SWOH

The constant build, build, build churn makes me question the cost of tuition as an alum, but hopefully it helps improve the university’s reputation Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If Western and Southern would have bought it, I could see a case for putting tennis courts over Fort Washington Way to make it the cap. It might even be possible to roll out artificial turf the majority of the year over it to let the space be a park until the tournament happens. It would be a killer good site, way better than anything they could do in Charlotte or Mason. TQL and PBS could be used for matches too. But it’s a pipe dream at best

Below are a couple of photos that I was able to snap of the Intel site on my flight to DC this morning. I wasn’t checking out my window until it was basically too late, but it is super recognizable from the sky. Also gives a great idea of how massive it is, I was flying out of Dayton so we were close to our cruising altitude by this point Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

For this $400mil to build in Charlotte vs $350mil to keep it here costing evaluation, does anyone have an answer on where these numbers came from? I realize he is a private business owner and it’s his money, but these numbers do not feel legitimate at all. Like not even close. Building a new tournament facility in Charlotte, with 40 tennis courts, some of them inside, with new stadiums comparable in size and stature to the ones in Mason for $400mil is insanity. The center court alone easily would cost like $100mil to rebuild. I don’t see a hard value estimated for the value of the Mason site sale to go towards the build. If he can find a buyer interested in using the stadium, maybe he could make 50mil or so. If not, it’ll go for really cheap. A lot of destroyed value there. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If a 20-story tower is built, it’ll probably be pretty similar in style and setup as the apartments attached to the Keystone Crossing mall in Indianapolis. Not a glowing example of good urban planning, sure, but honestly there are a lot worse ways the site could be used https://www.zillow.com/apartments/indianapolis-in/vitra-apartments/5Xt8cG/?utm_campaign=iosappmessage&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=txtshare Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Where’s SAF at? They should be jumping for joy lol Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

DMAX moving 20 minutes away to Brookville is good news disguised as bad news. Keeping the facility in the Dayton area, having GM re-invest in it, and not having this be built on Knoop Prairie are all huge wins for the Dayton area as a whole. 1.1 million square feet is significantly larger than their current facility. Since they built a casting foundry there already, I’m guessing they are going for building the extra floor space in case the Duramax trucks ever have to go EV. But this is a big bet on the Duramax trucks staying petro fueled for a while… a billion dollar bet. It will be interesting to see if GM decides to hold the current DMAX building or sell it off. My guess is they sell it off quickly, probably/hopefully to ICP since they redeveloped the OTHER massive formerly vacant GM plant in Moraine, and they find a tenant. Moraine is in a lot better shape now than it was 15 years ago as a GM town. WinSupply, Fuyao, and others are growing like crazy there. If I was Brookville’s city leaders, I’d be careful because GM has a habit of not treating its communities well. They really need to leverage whatever additional tax revenue they can get from this to invest in community amenities that are lacking in town like shopping, restaurants, a desirable downtown, bike infrastructure, and parks to keep GM committed Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Agreed. The math behind the numbers is total BS. The facility is surrounded by open grass fields. They are used for parking, but it would be very easy to just use Kings Island’s excess parking during the tournament and shuttle people over if needed Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

They have the Dayton Convention and Visitors' Bureau (Dayton CVB) https://www.daytoncvb.com/ That's the one I always think of for Dayton. All the surrounding counties have their own as well.

Also, tourism is not a big part of Dayton's economy compared to Lexington (horse country) or Louisville (bourbon + horse country). Both of those things draw international tourism, especially from Great Britain. There's a reason they take royalty through Bluegrass country whenever they tour the USA, it's because it feels like home to some extent for them. Which would make that whole area both well known and a destination for Brits. That being said, once Dayton's CVB sees what Louisville and Lexington are doing as far as marketing themselves, they should take advantage of it and do the same for the Air Force Museum, Wright Bros. heritage sites, and Carillon Park. The first two of those sites should draw international interest, and the third with enough education (first practical plane is on display). Columbus does not really have any internationally significant cultural sites or festivals I know of, but it may become more of a draw as a cool place to be a la Austin or Nashville, and a draw in its own right, in coming years.

^They are demolishing a historic stone church to do that, so I wouldn’t exactly call it a step forward. More like a massive step backwards. I don’t understand why they can’t build it on vacant land somewhere else in west Dayton Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

^maybe. He has to get this approved by the ATP , right?

That's just the city of Mason itself. Not the county, state, etc.

At least with Mason, it's a pretty vibrant place and one of Ohio's top suburbs. From an aesthetic perspective, even if Ohio as a whole might not be "flashy" enough for the tournament, Mason itself at least is putting one of our best possible places in the state forward. Whether or not we like to admit it as urbanists is a whole different issue, I'm not a fan of suburbia either, but for the most part it's suburbia done right. So it's going to be hard to make a case to pull the tournament out because the community doesn't look or act the part for it. They just bought it to poach it for the carolinas, it's simple as that. If building some kind of a village there, at the golf course site keeps it, then that's what should happen. There's demand for housing, office, residential, etc. there so it won't go to waste. I personally think the idea of moving it downtown, somehow, is pretty cool and if done properly could justify the Fort Washington Way caps.... but that would require an owner who doesn't have a sole goal of pulling it out. Somehow the Crew got saved, thank goodness, maybe this can be saved too.

Could be better, could be worse. I like that they are staying true to the neighborhood characteristic by putting 4-squares (8-squares I guess?) along Old Orchard Ave. I hope they have a brick or stone facade. The larger apartment buildings, let's be real, will probably be cheaply built and suburban looking. As long as they don't have exterior corridors leading up to the units, I guess it's OK. IMO if I was in city leadership I would push for a dense 5-over-1 stick apartment block facing Forest Ave, greenspace on the back of the block including the tree line (good save by the developers), and parking on the back side of the tree line, no apartments excluding the 8-squares to hide the presence of the parking somewhat along Old Orchard and Homewood, brick clad of course.

Agreed on the parking garage… but from what it sounds like, the garage will be used as some of the overall square footage inside the Delco complex’s square footage. I’m not sure how that building is constructed, but here’s how I see it: - IF the buildings have a basement, and the parking garage will be basement + first floor behind ground level retail only, then so be it. There’s not really a better use for that space. The retail market in general can’t support large floor print stores anymore, especially not downtown - IF the garage is first + second floor or something like that, then it definitely shouldn’t be done and tax credits shouldn’t be given through the Port Authority. Those tax credits will essentially cement those floors as a parking garage for life. Parking garage conversions back to residential are happening downtown (fire blocks district) and fortunately seem to be easier than, say, office conversions because there’s no demo and the space is wide open. So it’s not worst case for the future at all, there’s hope, but thing tax credits to the garage means use as a garage for a very long period of time and is unfortunate.

$132 million government payout on a $400 million capital project seems like a bad deal to me. If I was Charlotte I would offer a lot less. There's no way they would recoup $132 million on a $400 million project in 10 years if the property tax rate is, what, 2.5% there? At minimum at that rate it would take 14 years.

Any way the Art Modell law applies here? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The Funk Museum reposted the article on the Trotwood Friends Facebook page, so I’m guessing it’s still going in? The historical designation might help them preserve the building for conversion, at least partially, into the museum. 120k square feet is a ton of space, so if they do turn it into the funk museum it’ll be interesting (hopefully good-interesting) to see what is done with the rest of the building. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a museum on malls and some kind of dog food museum since Iams is from the area (their homestead house is in old town Trotwood) but that’s probably very pie in the sky thinking Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Sears building at former Salem Mall has shot at national historic listing "The Sears & Roebuck building at the former Salem Mall has been nominated for the National Register of Historic Places. The one-story structure on 4.7 acres at 5200 Salem Ave. in Trotwood was built in 1966 and consumes about 125,000 square feet, according to registration records. It closed in 2014 and was bought at auction by the city in 2019, records show. Sears has “undergone little modification, especially at the exterior, and maintains a moderately high degree of historic integrity,” records state." Read More: https://www.daytondailynews.com/local/sears-building-at-former-salem-mall-has-shot-at-national-historic-listing/7UTUYFCOURGFBAJUIBG6ZHO5O4/ Given that it has kind of become the poster child for vacant Sears locations due to iconic architecture (reference the 2018 Fortune 500 magazine article on Sears below, among others) I am really hoping they can preserve it. Glad Trotwood owns/controls the property and wants to preserve it too. https://fortune.com/ranking/fortune500/2018/sears-holdings/

It's been an amazing transformation over the past ~10 years downtown. Completely night and day from how it was to how it is now, visually. A ton of buildings have been preserved and restored, which has been great, and more are currently being renovated, the most notable ones being the Arcade and the old Delco buildings Mendelson's most recently occupied. There have been some demolitions too, but in downtown at least the demolitions have mostly been non-historic buildings, like a building on Monument Ave. that most recently had a Wright State extension office in it was torn down for a 5-over-1 stick apartment building. Everything is coming together really well. Up until a couple years ago, almost all of the development was happening west of Patterson but with the Fire Blocks and the Arcade the revitalization is slowly moving west across downtown. I'm really looking forward to the 40 S. Fourth, City Centre, and Algonquin hotel redevelopments happening as well as the new townhouses in Wright-Dunbar.

Hoping to make it over there!

A couple months ago the CityNerd channel was recommended to me on Youtube, and it's been great. Would highly recommend checking it out if you're looking for a new Youtuber to follow. The channel is put together by Ray Delahanty, and he does a great job researching each video to show what's being done well in city planning, and what is being done poorly. I'm really enjoying his stuff and thought I'd share to see if anyone else enjoys it too! https://www.youtube.com/c/CityNerd

Agreed. Ohio has a good path to really succeed if there's more investment in the small urban towns. They can't, won't and shouldn't be the old ideal (anybody remember Mayberry? Of course you do) but a new ideal where places like, I don't know, Circleville celebrate their walkable main street lined with shops and bars, taco trucks in front of the suburban strip center built at the edge of town in the 1960s that's more in the middle now, and professionals setting up and renovating the old mansions for their offices are homes should be celebrated heavily and somehow popularized in mainstream culture. That could help places that are causing a lot of the population loss in this state, places people do not want to be like Fostoria, New Carlisle, Portsmouth, and Steubenville (sorry to name names, and full disclosure one of those examples is ~3 miles from where I grew up to keep this fair). It goes into the argument of how to build good community leadership and stewardship at a young age in these small towns. I really wish somebody in Ohio had the foresight to put together a concentrated outreach effort where they would visit high schools and teach seniors not just how government works but also give specific guidance and support to help them become community leaders and even run for office. They could bring some new ideas and energy to their dying hometowns, and realize the path to success doesn't necessarily require going away to some other state. I can certainly understand wanting to escape and carve out a new life of your own that is not tied into your family, but who's to say that cannot be done without helping your hometown along the way?

The bars on Broadway in Nashville is, from what I can tell, ~90% of the reason why Nashville is booming. Nash-Vegas is certainly a thing, so many people go there for bachelor/bachelorette parties or just to party in general, and they stay long enough to like it and settle there, or long enough to at least find some reason to go back again. Keep in mind the type of people that have the time and money to do this are generally well educated professionals with disposable income... just the type of people that make the decisions about where to locate companies, who to do business with, etc. and giving themselves more reasons to take business trips to Nashville to drink more at the bars there is a real motivator. That paired with the climate makes it pretty desirable.