Ram23

Cincinnati's Fountain Square was packed for the first two games because the timing was very good. I imagine today's game there will draw a big crowd of people leaving work early, even though it's very hot and humid and may storm. I'll be watching in a nice air conditioned bar nearby.

Zack when that crew was doing the concrete work at my house last fall the labor and equipment rental costs were driven up because they couldn't get a Bobcat through the alley. Instead they had to rent a walk-behind bulldozer that had a scoop about 36" wide and had to cart the old concrete out with a wheel barrow. In OTR the backs of buildings are sometimes not accessible by an alley, meaning equipment, material, and waste sometimes has to be carried through the building itself and out the front door. I actually just picked up a permit to replace my front porch/deck. Because of the topography, all of the demolition will have to be hoisted up over the 10’-0” drop from the street to the yard and I’ll have to enter my house either by ladder or through a kitchen window (or decide which neighbor I’m going to annoy for a week). I understand the argument that time has a value, and I will be building a deck instead of taking a summer vacation, but for those of us who have lots of time but not lots of money, it’s an easy choice. For $1000 of material and a few vacation days I’ll have what a contractor would quote as at least a $10,000 deck/porch. I’d rather do that than spend $1000 and a few vacation days going to Florida. The same logic could be applied to an OTR renovation. It might cost a lot to pay a crew to cart out debris through the building, or you could just spend 4 or 5 evenings a week for a few weeks doing it yourself. I think even the small time developers (who are still profit driven) are paying to have work like that done, whereas a single family homeowner (who isn’t as interested in profit, so much as having a place to live) could do the work themselves over a few years. If you have enough startup cash to get the building to a state in which you can get a certificate of occupancy for it (could be a big if depending on the building), you could spend years doing the finishing touches.

I love that sort of thing in Cities, and wish Cincinnati would relax its sign laws. Cluter and Chaos is what makes cities great ;) Agreed, which is why this is one of my favorite pictures of Cincinnati: The tiny, Olde Montgomery-esque signs in the Gateway Quarter today are a bit depressing.

Labor costs are probably the big difference between doing something at $65-$75 a square foot and $100-$120 a square foot. If you know how to do a lot of the stuff yourself, you can save tons on labor. If we’re talking about owner occupied single family homes, you can do pretty much everything yourself so long as you know what you’re doing. If you’re flipping a building into apartments or condos, or you’re planning to turn around and sell it, that may be a different story because you’re opening yourself up to liability issues you wouldn’t have if you were renovating a home for yourself. There’s also some opinion to what is nice. Personally, I think marble countertops are overused and cliché, and you can get more creative solutions for half the cost.

The Wade’s get hated on quite a bit, but Lavomatic was one of the place that got the Vine St. restaurant scene started. During Grammer’s their brief stint as a restaurant, there was a guy who made chicken wings with ghost chilis he grew out back. I don’t remember his name, but they were some of the best wings I’ve ever had in my life. I hope that whatever happens with Grammer’s, those chicken wings are somewhere on the horizon.

The Growler Koozie market is already saturated, actually. Most breweries sell them alongside their growlers, and a quick search on Etsy would likely reveal some extreme hipster versions. You may be on to something with the ice packs, though. Maybe you should open up an Etsy shop?

oops! never mind. I was wrong as usual-- http://www.stilltasty.com/articles/view/35 While growing up in the 1990's my mother had a box of corn starch that looked like it was from the 1970's. There are a few things that you never, ever have to throw out if you store them properly (usually just avoid getting wet). Rice is another go-to apocalyptic proof item to keep excess stock of. Keep it dry and you can feed yourself for a long, long time. Thinking back, the corn starch I have is actually from Trade Fair in Queens, NY (which is a very interesting small format urban grocery, by the way). Not only have I stockpiled it, I've traveled across several states with it.

Something like 45% of the food produced in America is never consumed. It was a cardinal sin in our house to waste food. Our cupboards were bare. No snacks, no nothing. You go over to the average person's house and they have a fridge and freezer full of food that is going bad, then a pantry full of crap, then even more stockpiled in the basement or out in the garage. It's absolutely flipping ridiculous. I keep 2-4 weeks worth of canned/dry goods in a large cupboard just in case. A lot of frozen and canned goods half shelf lives of several years, or even indefinitely if stored properly. I've had a box of corn starch since 2004. I think that encourages stockpiling. I think the biggest waste of food is commercial, rather than residential, though. I don't have any inside knowledge of how much food goes past the "sell by" date at a typical grocery, but I wager it has to be more in a day than all the users of that grocery throw out in a week. I know Kroger has been trying to combat this with their "manager special" sticker prices, which I usually read as "Ram23's Dinner Tonight" stickers.

I assume they'll go with a property tax increase to do this? I wouldn't be so sure that will pass, especially if its on the same ballot as the Music Hall/Union Terminal tax hike (which may also be a property tax increase). Although maybe putting them on the same ballot might bring out the same big group of voters that will vote yes to both. I do think some swing voters will vote no to one of the two if they're on the same ballot, though.

The render was just part of a response to a request for proposals. Now that GE has accepted this developer’s proposal, the design will likely change as the architect sits down with GE and irons things out. It was likely as unassuming as possible in order to not lose out on the RFP because of a subjective opinion on the design, when the big selling point was the site.

Personally, I’d rather have my tax dollars pay for something like the streetcar than subsidizing a wealthy company like GE. I’d wager the ROI is much better with the streetcar, it’s just not as simple to see. One can quickly do the math and see that while the city, county, and tax are all subsidizing GE, they’ll still make some money in the end, as opposed to making absolutely nothing if GE located in another state. The streetcar ROI numbers are forecasts, and not the seemingly tangible and quantifiable numbers a corporate subsidy has (even though the entire thing is still based on forecasts for number of employees, salaries, etc.). For some reason the naysayers come out of the woodwork and question or flat out deny the assumptions that the streetcar forecasts make – that it will raise property values, bring in new residents and associated income and sales taxes, and create business opportunities. Yet no one would ever question GE’s promise to live up to their forecasts.

I assume the on-street parking will have to go with that conversion, forcing more people to have to use the garages (and pay). I sensed a conspiracy when they first built the garage and eliminated the on-street parking all around the park, this just adds to it. Aside from the tin-foil theory, I do really believe that the sidewalks around Washington Park would feel much safer if they on-street parking hadn't been removed, and I think you'd get a lot more people making quick, unplanned visits.

There was a volunteer cleanup at the First German Reformed Church in the West End, and I thought there were loose plans to turn it into a music venue of some sort. It looks like that has fallen through, though, as it’s on the market for $25,000: http://www.trulia.com/property/3159553892-1815-Freeman-Ave-Cincinnati-OH-45214?ecampaign=con_day_propertysearchforsale_bk&eurl=www.trulia.com%2Fproperty%2F3159553892-1815-Freeman-Ave-Cincinnati-OH-45214

I actually think that Rhinegeist may be one of the biggest drivers of streetcar ridership early on because of that stop location. I know I will walk from 12th street to Rhinegeist, but not many people are willing to do that, especially in the evening.

Maybe they could meet in the middle between chain and cowboy bar, and make it a Logan’s Roadhouse.

I agree that this is definitely a First Amendment issue, but I do find this statement amusing: “In a unanimous decision, the high court ruled that the two groups -- the Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes and the Susan B. Anthony List -- had been harmed by the law and therefore had the right to sue.” In summary, COAST has been greatly harmed because they have had to tell the truth. Maybe that’s why we haven’t heard a peep from them in so long?

Well, not exactly no emergency shoulders. It appears to have emergency stopping areas every so often, which are probably safer than standard emergency shoulders because you can pull farther away from moving traffic. It would probably save hundreds of millions if the additional Brent Spence Bridge would be built without shoulders, just emergency stopping areas at either end at grade. Just understanding that concept could actually save billions on the project, because people would realize the bridge doesn’t need replaced because the lanes are narrow. What it needs are tolls on the current bridge at peak usage, and a 45 mph speed limit.

I've never paid a security deposit that was more than the first months rent. I imagine the interest requirement is why so many deposits are matched to the first months rent, actually.

You'll have some tall floors for the garages and retail levels at the base, but residential floors are fairly short, typically. They don't have to be, though, like the loft building on 4th and Central, for instance. The good thing is that unlike office towers, residential buildings can have very small floor plates, and in fact that is almost preferable so you can avoid wasting space on expansive corridors.

There are some good names on that list, some bad names, and a lot of no names. I wonder why Flynn picked who he did? A lot of campaign donors I imagine. Either way this seems like something that should be done by our elected officials, not behind doors by a privately selected body of Kevin Flynn's friends.

The trash chute comes out of the second floor so they are definitely using it for receiving and/or stock of some sort. The large penthouse on the top of the building may be for a freight elevator, so maybe they do use the third floor for some stock as well?

The grocery store would have been good for residents of downtown, not ideal for the developer, and bad for any other grocers who aren't quite ready to risk opening up downtown. I think the question of who Cranley is supposed to be representing is a good one to ask in this case. I think the location was actually ideal. The southwest corner of downtown has lots of residential, and this is about as close to Fountain Square/the center of downtown as a grocer could probably afford to locate and break even. There's already a Kroger in OTR so building another grocery store somewhere between downtown and OTR wouldn't make much sense.

Easily. Where I work, we require 3-inch caliper trees at the time of planting for street trees and depending on the type of tree it can range but $400 - $800 is probably in the ballpark. That is probably about a 15 foot tall tree. So double that for something in the 30 foot range. Landscapers and developers will complain about the price and availability of a 3-inch caliper tree so I can't imagine what something twice that size would cost. The double or triple estimate would be pretty accurate. 2 to 2.5 inch caliper seems to be a much cheaper and more heavily available size. Not to mention, larger trees are more likely to react poorly to relocation, and will either stagnate for a few years while they reestablish their root system, or just not take to the transplant and die. Even when you have a client that can afford it, they usually back off when you tell them it's going to look worse before it looks better.

Stone is one of the biggest craft breweries out there, I doubt any building in OTR would be big enough to handle the amount of brewing and distribution they would need. I imagine their new facility would be something closer to the Sam Adams brewery than a Rhinegiest or Moerlein. The Kahn's site, as mentioned above, might work. It seems to me this article is much ado about nothing. Stone must have put out an RFP, and got 200 some responses, one of which is in Wilmington.

The big difference between typical juvenile delinquency and what these kids are doing is the assault and battery. I did a bit of vandalism, stealing, and trespassing (still haven't grown out of that one) as a kid, even got in some fights with other kids, but physically beating a stranger is way outside the realm of normal behavior. That's when kids need to go from slap on the wrist to actual punishment and rehabilitation. You can't punch out random people on the street, and a normal person would never even think of it.