Ram23

^ The promos have always just been joke pieces. I personally like the "Real Tri-State Heroes" ones they have (link). They blow things out of proportion on purpose, and I don't think anyone takes them seriously.

Exactly. COAST constantly complains about government inefficiency and red tape, meanwhile they're the only people running around with the red tape dispensers.

As of now, the Reds have the best record in baseball by 1.5 games. I'm really looking forward to the series against Pittsburgh this weekend, and heckling whatever fair-weather fans they bring out of the woodwork.

^ Most big downtown department stores closed during a recession, and decades after white flight/depopulation of urban centers had begun. I think we have already begun to see a re-population of downtown areas throughout the country, Cincinnati's growth in OTR and downtown is no exception. Bars, restaurants, etc. have all returned to walkable downtown neighborhoods, and it's only a matter of time before some retail does the same. Personally, I hate living in OTR and having to drive to Kenwood or even worse, Monroe, to shop, and I can't be the only one. It may be decades away, but retail will eventually return to urban centers. How will the skywalk system affect this? We'll have to wait and see. I think by that point, we won't have as much issue with taking people off the street.

Agree on Boston, it´s a mess driving around that central city. The grid in NYC, on the other hand, would be an absolute mess if the streets weren't one-way. Cincinnati has the grid going for it, at least in (most of) the basin.

Reminds me of the hideous 10 South Canal building in Chicago. The bottom 20 floors or so are solid concrete walls, as it serves as an AT&T data center. This has way more class than the Chicago version. Plus, even the name "Terrace Plaza" is dependent upon the idea that the hotel sits atop a bulky mass. NYC's data center building is also way classier than the Chicago verison: See 375 Pearl St. It's beautiful if judged from a "form follows function" perspective. The building in Chicago looks like it was turned into a data center as an after thought - it looks like a typical office tower with solid walls where windows should be.

You can check property violations by address, at this site: http://cagisperm.hamilton-co.org/cpop/permits/address.aspx I don't know if you can search by owner, though. LLC's are notoriously hard to track down. Most of the time a large corporation or real estate owner will have dozens of LLC's, one for each individual project or building. That's why you'll see a lot of parcel owners listed as "#### Vine Street LLC" or something similar.

I think two-way streets make sense in a place like Walnut Hills and the other first ring neighborhoods, but OTR is a bit too urban for it to work, in my opinion. Vine St. is a mess traffic wise, but it makes sense as a two-way street because it's basically the center of OTR. If you made every street in OTR two-way, it'd cause gridlock. Think of all the added left turns, buses stopping traffic, etc. Plus, you'd undoubtedly lose a lot of on-street parking that will be a vital resource if we ever hope to lose the off-street parking requirements.

Checking the LIHTC database shows that a huge chunk of those two blocks of Walnut were renovated 1991-1993 using the tax credits, so it may remain a shady spot into the 2020's...

I live on Walnut and everything from the Art Academy up to Urban Sites office near 15th is trouble. At night I walk up to Liberty and over to Main or Vine rather than walking down Walnut or any of the side streets off of it, which are even sketchier. Mercer Commons cannot come quickly enough.

The Esquire fills the independent void in Cincinnati pretty well, I wonder how another, larger theater would do? And just to note again, there were never windows over the lower half of the building, only the second floor was covered over. The lower half originally housed two department stores, which also work well without windows, but I'm afraid the ship has sailed on the downtown department store model.

^ That's a shame, the Hanke Building was a great venue for MPMF last year and would have been cool again this year, especially if a permanent bar tenant fitted out the space in time. Instead, we'll get a propaganda factory.

The windowless portion should be something like a data center. It sounds like a lame idea, but there are a few data centers downtown that I know of that take up office space that has windows, yet they just cage them off and tint over them. The second floor was originally glass curtain wall like the first floor, though, and I think restoring that would be a nice touch. I think the solid brick is a historically significant part of the building and I'd hate to lose it, even though it's hard to program a use for such a windowless space. On a side note, I've gotten a couple emails from developers over the past month or so asking if I had plans for this building (my blog has an old post about it). Not sure if that means there is interest outside of the current owner or not, but they were at least asking.

Financing for the grand cathedrals of Europe was far lest wasteful/harmful to the respective communities than, say, Paul Brown Stadium financing is to Cincinnati. Plus, they got timeless, beautiful buildings that still stand today as the physical manifestation of over 1000 years of culture. To say a cathedral like Chartres or Cologne was a waste and didn't do anything for the community is foolish. It's one thing to not have faith and not be religious, and it's another to have no grasp whatsoever on the importance of religion in a historical context. Even the beautiful churches around Cincinnati and OTR did a lot for those who came here, built them, and needed them socially, morally, and culturally.

Skywalks are a welcome addition when it's pouring down sheets of rain or 105 degrees outside. I've taken a backwards, uninviting trip through the remnants of the Skywalk a couple of times over the past month. I usually head in at Carew/Fountain Place and end up dumped into the basement of a parking garage a few blocks away. I don't think they take much away from streetlife as I never see anyone in them, and there isn't much streetlife when it's pouring outside anyway.

Cost is absolutely the reason the "revival" styles of the past are known as "faux-" styles today. People want the look but aren't willing to pay for it. It's also the reason why things like mass, form, and scale are replicated in today's infill projects rather than ornamentation and detail. A building can pay homage to a past style of similar structures while looking nothing like it.

At first I always Googled the person, just to see who they were. I quickly found out that almost every single time I Googled, "Cincymugshots" was the first result. I'm just genuinely curious who the people are that get killed in the neighborhood I live in.

His middle name is "Eugene," so you didn't capture all of his charges. Append these to your list: PALMER THEODORE E /02/CRB/7776 B 0202731 PALMER THEODORE E /02/CRB/8946 PALMER THEODORE E /03/CRB/17942 PALMER THEODORE E /03/CRB/36729 PALMER THEODORE E /05/TRD/17961 75/3489236 PALMER THEODORE E /10/TRD/21821 75/3699392 PALMER THEODORE E /10/TRD/26359 SEE TICKETS PALMER THEODORE E /10/TRD/26402 SEE TICKETS PALMER THEODORE E /10/TRD/32611 SEE TICKETS PALMER THEODORE E C/08/TRD/17279 00/978378 PALMER THEODORE E 75/3317260 PALMER THEODORE E 00/754053 PALMER THEODORE EUGENE /04/CRA/15272 B 0404349 PALMER THEODORE EUGENE /05/CRA/31311 B 0508219 PALMER THEODORE EUGENE /05/CRA/31311 B 0508438 PALMER THEODORE EUGENE /05/CRB/22104 PALMER THEODORE EUGENE /05/CRB/23904 PALMER THEODORE EUGENE /08/CRA/40409 B 0810025 PALMER THEODORE EUGENE /08/CRB/22294 PALMER THEODORE EUGENE /08/CRB/28563 PALMER THEODORE EUGENE /09/TRD/44841 75/3701549 PALMER THEODORE EUGENE /10/CRA/11139 B 1002502 PALMER THEODORE EUGENE /10/CRB/13048 PALMER THEODORE EUGENE C/01/CRB/5288 PALMER THEODORE EUGENE C/05/TRD/17613 34/20071 PALMER THEODORE EUGENE C/07/CRA/34857 B 0707875 PALMER THEODORE EUGENE C/07/TRD/68134 34/32049 PALMER THEODORE EUGENE C/08/TRD/29668 44/63110 PALMER THEODORE EUGENE C/09/CRB/23391 B 0904805 PALMER THEODORE EUGENE C/09/CRB/23391 B 0904805 PALMER THEODORE EUGENE C/09/CRB/23392 B 0904805 PALMER THEODORE EUGENE C/09/CRB/23392 B 0904805 PALMER THEODORE EUGENE C/10/TRD/25680 34/45664 PALMER THEODORE EUGENE 34/13011 I too check Cincymugshots.com and the Clerk of Court whenever there is a crime in the news in OTR, and this many charges is typical of those involved. It's an exception when the victim is innocent. A block from where this crime occurred is a halfway house full of ex cons who are on the right track and making the right decisions. It's a shame this guy didn't make the same good choices as the men who live a block away.

I imagine Grammer's will still have a stage of some sort. I hope they do, I really liked that setting for this type of music festival. It was literally in the back yard of a block of OTR buildings, which made it unique and unexpected. As much as I love Washington Park, it won’t be as interesting/quaint/unique of a venue as the back lot at Grammer’s was.

Re the Cincy subsidy numbers, they are a little vague in that article. The $100 million no doubt includes the value of the land and improvements for the Macy’s. That building was built under the guise of being a “base” on top of which a 30 story mixed use residential tower would be constructed. The city spent a ton of money trying to make that happen, and the Macy’s building was indeed built structurally capable of supporting a tower, but it has never happened. The Saks subsidies must just be the Skywalk, and maybe some sort of tax or ground lease deal. While these subsidies are different than what a suburban location gets, they aren’t unmatched. Millions go into road and site improvements for suburban malls, it just isn’t called a subsidy by the media.

JR is the artist that did that. I'm not suggesting they use the same picture for Cincinnati, or even a portrait at all: just something that is a bit more unique than a mosaic. Anyone could do it really, get together a small group of people, pick a stair, show up one night and clean it, wheat paste something on it, and call it a night.

I've always been more partial to this, as far as stair street art goes:

I think they are just street lights that aren't complete yet. The security cameras are already up all over the park (there's basically nowhere you can't be watched by the eye in the sky). While the park had a grand opening, it's actually not complete yet. There are a lot of little things left to do, namely the roof/trellis at the stage and other buildings.

I’m sure smoking will eventually be banned in the entirety of The Banks. Fountain Square was just the first step. They will all have to walk 30' out over the Ohio River on the Roebling in order to smoke.

The building needs four fronts, so it’s going to be a tough design situation wherever it ends up being. The view of a service entrance and even a dumpster or two can be shielded pretty easily, but the smell can’t. It’s going to come down to frequent service intervals being in a contract somewhere, I think.