Ram23

^ Yeah, a lot of people still get confused about what tax incentives actually are. There was $12 million in new potential revenue for Ohio, but Omnicare bartered and came out in pretty good shape only having to pay $4 million, after the $8 million incentive.

^ I'm sure that filthy Milwaukee piece of trash Bud Selig is behind this. He hates the Reds, and has a history of spiting them. First he toiled with Marge Schott through the 90’s , then he perpetuated the outcasting of Pete, then he took away Opening Day (which was always the day before the rest of the league, making it a huge deal) and now he’s marred Opening Day even more by scheduling it for Good Friday. If he doesn’t grant the Reds request to move the game to Thursday, he’ll lose whatever smidgen of respect I still had for him.

This is something I've always thought of when the huge, overblown cost estimates for utility relocation are tossed around, and the question of "who pays?" is perpetuated. If the utilities don't want to pay for relocation of their assets, fine, but when service time comes they can expect to work in a manner that does not interrupt service on the tracks that were thus laid down over top those utilities.

This should make for an interesting commute; I'm sure traffic will be stopped in both directions. I wonder where the actual speech will be - under the bridge? beside it? on it? President Obama to visit, speak at Brent Spence Bridge WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama is headed to Cincinnati's crumbling Brent Spence Bridge next Thursday to talk about the need for infrastructure repairs across the country, a White House official said. ... “The Brent Spence Bridge is on one of the busiest trucking routes in North America, yet it is considered ‘functionally obsolete’ because it is in need of so many significant repairs. If Congress passes the American Jobs Act, we can put more Americans back to work while getting repairs like this done," the official said. http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20110915/NEWS0108/309150100/

The changes in southwest Ohio have made for 3 heavily Republican favored seats. John Boehner grabbed some liberal areas, but not enough to make a dent in his base, while the 1st district picked up swaths of Boehner’s old land. It was fairly close in the past few elections, but will now be heavily conservative. Chabot, Schmidt and Boehner should all be around awhile.

If the amendment did pass, would it be possible to sue the city for having deliberately misleading language in its charter? The legal definition of “streetcar” (as defined by the State of Ohio) should trump the City of Cincinnati definition whether the word “system” is appended or not.

Exactly. There's no way relocating a few utilities over such a short distance is really going to run a $30 million tab. The utility companies are inflating this number because this is already a hot issue. Relocating utilities for public or private developments is something the companies routinely pay for themselves, the difference here is that they think they can weasel out of it this time because the streetcar has such a vocal opposition.

It's safer to assume the demolitions will happen. 3/4 of the buildings are already gone. The massive, old Milicron building is the only one still left. It's a shame it isn't considered a historic site, as it has a rather attractive office building on the east end, and an easily reusable open factory floor that covers the entire length of the site.

So a guy who is $32 million in debt will be driving the awful redevelopment of this site still? Sounds like a good plan. I was driving around what is left of these factories the other day, they're really attractive, and basically just expansive open framed spaces that have some excellent street frontage potential. It's a shame they'll be replaced with a parking lot and a few buildings.

At one point, the whole project preserved a ROW for light rail along the east side of the interstate. From a quick glance at the web page, it appears that is no longer the case. I believe it was one of the early alternatives. The old blog “Phony Coney” had an article about it.

Pretty much sums it up; Cincinnati loves the Bengals but hates Mike Brown. Everyone has ideas of how to fix a team; be it a new coach, a new quarterback, improve the defense, etc. but when the problem is very clearly the general manager, who happens to also be the owner – there’s nothing that can be done. He’s disillusioned into thinking he knows how to run a team, when it’s clear he doesn’t. The Bengals are the North Korea of the NFL and Mike Brown is our Kim Jong Il.

It'd never happen, there are BS parts of Mike Brown's contract with the county that have him getting too sweet a deal through 2027. I doubt even LA would strike as sweet a deal with him as Hamilton County did. He gets a free stadium to play in.. there's no maintanance cost, no upgrade cost, no operating costs, nothing. If he moved, he wouldn't make as much money, and that's all he cares about.

I went there quite a bit since I live across the street. It was always pretty dead, except what seemed like a bit of an after work crowd that died off by about 7:00 each night. Saying they’re closing because of the robbery is probably just an easy cop-out, they had to have been losing money.

I’ve worked in various architecture offices in NYC and Cincinnati. I think the difference in working hours is interesting. Most people are at work by 8:00 in Cincinnati, and leave around 5:00-6:00, myself included (unless there’s a deadline or I’m busy and stay later). In New York, the hours were closer to 9:00 or 10:00 until 7:00 or so.

There's one on Mercer as well as the one on Vine (which is through the new building, reminds me of the entrance to the Fountain Square Garage)

From this image yo can imagine how it would look from the street. It looks like it has some erratic concrete or metal panel facade system in the rendering. In any case, it looks like it wasn't forgotten about.

But that is the Mercer Street elevation looking south. Mercer is so narrow that you'll never be able to be far enough back that you'll have a sightline to see the parking garage. You can see it in elevation view, but in any perspective I bet it'd be hidden.

The ones who have raised the most money are the ones that need it to have any chance. Most incumbents are basically shoe-ins, Roxanne Qualls for instance could raise $5.00 and still win. At most there are 2 seats that are going to change, but I wouldn’t worry too much about streetcar support changing. If anything, a democrat is the biggest threat. The party representation numbers probably aren’t going to change, but PG could take an incumbent Democrats seat and cause a support vote to be lost. It’d be trouble if he took Young’s or Quinlivan’s seat.

^ That interchange and the associated chunk of I-75 will cost $53.6 million. Although, when it's all said and done it the exit ramps will all be pulled much closer to the freeway and free up some real estate. Here's the latest plan for that section: http://www.i75millcreekexpressway.com/images/pdfs/Public%20Hearing/Public%20maps/Middle%20North%20Board.pdf

That's really just a rant against Republican controlled state legislatures.

Who are the architects for this project?

Hopefully we’ll get something good for Chad. While I disagree with Mike Brown getting personal over Palmer, I do agree that he shouldn’t be traded. The Bengals could get a lot more for him if they wait until midseason or even next off season. As of now all they’d get would be a couple late round draft picks that they’d ultimately use on trouble making underachievers.

^ I use the post office a lot when I sell old books on Amazon, since they have special "media mail" pricing for like $4. I also prefer them for home delivery, since they have a key to the building and my mailbox. I tend to live in ghettos and can't be having UPS or Fedex leave packages at my door. I do think the post offices themselves are becoming less and less necessary, as a kiosk could handle any need I've ever had for a post office.

I park on the street in OTR and never have any problems. Half the meters have had the change receptacles stolen out of them anyway, so they’re basically free to park at. I used to live in NYC and parked on the street; that was a challenge. People in Cincinnati just can’t seem to grasp the fact that parking on a street is part of living in a city.

Please, it’s going to be 84 with a nice breeze in San Juan today. It’s going to be 97 with a heat index of 100 something in Cincinnati. I’d take a transplant any day of the week.