City Blights

^The effects of awful formal education and de facto segregation in the Cincinnati metro cannot be understated when considering the city's sour attitude towards embracing new experiences in the same place they've always been. Can't worry about Cincinnatians hating Cincinnati, there are too many. Supporting ventures that make sense in Cincinnati is the best way to drown that leviathan out. A streetcar system (minimum 4 lines) is one of the few ventures Cincinnati can afford to embark on that cannot possibly fail. The Banks unfortunately doesn't own that classification, that's why I feel the City would have been prudent to have reached a little bigger with the upstart of the Streetcar.

Why do you continually play the race card? I would have had no idea Mohagany was even a minority owned business had it not been mentioned in the article. I think the restaurant sounds awesome and a place I'd enjoy, but that has nothing to do with it. I just don't understand why the city is giving them a grant. That is prime real estate and they should be able to draw businesses in without giving grants. I don't follow or post on this board as much as you all so I don't recall the Toby Keith discussion, but I'd be upset if they gave them a grant as well. I'm not entirely happy about the loan that was mentioned for them either. Why aren't banks giving these loans? As for the vote, wasn't Seelbach the one quoted in the first article about Mohagany's coming to the Banks as being the guy who did the analysis and determined it was a good investment? Or am I thinking of someone else? The concept of "race card" is authoritarian in itself. It's the act of telling someone else how to feel about the emotional and social ramifications of a set of experiences that have educated them on where they stand in society. Falsifying their account of an incident without properly considering the realities of ethnics in the 21st, 20th, 19th centuries, etc. If you're a member of the majority applying the race card concept to an argument created by a minority, you're promoting bigotry, the father of racism. If you're a minority applying the concept to anyone, you're fighting for racism. As for the loans, I think both Toby's and Mahogany's will take off, sounds like Toby's already has, so that's good for Cincinnati. People on the riverfront is a sticking point for Americans. We want to see vibrancy on the water, and many cities don't have it, including many of Cincinnati's market competitors like St. Louis. I want to see the Banks be a repopulating force in the core because what living close to it means, not because who got what financial assistance. The 600 large Mahogany's received was mostly for jumpstart, long-term infrastructure. Not willing to go to fiscally irresponsible just yet on it.

Not exactly sure where my comment disappeared to, but I said that the chances of a black male becoming a victim of a crime increase statistically based on his income level. My example of blacks walking long distances in Cincinnati would go a ways to explain why you would see more blacks being robbed walking through suspect areas at night than whites. You're absolutely right about the impact of policing. Your tax dollars are much harder at work when the accosted individual is white. No one is trying to portray blacks as violent. I'm just expressing to the forum a reality about street crime and public safety in America. Many of us UO'ers understand why blacks are statistically the most likely to commit a crime. Blacks are poorer than any other American group, and always have been.

Let's be honest, this would not be the big fuss it's been converted into if the restaurant wasn't black owned. I don't know how many times unusualfire and others, most recently CincyGuy45202, have brought up Toby Keith and his 5.5 mil, but somehow we keep coming back to how unfair the Mahogany money is. It's really disappointing to witness people refusing to accept the facts of life, which is that all businesspeople need help, and all businesspeople make financial mistakes. Just don't be black while you're doing it, and don't be the City of Cincinnati if you were thinking of extending yourself in exchange for a large public benefit down the road.

You raised a major crime issue in Cincinnati regardless. The chances of someone pulling a gun on you and demanding your belongings in the winter is high. One reason there aere so many robberies in the summer is based in Cincinnati's demographics, with even more blacks than usual walking relatively long distances. That and OTR, Westwood, Fairmount and Avondale are absolutely notorious for street robbery, all but Fairmount being among Cincinnati's largest communities. A lot of thieves in these areas will use their own comrades as ATMs, so when they see lonely outsiders, dollar signs pop into their head.

One thing to remember about public safety is, statistically the most likely target of a crime other than rape are young black males, even if one were excluding homicide from the analysis as well. If you're a white guy, you should feel more safe walking downtown than black guys engaging in identical behaviors, especially if he's poor (Cinti black poverty rate 54%). In the recent past I've had several black women from Detroit who studied and worked in Cincinnati in the past 10 years tell me that they felt less safe walking the street in our fair city than the off-and-on murder capital of the United States. This is not to be confused with, "Cincinnati is more dangerous than Detroit", they all agreed that Detroit is Detroit for a reason. You're going to see a ton of weirdos in any city. The consensus with Cincinnati was the astounding number of strange men wandering around the city can be intimidating to a woman, and even among cities with similar issues controlling general safety and promoting wealth, the men would try to talk to them in Cincinnati. That was the real difference from Detroit to them. Isolated sample size, but intriguing points they offered me regardless.

Immigrants are used by natural citizens to create divisive politics, not the other way around. Low rents and access to available, low paying jobs are attractive to immigrants, and Columbus and Cincinnati both offer these things. Immigrants don't hinder economic growth, they stimulate it by consuming and providing just like anyone else. The difference with immigrants are that they typically populate low-income areas, adjusting housing trends, often for the better. For example, in Hamilton, an industrial city outside of Cincinnati, Mexican, Guatemalan and Latin immigration has been huge in the last 20 years. The westside and the Lindenwald area which is southeast, was almost entirely white, but now you see more blacks in both neighborhoods. That integration, albeit quasi-forced, would not have happened fairly recently without immigration. Don't forget about Guatemalans, guys. They are a major component to the Spanish-speaking immigration wave in central and southern Ohio. And they don't like being called Mexicans.

Fear of the majority being wronged by its own apologies used in practice in 2012 is troubling and rearing its ugly head on this thread. There is so much evidence of a discriminatory world both present and recent past that this should never have evolved into a debate on a forum where probably 90% of posters have completed 2 years of university.

Unbelievably narrow spectrum you're staring through there. Minorities are shockingly underrepresented in avenues that promote attention, like the media for one. Does the Enquirer even have black writers? Minorities have to work unusually hard for an unequal amount of positive attention. It's been proven time after time, decade after decade, in nation after nation.

Bill Cunningham is a sellout. He has long invalidated any off-air opinions he may have that differ from his buffoonish radio personality.

Ohioans' opposition to tax increases really gets me going. If you told every working Ohioan that it would cost them $27 dollars a year to increase the state's GDP by 40 billion in said year, the ballot measure would still fail. What about LRT from CVG to Tri-County? Do you think having stations at the three largest job centers along that corridor would supply sufficient ridership to justify LRT to the airport, apart from any smaller, more residential-oriented stations that would be on this hypothetical line? My rationale is that the number of people flying will increase tremendously the farther from downtown, and clearly the farther the person is from CVG, the more help they will need getting there.

The most encouraging part about the St. Louis news is, downtown Cincinnati is far more attractive, as well as the immediate surroundings.

It's too bad the Uptown spur didn't work out for Phase 1. That would have been a boon for the image of Cincinnati, a city that has its Zoo, public university, Victorian jungle and its downtown stadia on one transit line. That's a lot of entertainment on one line. A more comprehensive plan, MetroMoves-lite if you will, may have done more for Cincinnati in the long run. Streetcars for McMillan and Taft, Woodburn, Mt. Adams and Ludlow connecting to Northside. LRT to the airport from the Transit Center. The unpopular Oasis line to throw a bone to Portune, via the Wasson Line. I wonder if a package of a similar size would have gotten at least the amount of support in Hamilton County that Phase 1 has.

(Toby Keith's)It's like Mynt Martini. That place is full of @$$holes, but it's always packed. I'm glad they do good business. Excellent reference, haha. If Toby is feeding 2nd Street with traffic, I'm fine with his locale.

That's half of many people's lives. Cincinnati will continue, despite positive return with the Banks/Casino/Streetcar, to see modest growth at best because the good things that do happen there unfold far too slowly. When it takes this long to build a single streetcar line, even with obscene opposition, it doesn't always feel like a win to the people, it feels like more of the same. Bad decisions like Oakley Station stand out more because of this. The City has to start working with the county soon to place another regional transit plan on the ballot to build off the momentum of the Uptown Connector's approval if dollars are secured elsewhere prior to 2014, i.e. Obama.

Downtown Indianapolis is like a hard shoe. Large footprint, hardly any ridges. A streetcar would have helped get around such an open area. Maybe the Cincinnati Streetcar will make Bud Selig think of a valid reason why he hasn't and has no plan to put an MLB All-Star game in ten-year old Great American Ballpark.

That's the thing about the potential of a new arena...I feel the city should have thrown its resources and energy toward that a long time ago, potentially putting off or scaling back other projects, even the Banks. Back to the casino... How do they plan to integrate Mt. Adams into the larger casino district? I haven't heard anything about managing Gilbert. That boulevard does so many bad things for Walnut Hills and downtown.

I've seen them in London as well, and I don't enjoy it any more than I would in Cincinnati. I know that privacy isn't what it used to be due to technology and the modern age, however, the cameras CPD installs are concentrated in black areas primarily. It gives off a sense that certain communities are being profiled. We all know the reasons people sell drugs, in particular, minorities. It's hard to encourage the youth not to follow down the dangerous path laid for them in places like Avondale when the surveillance cameras they see on every corner are intrinsically telling them that their peers and family members are being targeted as deviant. The perception is strong, as well as the reality. There aren't too many people sitting on kilos of heroin at their residence on Blair Avenue, but the police could likely make a huge sting in Deerfield Twp. that would take much more measurable amounts of drugs off the streets of the city of Cincinnati.

It was Mallory who proposed the idea, but not Mayor Mark Mallory ... http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/ohio-news/boxing-arena-proposed-as-amenity-at-cincinnati-casino-445783.html?showComments=true If we're talking a new arena, let's stop fooling around and look toward replacing USBank Arena with one of the state-of-the-art facilities that just about every city has now. USBank Arena is a dinosaur. And since UC is making rumblings about replacing/renovating Fifth Third Arena, maybe now is the time to get the ball rolling. Louisville has the brand new Yum Center, and it doesn't have an NBA or NHL team. Cincinnati should do something similar ... I've written the mayor about US Bank and the $ the city misses out on because of that outdated structure, and I get the sense that it isn't anywhere near a priority or a project the city would even consider planning towards for quite some time. I wouldn't expect the issue to even come up at City Hall for 5-7 years. There will be obvious changes in city leadership before 2019, but I don't know if any of those deaf ears understands how important a modern arena is nowadays.

Why should the community be subject to surveillance? In a privately-held bank or grocery, yes. But outside, being recorded in public space that isn't serving a private business? Is that an appropriate acknowledgment of rights?

Anyone can answer this, but exactly why is anyone invested in what the Cincinnati Enquirer prints or what is uttered on WLW airwaves? These two outlets have not, and will not change how they present social climate and local finance in the foreseeable future. That energy could be spent toward getting the community more balanced information (which some UO'ers do), or creating a movement to publicly discredit some of Gannett's more flagrant offenders like Peter Bronson. Energy could also be preserved by ignoring the outlets and directing any influence or capital you may offer toward more fruitful avenues.

^Who cares? Same old tricks from a Gannett paper.

In Cincinnati, I honestly believe that its amenities would be used 300% more if the community could actually get there without a car. Ohio is a special color green, especially in the south. Ohioans don't appreciate how wooded and beautiful the state is. They take it for granted that the rest of the world looks the same. A lot of the world is mountainous, a lot of it is arid, and a good chunk of it just isn't that pretty. Ohio is gorgeous. Ohio's large cities are more urban than their patriots give them credit for. The 19th century brick streets in Columbus for example, look fantastic and could compete with most any city in the world both architecturally and conceptually. The air in Ohio's cities isn't very good, but the fact that the streets aren't closed in (a la Cincinnati's OTR) allows for a greater exchange of particles. The air in the core of an East Coast city or in International-style cities across the world can get stale and nasty pretty quickly, especially if it has moderate weather and doesn't rain much. Porch living is a great advantage of Ohio architecture. The colors and variety in architectural design in cities like Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati are very attractive when compared to East Coast rows that are often charming (Boston), but can become redundant. Ohio could lead the world, instead it elects John Kasich, Bob Taft, etc etc etc and refuses to control what it can. For ex., why doesn't Columbus have dedicated bus/cab lanes? Both High and Broad Sts. are perfect for them, all they need are barriers and lane instructions. Cleveland Ave. and the crowded #1 COTA route would benefit greatly from bus lanes. Essentially every major corridor could be utilized this way, yet I don't hear a peep about these possibilities coming out of the capital. If you're not going to do rail, do something.

Poverty, caste, and the illicit trades that gradually took the position of the State as a provider of basic modern commodity, are why homicides occur, not a code of silence in the community. What do you suppose the public owes the State?

The same people that voted MetroMoves down in 2002 have been crying about the relative small scale of Phase I since 2008. What city could display a shorter memory and lower IQ in the same gesture?