Jeffery

Not sure how that vote went, but they do have a legit concern with maintenance issues, particularly trash and litter. That is an issue with RTA stops. But interesting how things work here in Dayton, how they manage the denial, how "Oh its not really about race, or class, or , or, or...its about other, more neutral things".

This could be a leading indicator. We might see more early warning signs like this, but we'll see this flush out in the employment numbers if job growth in the first and second quarters are weak.

My favorite modern buildings in the area: That new LEED-certified lab on WSU Art Street (or whatever its called) at UD The Glen Helen Building. MetLife Building looks like cool outside, but dont known about the inside. If your going to do suburban office park at least due it with some panache, the way Metlife does it. ...and...this nifty half-underground office building set in a wooded lot in an office park in Centerville, sort of off Alex-Bell and I-675. Its hidden away so hard to see or find, but its pretty cool for Dayton.

And Dayton is now smaller than Joliet and Rockford (!) Illinois. Wow. I wonder how long will it take to drop below 125,000, or even 100,000.

Fro CDMs list: 39. Milwaukee 1 555 908 + 40. Jacksonville 1 345 596 + 41. Memphis 1 316 100 + 42. Louisville 1 283 566 + 43. Richmond 1 258 251 + 44. Oklahoma City 1 252 987 + 45. Hartford 1 212 381 + ...Louisville has been in this 40s ranking for some time now. Holding its place.

Louisville metro area growth rates....note how the growth is some of the best since the tail end of the postwar boom era (1960s): 2000s: 13.6% 1990s: 10.0% 1980s: 5.1% 1970s: 4.4% 1960s: 19.6%

Bingo. Political power is where the votes are. Though, I would say not "capable", but "motivated to vote", or "habitual voters" , or "frequent voters"

Caution on the tracts. After looking at the .pdf of the Montgomery County tracts I see they did some fiddiling with the tract boundaries so comparsions between different census years.

I think the Louisville MSA grew by 12%-14%. The kicker is the core county grew, too, which is more than you can say for a number of Ohio metro areas.

Yeah I did and unfortunatly they fiddled with the tract geography for Dayton city, so you cant do a direct tract to tract comparison from 1990 to 2000 to 2010. 1990 and 2000 are comparble, but not 2010 and 2000. Rearranging the boundaries for, say, a West Dayton tract to take in the VA will mask the depopulation going on in that tract, so the declines wont look so bad. Same with merging Mcphersontown and Grafton Hill into the same tract.

You could post a similar map of Kentucky. A lot of the branch lines from Greyhound that I remember from the 1970s, out into Eastern KY and Southern Indiana, are gone now. For Dayton its even more interesting to look at bus service in the 1940s and early 1950s, where Greene County had scheduled local bus service provided by local operators...through Beavercreek to Xenia and to what is now Fairborn. Going even further back, into the 1920s and 1930s, there was rural bus service out to Lebanon and north to Greenville, I think. Regional mass transit has just withered away over the years as we became more motorized and roads improved.

Funding additional service to Wright-Patterson AFB would be a colossal waste of money. This is actually a good thing, that the money isn't going to this.

Theres some neat modernist stuff behind Northtown shopping center, too.

This is a local ordnance, correct? Introduce a new ordnance that revises the phasing. Yes, more politics, but this thing is being micromanaged for political purposes anyway. Cold comfort to know that if this dies, at least the only infrastructure is the changed utility runs, not extensive, like the tunnels, roadbed, and stations, from the infamous cancelled subway. The streetcar avoided getting that far and being that much of an embarassement (if the plug was pulled at a later date while the line was under construction).

Look at the EA as an omnibus EA for the entire effort, which is now going to be phased due to financial considerations. Dont change the routes, just do a basin loop as phase I and the uptown extension as Phase II.

My hunch is that they could care less....or they can just "change the law", like I said upthread if there is a legal issue. Its a regular Glechschaltung...change the rules to suit the party ideology or policy goals.

I'm wondering if the city can build a scaled-down line (say just a downtown/Findlay Market area loop, without state/fed money? If not y'all might have to outwait Kasich....but then the legislature is usually controlled by the GOP (one or both houses), so it would still be a fight.' If the there is a legal fight the state house and senate could just "change the law" and what was once illegal becomes legal, so I think y'all might be screwed. Don't really see this as a knock against Cincy per-se, as the city has been quite supportive of this streetcar concept....including a sucessfull referendum that essentially said "yes" to the concept.

I'm wondering if this supposed off-the-record discussion with the "local buisness communtiy" alluded to by Kasich has something to do with 3CDC remaining neutral on the streetcar (think this was mentioned upthread). 3CDC's efforts at center city revival would be enhanced by the streetcar, so it was puzzling to me that they would not be a supporter, even if the support is just verbal or a position paper or something. Especially since one knows that 3CDC is funded by the local movers-and-shakers, the leading corporations in the city. Presumably the leadership of these entitites are the ones Kasich was talking to or would listen to (assuming the conversation really happened and Kaisch wasnt just blowing smoke).

Interesting about the real estate market since we are seeing job growth and economic growth in general, paltry though it may be. I think the concern is that property valuations will drop thus tax revenue for local govt. But otherwise this is a deflationary situation in housing, no?

Did a little grocery shopping by bike. After dropping off a rental on Saturday, I walked to Old North Dayton, to Troy Street. Goal was to take a few more snapshots of the Valley/Troy business district before certain buildings get demolished (a lot are boarded up, so I figure this is part of my "Dayton Documentation Project"), AND to do some shopping at Chariles...while I still can.... Charlies seems to be phasing out the market part and concentrating on their deli and junk food?/HFC/"forties" business (in other words becoming like every other surviving corner store here in Dirt-town. So I get some Silesian rye bread (from Canada, no Silesia), blackberry syrup (from Slovenia), and some teewurst. I have this shoulder bag I got at the US Social Forum and put it in that, wear it with my couriers pouch, which is also sort of a shoulder bag (got that at Northside Surplus in Cincy). and start walking back to the bus hub. There is a bus line on Troy Street, and I saw a guy waiting, but given the low frequency of runs on weekedays (or any day for that matter) i figure i can walk to the downtown bus hub before I can catch a bus. So la-de-da, walk back through OND, across the Mad River, moving fast under a blue midday sky.... ..I check schedule and see I tarried too long taking pix of abanonded OND buildings and will have to rush to make the bus, or wait another hour. Step up the pace! Then, around Memorial Hall, I see a bus passing, and see its bus 17! My bus! Yoiks! Lucky me there is a light, and the bus stops...at a bus stop...at the intersection of 1st & St Clair. I run to catch the bus before the light turns, knock on the door, driver opens it. Driver: "Where did you come from?" (suprised to see someone appear seemingly out of nowhere) Me: "From North DaytoN!" She: "Oh!" Me: "I was going to try to catch you at the hub but saw you drive by so ran to cacth you here"! She: I think she looked at me funny and had a laugh. So, I ride 17 through the hub all the way back to my house down in the suburbs. Since there was a bit of layover at the hub I figure I might just have made the bus, but maybe not. I guess the lesson is to plan trips a bit. If I didnt have food on me I probably could have waited a bit for the next bus. But maybe not. At home, I did do some walks for little errand things..to the Indian market for some guava juice and nuts, to Arrow Wine for soda wate, to Drug Mart for some canned veggies, sour cream, etc. Thinking this is were the bike would come in handy, to make these "short" errands more workable. Also notice that Wal Mart is open near me and I should take a test walk there for timing and bus waiting, as an alternative to Cub. But, truely, DLM @ Washington Square works better. I can take 17 home from the hub on a workday, get off at DLM and get back on on the next bus with groceries. Could work! But it would take forever to get home. Daylight Savings Time Leisure Walks Now with DST, I have much more time after I get home to take some walking for fun. Usually to Grant Park (which is a big forest/prairie preserve nearby) or subdivision walks to Spring Valley Road and Yankee, a suburban intersection that hasnt been developed much yet...except it has sidewalks. I can get in 3 miles on both of these walks, though one is nicer than than the other.

Looking at those maps I am looking at the areas I travelled through past Fall and see Scranton/Wilkes Barre and the counties between that area and the Delaware River (which was true appalachian mountain country) growing in population. Interesting to see that since it might explain why the place (Scranton city) didn't seem as wasted/trashed as Dayton, given the even more dire economic histo For Ohio it seems nearly every county in the old Virginia Military District has grown, while the big-ag counties of western Ohio have seen some declines.

I think a lot of southeast Asia Asians and Indians from India (which could include Pakistanis and Bangladeshis too). Louisville has some apartment complexes and charities that are involved with refugee resettelment, so this is probably resulting in chain migration. There's some anecdotal evidence of this, too, in my life, since my nephew goes to one of those math and science magnet schools. I've been told most of his classmates are various Asian types and some blacks (US blacks, I guess). That probably says something about immigration in Louisville and the professional/upward mobility aspirations of them.

Down in Kentucky, the Louisville metro area grew by 12.3% and Lexington grew by 14% The suprise is the core county of the Louisville metro, Jefferson County (AKA "Louisville Metro" mergerd city/county), gained people. 47,000 plus or minos, growing by 7%, which is better than its growth rate between 1990 and 2000. The local paper says this is due to ncrease in minority and immigrant populations. "...Jefferson County, the state's largest which includes Louisville, outpaced its growth from the 1990s and added about 47,500 people during the last decade, the data shows. The increase was fueled largely by surging numbers of Hispanics and Asians, offsetting a continued drop among white residents...." ...the whites are moving to the counties surrounding Jefferson, meaning Jefferson is becoming more diverse. This is actually somewhat noticeable driving around Louisville, seeing this evolve over the years.

Kettering Tower sale a sign of downtowns troubles DAYTON — The Kettering Tower, Dayton’s tallest and most prominent office building, is on the verge of being sold at sheriff’s auction, making it the latest landmark building to face a far less certain future. Built in 1972, the Class A office tower was owned by Virginia Kettering, daughter-in-law of famed inventor Charles F. Kettering. Virginia Kettering died in 2003. The Kettering Tower Trust sold the building in 2005 to Kettering Tower Partners for $21.5 million.... The article goes on to say how the trend during the 2000s was that office users leaving downtown... .... The trend has led to the foreclosure or steeply discounted sale of some of the city’s most prestigious buildings. They include KeyBank Tower, 10 W. Second St.; 110 N. Main St., once the regional headquarters for Fifth Third Bank; and 32 N. Main St., which a self-proclaimed Hindu guru bought for $525,000 cash last year. The artcile quotes competing claims to overall vacancy...20% or 30%.....with downtown the highest vacant-space submarket in the region. A related artcile discusses how the owners want the Sheriff sale stopped because the appraised price is too high Kettering Tower owner wants Sheriffs sale stopped DAYTON — Owners of the Kettering Tower, downtown Dayton’s tallest building, are trying to stop an April 1 sheriff’s sale, stating that the $16.2 million appraisal is too high. The appraiser’s estimate, which is $33.30 per square foot, “is so overvalued that it is likely to chill bidding at the scheduled sale,” according to a motion filed Friday by attorneys for Kettering Tower Partners, LLC. The artcile goes on to note the old Mead Tower, now home to Keybank, was sold for only $1M (wow, a skyscraper for only a cool mil!), @ $3.52/SF, and "another building" will also soon sell at a low amount, $3.8M or $12.33/SF. Sort of symbolic of the new era Dayton has entered. Can it get any worse for downtown?

Yesterday and today, while walking from and to the bus hub, I had some interesting pedestrian/vehicle encounters. Yesterday...walking across a street an SUV crosses the street at right angles, coming toward me, but sees me and serves to avoid me. This was a street with a stop sign, so they did come to a stop and were driving across the street as I was crossing the the street. Sort of wierd seeing this guy or gal was so desperate to make the intersection that they'd drive across it with a pedestrian crossing the street. But they knew I was there and took action to avoid me Today....nearly was hit by a Mercedes. Traffic light but no walk sign, and I had the light. The car had stopped at the intersection and I was walking in front of it...then it started to move forward. I did a quick side step and they stopped, guess they saw me at the last minute. Lessons learned....for drivers pedestrians dont exist, particularly in case #2, early morning traffic when its still dark outside.