SWOH

That is an interesting article! Since this has become the de facto Good Sam Hospital thread, here's a picture I took earlier this week mid-demolition:

15 years for a suspension is ridiculous though... 4-5 years should be the max for any of these suspensions. That's how long it takes for the former members to graduate and leave. It also gives the frat enough time to purge bad leadership and get new, good leadership.

Damn... considering how those areas are now, those renderings are gorgeous! It takes dreams to make things happen, so who knows? If that Trotwood rendering happened I'd love to be able to walk over there and have lunch. Here's the link to the Trotwood proposal: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a6bef9e6f4ca33ee68ec2b6/t/5d3f452498ec4a00010f7e86/1564427560015/Project+Sheet+-+Trotwood+East+Main.pdf I'm not finding the Harrison Twp. one as easily, but will keep looking because I'm really curious about it lol

I'm planning on it, can't wait!

Same here!

It's looking good! That second rendering is odd though... it appears they tried to make the rendering be from the north looking southwest onto the roundhouse but instead made it a mirror image (Main St. should be to the left of the roundhouse if looking at it from the southwest unless they really meant to show Patterson Blvd?) with downtown superimposed into northern Oakwood. Very strange. EDIT - on a second look it could be possible they were going for looking northwest onto the roundhouse from the south, and the side street we see running to the left is a TBD cross street per their design. (it would roughly line up with Wyoming Street). After looking at the first rendering more too I'm thinking this is actually the case... and there would be an anchor building at the northeast corner of the development.

^That is correct. and it’s not really justifiable either... the development is in Northmont Schools, has good highway access, and is well built for suburbia at least. The quality of homes built there is good. But people are afraid of the Trotwood address and Trotwood city services. It would take me a while to dig up the news trail, but if I remember correctly Moss Creek was built in the late 1990s because the owner of the farm on that site (last name is Oakes?) wrote in his will that the property was to be turned into a golf course. The owner was also wealthy, and had the money to commission Chi Chi Rodriguez to design the course. This is a stretch of my memory so all of this may be incorrect but I could swear the way he seeded the property the city of Trotwood was responsible for actually constructing the community. For instance, there’s no way this house only cost $365k to build: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/7271-Wentworth-Way-Clayton-OH-45315/34981982_zpid/ It sold for $545k back in 2008, and at this point the development had already stalled out. The lot sold for $80k.

Agreed, Puerto Rico on a smaller scale would be a more apt comparison. The damage is still very severe and very real though. What concerns me is the fact that there's so many good, easy options for relocation nearby. In a sense that is great, but what is going to keep someone in Trotwood when they have cash instead of their house and a decent market of houses nearby from which to choose in communities with better schools, better infrastructure, walkability, access to amenities, etc.? Nothing. Trotwood is a suburban food desert. So even if the homeowners leave, what I'm hoping is that they are at least required to demolish their houses and prepare the demo site for re-use properly so there isn't a jumbled, dangerous mess left behind. No more Salem Mall site repeats.

True, there definitely is not a housing shortage here, plenty of places to go. What it seems likely to do though is accelerate the exodus out of Trotwood, Northridge, and the like... can't see anybody living in Moss Creek with catastrophic damage rebuilding, for instance. It may sound harsh, but a lot of the people in Moss Creek that had $400k houses sitting on the market for $300k less than what it cost to build them in 1999 dollars were probably praying for something like this to happen so they could get out from under it with a full recoup of their investment (assuming they insured the house at its full build value). They got the short end of the stick there, not only because the community was never more than ~5% built out but also because the golf course ceased operation last year. What would be great is if the exodus went to places that may be at the beginning stages of redevelopment like Five Oaks instead of further out into Dayton suburbia, or other metros, or even other states. Either way it'll be interesting to see how this shakes out.

I'm really worried about how this storm recovery in going to look... it has the potential to be Katrina-level bad. The worst of the tornadoes went from Brookville down through northern Trotwood, right past Salem Mall, over top of Hara Arena, down through north Main to the southern end of the Dixie strip and on out to the northern parts of old North Dayton to Page Manor and Beavercreek. Most of these areas were already in rough shape... Hara Arena was falling down, Salem Mall was dead before dead malls were a thing, and a number of lower-rent apartment communities got knocked out. Brookville and Beavercreek will be fine, but this particular storm seemed to do a great job at hitting the poorest parts of the Dayton area, which is poor to start with, honestly. People in these areas don't have good access to stores or anything really beyond where the RTA can go. They don't have much money, and many can't afford to lose a paycheck. The areas where the storms hit aren't the types of areas where people rebuild, the mentality is "cash in the insurance money and pull out" for those that own property and have insurance. If Hara wasn't insured, I doubt anyone will rush to demolish it unless they are absolutely forced to do it, and even then it'll be a big legal battle. No one is going to want to pay those demolition fees, and whoever owns it now likely does not care if it continues to rot in that spot since they didn't care to demolish it earlier. The apartments are a worry too. The Rivers Edge apartments seemed to be a real success, the owners came in and fixed up a number of buildings that were abandoned for years, creating over 500 nice, livable apartment units. They did a real service to the area and region by fixing those up a couple of years ago. Now every single building there is decimated... I don't know if they will be willing to rebuild. To me it seems like these tornadoes are only going to make things worse in a part of town that really needs a lot of help and reinvestment.

The only way buying this plant would work is if Workhorse lands that US Postal Service vehicle contract it apparently is a finalist for right now... a $5 billion contract, as ColDayMan noted above. In the past, places like Mahindra have had a lock on that work, and a lot of their manufacturing capacity is in Mexico. Trump isn't the smartest guy on the block, but if he has even an iota of common sense he'd be making sure Mahindra or another company based outside the US doesn't get the contract and it goes to someplace like this new Workhorse startup. Workhorse currently has a building in Union City, IN that does manufacturing (guessing it is structured more like a job shop), idk what they really do in Loveland. What confuses me about Workhorse though is how they are convincing the venture capitalists to keep pouring in as much money as they have poured in, IMO it is Theranos level bad... Source: https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2019/05/08/trump-tweet-loveland-manufacturer-will-buy.html?iana=hpmvp_cinci_news_headline Probably an unpopular opinion, but if Tesla were in financial shape to take on any of the three closing GM plants Hamtramack seems like the best bet because it puts them in the Detroit market with the Detroit supply chain. I know a number of OH companies that supply parts to Tesla's Fremont plant and can't imagine it is the most efficient way to make those cars... might as well come to the auto hub and build on the knowledge here instead of trying to fight it.

IMO this is a very surprising move because Honda's UK plant is shutting down. They only make Civic and CRV there. I would have expected a decent amount of that production to shift here to the US or Canada... Marysville (MAP) and ELP (Honda East Liberty) are both making CRVs right now. HMIN (Honda Mfg. of IN, in Greensburg, Indiana) is making Civic 4-doors, Honda Insight (basically a hybrid 4-door Civic) and CRV. HCM (Honda of Canada MFG, near Toronto) is making Civic and CRV as well, and they make the 2-door & Civic SI. All this makes me think Honda would shift more CRV production to MAP, away from HMIN or HCM, to allow them to start making Civics for Europe and Civic Type R's (all Civic Type R's sold globally were made at Honda UK). What further confounds it is HMA (Honda Mfg. of Alabama, in Lincoln AL) 100% makes 4 models right now... Pilot, Ridgeline, Odyssey, and Passport. Pilot has been selling like crazy, Odyssey has been doing well, and Ridgeline has had a slow go of it but not unexpected due to its unibody frame (what's really interesting is Ridgeline still takes the #1 spot in almost every mid-sized Truck competition). Passport is a wild card, but I can see a lot of people going for it that want a bit more than CRV. All Acura MDX / RDX production shifted up to ELP. So to me it seems like HMA is overloaded too... that's demand that ELP can handle if they shift out some of their CRV production to MAP. Hoping some of these shifts happen and Marysville gets its 2nd shift back soon.

Not to argue for the sake of arguing, but this is exactly what I'm doing and it's going OK. If I was doing my dream job I'd be a city planner, but there's not as much flexibility in public policy fields as there is in engineering. Sometimes it's worth understanding that people work to live, not the other way around. It's part of the reason why there's been not enough younger people going into skilled trades in recent years... nobody wants to be a plumber, but people need plumbers every day so if you know how to do it it's possible to make an excellent living with a relatively low barrier to entry.

Not saying I have experience with bachelorette parties, but from my experience with bachelor parties and similar: Chicago > Detroit = Vegas = Cincy (being a Cincy quasi-local helps) >>> Nashville. I don't get the Nashville bachelor party / bachelorette party draw. Nashville certainly would have Gatlinburg beat IMO

I missed this earlier... this is a really good idea. Minimal impact to buildings, a decent amount of the grading is already done, plenty of room past the bridge to slope the entrance and exit from this road down to US 50 if needed. It'd work well. All we need is the political will to make this happen, or some influential group strong enough to oppose the Fischer Homes people and back it instead of the Eastern Corridor.

Trotwood: We can win Fuyao expansion The executive director of Trotwood’s community improvement corporation (CIC) thinks the city has “at least” a 50-50 shot at winning a distribution site linked to Fuyao Glass America’s Moraine complex. However, decision-makers at Fuyao aren’t publicly discussing the matter. For months, leaders at Moraine-based Fuyao Glass America — the complex the company says is the world’s largest factory producing automotive safety glass — have talked of the need to secure additional warehousing space. More below: https://www.daytondailynews.com/business/trotwood-can-win-fuyao-expansion/9FEbCkt5GRJORvIWi46g4J/?icmp=cmgoBusinessStoryLink ...Looks like it'd be a 250,000 - 300,000 square foot warehouse if it were to be built. It also looks like most of this warehousing is currently being done in Moraine in part of their building / former GM Moraine.

That is true, and a really good point. Access down to US 50 (which would be critical to making any kind of proposal like this work) would be really tricky with the massive elevation drop. Your proposal sounds good and workable for sure, but it seems like if this were to ever happen there'd be a lot of pushback from Mount St. Joseph. The more I look at the map, the more I wonder if it'd make more sense to tie in at Minneola instead? The bridge would essentially replace the Anderson Ferry because it'd be located right over top of its current path.

Interesting, never realized there was a proposal for a bridge from the airport across the river to the west side already... amazing to think where we would be if Qualls was mayor instead of Cranley. Seems like a bridge in this area would be at least 80% cheaper than building a giant unnecessary Eastern Bypass highway. Also it'd tear down a lot fewer houses and disrupt a lot fewer people's lives.

Interesting post about Wright-Dunbar from an interesting and new-to-me blog about Dayton: https://daytonvistas.com/history-of-west-third-street-buildings-in-wright-dunbar/ Wonder if the author is a Urban Ohio member or lurker...

This is what I'd do... it wouldn't tear up any neighborhoods and really improve interstate access for the west side. I'd leave it as a "super street" grade road with a 55mph speed limit rather than a full highway. It's poorly drawn, but I'd include an interstate grade interchange to US 50 (which is built to almost highway grade itself). I'd also include: - A bridge over the OH river and KY-8 - Improvements to KY-20 to withstand increased traffic down to KY-8 - A traffic circle at the intersection of Terminal Drive and Delhi Pike - A Michigan Left or similar interchange at Terminal Drive / Petersburg Rd. to keep traffic from clogging down to I-275. What would be really awesome is if some type of rail infrastructure could be included along this road and across its bridge too for future mass transit to CVG.

The points on their website ( http://www.cincyeasternbypass.com/ ) are laughably dumb... below is one of their main selling points: Apparently these people love facts & data to support their conclusions rather than blind intuition and feelings. If you guys notice this proposal's northern trajectory between 71 and 75 in Warren county, I don't understand why they don't show using OH-48, which is built just below highway grade as part of their plan. I doubt the tea partiers of Springboro, the same crowd they are trying to court with this proposal, would be happy with a highway in their backyard. Power to whoever is backing this for being that stupid.

Agreed, but... What about pedestrian bridges? It seems like there are many ways to calm traffic and get MLK to be at least somewhat pedestrian, but given the big fight that's been going on over Liberty St. I doubt the Cranley administration is going to be too keen on truly making the area more walkable. I have my reservations about pedestrian bridges, or at least I did until I went to Las Vegas. The environment is a lot different, they can do things like have outdoor, uncovered escalators. But the pedestrian bridges did a decent job of making a completely pedestrian-hostile corridor with buildings well beyond human scale somewhat navigable. The alternative I see would be suburban-style pedestrian tunnels, the ones like they use to keep kids riding bikes off of busier streets in a subdivision. I haven't had a chance to read the plan so maybe one or both of these elements are included.

Looking forward to what they have to say... Even though we know UD and some of the other major players getting this done it seems like actual, tangible details on what will be opening in the arcade are non-existent. Hopefully the big announcement will clear some of that up.

^What's hilarious is the fact that Clayton has an actual downtown.... It's on the far western edge of town, right next to 49 North exit off I-70 (Exit 24). It was originally called Salem, and Salem Ave. went there. There's not much to it. Apparently even civic leaders in Clayton forgot their own history. If Clayton can pull it off, great, but housing values there are not increasing. They already have a failed new urbanist development that hopefully can be re-launched but the odds of that being a success are long. Plus the North Main corridor they are planning to make urban south to downtown is one of the most blighted commercial corridors in Ohio... not that the city of Clayton can really impact that corridor but it'll certainly impact what scared suburbanites think about moving to the north end of the corridor in Clayton. I'm hoping they have the budget for the streetscape improvements at least, it'll be a good first step for keeping North Main up there from becoming as blighted as the rest of North Main in Dayton.

Honestly the most polluted place I ever lived was Indiana... actual farming smells a lot worse than most city smells IMO and the pesticides / poisons used on a farm, as well as the ones used on suburban lawns, are a lot stronger than anything consumer grade you'd find used in most urban areas. That being said, if Dayton could fix their wastewater treatment facility so it didn't smell like a sewer pipe in Moraine and west Dayton most days that would be awesome