jjakucyk

Isn't there some construction going on at the K-mart site?

Well of course it's going to be in a space with a big window right onto the sidewalk. I mean, why wouldn't it be?

My guess about that is that they're closing the Edwards to NB I-71 ramp so they're detouring anyone from there onto SB I-71 to Dana and back north. I think they're also closing the EB Lateral to SB I-71 ramp and detouring via Ridge.

I was wondering myself and managed to find a reference to painting of the I&O Railroad overpass, which has been happening overnight for almost two weeks now. I guess they've been closing some of the onramps so they can have room to work. Sadly they're just repainting the bridge a drab gray. The orange paint on all the surrounding road bridges is very sharp, and it still looks good after some 15 years.

And it's not like the Washington Park garage doesn't dump you a mere stone's throw from Music Hall's front door. I wonder how many of these people even know it's there.

Retail/commercial has trouble on single-sided streets generally. Even in Manhattan 5th Avenue goes residential once it hits Central Park.

Ok yeah. It's actually kind of a similar situation in that the tower is the only part left that's old. The original church burned down in the 1960s or 70s (wasn't it a pastor with a history of arson or other misdeeds who was being constantly shuffled around to different congregations?). Anyway, the tower was spared and kept, as was the front wall along Madison Road, but otherwise there's not much left that's original.

Why cross off "East"? It IS East Walnut Hills.

Maybe an issue at the main campus is access for a vehicle for rebalancing? It's certainly not impossible, as there's service streets throughout, and the docking stations phone home so it's not like someone has to just drive around checking. Still, vehicle access to the center of campus is pretty limited. That's not the case on the medical campus though, which still has several public dedicated streets going through it.

^ Yes that's the basic mode of operation. The two cars were permanently attached to each other via the cables, like the counterweight in an elevator. There wouldn't be enough power to pull one car by itself. A deadly wreck on the Mt. Auburn Incline happened when one car reached the top and the cable pulled out, so that car rolled down the entire length of the incline almost at a free-fall.

I'll be the bouncer.

Why discouraged? It's a circulator that goes a fraction of the distance that most bus routes do.

Cantilevers do complicate things especially with wood construction, but that does sound excessive. The other things is that you need the depth of a 2x12 to get the required R-38 roof insulation in our climate. Closed-cell foam, or rigid foam above the roof deck, is the only way to get that R-value in less than that depth. Also, anything less than a 2x10 needs a fire barrier, which can be a problem in a basement if you're trying to save money by not finishing it.

Yep, the live load for a parking garage is just 40 lbs/sq ft (PSF). Of course there's pretty high concentrated load factors as well since the weight of a car is sitting on four contact patches that are only about six inches square. Offices and residential uses are also in the 30-50 PSF range, but corridors, lobbies, or any sort of assembly space easily doubles those numbers. I recently designed an outdoor deck for a commercial assembly use (think wedding receptions, dances, etc.) and there we used a 150 PSF live load, but even then it's still just 2x10 joists at 12" on center over a 13' span. Nothing crazy by any stretch of the imagination there.

Somehow I doubt it. There's so many geotechnical challenges to building on a site like that, on top of the whole wedge-shaped building issues and lot coverage and setback restrictions, not to mention off-street parking requirements. Remember Bombay Oven at Nixon and Jefferson that burned down? That wasn't even a wedge-shaped building, but it's certainly a narrow lot, and it's just been sitting fallow since. I wouldn't expect to see anything built there unless someone consolidates it with the old Adriatico's building and does a full redevelopment of the whole thing.

The type of photography done for these real estate listings is also very particular (peculiar?) in that they always seem to use a very wide angle lens, sitting low to the floor, making the rooms look a lot larger than they really are. I just drove Auburn Avenue yesterday and with all the demolitions that have happened in the neighborhood (Glencoe Place, the medical office on Wellington, the church at Auburn and McMillan) it's a lot more open and suburban looking. You get a better sense of the lay of the terrain (not unlike a lot of the rural hills and hollows of Campbell County Kentucky), but it's almost looking more like the neighborhood when it was first being built up, very haphazard and unfinished. Unfortunately that's the wrong direction for an urban neighborhood to be going, and I fear for its future, especially with Christ Hospital looming over it all.

^ You're making a lot of assumptions that you're purporting to be fact. I won't deny that may be SOME factor, but if what you say is true why didn't the same happen with European or Japanese or Russian soldiers? Much of suburbanization was supported as a way to keep the military industrial complex going. There was great fear that the country would slip back into depression after the war, so all the manufacturing and logistics were directed into creating a much less efficient way of living than in the past. What better way to keep the factories operating if everyone had to buy their own house, with all its own appliances, and their own car, to be driven on all new roads and highways to all new shopping centers with ample parking lots. Jim Kunstler calls it "entropy made visible." It really had little to do with "oh the poor farm folk won't want to live in an apartment."

^ Yes but even if you want to buy a small apartment building you're still kicked into the commercial mortgages if there's more than I think 3 units. Most banks might balk if it's any sort of "income producing property" like a duplex. You're quickly shunted into the 30% down, higher APR, and much higher reserve cash requirements.

Government action of some kind, usually in the form of zoning, TIFs or other incentive to high density or even TOD growth, is necessary, ... otherwise, you have Houston which, btw, I heard a news report yesterday where an expert noted that the recent flooding in Houston was exacerbated by the lack of zoning -- all the runoff went onto somebody's property; almost no natural areas left. Well, incentives for higher density development are only necessary if you don't remove all the subsidies in place for low density development. I'd say that's the better place to start rather than piling on subsidies to try to compensate for other subsidies. That's more of a "fix the symptoms" approach rather than "fix the disease."

It's not just biking though. Kids playing in the streets are very rare compared to what it used to be. Hell, parents are being arrested for letting their kids walk to school or to the park. Granted playing in a street isn't as fun as it was in the horse and buggy days since puddles must be drained and oil and antifreeze is more dangerous to play around than horse crap. Still, the fact that kids aren't allowed to play in streets unless there's essentially zero traffic at all shows how dangerous they're perceived to be.

^ Yes, in a lot of cities zoning makes existing lots too small to build on (whether practically or at all), usually limiting development potential to such an extent that the economics don't work out anymore. Plus never forget the super onerous restrictions on lending that makes getting a mortgage on anything but a single-family detached house incredibly difficult. Just listen to this Strong Towns podcast about someone with more than enough financial resources to buy a small mixed-use building (two storefronts plus a couple of apartments above) to live in, who could not, despite going through multiple banks, secure a mortgage for this building with rent-paying tenants in a stable neighborhood. Yet after giving up on the project, was able to get a LARGER mortgage for a single-family house in a matter of weeks with no hassles whatsoever. http://shoutengine.com/StrongTownsPodcast/the-frustrating-real-life-story-of-a-mixed-use-loa-16368

8' is very tight for a downtown sidewalk, especially once you put in all the poles, posts, signs, lights, meters, and benches. Granted you can accommodate a lot of those things and street trees in curb bump-outs into the parking lane instead, but not all of them. I think most of the roadways downtown are 40' wide with 10' travel lanes, so this plan looks like it would require moving the curbs (a very expensive proposition). I'd rather see 13' sidewalks and eliminate one of the travel lanes instead (or 12' sidewalks with 8' parking lanes). 10' driving lane width is pretty much ideal, which is what most downtown streets are, but it does waste some space with the curb lanes being rush hour limited parking, meaning the parking lanes have to be 10' wide rather than the 7' or 8' width they can be as permanent parking. And as easy as it may be to bike downtown, it's still very intimidating for normal people, especially with the double right turn lanes. No matter how slow traffic is going, it's not going to get people out there who aren't already fearless. Would you tell these kids they just need to "man up and bike more" rather than saying "hey, maybe our streets are designed wrong?"

Not necessarily. Incumbent residents get preference in decisions for any zoning changes, so those who might want to move to an area into a denser development have essentially no say because "they don't live there." Such living is in demand, but supply isn't able to meet it, thus the only response is for prices to go up. That's what we're seeing.

Seems like standard operating procedure where they ask for more than they expect to get, and the neighborhood smacks them back down. That way the developer gets what they want and the community members feel like they accomplished something, because they have to meddle. Unfortunately this becomes something of an arms race, always escalating. The community asks for more and more concessions so the developer has to start with an even bigger proposal, but it starts to spiral out of control. It's sort of like with ad blockers versus advertisers. There's no "we'll all just get along" agreement because as soon as someone makes a move beyond what the other thinks is reasonable then the game starts all over again.

Is that because of work on the railroad overpass? They just rebuilt the ramp maybe two years ago.