Ram23

A couple of points: 1. A 401k should move to far safer investments as retirement approaches. By the time someone is in their 50s they should mostly be invested in bonds rather than risky stocks - but again, it's about controlling your own destiny. Want to play it risky? Then you risk not being able to retire on time. 2. Someone has to pay for pensions when/if the market crashes, and it ends up being a lot of people paying for a lucky few. There's an inherit unfairness, and as a taxpayer I don't like paying for it - I'd rather my tax dollars go towards a more modern and efficient retirement system that shifts the burden to wise investments rather than tax dollars.

The primary will narrow the election down to two candidates. On a side note, how will party line voters vote? I'd imagine Republicans might vote Qualls just because she is (technically) a third party candidate. Cranley may be trying to appeal to conservatives, but he is still a Democrat.

The idea that it isn’t urban to get all your groceries in one store is absurd. I lived in NYC and did it every week, both in Queens and the Upper West Side. Here, I usually drive 4 minutes up to the Corryville Kroger (which isn't huge, despite its suburban site layout) which suffices as a one stop shop because I often go after 9:00PM and need a handful of things I couldn’t get in OTR anyway. A few product line changes (craft beer six packs instead of 40oz beers, for instance), and better hours and the OTR Kroger could work for most as a one-stop shop. It already works as a one-stop shop for most of the neighborhoods poor.

It had to have been very expensive to originally create the shape files, and there’s a small cost to keeping the files up to date and accurate, not to mention the overhead involved with storing and distributing them. Also, Cagis has a viewable version online for free that suffices for 99% of the general population’s needs. What you’re wanting are the actual base files that compose it. I think it’s fair there’s a fee for that information, as you can imagine what the cost of gathering it yourself would be. It’s such specialized information that it wouldn’t be fair to pay for it out of the general tax dollar pool, when it is only useful to such a small group of users. Asking for the files for free would be a de facto method of making every tax payer fund it.

Yep yep! I shop there all the time. Most of the people in there are poor and black; of course the veggie section is heavy on collard greens(Which I am most certainly not complaining about ;-)) and the alcohol light on premium beer. They're serving the people who actually live in OTR quite well and the newcomers aren't numerous enough yet to warrant their expensive cheeses. I'll never understand people who live in Over-the-Rhine and drive (to Kroger or anywhere else). You wonder why they aren't stocking your favourite things? It's because you aren't actually in the store! Indeed, if you have a car and are so ready to hop in it, you're barely even really living in the neighborhood. The city sure, but hardly the neighborhood. Why should Kroger consider the desires of such fickle people when there is a more captive audience? Why would anyone shop in a store that didn’t carry the things they need? If I have a rare lazy Saturday when I can manage to spend a few hours walking around the neighborhood to the various stores I need to visit to get my weekly groceries I do it, but in general I barely have enough time to make one stop. Until the OTR Kroger can manage to carry some decent bread, beer, deli items, and produce (my staples) I’ll have to drive elsewhere unless time permits otherwise. Also, I don't think someone having a car has much to do with how much someone "lives" in a neighborhood. Some people like their bikes, and some people like their cars; I'm not sure why some of those people seemingly hate each other.

This "solution" to the financial crisis is hilarious- basically, "If we just made more people's retirement less secure we wouldn't be in this situation." That's obviously not the answer. The answer is to fix unemployment. My solution would solve the unfunded pension issue by not giving special, preferential treatment to city employees. Solving unemployment would also help but that's another discussion altogother. My only point is that pensions are a horrible investment for a city to be making. 401k is matching is much less risky for the city and lets people control their own destiny.

40% of the city's unfunded liability is because of the financial crisis. About 12% is because of under funding. But if the city handed out 401ks instead of pensions, they wouldn't have any unfunded liability. If that were the case, everyone would share the burden of the recession. Instead, a select few lucky enough to have pensions are immune to it, while Cincinnati residents will either end up paying higher taxes or receiving less back from our current taxes. Pensions can bankrupt a private company (which is why most have stopped offering them), but the pensions are insured. It is as of yet unforeseen whether or not cities can even legally shed pension debt in bankruptcy.

I don't think there's a hipster credit card, they're all in credit unions and just use the debit cards.

Downtown and OTR are crowded as is, I'm glad some people still live in a bubble and think they'll die if they come visit. Hopefully this will keep the 60+ minute waits for a table at most of the restaurants from getting even longer.

Yes many are. I'm good to AMEX and AMEX is very good to me. I'm sure AMEX knows exactly what makes them money overall, and won't do a thing beyond that. Have you seen the benefits of those cards? The more bennies they give the more I'm willing to spend! The new floor I just installed in my kitchen was free thanks to the Amex reward points I got buying all the cabinets, countertops, etc. Love that credit card.

Extremely strict enforcement of any minor traffic violation is always met with disdain from the community. If people routinely get tickets for being 45 seconds late to their cars, they'll stop visiting. No one thinks parking is a god given right, it's a simple case of not fixing what isn't broken. I have serious doubts anyone will be pleased with the new parking systems aside from Xerox and city coffers.

It seems the city's consultant reviewed the lease and determined that Xerox will cause a 257% increase in on-street parking overhead costs. I'd assume that means they'll be writing an excessive amount of tickets.

The city can barter a bid but the lowest bidder probably isn’t going to come down much. The city can always axe certain luxury items or extras off the project, commonly called value engineering (happens in almost every project once bids are received), or they can change some things to alternates and only build them if they find the extra cash. Bids coming in over budget is pretty much a standard in the construction industry, be it a house, an office building, or a streetcar. Just quickly browsing the bid list, there are a few things ripe for VE’ing out almost entirely, and quite a few things that have scopes that could be reduced.

He doesn't use the anti-gentrification card there because he knows who his audience is. His stance against the streetcar when he is in an NAACP meeting is anti-gentrification based, though. I've heard him speak at UC once or twice and he's rather bluntly stated that the streetcar will force blacks out of OTR.

Students typically wear down properties very quickly, don’t perform routine maintenance, and don’t have a lot of money for rent (minus the percentage that take out tons of loans or have parents pay it). They need to have cheap, breakable, properties in order to survive. Living with 6 roommates in a falling apart house for $900 a month is part of going to college for most people, and there will always be a demand for it.

I take Ultimate Air Shuttle out of Lunken for work pretty often. It’s great, you walk right in, the pilot checks you in, and you get on the plane and leave a few minutes later. Even though CVG has very quick security lines, it still takes time to get all the way out there, park, take the shuttle bus, etc. Lunken should be able to handle a few commercial flights a week without many upgrades. I’ve been to smaller airports in rural areas that function almost exactly the same way, with 1 or 2 Delta flights in and out per day. The TSA lines are open for about 30 minutes and everyone gets checked in quickly. It is actually very efficient when everyone is just getting on the same plane at one gate. And as for baggage, those places usually just offload it onto a flat carrier, and drive it around to the terminal exit.

I feel like this discussion has been had on here before, but why is 14th Street the Gateway Quarter? "Gateway" should be one or two blocks into OTR, at most. I don't like how it is instead used as a term to differentiate the gentrified parts of OTR from the rest of the neighborhood.

I think they already stopped using the Tram. It wasn't running the past few times I have been there. It's been running the dozen or so times I've been to the airport over the past few months. Concourse B is a little bit of a walk, and the tram is definitely quicker.

If you look closely, I don't think it's actually cinder block. The wall itself is cinder block, but looks like it is clad in a calcium silicate cladding, which is a small step above cinder block, and is a sort of cast stone product. They usually come in the same sizes as CMU so they tend to remind people of basic concrete block. It's supposed to look like limestone or granite, but instead looks like concrete. I've had to try hard to talk my firm out of using it in buildings a couple times recently. I'm not a fan!

This happens a lot when a "creative" company hires an architecture firm. There are always lots of conflicts because various creative types tend to think they can also design buildings for some reason.

Adding a stair is extremely expensive and involves a ton of work, but I agree that the fire escape on this building is awful. Building code does not actually allow new fire escapes to be built these days because they are only marginally safer than remaining in a smoke filled building to take ones chances. Existing fire escapes are, of course, grandfathered in, but I know some jurisdictions will make you provide a new means of egress dependent upon the extent of renovations. I don’t think Cincinnati is that picky, though, so this one will probably be allowed to stay. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be allowed to replace it with a newer one, though.

Where did you see this? It still shows as $440 round trip for me. I was really considering flying out to Denver for the Reds vs Rockies, and because I've never been there, and $200 round trip each makes it about the cheapest place to fly to from Cincy. If Delta is matching the price though, I may just fly with them because of my frequent flyer miles. "because of my frequent flyer miles" THE reason every "low cost carrier" is doomed at CVG. We the flying public are our own worst enemy. I personally hate Delta enough for what they have done to CVG that if I have options, I WONT use them. I'll admit I'm on the fence between convenience and principal... I'll probably still give Frontier a try, though.

Where did you see this? It still shows as $440 round trip for me. I was really considering flying out to Denver for the Reds vs Rockies, and because I've never been there, and $200 round trip each makes it about the cheapest place to fly to from Cincy. If Delta is matching the price though, I may just fly with them because of my frequent flyer miles.

The building on the immediate right would later become a Gold Star Chili (although it's been closed for a few years now). Most of the buildings on the right side are still there today, as is the church, of course: Streetview

^ The retail portion of this project will be fine, and will drive it to be profitable. The office space will be completed to the original plans, and I doubt any demo work will be done to what has been built already as that would be an engineering nightmare. Look at a place like South Park in Charlotte or Buckhead in Atlanta and you can see that for whatever reason offices do want to locate in busy shopping districts. There are already a few office buildings within a half mile of KTC. I personally think it’d be a nightmare, but I hate being stuck in my car for longer than about 5 minutes at a time. A lot of people don’t mind it, and like to get shopping done at lunch/right after work. This project really is pretty standard, albeit not in Cincinnati yet. The single difference being the white collar crimes surrounding it, and that will disappear soon enough.