natininja

Guys, this thread finally had an impact. We did it!!! :clap:

Scott could have done a better job matching the wall color. Though it's nice he did what he did. Also interesting he said he did it for people driving by: “If you’re driving by you never would have noticed it was there at all, which was the goal.” Especially when he had referred to the spot as the "town square." Now I am curious to hear the Exploding Skulls. I guess their advertising worked. Can't find a website or anything, though, so maybe they'd do better to amp up their web presence instead of creating bad blood with DIYers in Northside.

Really like some of those Washington Park shots!

I must say though, this is debatable. A portion of Cincy's metro area goes into Indiana and Kentucky, thus Cleveland actually has the largest metro IN the state of Ohio. Being a native Clevelander, I of course have to bring this up... ;) It has now been corrected to say second largest with Kentucky and Indiana. I personally have never heard of the 4th and Vine building being called that. I know during the WKRP days the Central Trust logo was on top of the building and then PNC, which is why I was under the impression it's called PNC Tower. Although I like calling it the Central Trust Tower, since it's more original. It is the largest, it just isn't "entirely contained in Ohio." Like how LA has the biggest American metro wholly contained in one state. (A statistic no one cares about.) According to TPH's logic, you can't call it "the second largest metro in Ohio" or "the third largest metro in Ohio," either, because "it's not a metro 'in Ohio.'" So go figure what you're allowed to call this poor, stateless metro.

^ So many low-wage service jobs, which make up the heart of America's "low-skill"/low-education job field, are located out in the auto-dependent burbs. I assume the authors know that subsidizing auto-ownership so that people can get to these jobs is not a sustainable solution, but it makes for an interesting thought experiment. Trying to figure out how to make a car share program work for low-income commuters is also an interesting task.

^ Better late than never! Thanks for the pics.

I can't disagree with that. But politics is funny and unpredictable, right? My point is only that if somebody put together a comprehensive SID plan to go along with an equally comprehensive network expansion plan, and the SID component was thought to be instrumental/essential to getting the network expansion accomplished in the short(er) run, then I'd be for it. You could use, say, neighborhood boundaries as SID boundaries, which might be appropriately local. Perhaps SID passage/payments could be used to support operations and capital for the stops, and so be tied somehow to the number of stops in the neighborhood. It sounds messy, but of course lots of complex things do, until the right person is charged with pulling it apart and developing the plan. And you'd think the whole process could be replicated so that it wasn't so hard after the first one. I'd have to actually see a proposal to say if I'm wholesale against it, but I'm just trying to be a voice of caution. I think Mann and Murray are being a little reckless without considering all angles. Yes, these details have been glossed over so far. The details matter a lot IMO.

I admit I was wrong on that detail, but I think the broader point still stands.

There also were never tolls before on Ohio River crossings, but that's become a thing. KY just passed into law legislation for public-private partnerships, and we've seen them have a huge impact in Ohio with 3CDC. Alternative funding structures are not going away, and the SID is a powerful tool that I believe will become much more common. The fact that there's only one now means very little IMO. Austerity is the rule of the day, and hyper-local funding is on the rise. Let's use it wisely and discriminately, for projects where the impact is on a similarly small scale.

Nope. Me, too. Takes me back to 1991 or thereabouts.

Total income by census tract. I could standardize it by area, or manipulate in another way if you want. But this gives you an idea.

Is that a state law? It seems really messed up. Why can't there be several things being funded by overlapping SIDs? It strikes me as a huge reason not to fund the streetcar in this manner. There are likely to be other localized improvements for which the benefits will be more concentrated than an upgrade to the transportation network.

FYI - 89mil AED (Emirati Dirham) = 24,230,873 USD

Mann and Murray reflect on their trip to Portland: http://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/contributors/2014/03/26/portland-cincinnati-streetcar-david-mann/6930051/ http://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/contributors/2014/03/26/murray-portland-streetcar-depends-citizens/6931271/ Murray sounds refreshingly committed to making the project a success. Both are overly focused on the "Special Improvement District" financing structure (where is the call for that regarding the MLK interchange?), but I'd say there is more positive here than negative. Murray doesn't even suggest she's against expansion. Mann hints at support for regional LRT.

Reminds me of this thread: http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,27294.msg617504.html#msg617504

OMG PARADOX24 WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN??? You're like a reclusive celebrity genius around here. Like Jeff Mangum. Good catch on the skyline. They should commission one of your shots to replace it.

Maybe UC should start holding some events in the park. If students became more familiar with it, rather than seeing it abstractly as some sketchy place they think they shouldn't go to, maybe they'd start going on their own. A lot could be done without any capital expenditures, if the goal is to get students interested in using the park. I mean...the park is there...and it's pretty nice, as is...if there is a demand for it that isn't being met, UC could do a little marketing. Hold a frisbee golf day, have some bands play at the band stand, have a fishing day at the pond, do a scavenger hunt including some of the park landmarks (fountain, concrete slide, bandstand, etc.)... Lots of possibilities. But, by god, if you're going to throw down a bunch of capital dollars, don't throw it at a bridge over MLK.

At the ballpark is one place I'd specifically seek out a higher ABV. The high prices and potential to take a half hour to get another round makes it a smart thing to do IMO.

Plus injuries, plus the UC loss to underdog Harvard. And I feel like the line-up is weaker than last year, due to injuries and losing Choo. The only thing I'm really excited for regarding the Reds is watching Billy Hamilton hopefully live up to the hype.

It doesn't suck, if simply for the fact it's compact and easy to get around. Plus the Main Street area really is quite nice after all the improvements. Not to say there isn't a whole lot that could be done to make it better. I think it's interesting Ono is worried about Burnet Woods, when he could simply spruce up Sigma Sigma Commons. I guess he wants improvements on the city's dime. Sigma Sigma is far more of an activity void than Burnet, which sees a lot more activity than you would think based on the conversation in this thread.

Totally agree. This is the real problem with the park. ^ I would like to have trees and medians all the way down clifton like they have up by the law college, also the same thing on MLK. A round -a-bout at the corner of MLK and clifton with a fountain in the middle would help slow the flow of trafic, and change the speed limit around campus to 25 from 35 (or enforce the posted speed limit) I would like to see some motorists be ticketed for flying through crosswalks as pedestrians wait, as opposed to the occasional cop waiting to ticket students for jaywalking. But, you're very right, some legitimate traffic calming would do wonders for the entire area.

What is stopping people from doing that? The lack of surface parking? Here we go with the "let's pave over Burnet Woods," which I guarantee would be the result of giving any of the property to UC.

UC could start by making the side that faces the park more inviting for pedestrians. Giving UC carte blanche to build on Burnet Woods would be a disaster. If UC wants to build more, it can look at the Wilson Auditorium site, for one. Or the under-utilized Sigma Sigma Commons. It could also give some money to make some nicer entrances to the park. If you think about it, the problem is more the streets around the park than the park itself. Only Ludlow/Jefferson has something resembling a human-scaled, pedestrian-friendly environment. But it happens to be right at that corner that the business district starts to drop off and density drops down. MLK is the worst offender. Bishop has some access, but there wouldn't be much reason to use it unless you're living on that street (and I bet people who live on Bishop use the park all the time). The hospitals and HUC are not exactly going to feed a lot of people into the park, nor invite park users to walk or enter from Clifton Ave. I guess you could create an anchor business or something, but the more I think about it, the park isn't the park's problem. It's the streets that border the park. Though I do think making some nice entrances would help invite people to come in. A pedestrian bridge from UC is not a good "solution" to anything, and giving land to UC would create more problems than it solves. 1. Complete the streets around the park (especially MLK). 2. Landscaping, structures, programming at park entrances. 3. Address the public sex problem. That's pretty much it. The playgrounds could be updated. Maybe put in a "splashground" or something.

^Yeah, that's definitely going to happen in Cincinnati... :roll: Well they seem to tolerate it implicitly now, which is in some sense a more extreme stance since it covers the whole park. I know some would disagree, but I don't see "Arrest the queers!" as an appropriate response, but the status quo is also not okay. What would be the benefit of doing that? UC has plenty of room to build. I can just imagine the southern end of Burnet Woods becoming a big parking lot. What an improvement that would be (/s).

Seems to me there could be a happy medium. At least the exterior edges of the park could be made a bit more inviting. But having a forested oasis in the area is nice. I don't feel like the place is broken, though. It's nice and there for anyone who wants to visit. And, while perhaps under-utilized, it's not empty. Though the cruising is a bit out of control. Maybe they could designate an area where it's tolerated, instead of basically letting it run rampant throughout the park. In the Netherlands, they even put up signs for cruising areas, so families know to keep children out and men understand not to venture out of those spots. The idea being you aren't going to erase the problem by law enforcement alone.