jjakucyk

That's a bummer. The Loveland Station development did a decent job of staying away from the historic building. There's really very little history left in the downtown, and just from this low-resolution rendering those townhouses look like crap, though a small step up from the rest of the new buildings on the site.

8 stories is rather much for such a small site and with nothing remotely similar in scale nearby. I think the tallest building anywhere near there is Voltage Lofts at Brotherton which is 5 stories tall, while most other buildings there are only two or at most three. This could be a case of asking for the moon and not expecting to get it, which makes what the developer actually wants more palatable to the community. It seems you can't just go in with a reasonable proposal anymore because the busybodies have to shoot something down to feel good about themselves. So if you want X you have to ask for X+1 and let the NIMBYs beat you back down to X. Otherwise you ask for X and they beat you down to X-1 which is usually an economic non-starter. Everyone loses regardless because the project has to go through more hassles and hearings, and the developer is always the enemy and the community councils are viewed as obstinate power brokers wanting nothing but unreasonable concessions. Oakley is odd in that the square itself is at the end of the business district with a rather abrupt change to residential, with the most density a block to the east and a more commercial pattern. The square is the most empty part of the district, and if anything that's where more development needs to happen. Not that infilling parking lots or other automobile-oriented businesses farther east is a bad thing, it's just a very unbalanced business district that could use some thoughtful planning to better leverage its existing assets.

Pretty sure that eagle is this one that was moved to Dayton Street. I know Paul Muller at the Cincinnati Preservation Association is familiar with it. https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1191919,-84.5272891,3a,15y,182.99h,94.05t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sx8xKsCifHWq04AVu5Sz4ZQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en-US

The old Hopple Street school was farther west. The workhouse was farther in the distance. The building in question was on Hopple Street at the canal, leveled for the I-75 exit. It does look like a school to me too, but it's not listed at all on my 1912 topo maps, which does label all the schools and churches and such, so my guess is it's an industrial facility of some sort. The vents on the roof and the shop-like roofline in the back would seem to suggest as much.

Cincinnati like many cities its size is certainly a laggard compared to SF, NYC, Boston, etc. on the back-to-the-city movement. Nevertheless, what we're seeing in those cities is markets that are starting to boom *despite* all of the anti-urban, pro-suburban, pro-rural policies that are still in place at the national, state, and even still at the city level, not to mention policies held by private companies that also have a lot of skin in the game (banks, insurers, etc.). 50+ years of deliberate disinvestment has taken so much of a toll that the innate market forces simply can't be hidden anymore. If all these bad policies could be stripped away and the innate efficiency of cities was allowed to be expressed rather than suppressed, then we wouldn't need to rely on PPP's or tax credits or all these other financial shenanigans to get projects done. I think it's only a matter of time before we're forced to allow that to happen, because we simply can't afford to keep propping up unsustainable suburbs by draining resources out of cities.

Back in the days of the canal I bet Camp Washington was a pretty cool neighborhood. It was close to railroad and industrial jobs on the west side of the valley, but it also ran right up to the hills on the east in much the same way that OTR does, with a nice commercial strip on Colerain. The canal was more of a spine with smaller and older industries lining it, whereas now I-75 and Central Parkway are significant barriers and the neighborhood. Check out this photo of the canal at Marshall Avenue, there's so much "fabric" here that's been cut apart since.

It's the same "trendy" crap everyone's been doing for the past 5 years. Say what you will about boring glass and steel high rises, they've been around long enough and so many have been built that they've achieved a sort of "modern timeless" quality all their own. This other stuff that jumps and spins and zig zags and twirls and gesticulates wildly while trying to pretend to be multiple buildings is so incoherent as to be incomprehensible.

MOLT has to stand for something. They have a bunch of other acronyms but no explanation as to what they mean. I bet there's a way to tease out the meaning from the descriptions below. MOT The term "MOT" refers to the single legged traffic support poles in the CBD that are painted beige. These poles are twenty-one feet tall. MPT The term "MPT" refers to the three legged traffic support poles in the CBD that are painted beige. These poles are twenty-one feet tall. MOL The term "MOL" refers to the single legged street light support poles in the CBD that are painted beige. These poles are fifty feet tall. MPL The term "MPL" refers to the three legged street light support poles in the CBD that are painted beige. These poles are fifty feet tall. MOLT The term "MOLT" refers to the single legged combination traffic support/street light support poles in the CBD that are painted beige. These poles are fifty feet tall. MPLT The term "MPLT" refers to the three legged combination traffic support/street light support poles in the CBD that are painted beige. These poles are fifty feet tall. MOIN The term "MOIN" refers to the single legged street sign support posts in the CBD that are painted beige. These posts are eight feet tall. MPIN The term "MPIN" refers to the eight foot three legged street sign support posts in the CBD that are painted beige. BOOM The term "BOOM" refers to the horizontal structural channel support for traffic control devices used in the CBD. The booms come in sizes ranging from one bay to continuous booms that extend across the entire roadway. These items are painted beige and are attached to either MOT, MPT, MOLT, or MPLT poles.

The three "courtyard houses" at the end of Paul Street in Evanston (sorry, Hyde Park Adjacent) are progressing slowly. Two are sold with one finished and occupied. So it goes from completely done on one side to just mud on the other. At least they got the new street hammerhead built so the mud isn't as bad. These are listed as starting at $595K, but what I hear from neighbors is that they're more in the $700K+ range. For three bedroom houses that's pretty lousy. The same houses in Northside would cost half as much. The construction quality seems alright, but there's some very weird design choices. Like there's a front parlor/office with a large closet that can only be accessed from the foyer, and is too remote from the kitchen to be a dining room. There's only a powder room in the hall so it can't be a guest bedroom either. There's a large family room/great room that opens to the kitchen and breakfast area, which has big windows into the courtyard (behind the garage) but only one tiny door to the outside crammed in the far corner behind the dining table. No French doors or anything. The courtyard also looks at the neighbor's blank brick wall. The kitchen itself is painfully tiny, like 10' x 12' and the master suite in back is also quite anemic with his and hers closets that are maybe 6' square. On the second floor there's two pretty decent bedrooms each with their own private bath and a bonus room over the garage. But since there's no hall bath you can't use the bonus room as another bedroom without building both a closet and yet another bathroom. There's a full basement but only two tiny windows at the far back. It's like they deliberately squandered every opportunity they had to make some nice moves. https://www.coldwellbankerhomes.com/oh/cincinnati/2132-gold-street/pid_69900/

Huh, they recently put one of these on Kenwood Road at the north edge of downtown Blue Ash. I thought it was a lightning detector or maybe a small-format tornado siren. Totally bootleg install in that case too, they jammed a wooden utility pole in with overhead electric feeding it, plus all the boxes and conduit, electric meter, cut-off switch, and all the other garbage, none of it painted or anything. All this while they're redoing the streetscaping. One step forward one step back. The one jmblec2 posted is much nicer, though why can't they put it on an existing pole? The city's downtown light poles are pretty tall, but maybe the city doesn't lease space on them, or does the equipment need to be at the very top to ensure there's no signal "shadow" from the pole itself in a side-mounted situation?

^ The dining room soffit hides some air ducts. The soffit and beams in the kitchen hide air ducts and a steel beam that took the place of a bearing wall. Still probably would have done something in the kitchen anyway since the ceiling is 10'-6" and the room is quite large.

^ If there's signs that indicate it as a shared path then it's not illegal, but that's still a local situation as far as I know. Ohio law doesn't expressly prohibit sidewalk riding, though many municipalities do, Cincinnati included, if you're over 16 years old.

Of course there's also the big empty lot directly across the street from Cincinnati Gardens too.

^ Cyclists don't ride on streets that suck to ride on. Go figure! The hills around Corryville are much more doable than Sycamore or Dorchester. The problem is traffic and lack of cycling facilities, but the vehicular cycling advocates think nothing's wrong. I bet the cycle track was put in as a diversion tactic to get people to accept the rest of the street widening (it's being made 5 lanes wide from the current 4) by presenting an excessively wide cross section and then later cutting out the cycle track to save space and appease opponents. Even so, that 4' buffer could easily go away, it's redundant with the parking/rain garden right next to it. Plus two-way cycle tracks really aren't best practice anyway, unless you think the crap we do here in America is sacrosanct. Also won't this run afoul of the Taft historical site? There's original stone walls and entry gates that would need to be...disassembled and reconstructed further back I guess? Such things are not well received by the National Trust and other preservation organizations.

Was any reason given, besides being an asshole?

It's interesting how thoroughly that hillside was scraped clean of buildings. Not like it was always that way.

I'm sure they didn't build it near the river for fear of flooding. :-D

No way was that big enough for a fire station. The garage doors are way too small. https://goo.gl/maps/tQSiHDsXJUp Not sure what it was though, maybe some sort of maintenance facility with offices? I'd worry about hillside stability issues for any redevelopment, that whole hillside is a mess.

Many of even the very dense multi-family zoning districts like RM-0.7 or the small-lot single-family zone SF-2 still have 5' front and side yard setbacks. Slightly less dense zones like RM-1.2, RM-2.0, RMX, and single-family districts SF-4 and SF-6, which cover a good chunk of the West End, much of Pendleton, Mt. Auburn, and Fairview have 20'-25' front yard setbacks. So there's no residential-only zones that permit zero lot-line development (in some you have limited ability to do zero side setbacks for rowhouses but only within your own development), and there's nothing between the 5' and 20' front yard setbacks. That makes a lot of non-conforming buildings.

Double standard. People do dumb things and break laws all the time, whether on a bike or in a car. Motorists speed constantly, roll through stop signs, run red lights, swerve, park on sidewalks, and do plenty of other jackhole things. And here's the thing, those are all incredibly dangerous to other people. While a cyclist is a bit more dangerous to a pedestrian than another pedestrian, the danger of even a small car to pedestrians and cyclists is an order of magnitude greater. The other difference is that when you see someone do those things in a car, it's "that asshole" [person like me doing many things I do too] but when someone on a bike does it, they're "that asshole cyclist" [other creature I don't identify with doing things I don't understand]. Also the thing about earbuds is that what you hear versus what you see only tells you about things directly behind you. And the only thing of much use would be that you're about to be run over, which you can't really do anything about. Regardless, what's behind you on the road is not your responsibility. If you're going to change lanes or turn or whatever, then you have to look to see you're not cutting someone off, but hearing has no bearing on that. Deaf people can drive cars after all.

Is it 1996?

I think that's pretty common across all of America. There's this notion that the cure to bad urbanism is "green." Just "green it up" add "open space" or "green space" and that will fix everything because density and buildings are bad.

Well sure exploration goes up when prices go up, but all the easy stuff has been found and put into production already. So like I said, it takes more work (and money) to find, extract, and refine the smaller, dirtier, harder to reach fields. Since the world (and especially the American) economy is predicated on inexpensive oil, when prices get high enough to make producing these resources viable, demand goes down, and those prices crash. This is the supply/demand destruction cycle we've seen playing out, due to time lag between supply and demand responses, plus other investments and subsidies that further distort normal market forces.

^ But the fracking sites deplete after just a few years instead of decades. That's the problem few are acknowledging (but which is mentioned in the article). All it does is let us more quickly scrape the leftover sludge off the bottom of the barrel, so to speak.