jjakucyk

Utility companies are responsible for the cost of repairing the street, and Cincinnati also has an ordinance where if the street is less than two (or maybe three) years old the utility has to pay even more, sometimes requiring a full width repaving. Doesn't mean we don't still pay for it through higher utility rates as opposed to taxes, but it seems like the penalty isn't harsh enough to discourage this practice.

Now that's a cool shot. Awful color cast though. Here it is fixed up. Interesting that Vine was only one-way north to 13th Street. Also you can see what's left of the "Barr's Loans" ad today https://goo.gl/maps/LHVr7FMKJ4J2

That 1973 photo is an unfair comparison though. It's a telephoto shot taken from the former pedestrian bridge next to Fountain Square, so we're seeing basically the entirety of Vine Street from 6th all the way to the bend at Mulberry Street. There's only about a dozen cobrahead lights on each side of the street, which is just one per street corner north of Central Parkway, but because of the telephoto shot everything is so compressed into a single focal plane that it makes everything look way more cluttered than it really is.

Horizontal means stop, vertical means go. I saw them flashing too once, is that equivalent to "yellow"?

While not an exact match, the Cincinnati Bell colors are at least similar to the city's and Metro's colors.

I've seen on the Market Urbanism Twitter account a lot of complaining about all the thru-wall units, window air conditioners, and PTAC units. How are these new buildings heated? Obviously old buildings with window or thru-wall a/c would have radiators, but in new buildings are these units heat pumps and/or electric resistance heaters, or is there a hot water feed to the PTAC units?

^ And electric and gas meters right next to the front door.

In the grand scheme of things, Cincinnati's downtown is quite solid in that there's not much in the way of surface parking lots compared to what you see elsewhere. Sure it's not 100% building, but it's better than a lot of similar sized cities. So Columbus may need all that construction, tower cranes, etc., just to catch up, while Cincinnati rests on its laurels. Of course, that's dangerous as Columbus (similar to Nashville and many sunbelt cities) builds momentum and can easily rocket ahead of Cincinnati.

^They used a truck like that to tow the streetcars around before the overhead was finished. I assume they were able to power the streetcar's turn signals and brake lights at the very least. In the case of a storm or someone crashing their car into a catenary pole, I assume they could get it back up and powered fairly quickly, even if it requires a slow zone and some temporary guy wires and such.

Batteries that would allow cars to get back to the MOF would need to be big enough to run half of the route wireless. Those would be enormous batteries, which would then raise the question of why install overhead at all. Small batteries would be enough to keep the vehicle's lights and doors operable, or perhaps to be able to clear an intersection at most.

The market was on the south side of today's 6th Street where the convention center is now.

It would be nice to have a bit more frequency around midday so you don't waste your lunch break waiting if you're using the streetcar to get around, but if they can maintain a consistent schedule (even if it's not technically scheduled) then that would help so you can plan ahead a bit.

Agreed, adding piers to a simple earthen berm should strengthen it. At Manhattan Harbor we were told the Corps has no problem with them cutting into the levee to put in buildings, though that doesn't mean it wasn't some hand-waving going on. Surely that's a worse compromise of the levee's integrity than adding piers though. Something about this smells fishy.

The trouble is that it's not a public park, and P&G is zealous in closing it down after hours. Plus it's a thoroughly un-activated outdoor space. It's surrounded by monolithic office buildings and it's across the street from a monolithic theater. Compare that to Fountain Square which has many different businesses fronting it, several of which open directly onto it. The way 5th Street gets stupidly wide by P&G only makes it worse, and actually the pergolas/hanging garden structure creates a barrier against the street (understandable since it's basically a highway there) which only serves to further isolate the space inside and make it feel uncomfortable if not unsafe. It's also just way too big to fill up with people, which adds to the perception of safety problems, further keeping people out of it.

I like the "Delicate Flower Bridge" name :)

You can see incorporated versus unincorporated areas pretty well on my transit map at http://www.jjakucyk.com/transit/map/index.html though I don't have township boundaries drawn. That little bit of Columbia Township between Pleasant Ridge, Amberley, and Golf Manor is a cute little neighborhood called Ridgewood that seems to embrace its "separateness" from everything else with some signs and benches https://goo.gl/maps/7FHZJJRwme72 It's a pretty full-on pre-WWII outer city neighborhood though, with nice streets, curbs and sidewalks (mostly), rear-yard electric, and even gas lights. It looks like it was developed by the same outfit that built a lot of Roselawn between Losantiville Avenue and Section Road on either side of Reading, as well as streets like Drakewood and several between Brotherton and the HP Country Club in Oakley. I bet there's a story behind it never getting annexed beyond the usual benefits of city services with township taxes sponge game.

Downtown business districts all have trouble with retail and restaurants. Without a respectable residential population, restaurants can only survive on lunch and retail also loses out on evening and midday "housewife" shopping. So all that can make it are high-volume high-turnover mostly fast food chains and stores that can handle the lunch crush. I think this is changing as more residential developments and conversions have happened, but even the Chicago loop would completely die after about 7:00 pm, while north of the river it would be hopping until who knows when. This is why Hyde Park is such a restaurant and to a lesser extent retail mecca, because it has a lot of residents, workers, and stay-at-home folks making decent money. Bedroom suburbs don't have the daytime worker population to support so many good restaurants while retail (also of the higher-volume cheap chain variety) relies more on weekend shopping.

I've been in an acoustically perfect auditorium before. It was a newer one, but you could stand at the far rear entrances and hear someone talking in a low voice on stage perfectly clearly with no amplification whatsoever. There was no echo or anything like that either.

I'm sure lawyers would love to take it to court to find out! If it's part of the deed of the building/property then it should be enforceable. If it's just in a will, probably not so much, unless her will also gifted the building with those stipulations, at which point it would become part of the deed again.

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."

Also even these brand new expensive apartments are still cheaper than living in a dorm.

The street view I posted above is basically how it was until it was finally demolished. That doesn't mean it didn't perhaps collapse inside, and I figure it would have required a total gut, but still.

Even if that whole rear addition needed to be removed, and it was a total gut job (I figure it was), new roof, or even just lop off the mansard and leave the brick part, that would've still been way better than this new thing that looks like a muffler shop.

So this is what's replacing the old East End Cafe. It makes me sad.

Ever since the city sold the streetlights to Duke, it's gotten much harder to have burned out lights fixed. They want you to give them a pole number rather than an address or description (since they work during the day and have no way of knowing which lights are or aren't working), and it's a very frustrating process.