seangray

Signs are going up on a Taste of Belgium.

It looks like they are going to be taking at least a section of Buddy's Place surface lot. The site plan shows it restriped and the renderings show the garage and Vine St building lined right up with the alley.

I am not sure this will really be noticable. It is a narrow street that will be lined with 4-5 story buildings so the viewing angle from the street will make it invisible. Look closely at the site plan. I am pretty sure this brick wall is the rear of a building along Walnut, not part of the garage.

Lots of exciting new stuff in the just released 3CDC annual report http://www.3cdc.org/images/editor/2010-2011%20Annual%20Report.pdf

There is an article is the Business Courier about this today. I would post a link but it is subscriber access only. It'll be on Main from 1300-1500 block and is the former Maribelle's Tavern chef behind it.

I was kind of hoping Rookwood Exchange would sign the movie theater first, leaving this POS w/o an anchor tenant and on hiatus indefinitely.

95% of the people who go to this Casino will park in the garage, go in the back door, use the restaurants that are tied to a player's card, and go back to the parking garage to leave. It enhances that side of downtown because it is no longer a surface parking lot, that's about it. I really do not expect people to venture out and the operators will discourage it despite what they say publicly. The design is very suburban and leaves tons of dead space all around. I would expect more loan/pawn places to join Barr's on Reading as well. The extra money the city will get as a result of it will be where this thing is where the positive impact is.

Hopefully the Rookwood Exchange projects mostly kills their plans. The "Center of Cincinnati" project is so poorly executed.... and were getting more of the same from one hell of a crappy developer. Without the movie theater, I'm not really sure what major retailer would be interested in this spot. The Circuit City spot is still vacant too.

New OTR Work Group Presentation for April: http://www.3cdc.org/images/editor/OTR%20workgroup%20-%20April%2019%20(NXPowerLite).pdf Lots of good stuff including the official Gateway V and really good detail on Mercer (hopefully the "market rate" part of this can get going soon!) This is really exciting stuff.

Just to be clear, it was on the 1300 block, not 1200 block. From what I could see the investigations teams were over at that small park on the west side of the road. It was a really really busy night there, clearly this shooter is fearless. I am at the point where I would like to see that park closed. 2 shootings in about a year, constant drug dealing, it is too concealed. Is it the city's park?

Taste of Belgium is a done deal! Woohoo! http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20110405/BIZ01/304050036/Taste-Belgium-OTR?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|s

That would be cool. On the OTR work group maps it shows "Current / Under Construction" projects and "Pre-Development" projects. Mercer is listed as a current, while the others you mention are listed as predevelopment so I assumed they are in line behind Mercer but I suppose each project has its own timeline. It would be great if they are accelerated as 13th St is going to be a gateway into the park. 3CDC via OTR holdings picked up more buildings in the area on the 1200 block of Republic and on the NW corner of 13th/Republic recently too. Color Building / Weilerts also got a good size historic preservation grant and I think Model planned on moving their offices to the Color Building, hopefully that kicks off soon. I worry about those buildings...

I don't mean to come off as negative. 3CDC does awesome work, along with others in the neighborhood. I'm just impatient I guess. I would not live here had it not been for 3CDC. As far as my comment being false, please then do tell what you know. A handful of units up by Findlay Market perhaps that the BDCURC has been working on. Gateway Quarter there will not be much. High quality rental is what is needed.

Look at this way, aside from a few homes on Pleasant St, it doesn't look like there will be any new residential units built in OTR for at least another year. That is disappointing.

This is a pretty disappointing timeline...... 6 more months for final design? I would have thought the Parvis lease up might have been a sign that the rental market in OTR is hot and they need to get this moving ASAP! At this rate we'll be waiting for 2012 for ground to be broken and along the way Kasich might take notice of the $4mil Ohio Historic Preservation Grant and reallocate it to save barns in his home district.

It is amazing how much construction is going on down here. I took a little walk around this afternoon and it feels like the entire 1400 block of Race is being worked on. The new condos look great, new sidewalks are going in, it looks like the utilities are going underground, and the stabilization of the church at 15th and Race looks like a major undertaking (the entire roof is off). There also have been survey crews on 13th, does anyone know if the streetscape project there is going to get started soon? Are utils going underground?

I disagree, a parkway with a creek can be quite the urban asset if done right. Look up Minnehaha parkway in Minneapolis. It's a low speed roadway along a creek with bike trails, is heavily used, and is big driver of property values in the areas immediately surrounding. http://www.minneapolisparks.org/grandrounds/map_M1.htm

Vine has been a parade of dump trucks lately hauling out the Washington Park dirt. They're going 30 ft down over a 2 acre area- that is a lot of dirt. Anyone know where it's going? Helping to grow Mt. Rumpke?

Urban Sites developed a lot of condo projects such as Duveneck, Trideca, Goodfellows, etc, as well as many apartment buildings. As I understand it, Urban Sites is now out of the property development business and now is exclusively a property manager while still selling off what it had developed. Bill Baum started Urban Innovations as a new company focused on development, separate not subsidiary. The projects on the Urban Innovations site were done by Urban Sites under Bill Baum. They stabilized the building at 13th and Walnut as well. While it's open now-- many blogs have been saying that due to ______'s divorce (I can't believe I'm forgetting his name right now), he may looking to liquidate his restaurants. Lavomatic will probably be bought by several of the current managers/chefs, but we'll see if someone comes up to keep Grammars operating. Yes the Wade's own Grammers and quite a bit of surrounding property on Walnut just S of Liberty. They had hoped to redevelop the area (or so they say). I sure do hope they sell because even the Grammers building itself is starting to fall apart. Maybe 3CDC will be the buyer again. I was not aware they were liquidating due to a divorce, I just thought it was financial. Lavo was going to be sold to the chef, but it fell through and that chef left sometime in late Dec / early Jan, so I am not sure what is going to happen there. There is also interesting stuff out there on the Wade's involvement with Rookwood Pottery. anyone have any scoop on Senate II? Someone is definitely building out the space next door, and I know they were already working in the basement to build a prep kitchen. Maybe this will be called House?

I believe OTR Adopt had a major hand in getting 1513 transferred. $30k what a joke, the owners should have given it away and be happy there aren't criminal charges being filed against them.

3CDC made a major purchase for their land bank (OTR Holdings) this past week, getting a bunch of property from Middle Earth in the Walnut/14th area. It is nice to see some action on Walnut, these will be prime once Mercer is underway. ...maybe it will even get the Wade's to start fixing up the property they own in the vicinity. This should help answer some of those "where does 3CDC go next questions" From what I can gather this is what was acquired: 1420 WALNUT ST 1412 WALNUT ST 1406 WALNUT ST 112 E FOURTEENTH ST 114 E FOURTEENTH ST 28 E FOURTEENTH ST 34 E FOURTEENTH ST

Biz Journal article from Friday (paid version) says Smash Burger, Qdoba, Noodles, and Lids have signed letter of intent.

While we are rebuilding the street grid, we should name these roads in accordance with the rest of the street grid as well. If one more street name ends in "Way" I am going to puke.

The Center of Cincinnati development is crappy even by strip mall standards. Hopefully this will be a little better.

Smitty's is going to reopen at 15th and Vine. No doubt about it that Vine is really getting cleaned up. I'm not really sure if the thuggery was related to Smitty's or if it just so happened that development was happening about the time it burned. That green building (it will be so amazing rehabbed, imo) along with the color building will bring a redeveloped Vine all the way to the Kroger, which is quite exciting. I hope Kroger can help out by halting the sale of singles and maybe even expand the store out to the street to make room for a real produce section and a deli with prepared foods... Speaking of singles, did the carry outs on Main stop selling them? If so, I think Kroger might be the only place to get them S of Liberty. Watch the ground, and look how much litter up around there are steel reserve cans and colt 45 bottle tops.