jjakucyk

I hate to sound prejudiced, but I don't think a bunch of middle-aged white women would even consider a local non-chain restaurant, no matter how cheap or close it is. There's a lot of people out there who would go to New Orleans or Boston or San Francisco and seek out the nearest Olive Garden. Joe also makes a good point, some people only get 30 or 45 minute lunch breaks.

Having office space mixed in is critical for a healthy restaurant scene, so long as the jobs are well paid enough that employees aren't brown bagging it five days a week. I don't think Job and Family Services folks go out much more than to the hot dog cart or Subway, which is sad because there's a lot of people in there. Anyway, central business district eateries tend to be almost entirely lunch focused, many times closing around 4:00. That almost always requires higher volume lower quality fare. Restaurants in residential-only neighborhoods also struggle without a lunch crowd that has faster turnover and can draw more people in with the lower prices compared to dinner. In mixed neighborhoods it's more symbiotic.

There was a decent, if somewhat hidden pedestrian entrance off Dury back in the day. It was kind of a neat little sidewalk with bamboo on both sides that came in next to the drive-in lanes. I assume there was pressure from neighbors to get rid of that so patrons wouldn't park on "their" streets and walk in. The current bridge is very much a highway-scaled thing catering directly to the main parking lot. It's kind of confusing if you arrive by any other means, and the berms and retaining walls along Vine and Erkenbrecher are very anti-urban. Compare to this: https://goo.gl/maps/W26YK4sB23J2

Technically Northside has a tentacle that stretches all the way up West Fork to the city limits.

A garage would still be better than surface lots. They can put solar panels over it too.

There were a couple more houses on Howell with back yards and what looks like some small garages among the trees. From old aerial photos anyway, it looks like it was pretty similar to what the rest of the block is still like today closer to Ormond. https://www.historicaerials.com/location/39.14316699681419/-84.52063858509062/1960/18

The hillside slipping that's going on there along Riverside is frightening. It's entirely possible the house was on the verge of falling over. I just biked through there on Sunday (I don't recommend it, what with all the gravel and mud from construction) but I saw sidewalks buckling as far east as the newer townhouses/East End condos, which I think is beyond the work area. Google Street View has only caught the very beginning of the problem at the old Verdin building. It now stretches hundreds of feet in either direction. https://goo.gl/maps/tWsri1MwDvA2

Nice! It has a bit of an Albert Kahn feel to it, especially with the arched windows at the top.

Get Cranley out of office first. He put the kibosh on a reworking of the zoning code that was already in progress.

OH-561 follows Seymour to Vine Street where it ends. OH-4 is Paddock to Vine and Springfield Pike. So there really isn't such a thing as an OH-4/561 bridge because the routes aren't concurrent.

They're replacing the Seymour Avenue bridge, and just modifying Paddock. I believe they need to saw-cut away some of the concrete abutments. http://www.dot.state.oh.us/trac/_layouts/mobile/dispform.aspx?List=454c3b6d-ca08-4f10-bef1-9d84976a40d2&View=2943ccdc-112f-433e-9d99-98bafd9d04c0&ID=5

Spillover really needs contiguous urban fabric in order to work. There's so many barriers that can block it, from highways to railroad berms to housing projects. It's hard to find that in Cincinnati, especially with the neighborhood business districts being so nodal. Hyde Park spillover to Oakley is about the only good example we have. Hyde Park and Mt. Lookout aren't much different. Mt. Lookout and Columbia-Tusculum is a smaller example, and also Walnut Hills to East Walnut Hills. So many neighborhoods have hillside barriers and/or industrial corridors, like Red Bank separating Madisonville from everything else.

It's been mentioned before, but the percentage of people that are willing to be pioneers, or even "risk-oblivious" or "risk-aware" is very very small. That's why so many stick to the "safe" neighborhoods and suburbs.

Because the park board has been staunchly opposed to any MTB trails for ideological as opposed to technical reasons.

Well, what DOES a brick box with no remaining architectural elements contribute? At some point you have to draw the line.

Here's some photos from this evening.

I checked Google Maps traffic for Atlanta this morning and again this evening. It doesn't seem to be appreciably worse than usual, but I don't have an on-the-ground view of it. Sort of like the expected carmageddon when the 405 in LA was closed for several days, it never actually materialized.

Exactly, same with buildings that have had additions, or outbuildings added, or any number of other modifications.

Something that's always puzzled me is the string of 1920s bungalows that line Dorchester and Highland. That's much too close to downtown, being along a major streetcar and former cable car route, for such small/cheap and new houses. They get much older once you get north to Earnshaw and west towards Auburn/Sycamore, but I see no evidence in Sanborn or other old maps that there were mansions or anything along here before. It almost looks like the land was mostly vacant, but I find that hard to believe.

If you go to his blog you'll see the explanation of why it's only so accurate (it's based on the county auditor's database, which has some unfortunate defaults and compromises). https://nathanrooy.github.io/posts/2017-02-15/the-age-of-cincinnati/

No, they're just ugly houses, but they do fit the proportions. At least some kids can walk to Montgomery Elementary from Ross, Campus, and Zig Zag, but the disconnected street grid quickly becomes a hindrance.

Yes, Montgomery probably has the most teardowns similar to Chicago's North Shore, it's just taken 20 years ;) Indian hill sees plenty of it too, but it's not as noticeable.

That's what I figured. The a right turn from eastbound Dorchester to Sycamore is almost a u-turn, making it slow and somewhat blind too. It also has quite a tilt to it as well, which makes it impossible for anything but small vehicles. Plus it's not like Sycamore couldn't use some curb bump-outs as well, since you can't park until you get to the bottom of the steps anyway, and it's a wide no-man's land.

The 30" footing depth here (not 32") isn't really all that far down, and I don't recall running into instances where it was required to go deeper to reach good bearing soil. Having the flexibility to run wiring, pipes, and air ducts makes at least a crawl space advantageous, if you have the space. In the south, I think it's moisture and higher water tables that tend to preclude basements, but crawl spaces still seem to be preferred to raise the house a bit above the reach of termites and to vent the moisture out before it has a chance to force its way up through the floor. Historically, having a basement was advantageous for coal delivery. Cincinnati was also more of a furnace city than a boiler city, and the big old octopus gravity furnaces needed to be in the basement to allow the heat to rise up to the living floors. I don't want to get into the details of why some areas preferred furnaces, others boiler, and others stoves, on top of the historical switch from fireplaces to central heat, but that could be a fun discussion. Anyway, another factor as touched on before is accessibility. Many houses have a first floor that's a few feet above the yard, and another few feet above the street. So to get a full basement would only require digging the minimum 30" required footing, piling up the excavation around the yard, and then having some more steps up to the front of the house. I suspect that when the streets were built they were dug down to good subsoil, with that excavation also spread around the building lots. That's how you end up with situations like this: https://goo.gl/maps/pq4ZShri41p where the basement is almost free. I would hypothesize that the original grade was about a foot above the sidewalk in a case like that. It's not great for accessibility though. Yeah the driveway ramps are generally ok, but getting that extra couple feet up to the first floor is tough for the enfeebled. Nowadays on smaller lots like these you wouldn't be able to dispose of the basement excavation on-site, and hauling it off is expensive.

Huh, so that's what that's all about. I'd noticed the sidewalk next to the old Verdin building buckling before, and I thought it was a water main break or something, but then it buckled again after being repaired.