assistance from KZF Design, Inc., and Brashear Bolton, Inc. In all, about 30 UC students have worked on the project over the last two years.

Said Boling, “It’s very important for the students to build what they design, to explore design and construction techniques with real clients, real materials and real constraints. They have only so much budget and time. And yet, the outcome has been fantastic, and that’s probably the best part, seeing the sisters’ reaction… how thrilled they’ve been at each stage of progress.”

In addition to the kitchen and dining area of Venice on Vine, the ministry (called Power Inspires Progress) also consists of a catering center as well as a small computer training space. When it opens, Venice on Vine will continue with its ministry of employing and training hard-to-place workers, paying up to $7 an hour. In the past, the venture has employed up to 12 part-time workers at any one time.

The sisters will celebrate the completion of the project with an open house from 1-4 p.m., Sunday, June 4. It’s a long awaited celebration, according to Sister Barbara. “We never thought it would take us this long to open,” she admitted. “But it’s all worked out wonderfully. The time spent in refurbishing the storefront was time we then had to write grants to support our work. And, it gave us time to implement many of the design ideas that students developed for us. We needed their ideas since we [the sisters] don’t have design backgrounds. It was the students’ ideas and enthusiasm that often pulled us through.”