Ram23

NYC has "alternate side parking" that is supposedly for street cleaning. The real purpose is to discourage people having cars they don't use every day, and to generate revenue via tickets. For 2 hours in the middle of the day every Tuesday and Thursday you can't park on one side, and every Monday and Wednesday you can't park on the other. If you don't need your car on a weekday, you still have to drive around and find a spot on the correct side of the street. At the designated time, without fail, a van full of meter maids will show up in each neighborhood and ticket every car they can get their hands on. But to get back on topic, I don't think OTR has nearly the parking difficulties that Cambridge and NYC have. I don't even think OTR is the most difficult neighborhood in Cincinnati to find parking in - CUF probably is.

The memo they posted alongside the filing shows their claim is that "Ohio Revised Code Chapter 307 applies specifically to Boards of County Commissioners —not Regional Transit Authorities." They're trying to find a loophole to get around the fact that bids don't have to be made public until a contract is awarded, for reasons that should be obvious to all. There's no logical reason a transit authority would have to publish bids while the rest of the government doesn't, and hopefully that's how a judge sees it.

Hopefully it means the whole idea of residential permits goes away. I have parked a car on the street everywhere I’ve ever lived – OTR, CUF, and New York City, and never felt the need for on-street permits. Of course, this also means the city needs to stop aggressively expanding parking meter locations and hours. Also, the $1500 a year is a complete joke. It's almost 3 times what I pay to park in a lot downtown.

^ From the looks of it the Enquirer is trying to use a bit of a loophole. Ohio Revised Code allows counties and other governments to keep competitive bids secret until a contract has been signed, however the language specifically regarding transit agencies is a bit vague and doesn't seem to have that exception. I could see the suit going either way - it's obvious that state law allowed for competitive bids to be free from public disclosure prior to a contract being awarded, but the laws governing transit agencies don't duplicate that specific item, as they probably should.

Why would 3CDC sell it to someone who plans to demolish it - especially if the demolition is for a parking lot? Do they not vet potential buyers?

This photo is from 1928, so at least some of the windows had been bricked in by then (perhaps some of these were never windows originally?):

I was under the impression that Black and Cranley were trying to get these opened by the All Star Game too. You're saying Cranley doesn't want a Banks ORA before the ASG? EDIT: Just saw an article that said the ASG would use the same permitting as Opening Day did and they will take their time creating the ORA for The Banks. Maybe a good idea to make sure it's done correctly and not rushed into place. It'll be almost identical to an ORA anyway. I thought the administration had wanted it opened by the ASG though. Maybe they were just saying that so the regular 90 day waiting period with state laws was waved. The size limit didn't change in the final version, did it? In my opinion, the district in Cincinnati should not be limited to The Banks, but extend into downtown and contain Fountain Square and chunks of sixth street. That would have worked in the earliest version that I actually read, but I'm not sure if the size has shrunk since then. There's not much sense in having it just be at The Banks - people should be able to walk from hotels and bars near Fountain Square down to The Banks.

The record isn't too awful yet, but consider the fact that half of the Reds wins have come against the Brewers, arguably the worst team in baseball. So far, nearly everything that was a question mark coming into the season has been answered with disappointment and failure. There's a lot of baseball left to be played, hopefully the reds can make a lot of changes along the way.

Though I haven’t heard it much in the past two years or so, a lot of suburbanites would constantly say they don’t want to step foot in OTR because of how much crime there is. When you point out it’s been decades since someone random has been killed in OTR, and that all the murders are amongst the same small crowd of thugs, they move the goalposts and say they don’t even want to risk seeing something like that. Personally, I’d be a hell of a lot more scared to get on the highway and commute 45 minutes to the burbs every day than I am to walk/bike through OTR. As an average white guy, I’m a lot more likely to die in my car than by violence in OTR, or anywhere for that matter.

Reading between the lines, my initial impression was that part of the reason Wade left the job of CEO was to focus on developments in OTR. They own a lot of property, and I imagine oversight of development of it could keep one person very busy.

What exactly are you saying here? Just push the problem out into another area instead of trying to solve it? As long as it's not around you it's ok huh? So we should “solve” the problem of crime before we continue to make our urban centers safe environments? The only thing we can do is repopulate the city's blighted neighborhoods, but even then there will always be some people who prefer to live a life filled with crime. The good news is that overall, crime has continued to fall city wide since a post-riot peak around 2005. While some crime is being shifted out of OTR to other neighborhoods, the majority of it is simple disappearing altogether.

There was no risk the project would be over budget or behind schedule, it was all just a part of his narrative. He was saying it not just to make himself come off as a "go-getter" and a stern leader, but also to send a message to anyone at City Hall who was pro-streetcar that they'd be on the hot seat for any miniscule slip ups. It also shows how he sees a divide between himself as mayor and a municipal project just because he doesn't like it. There's the "streetcar team" and then there's "his people," and Cranley and his people are not just failing to unite and work on the project, they are actively trying to knock it off course.

There aren't any permits pulled for the property at the moment, so they won't be starting demo any time soon. Maybe they're cleaning it out in order to sell it?

^ Cranley would do better in District 2 than he could ever hope to do against Chabot, but I doubt he would win given the demographics of the district. Suburban Republicans might throw money at him because he’s the closest thing they can get to a Republican mayor, but when it comes down to a general election he won’t be able to take many votes away from an actual Republican. In 2014 Wenstrup got nearly double the amount of votes of his Democrat challenger. Even in 2012 with Obama on the ballot he still won by a double digit percentage. Even with Cranley’s slimy ways, it would take a major screwup by Wenstrup for Cranley to take that seat. I’ve always assumed Cranley’s move to the east side was for a run against Wenstrup, but the more I think about it the more I think he’s got his eyes on something else, especially given the last redistricting.

The fact that there are both brand new credit card capable meters and new boxes on the same streets, with no signage directing which one requires payment is a huge screw-up by the city. With the appearance of these boxes, it seems that the city wasted thousands of dollars installing new meters that won't be needed. The best case scenario is that the credit card meters can be removed and relocated to other neighborhoods, but there are miles of brand new sidewalks laid down around parking meter poles that will look awful if poles are removed. Maybe they can be salvaged and converted to bollard bike racks, but that is yet another expense that could have been avoided had there been some forethought here. I can't help but think the canceling of the parking deal, and piecemeal application of the parts of it Cranley liked contributed to this waste of money.

You don't have to shut the street down for vehicular traffic in these districts. Exactly, the district should max out at the largest size allowable by the law, and try to stretch from Washington Park to Main Street along 12th and 13th. They shouldn't need to restrict traffic anywhere, just let people get a slice of pizza and a beer any enjoy it on the street. The community council is made of up residents, who likely don't want to deal with drinking in the streets, be it memories of homeless passed out drunk in the streets, or simply not wanting drunk visitors from other parts of the city making noise outside. But we need to be honest - OTR is the biggest nightlife destination in the city and is an ideal candidate for an open container district.

^ One, two, and three unit residential buildings do not need architectural plans. Anything with commercial space, or more than 3 units does. A lot of the plumbing, HVAC, and electrical companies have engineers on staff that can submit plans. ^^ I have an Ikea kitchen in my house, it was probably 1/10th the cost of what a typical full kitchen renovation would have cost (granted I'm an architect and did all of the construction myself with the exception of plumbing) It's not luxury but it does the job, and looks clean and modern. I wouldn't want to put anything nicer in a rental unit, because it would just be something expensive to replace when a tenant inevitably destroys it. Though a problem with Ikea is that they are continually redesigning their products and replacements will be hard to come by in 5-10 years. My cabinet doors have already been discontinued in their newest kitchen line. I'm likely skewing cost a bit overall when I say new construction can be done for $150 a square foot - as I'm not considering the cost for my own services and the work I'd contribute. But as Jim Uber put it, if you're capable of doing some of the work yourself and have a decent site, the costs can be lowered dramatically.

Meanwhile, in Japan: Japan’s maglev train breaks world speed record A maglev train in Japan reached a record-breaking speed of 590Kph (366Mph) this week, according to the Central Japan Railway Company -- smashing a record that’s been held for 12 years. The seven-car train completed a test run on Thursday on an experimental course in central Japan's Yamanashi prefecture. The train beat the previous record of 581Kph (361Mph), which has been held since 2003.

The vast majority of indie bands are all-white. Are you mad at country festivals who have almost all white lineups? Let's not create false outrage. Plus it fits into the week-long schedule of events at Fountain Square. Saturday nights there's free hip-hop concerts, Tuesday night has folk music, Wednesday is Salsa, etc. Each one targets a somewhat specific demographic.

This was issued in January: It doesn't appear that any permits have been granted since then.

I wonder what it would cost to get a streetcar clad in polished stainless steel panels. We could one-up Chicago by having a rolling bean. We could bring it out whenever the Cubs are in town.

There was no evidence that Christie had any knowledge of that, but the aides responsible for it were either fired or resigned. Of course he could have told them what to do off the record, but none of those found responsible have said that was the case. The Cincinnati Streetcar version, probably consisting of Cranley sitting in a dark back room at a Gold Star, directing Kevin Osborne to push derelict cars onto the streetcar tracks would make for a good political cartoon though.

If it does become a problem the city should look into more expensive parking infractions for blocking the streetcar. On top of the $50 ticket and whatever the towing/impound fee is, there should be a very large fine for impeding public transit or something along those lines. But, I don't think Cranley or even COAST (who has been basically non-existant since Cranley threw some cash their way in that settlement) would go so far as to collude to block the streetcar tracks.

Wire to wire 2.0? On a side note, I wish people would stop the woo-ing. It got old about the third time I heard it, and now that it is basically nonstop, it makes watching the game painful. The Reds need to start a campaign to end it.

I dropped in. Be it the handrails, carpet selection, exposed CMU, light fixtures, etc. the "value engineering" is the most striking feature of this building. The building looked better when I had a tour last year - the concrete work is spectacular; aside from that the building is awful.